Never See Them Again, page 33
“I was thinking maybe I didn’t ask the question clear enough,” DeGeurin pressed. “In your mind, when you were looking at the pictures before you determined which one you recognized, were you of the impression from whatever the officers told you that their suspect was going to be one of those photographs?”
“Yes.”
“And do you recall what they told you that led you to that conclusion?”
“They said they had a lineup of people they wanted us to look at. And I think they maybe even said that they had received a tip, I think, and that they had a lineup they wanted us to look at to try to see if we saw the people that we saw.”
“In other words, they didn’t . . . tell you, ‘Our suspect is not even in this group’?”
“They didn’t tell us that.”
IT WAS OCTOBER 6, 2008, Monday. Brian Harris had been recalled the previous Friday to conclude his testimony. He had walked the jury through every nuance and beat of the case as he saw it. Harris’s second round of testimony allowed the state to put into the record several pieces of evidence, as well as scores of additional photographs and witness/suspect statements.
Before the day began, the judge told the jury that the state would be “wrapping its case on Thursday or Friday.”
This was a great relief to many.
With that out of the way, Detective Breck McDaniel took the stand and explained how he interviewed Christine two days after she was apprehended in San Antonio, after she had placed herself at the murder scene. It was certainly implicit in McDaniel’s testimony that Christine had had some time before this particular interview to think about what she was going to tell police. By then she believed they had evidence placing her at the scene, so she had to come up with some sort of explanation for being there.
The only jabs DeGeurin could take at McDaniel, which turned out to be weak on merit alone, included questions about Christine’s medication and how well she was able to answer questions while under the duress of withdrawal.
But Christine had been checked by doctors and nurses at a hospital and allowed to leave. She had been discharged, McDaniel noted.
The day ended after DeGeurin finished his cross and the state passed on any additional questioning. The judge had something else to do that day, but promised they’d work a full eight hours tomorrow.
At the start of the next morning, Craig and Michelle Lackner were recalled to answer a few additional questions.
Then Nancy Vernau told her tale of hearing the gunshots ring throughout that afternoon, somewhere around three-seventeen.
Prosecutors sometimes refer to this portion of a trial as “coasting,” whereby Rob Freyer and Tom Goodhart were crossing their t’s and dotting their i’s, rolling into the station with plenty of fuel in the tank.
An eighteen-year veteran officer, Guillermo “Will” Gonzales, a sergeant in the Homicide Division, sat down next. Will had spoken to Lori Paolilla about Christine during the investigation at the behest of Brian Harris. It was Will Gonzales who tracked Christine and Justin down in San Antonio through bank and credit card records. It was also Will Gonzales and his partner, Detective Richard Martinez, who flew to Louisville to conduct a search for Chris Snider and to look for the weapons used in the murders.
And so now the weapons were entered into evidence.
Next up was DNA specialist Laura Gahn, who had examined most of the DNA in the case.
Quite interesting, Christine’s prints or her DNA were not recovered from either of the weapons.
“There was a good reason for that,” a source later said.
“Chris [Snider] had wiped off the weapons, and he also was caught once in the backyard of [his] home, holding the gun up to his head, ready to kill himself, but was talked out of it. These are good reasons why you’d never find Christine’s prints on either of the guns.”
What Gahn did make clear was that the guns found at Snider’s house were, in fact, the weapons used to commit the murders.
When DeGeurin finished cross-examining Gahn, Freyer passed on further questioning.
With that, the state called Justin Rott.
Rott had some credibility issues; there was no getting around them. The guy was a convicted felon, dope addict, known liar, and convicted thief. And yet, Rob Freyer explained, “The thing that people lose sight of when speaking of Justin Rott’s testimony is that he knew details about the crime . . . that had never been released to the public. He knew because she told him. We knew she had gone to work at Walgreens after the murders because she had told Rott. The officers followed up on that, and it turned out to be true.”
It had been Freyer’s job—and what a task it had been—to keep Justin Rott on his toes as the delays before trial turned into months of waiting. For a recovering drug addict, prone to relapse, downtime is the enemy.
“Rott was good and bad for us,” said one victim’s family member. “For months leading up to trial, we never thought he would make it. The guy OD’d, he was using, he would take off and not be heard from. So Freyer literally had to call Rott every day, visit him, and, basically, take care of him as if he was a child.”
But here he was, not looking half bad, ready to do his duty and talk about what his wife had said to him. And that was where the impact of Rott’s testimony would strike hardest. Only Christine could have given Justin this information. It was so simple when pared down and looked at objectively. She had confided in her husband, never expecting that he would one day turn around and testify against her.
“The things that he told us in San Antonio,” said one law enforcement officer, “all matched up. We would not have known the guns were in a safe, in Kentucky, hundreds of miles away from Texas, if Rott had not told us that fact.”
Rott hadn’t changed much since he and Christine split up. He still walked with that lanky, wayward shuffle.
Freyer had Rott state his full name: “Stanley Justin Rott,” he said, telling the jury where he was from and how long—four years—he had lived in the Houston area.
