Hi, everybody. It's Deborah Roberts, co anchor of 2020. Welcome to episode two of the Interrogation Tapes, a special limited run series produced by ABC News Studios in partnership with 2020. Today's episode, the clique focuses on the case of four young people murdered in a home in Texas. After four years of chasing dead ends, a tipster points law enforcement in a surprising direction.

Capture the emotions that you've been going through.

You have to wave. That means give up your right so I can hear what's going on, what happened. Do you understand?

Are you ready to do that? Tell me. I know you're scared.

You ready to tell me what happened? Tell me what happened.

All four people had been shot multiple times. I can't even call it a crime scene because it's carnage. It's a bloodbath. Nobody knew who did this. It was young kids in the middle of the day in a nice neighborhood.

Tomorrow is our precious daughter's birthday. She would have been 19. The police got leads that took them all over the country. These interrogations, they really bring out what happened. He didn't get to this right.

This is very much a life altering moment. I've been honest with you about everything that happened. You are feeling that pressure. The only way that we can help you is if you are cooperating with us. If investigators are going to learn the truth, they're going to have to do it inside the interrogation room.

I'm doctor Sujita Bhatt. I'm a research scientist who has supported interview and interrogation research and training. My last four years in the government, I moved over to the FBI's high value detainee interrogation group.

My name is Laura Richards. I'm the former head of New Scotland Yards homicide prevention unit and Sexual offenses section. And I've also been trained at the FBI's academy at Quantico on interviewing and interrogation.

I'm Brian Buckmeyer and I've been a New York City public defender for about nine years. Interrogations are important pieces of any case where law enforcement is trying to find the missing piece. An interrogation is about a search for truth. It's about unearthing what really happened. The interrogations of Christine Paolilla were incredibly important for this case.

My name's Brian. What's your name? Christine Marie Paolola Paola. Is that italian? Yes.

You know, this has been cold for essentially three years.

Houston is a sprawling urban center that covers three separate counties. It's gigantic and clear Lake is on the southern edge of the city.

Rachel Coloroudis and Tiffany Rowdy, they were both part of the popular group in the clear Lake high school, Rachel really, she floated a lot, but within her own group, she was really kind of top dog. There was this really sensitive side of her that liked the psychology, and then there's this other really justice driven side of her that wanted to help society. That's what she always talked about. Even when we were little girls. She would say, I want to either be, you know, a ballerina or a copy.

Tiffany Rao was described as a natural born actress in the drama club. Tiffany was a very just, fun person. The best way to describe her is as a sensitive soul. She wanted to do some social work. I think they were drawn to each other because of those things.

They kind of held each other up a lot.

And her father had moved out but left the home to her so she can finish high school as a senior. And so she lived there and oftentimes spent a lot of time with her then boyfriend, Marcus Purcella. Adelbert Sanchez was Marcus cousin, and he often spent a lot of time at Tiffany's home with Marcus and Rachel. Delbert was just an outgoing person with everybody, and he was just so smart in school.

And in that home is where all four of them are killed in a tragic, tragic way.

I remember hearing about it the next day about four kids that had been murdered in a house in Clear Lake Friday evening. Friends discovered four bodies inside. All four people had been shot multiple times. This was the last case I tried in Harris county before I left, and I was the chief prosecutor. I'll never forget it.

It's had that much of an impression over me throughout my entire career. The family members, the victims, the friends of Rachel, Adelbert, Marcus, and Tiffany, they did not deserve this.

It was an earthquake to our family, and it was devastating. And we each suffer in our own ways, and then we suffer collectively.

He's always in my heart. I know it's not the same as being with him, but still being close to him. Just my little girl.

I had written books about Texas cases before.

I began to make calls. I began to delve into the case.

Wow.

Just the brutality in this case alone was enough to make me want to know, why would someone do this?

Our investigation showed that around 312 318 pm, somebody opened up the door, and within minutes, numerous rounds. Six, seven, 8910, twelve rounds over, twelve rounds are fired. The crime scene was very, very violent. There had been rounds that had been shot that had gone through some of the back windows. There was a live rabbit in a cage, but that was the only living thing in that house.

When the police got there. The tv was still on.

Tiffany Rowell and Adelberts were shot where they were sitting, where they were watching tv. They never even got up and moved. Marcus Purcella had tried to jump over the back couch and flee, and he was found behind the couch. There was blood everywhere. Rachel Coloradus was found on the floor with a cordless phone right by her hand.

