That one lead: someone who perhaps courageously steps forward and decides to open up despite the consequences.

  The flip side to this, however, is that there must be a system in place to get this lead into the right hands. Moreover, the lead itself might possibly have to mean something to the investigation in order to be useful. And with an investigation that had produced as many red herrings as this one, not to mention hundreds of “tips” and so-called witnesses, only a magician would have been able to pick out the best tip that the Homicide Unit had gotten up to this point as it came across Brian Harris’s desk during the summer of 2005.

  This crucial information—naming both killers—was called in on July 28 that year, exactly ten days and two years after the murders.

  An anonymous caller phoned the department: “While Christopher Snider was drunk,” the female tipster told the tip line, “he told me that he and his girlfriend—her name is Christine, I do not know her last name—killed the four people in Clear Lake.”

  And there it was: laid out on a silver platter, as if the keys to the case were plated in gold, and arrest warrants were there, filled out, signed by a judge, and ready to be served.

  The tipster went on to say that Chris Snider, feeling a steady flow of booze wash over him on that day, wanting badly to get this demon monkey off his back, said, “Christine’s best friend was raped by the two males that we killed! So Christine and I went to the location and I killed the two males, while Christine killed the two females. We wore bandanas over our faces.”

  The details of this call fit a later description of Christine given by Chris Snider’s sister, Brandee, to George Koloroutis, spelling out things clearly, and in doing so, seemed to make some sense out of the case and the motive behind such violent deaths. The female victims were Christine’s friends, Chris’s sister had said (a fact that the tipster had not verified).

  “I just remember her (Christine Paolilla),” said Brandee, “as being intensely jealous, maniacal, malicious, and controlling. One thing I can say with certainty is my brother would have never touched a girl—much less done what was done, to any female. He was very protective of females. And the details of the case further showed me that there must have been some underlying jealousy between her (Christine) and [Rachael]. When I saw the photos of [Rachael], I knew instantly. [She] was very beautiful. . . .”

  The speculation was that Rachael and Tiffany’s beauty “ate Christine Paolilla alive.” She was crazy jealous of these girls—and with Rachael’s head being beaten in with a pistol, it would certainly bode well for any argument of her killer snapping into an envious rage and taking that anger out on Rachael. Even more, both Rachael and Tiffany had been shot in or close to the vaginal area, another obvious “tell” pointing toward hatred and jealousy. Add to that the theory that Christine had told Chris that the two boys were rapists, and you have some serious theories of motive going on here. Whereas the investigators had believed all along that the killer (or killers) had gone to that house to murder D or Marcus, now it appeared that Christine had, in fact, initiated this crime to take out two of her friends, using a feigned rape accusation to get Chris Snider over there with her.

  The informant nailed Christopher Snider’s birth date (HPD checked it out) and last known address. She also stated Christine’s father’s name as “Dick Thomas.”

  Close enough.

  She gave Christine’s phone number to HPD.

  Again, this was spot-on (although HPD had no way of knowing this then).

  There were two problems for Brian Harris as the lead crossed his desk. “The clue did not even come close to the motive we were working with, because it said he told the person (the tipster) that he killed the guys because they had raped [one of Christine’s friends]. This was nowhere close to the backgrounds of the victims. I searched the reports and phone records for a ‘Snider’[after the tip came in] and did not make the connection. He was not listed in any local reports because the stuff he did with Christine was in the county. By then he had been shipped back to Kentucky.”

  Then there was that phone record check that the Homicide Division had conducted on the girls’ cell phones: that forty-eight-hour search backward. Again, if they would have gone back seventy-two hours, it would have all come together. Because Christine Paolilla’s number was part of Rachael and Tiffany’s records.

  Then there was the photograph of Christine and Rachael. That seemingly naughty picture of Christine flossing her teeth with the strap of Rachael’s panties had been mistakenly labeled by someone in the chain of command.

  The wrong name was on the photograph.

  Christine was not even listed among friends of the girls. So neither Christine nor Chris Snider were ever connected to Rachael or Tiffany. And thus, a tip that could have solved the case right then and there remained, for the time being, just another phone call to add to an enormous stack of calls already in the Clear Lake file.

  In addition, there would soon be another major hurdle to contend with as August 2005 approached—this one brought on by Mother Nature.

  CHAPTER 36

  WITH SOME OF that money she had received from her trust fund, Christine Paolilla and her new husband purchased a condo in Webster, Texas, a two-mile trip south of Clear Lake City, her old stomping grounds. Christine and Justin were now back in the neighborhood of the murders that she had helped commit. It was the end of April when the condo deal went through. They had been married for a few weeks then. Nestled comfortably inside their new home (the deed in both of their names), Christine watched television one day in July, right around the same time that latest call had come through the Crime Stoppers tip line. It was the two-year anniversary of the Clear Lake murders. Justin and Christine were upstairs. Christine was in the bedroom, and Justin was inside his studio, working on some drawings for tattoos. (“Justin was an incredible artist,” said one old friend.)