Christine wore her black overcoat snuggly, as if she was cold. She sat and stared at her husband with a serious gaze that said: How dare you! We shared secrets.
Rott didn’t mince words when it came time to talk about his problems with drugs. He explained that although he was “in recovery” at the time and a member of NA, Narcotics Anonymous, he had also been going to Cocaine Anonymous meetings, as well. The end of the month of October, he claimed, would mark a year of sobriety for him.
Then Rott talked about his “home group” and his “sponsor” in the drug and alcohol abuse programs he had been attending. He said his sponsor was there, in the courtroom, supporting him.
Freyer asked Rott if drugs had caused him problems in the past.
“Of course, yeah, family problems,” he answered, “and all kinds of things.”
It was the understatement of the trial. The amount of drugs he and Christine had done would have killed many addicts not accustomed to the potency and sheer bulk. They had lived like animals inside a hotel room, feces and blood all over the place, needles everywhere.
Rott next admitted that he had been arrested for theft and other misdemeanor crimes associated with being a drug addict and having to support his habit. Currently, Rott told jurors, he was on probation for theft and habitation. Five years, in fact. He had been following his probation standards “so well,” Rott said, he was a “VIP speaker for the district felony courts in Fort Bend County.” He had been asked “to speak to the courts, the drug courts, misdemeanor courts, and speak to families about drug addiction.” Thus, as far as recovering drug addicts go, Rott was the poster boy—the man who could speak from the dark end of a tunnel about the evil spewing from the tip of a needle.
Freyer was doing his best to polish the witness.
DeGeurin allowed it to go on for a brief period and then objected. “Relevancy, Your Honor?”
“Sustained.”
Rott talked about meeting Christine and falling in love.
He spoke of how their life together was great—in the beginning.
He told how he liked Lori and Tom.
He shared how he proposed marriage to Christine.
And how, during Hurricane Rita, they drove down to San Antonio and began the ultimate drug bender.
Before he knew Christine, he said, he had never heard about the murders in Clear Lake.
One of the most important parts of Rott’s testimony included an exchange shortly before Freyer concluded his direct questioning. It had to do with Christine’s story of being forced into helping Chris Snider.
“Did she ever indicate to you that she was—in the description that she gave you—that she was ever forced to do anything? That anybody else forced her to do anything?”
“No.”
“Or threatened her?”
“No.”
“Pointed a gun at her, or anything like that?”
“No.”
Freyer brought up the billboard and how Christine reacted that day she had brought Rott out to see it, telling her then-husband, while pointing to the billboard, “That’s the Chris that I said that was with me that day.”
Freyer didn’t need the Lackners’ identification of the sketches. Here was Christine herself doing it for him.
Rott said he didn’t leave her and turn her in when he realized she was a murderer because he “loved her.”
Then Freyer had Rott tell jurors the version of the murders Christine had given him after he pressed her for details.
“Christine walked in,” Rott explained. Jurors listened intensely. This was it, the reason why Rott was on the stand. “Chris followed. They walked in the house. She went around with one of the girls. What she told me was they said they were—they were asking for drugs, and I think one of the girls was taking her to go get some. That’s how they got separated, her and Chris, from what she told me. But then she told me she started crying when she was with the girl, with Tiffany.”
“What did she say she said to the girl?”
“She said she was sorry. She started crying.”
“Did she say why she said that?”
“I guess. I don’t know.”
“Did she say whether or not this girl that she said she was sorry to had any kind of response?”
“She just asked her, ‘What are you talking about?’ ”
“And what did she say she said in response to that?”
“She just said she was sorry and started crying. And at that time, that’s when Chris yelled for Christine to come back in the room.”
“And what happened after that?” Freyer asked.
“When she came in the room with Tiffany, Chris already had a gun pulled.”
“And what did she say she did after that?”
“That she did?” Rott asked, confused.
“Yes. Not Tiffany, but Christine.”
“Chris—she said that Chris told them all to get by the couch, and that’s when he did tell her to take out the gun.”
“What did she do? What did she say she did in response to that?”
“She took out the gun.”
“Did she indicate that she did that voluntarily? Was she scared? Why did she say she took the gun out?”
“She didn’t say she was scared. . . .”
Shocking many in the courtroom, Justin Rott talked about what happened when Christine “voluntarily” went back into the house to make sure they were all dead.
“Did she tell you whether or not Rachael said anything to her or asked her any questions?”
“Yeah. She said Rachael . . . just kept asking ‘why?’ ”
“Okay. And did she tell you . . . that—after hearing that—what she did after?”
“She beat her to death.”
Gasps could be heard from every corner of the room. The images this exchange conjured were horrifying: a teen girl beating her so-called friend to death, and that girl asking why she was doing it. It was harrowing to listen to, and a few people got up and walked out of the courtroom.
“How?” Freyer asked.
“With the gun.”
“Did she tell you that?”
“Yeah. Because she told me that she kept hitting her and hitting her, and she [Christine] was crying the whole time she was doing it.”