She had tried to dial 911 when all of this happened. The indicator that they knew the attackers is that there was no sign of any forced entry.

They found two neighbors who saw two individuals walking up to the house. A sketch was done early on of the potential assailant, so they begin to do victimologies on all four victims. We were looking at phone records. We were looking at relationships. Tiffany's house was suspected to be high risk because this was the party house.

Police allege this was where drugs were used and sold because of the party house aspect and that alleged drugs associated with this home. The cops think this is a drug deal gone bad.

So this investigation basically becomes a cold case. Tomorrow is our precious daughter's birthday. George Colerudus, Rachel's dad, made it a point that he would never quit until this case was solved. Family cops and Crime Stoppers announced the $100,000 reward amid an investigation that seems to be stalling. Sketches of these two individuals as people of interest were plastered all over the Houston and Galveston area.

If you know these people, call this number.

Three years after the murders, an anonymous caller calls in with a tip with two names, Chris Snyder and Christine Paolilla. And then the police later find out that these two went to the same high school as three of the victims, Marcus, Tiffany, and Rachel. That connection between victims and potential suspects reignites the case. So now I had a male and a female. I have a sketch that's a male and a female.

The caller detailed that they went in and then they knew the kids and how they obtained this information. They said they heard this information from Christine Paolilla. My heart was pounding, hung up the phone, and I said, partner, buckle up. So here you have Christine Paolilla, this young girl with a dark secret. This is specifically bring you back to July 18, 2003.

But tell me what happened.

For three years, police chased lead after lead without an arrest, until finally a crime stopper's tip led them to a 20 year old, Christine Marie Paulilla. Chris Snyder is hard to find, but they find Christine. She's off in a hotel in San Antonio, married to another man, clearly using drugs.

When the investigators get the crime stars tip, I mean, I think that's kind of the breaking point for figuring out. Okay, now we know who to focus in on. There was information that was not made public, you know, the location of where one of the victim's bodies was. And it made it very clear that Christine knew more about this than anyone had realized.

The tipster had couched that he had overheard Christine saying these things. There are two potential suspects here, so he's trying to see what she says. He talked about things such as people getting what they deserve and people getting what they need. Do you believe you deserve justice or mercy? Mercy.

Mercy. Okay. She has to pick one. What do you make of that? He's trying to ascertain her level of culpability and guilt, so she goes down the route of mercy for her, but justice for him.

She's really saying that he's the primary offender and that she was just part of it. Justice for him. Okay. Justice for him. Him being who?

Chris Nyer, Detective Harris, when he moves in really close to her, I mean, that is part of the accusatorial reed technique. Right? It's reducing the physical space between the two of you. The reed technique, it's the evaluation of all the evidence they have in front of you. It's really coming in and saying, you know, we know without a doubt and for a fact that you committed this crime.

It's developing themes. These are these buttons. Anything that you can use to get that subject to talk. The re technique can often have false positives, but at the time of this case, it was probably a more prevalent form of interrogating people. What happened?

He didn't get to. After this rape, he cannot get to you. It will not hurt your family. For anybody to hurt my family feel. We are me.

So here what I'm hearing, what I'm seeing is what her biggest fear is, and she's sharing that with him. Her biggest fear is Chris Snyder. Tell me about this fantasy. Detective Harris is also trying to use that information as a theme. We can keep you safe.

Just tell us what happened. Has he threatened your family in the past? Tell me what kind of person Chris was part of. Why he's doing this is, I think because in the anonymous tip, there is reference to when Chris would call Christine, how he had threatened her. It was just a very violent person.

It was my past and stuff. I always feel like everybody just. Everybody just left me and just was against me or like. I don't know, but that's why I stayed with him for so long.

Christine Payalilla is the outcast in high school. Her father died when she was a very young child to two years old. In fact, on top of that, she suffers from alopecia. She would wake up in the morning, and there would just be clumps of hair all over her pillow. She started wearing wigs and started being ridiculed at school.

Classmates would come up behind her, pull her wig off her head, and became a very big problem.

And fortunately for her, she meets these two girls at the top of their clique, Rachel Colerudis and Tiffany Rao. Christine came home one day very happy, and she said, mom, she said, I made two new friends who were the sweetest girls I've ever met. She said, oh, Rachel and Tiffany, she couldn't speak highly enough about them. Tiffany and Rachel take Christine under their wing. They teach her how to do makeup correctly and pick out wigs.

They really helped her break out of her shell. In fact, one year in high school, she's picked miss irresistible.