  “Hey, babe, come in here,” Christine yelled from the other room.

  Justin got up from where he sat with his sketchbook. He walked down the hall, then into the bedroom.

  Christine was up off the bed, staring at the TV.

  “What’s up?” he asked.

  “Look,” she said, pointing. She had one hand in her mouth, almost biting on the bottom of her palm. “Oh my . . . Oh my . . .”

  On the television screen were photographs of Rachael, Tiffany, Marcus, and Adelbert. These were now familiar faces to area residents. The newscast was talking about the two-year anniversary and still no arrest.

  At one point the sketches went up on the television screen.

  Christine became “nervous, very worried” at that exact moment, Justin noticed. She paced, walking back and forth in front of the television.

  Oh my! Oh my!

  She stood in front of the TV as Justin sat on the edge of the bed, wondering what was going on with his wife.

  “And she stood there,” Justin later said, “and she couldn’t sit.”

  Then the tears came. “Oh, my goodness,” Christine said as the sketches stayed up on the screen, “does that look like me? Does that look like me?”

  She’s involved, Justin thought. She’s part of this. It hit him all at once while watching her freak out at the sight of the photographs. Several comments she had made to him subtly over the past few weeks. That Christmas dinner. Her knowing the two girls. It was coming together for Justin as though he couldn’t turn away.

  “I couldn’t deny it anymore,” he said later, talking about that moment as his wife sweated out the broadcast of the photographs. He realized, for the first time, that he had married a murderer. “There was something. . . . There was truth to something.”

  CHAPTER 37

  AS THE END of the summer approached, a storm brewed, a literal tempest, that is. Katrina had started out as a Category 1 hurricane, over the Bahamas, on or near August 22 to 23, and by the time it hit land, this prodigious tropical depression had manifested into a devastating Category 3 hurricane. The storm surge alone was enough to send thousands of New Orleans residents out of that bowl-shaped supercity, heading for dry (upper) land, an area of which turned out to be Houston. And yet Katrina wasn’t the storm that had sent Justin Rott and Christine—“I didn’t want to change my last name”—Paolilla running from their new condo. Hurricane Rita had made a near direct hit that September on Houston/Galveston, which pushed Rott and his wife, as well as scores of other residents, toward safer ground. For Justin and Christine, it was his parents’ house in Arlington, Texas—they had apparently relocated from the Chicago area, too—that he chose.

  He and Christine ended up spending two days waiting out the destruction and devastation of Rita. This had worked out for Justin: he had wanted to introduce his parents to his new wife, anyway.

  By now Christine and Justin were fighting that terrible itch, that subtle yet substantial urge to get back into the game. That money they had was burning a hole in their sobriety, telling them it was okay to fiddle a little here and a little there. That demon on their backs was now on their shoulders and speaking: Maybe a bag of dope on the weekends. A few beers. Then back to real life on Monday until the following weekend. Yeah . . . we can do it right this time.

  A savage disease hibernated inside of Justin Rott, one that Christine had no idea how to defend herself against. Justin was a recovering heroin addict. He had fought legions of demons, not a solitary devil. The guy was constantly on guard against the biggest dragon of them all—sitting there, waiting, dictating to him how to live life. Once that needle was stuck back into his arm, there was no turning back. And with what seemed to be unlimited funding, that sleeping giant, who had sat dormant for some time now, was ready and waiting to pick right back up where Justin had left off the last time, when he wound up homeless.

  From Arlington, shooting dope “not every day, but close to it,” Christine and Justin drove to San Antonio.

  Why?

  “To use drugs,” Justin said later. A good dope addict goes to where the best dope is—and he had a dealer in San Antonio.

  They had actually started using before the trip to Arlington. If Justin had to put a motive behind the reignition of his drug habit, and introducing Christine to the needle, he said he’d be lying if he pinpointed a specific reason. There had been no precise, calculated decision, or an exact moment. In other words, it didn’t happen after an argument or a brush with police. A drug addict doesn’t have to be sent over the edge, or necessarily pushed off the wagon; the disease of addiction is always there, always plotting and planning, always playing games with the mind. One weak moment is all it takes to burst like a blood blister and begin to control once again every aspect of an addict’s life.

  Justin knew this.

  They had decided before leaving his parents’ not to stay in San Antonio. Yet, they had no ties, really, back at the condo. They had purchased a dog, and the dog was traveling with them, so there were no pets to attend to back home. They had money. What seemed to be, at the moment, an endless supply of cash. They could roam from place to place, providing, that is, there were drugs wherever they wound up.

  “So,” Justin explained, “at first, supposedly, we were just going to go there (San Antonio) for a little while and then go home.”

  As they drove, the subject of the murders and Christine’s involvement came up inside the car. By now the newlywed husband knew that his wife was involved; although they were not necessarily openly talking about Christine being some sort of runaway fugitive who needed to be hidden. Christine had told him just about everything. Where it happened. Somewhat how it all went down. And her version of why.