“Okay. Did she tell you how many times that she hit Rachael with the gun?”
“No. She just said she . . . When she started hitting her, she just kept hitting her until she was dead.”
CHAPTER 70
JUSTIN ROTT CONTINUED to tell the jury his story the following day as Mike DeGeurin did his best to smear Rott’s reputation and prove him to be the liar that he was known to be. Still, those snapshots of Christine Paolilla pounding the back of Rachael Koloroutis’s head were hard to dismiss.
DeGeurin was able to get Rott to admit that he had met a few women since he and Christine last saw each other. In fact, these were women to whom Rott had lied to, the lawyer said, “for their attention.”
Quite shocking, one female Rott had befriended turned out to be Nichole Sánchez, Adelbert’s sister. Rott had gotten together with Nichole on several occasions, although both said it was nothing more than a friendship. Nichole wanted answers. Justin had known her brother’s killer, Nichole believed. Perhaps he could offer some insight into why Christine had taken Adelbert away from her.
If nothing else, Justin Rott’s cross-examination made clear that the guy was unafraid of admitting his faults—be it lying, cheating, stealing, using heroin, or turning other people on to the drug. He was open and honest about everything.
Mike DeGeurin made Justin Rott sound as though he was a predator, out in the world seeking women to turn into drug users with him. According to Rott and several people who knew him, this was totally untrue. Yet the one topic DeGeurin stayed away from was Rott’s inside knowledge of the murders.
The state called firearms expert Kim Downs next, who gave additional details about the murder weapons, tying them even closer to the murders.
The next morning, October 9, the state called assistant medical examiner Morna Gonsoulin. The judge warned the gallery before Morna began that there would be gruesome photos coming up and that anyone was welcome to step out now.
Freyer and Goodhart made a classic move here. By concluding their case with the reality and totality of the murders, those photographs of the victims, as they appeared during autopsy, were setting those images in the jury’s minds.
When DeGeurin passed the witness back to the state after his cross-examination, Goodhart stood and spoke, “Nothing further, Judge.”
“You may step down, Doctor,” Ellis told the ME. “What says the state?”
“Judge, at this time, the state of Texas will rest,” Goodhart acknowledged.
The judge asked that the jury retire to the jury room.
“YOUR HONOR, NOW that the state has rested,” DeGeurin began, “and outside the presence of the jury, I move for an instructed—for the court to instruct the jury to return a verdict of not guilty because the evidence is not sufficient to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, to a reasonable juror, each and every element of the offense, which is set out in the indictment in three separate paragraphs.”
Without hesitation the judge said, “That will be denied.”
The jury was asked to return.
DeGeurin’s first witness was the father of a girl whom Justin Rott had lived with for a brief period of time after he and Christine separated. The guy’s daughter was one of the women into whom Rott had supposedly shot bags of heroin. Her father was there to qualify that Rott was a lying thug who took women under his wing and turned them into dopers.
Mike DeGeurin made a strong point with his witness to let the jury know that Justin Rott had not only turned the guy’s daughter on to heroin, but had injected her on several occasions and was using dope at a time when Rott had told Freyer—during that lull in the case when Freyer was babysitting him—that he wasn’t using.
DeGeurin next brought in the girl in question, and she—guess what?—verified everything that had been said by her dad before her.
As it turned out, the girl knew Rachael, Tiffany, and Christine from high school, and her locker was, incredibly, right next to Christine’s.
She said she met Justin Rott in the same place Rott had met most of his women: recovery meetings.
Rott had found out that the girl’s mother had committed suicide, so he told her his mother had done the same, in order to build a bond between them. To gain more sympathy, he told her his father had died in a car wreck. Rott had even proposed marriage to the girl, according to her testimony. But the ring he had placed on her finger, when he asked for her hand, had been stolen from another girl’s house, she later learned.
After the girl buried Rott, DeGeurin brought in another, who sat and told an almost identical story. Would any of it help Christine Paolilla? That was anybody’s guess.
BY FAR, MIKE DeGeurin’s most important witness was Dr. George Glass, a “paid,” according to Rob Freyer, medical doctor and psychiatrist with decades of experience. Glass talked for the remainder of the day about Christine’s state of mind during those days when she gave HPD what amounted to a confession of being at the scene of the crime as it occurred. The topic of addiction came up routinely during Glass’s direct testimony, the doctor offering his opinion whether Christine was treated properly when she went to the ER that first night HPD had interviewed her in San Antonio.
“So . . . the hospital people, when they make notations about what they observe, is there some . . . Is there any reason they would write something wrong, or is it . . . when they’re writing something in the hospital record, what’s it for that they’re writing?”
“It’s to document what’s happening at the time,” Glass answered, “as well as to lay the foundation for a treatment plan from there on out. And usually the treatment plan is because, you know, hospital emergency rooms work in shifts, and when the next shift comes in, they need to know, you know, at four o’clock, whenever somebody leaves, what the last person thought and why they did what they did, because they may not have the opportunity to talk with them. So that’s why it’s written and documented in some detail.”