And here comes Chris body piercing, spiked hair, chains hanging from his jeans that were kind of down around his knees. Every time I saw him made me very uncomfortable.

Chris Schneider wrote poetry, and he drew, and I looked at those drawings. That's a guy who is tortured inside.

Every move she made became something that he would monitor. He started isolating her from her friends, including Rachel and Tiffany.

Started, like, five accords that area. It's like, I'll see if Marcus is there. Christine tells officer Brian Harris that Chris Snyder forced her to drive to Tiffany's house because Chris knew that Marcus would be there and he could buy drugs from him. He told me that, like, the stuff that Marcus had was on good, that we had been there, like, a couple weeks before that. Whenever Tiffany's birthday was, she tells officer Harris that she waited outside.

Chris goes inside and gets the drugs. He comes back outside with some drugs, and he says, I jack them. The girls, they were my good friends, and I just. I couldn't believe, like, you know, getting jacked up.

He came running out with the. With the gun, one of the guns in his hand. And, I mean, I didn't. I didn't hear any gunshots or anything. What does he say?

You told me he did it. He did it. Did what?

What did he say, christine?

He probably believes that Chris is the primary and giving her the opportunity to confess to her part in it. They haven't got anything that places Christine in the house. So that's what their strategy is, just to get her to place herself in the house. Now, whether you do it on your own, okay, or whether he forces you, you're in that house.

After the murders, Christine started getting into the drugs, and I'm assuming some of it had to do with Christine. Christine had been arrested with Christopher Snyder for shoplifting at some point, and they were arrested together. Christine is sent to rehab in Curville, Texas, and at a dance at the halfway house, that's where she meets Justin Rott. When I saw the dance, I took her hand, and I said, you're gonna dance with me? That's just how it was.

She liked someone that knew what they wanted and wasn't afraid of what people thought, and I wasn't afraid what people thought. They get encaged, and then they get married at the same time. This is when the crime stoppers, billboards, the sketches, they're all over the place. One day, you know, she. She asked, let's go for a ride.

And I said, okay, pull up through this billboard over here. And we sat there and, you know, and she asked me. She said, you know, does that look like me? The more time we spent together, the more she told me, the more detail, and just. I just went downhill from there.

She told me step by step what happened, you know, I mean, everything. They hit the room at the La Quinta in San Antonio. They never left.

They subsisted on a diet of cookies, cheez its, sodas, crack pills, and heroin. When we're at a hotel, she'd look in the mirrors, and she'd start crying. She was. See Rachel's face? Paolo was arrested in San Antonio.

When they brought her in, looked like she was days away from death. When Christine was arrested, Justin Rott was arrested. At the same time, police had an arrest warrant against Justin for an unrelated incident so they could detain him, but he wasn't charged in that case. He started talking immediately. Listen to me.

Do you love your husband? I love him very much. You love him very much? Okay. Your husband gives exact details of what happens.

Okay? Of exact details. When you went in there, okay, when you went in the house, your husband is telling us that you pulled Rachel out. Okay. Initially, okay, I did not go in that Chris did the shooting.

I swear to God. Part of what Reed tells you to do in the interrogation is to handle denials, right? You do everything you can to stop them from denying being in there. One of the approaches that Reid suggests to use is this monolog of laying out like, this is why we think you did it. This is what we know you did.

And you do it for a long enough time where you don't give the suspect an opportunity to interject. I think. You know what I think happened? I think Chris did what he did, and you did run up the driveway. Okay.

And I think that you went in the house and saw what he did, and you went, oh, my gosh. That you physically saw what he did, and then he's right in behind you, and then you see him make sure that they're all dead. And then he looks at you and he says, now you're in this with me. And he manipulates your mind that way. You see what I'm saying?

Christine, though, that I can believe. Your husband knows too many details, and we know you don't know him until you all hook up in Carville. See what I mean? Never, ever was in the house. The most significant thing about this tip was that they said Christine went back inside the house to make sure that they were all dead.

All I can go by is what other people have told me and what Chris has told me. She was led to believe that we had Chris Snyder in custody. We didn't have Chris in custody, but she thought Chris Snyder was in custody and that he had confessed. The falsification of evidence is legal. It's allowed in us investigations and us courts.

It's risky because you can potentially cause somebody to falsely confess. I mean, you don't have to tell me anything. I'll just go with what we have. The fact that he already admits that he has this statement from Chris. Right.