  “Just be quiet about it,” he said when she brought it up during the car ride to San Antonio. He didn’t want her talking to anyone else about it in the same manner as she had been doing with him. He was on edge; they were both withdrawing from the dope and needed a fix—hence the trip to San Antonio. He didn’t want to hear about anything besides when that next bag of dope was going to be entering his bloodstream.

  “We’ll talk about it later,” he said to Christine at one point. It seemed it was all she wanted to talk about now.

  “Rachael . . . ,” Christine said. She started crying. “I can sometimes see her.”

  “What?”

  Christine was having flashbacks. She once explained how, when they’d watch a movie, she’d see someone get shot and think of Rachael, her “friend.” She’d stare into the mirror while combing her wig or brushing her teeth and see Rachael’s face. It was consuming her, she told Justin. She couldn’t handle it anymore, which was where the amnesia drug of choice—smack—came into play: the all-powerful numbing agent.

  Christine had now found her new best friend—cheeba, chiva, chieva, whatever else you want to call it—to be all she had been searching for. A true love affair had begun. Christine didn’t need all that much convincing to take off with the drug and run as fast as she could. She had the genes. The past history. The foundation for such an affair was bursting inside her already.

  One thing about Christine that emerged as her life unfolded throughout this period was an inherent willingness to adapt, but in her own narcissistic way. For example, like her mother, Christine had chosen not to take on Rott’s last name. Lori was Lori Paolilla, not Lori Dick. Not because she didn’t like that last name, but according to Christine, it was a mere nuisance to change over bank accounts and driver’s licenses, et cetera.

  Christine, Justin Rott later said, “did the same thing” as her mother. “We were going to do it (change her name) at one time. We had just opened up bank accounts and . . . we used that excuse for a while . . . that we didn’t want to change everything around. If anyone has ever done it, it’s kind of hectic, all that change. One thing led to another,” Justin finished, “and it wasn’t an issue, really.”

  And in defense of those who don’t share a last name, it generally isn’t an issue.

  Justin and Christine began a tour, essentially, of hotels and motels throughout the San Antonio region, paying with credit cards and cash from Christine’s rapidly dwindling trust fund account. And this trip wasn’t anything close to a honeymoon or extended vacation that some couples might take; it was about doing as much drugs as they could, as fast as they could, and staying as high as they could.

  Truly, as time would tell, this was a bender to end all benders.

  CHAPTER 38

  HURRICANES KATRINA AND Rita stalled just about everything to do with the Clear Lake investigation. Nearly all HPD detectives were now in uniform, working the Houston Astrodome and other places around the city where that huge influx of “Katricians” had settled in the state, and more crime than HPD had ever seen began to consume all of their time and energy.

  “By the end of the summer,” Brian Harris said later, “our caseload was picking up.”

  That would be a gross understatement. The murder rate in the city skyrocketed nearly 27 percent, with what Homicide called “the Katrina murders.” Any tip that might have come in concerning the Clear Lake case, including that tip in July regarding Christopher Snider and his girl, Christine, was placed in a notebook and saved. With all the post–Katrina/ Rita crime taking place in the city, tracking down Clear Lake tips was certainly not on the top of the Homicide Division’s list of things to do in the Clear Lake case. Add to that, that Clear Lake’s number one advocate, George Koloroutis, had now moved his family—because of his job—to Kansas, near Kansas City, the Clear Lake murder investigation was about as cold as it had ever been.

  And wouldn’t you know, this happened precisely at a time when it could have been easily solved with a small amount of gumshoe police work.

  BEFORE THAT TRIP he took with Christine for Christmas dinner, Justin Rott had never been to Houston. Justin had not heard about the Clear Lake murders before his wife introduced him to it. Those types of crimes were not something Justin had made a point to follow in the news. It’s safe to say that Justin Rott was concerned with his sobriety at times and finding dope at others. He might have seen a news story about it, but he didn’t know anything until he met Christine.

  And now he was married to one of the murderers and they were shooting dope together as if the poppy fields in Afghanistan were in jeopardy of drying up.

  As he thought about it later, little hints that something was wrong had been there all along, though Justin was not attuned enough with the situation to know what they meant. There was one time, after they had first started dating, when Justin and Christine prepared to part ways and go back to their halfway houses. Christine had broken down for no apparent reason inside the car. “We were just sitting there,” Justin said later, “and she just started crying hysterically.”

  “What’s wrong?” a concerned Justin Rott asked his then-girlfriend. “Talk to me.”

  “There’re some things,” Christine said through tears, “there’s . . . um . . . there’re some things that I want to talk to you about and tell you, but I’m afraid.”

  Justin had never seen his girl this upset. Her body trembled. Something had rattled her cage. She wanted to spit it out, but for some reason she couldn’t.

  “Tell me, Christine,” he begged. “Come on.” He was trying to say that there was nothing they couldn’t handle together. They were a couple now. They loved each other. She continued to cry. “There’re some things”—Christine looked out the window—“there’re some . . . things that happened in Houston that I am scared people will find out.”