And it's essentially his word against your word. You understand that Chris is saying this was all your idea and that you had a lot of bent up frustration towards Rachel, that he thought that you thought that he was having an affair with her, and that's why you never. I would have never even thought of making up something like that. And then when he came out that it was your idea to go back in and that you told him no. Gotta make sure that they're all dead.

We gotta go back in and make sure you're all dead. I never said any of those things. I promise you, I never said nothing like that. I've been honest with you about everything that happened, okay? I swear to God.

Is there a risk to lying to a suspect? Oh, absolutely. If you've got a suspect who knows for certain that there is absolutely no way that that evidence or that information that you're presenting them could possibly exist, they will dig their feet in deeper because they know you have nothing or very little on them. And the other part is, of course, she's been using heroin. When they found her in the hotel.

Ok, it's a mistake right now, so she's probably got withdrawals. Let's take a break. Ok? Let's get you get together. They had a feed going in another room so they could see that she was acting all curious.

Hey, what is it that the police know about this? Sir? What do you think? Big. What?

I need 200. Nurse.

I didn't know how it was gonna end.

I was hoping that deep down inside would end the way it did. Couch would come. All they have is the anonymous tip and her husband Justin's statements. That's it. There's actually no physical evidence putting her at the scene of the crime.

But she doesn't know that. Come here. Come here.

Standing right here. Tell me. So I'm outside in the hallway. Myself and my partners, we're outside in the hallway and we're talking to Justin Rott. This is her life.

Did you tell us the details of what happened? And we're telling Justin. Tell her that you've told us the truth. Tell her to tell the truth. If you guys do bother.

Go back in. Sit down.

They had a feed going in another room so they could see that she was acting all curious and inquisitive about wanting to see. Hey, what is it that the police know about this right now? Well, she's already got what Detective Harris probably knew, that she could hear the conversation that he was having with Justin and what he does in mentioning, you know, the death penalty or rehab and then jail time is essentially maximize the potential consequences for her not participating. Right, which is death penalty, but it also kind of gives her an out. Like it's an alternative question again, right?

Yes, sir. What do you think? I need a nurse. A what? I need to.

Do you need a nurse? Yes. Okay, we're getting one. Okay, sit down. If you can just sit down.

We're getting one. She opens up the door and yells, I love you. And then that she's sick and has to go to the hospital. So even her feigned illnesses or sickness that she claimed was very cunning. We'll get you some help.

Stay out of here. In this situation where Justin's being used as a lever against her, someone might think, well, that's her being manipulative. But I don't believe that that's what she's doing. I think she genuinely does love Justin and she's trying to communicate that to him.

Once Christine is discharged from the hospital, they fly her from San Antonio to the Houston Police Department. But there's another interrogation. I'm Sergeant BC McDaniel, Houston Police Department, Homicide division. Now, remember, they don't have custody of Chris Snyder at this point. Who was Chris Snyder to you?

Very controlling, very, very scary person. There's been times where you get almost satanic talking about people. I wonder what it'd be like to kill someone. By the time the detective McDaniel interview happens, she's kind of changed. She makes references to satanic mindsets or fantasies that Chris had that she did not mention at all in the first interview.

There's been so many times where me and him have gotten into fights. It was, you know, kind of immediately putting distance between her and him that he was abusive and controlling, which is not what she necessarily laid heavy into in the first interview. It's almost like he was a father figure to me because he always, you know, said, you take care of me. And I always had that, you know, in my mind, you know, not. Not that, like, he is my father, but, you know, this is the dominant male in your life.

Yeah, this is that part of, you know, my life that was taken out once, and now, like, he's feeling that for me.

She says it in the interview. I want to fix men in my life. Abandonment and rejection and people being against me has been a big part of my life. Unfortunately, she gets in with a bad boy. With Chris Snyder.

He had been convicted for armed robbery, but she felt that she was trying to help him and fix him. So you got in the passenger seat? No, I got into the driver's seat. Driver's seat. But you don't have the keys.

Yeah. McDaniel has a lot more resources than Harrah's had when he's interrogating Christine because. But they also have Christine's own statements from the interrogations before. So he's confronting her with all of these defined inconsistencies to hope that she breaks in a way that puts her inside the home during the shooting. And I was just.

I was just sitting there just, like, crying or whatever, and he kept, like. That's when he pulled out his gun. He started, like, poking me and stuff. Wait a minute. Where were you sitting?

I was at that. No, wait. At that time. No, actually, I'm sorry. He had got.

He had gotten out. I'm sorry. You're right. He had gotten out. And, uh, I got out of what seat?

He got out of the driver's seat. So you were in the passenger seat? Yes, I'm sorry. I remember he got out of the driver's seat, and I got out with him. We knocked, or he knocked on the door, and Rachel, she opened the door.

Did you go in the house? Yes, I was. I was right behind. I was behind Chris. You know, I thought, let's cover that.

That's the first big admission she makes, is really kind of like the goldmine, right? What the investigators are looking for in this case, that she is admitting to going in the house. The first interview, she downplayed whether she was there. She never, ever was in the house. Then she admitted to being in front of the house but not going in.

It was not until the last interview that Paolilla began to start incriminating herself. Okay, I'm sorry. I'm. For being at.

A picture of Christine is found in Rachel's wallet, and now you see a friendship. Now you start to understand the relationship between suspect and victims. Rachel was the kind of person that always looked out for the underdog. And because of this affliction that Paelea had with this alopecia, Rachel really felt for her. The girls were ahead of Christine in school, so when they graduate, they tell her, they say, look, you know, we're moving on with our lives.

We're adults now, okay? Was there any disagreements? Was there any history of problems between you and anyone in that house? Never.

When she saw she went into that house, that's your first step into getting down that path of what her role really was. Christine says that she is inside the home at the time of this, let's call it drug deal gone wrong. Chris pulled out the gun. You put it in your hand. Yeah, I had grabbed it, and I was just crying, and, you know, I just.

I felt like, you know, oh, my God, I'm gonna die, right? I'm gonna die if I don't, you know, if I don't, you know, follow his direction and, you know, do what he said. The next major admission that Christine makes is that Chris put the gun in her hand and that she was holding it by the handle. And that's when. That's when I heard.

I heard the first gunshot. And I don't. I don't think it hit anybody. I was. I was still, like, hiding behind the wall.

She's still minimizing the fact that she has the gun in her hand, and so she's doing what she can to create distance between herself and what happened. You get your out here. And he had the gun pointed towards me.

You see this scenario happen when you have two people that commit the same crime. Well, once they realize that they're screwed, what's the last card they can play? Blame each other. Once it became apparent that she thought Snyder was in custody, he wasn't, she flipped it around and made it all about him. But then he kept, like, you know, he, like, had my hand, like, on.

On the, um. On the handle of it and.

Please, can I. The break. I'm sorry. I'm just. I'm being so, like.

Okay, I'm sorry. I'm freaking out. Okay. Thank you. But, you know, we get through this really important part.

Okay? She has a visceral reaction, but Detective McDaniel tries to reassure her and comfort her and say, you know what? Like, this is hard, but let's keep going. How many times do you think it went off in your hand? A million times.

Yep. I was there. He made me do it. And that's when he said that, here, take this gun. And he put his hand over her hand and fired the gun for her.

So you. You're pulling the trigger? No, like, it's like, he has hand, my hand. Like, I couldn't even tell you how, like it was, but it was his force that was making. Okay.

Are you hitting anyone? I don't. I don't know. When she admits that the gun was in her hand and that she fired it, that is, like, it's gold.

After the interrogations, they filed the capital murder charge on her. Shackled with tears in her eyes, Christine Marie Pilolia made her first appearance in court this morning. Hey. Olila has now made a statement to police admitting some role in the killings. And investigators say her former boyfriend, Christopher Snyder, is also responsible.

Christopher Snyder is a fugitive on the run. Police tracked down Chris Snyder to Greenville, South Carolina, where they find out he was dating another girl. And he said that he had just run off somewhere. He told her that they would never catch him alive, and they found what was left of him in the woods. And they got consent from Snyder's stepdad where they recovered the guns.

And sure enough, just like the tip says, in the parents closet, on the shelf, there's a gun safe. They came back to Houston with the guns, put them in the firearms lab. Everything just fell into place after that. Everything. The tip had indicated that Paolilla ran out of bullets and decided to go back into the house and finish it.

All four of them had been shot, but one of them, Rachel Colerudus, had also sustained blunt force trauma to her head. Perhaps there was another reason behind it and would show us that it was a personal attack. All right, we just need to be sworn in. Justin rot filled in those missing details, and she told me she told Chris they had to go back.

Christine Pilmillan is on trial for the brutal slayings of her high school friends. According to prosecutors, Paolea admitted to being in the house with the other suspect, Christopher Lee Snyder. They believe she and 21 year old Christopher Lee Snyder committed the killings. All right, us, it's 2008, and Christine Paolilla is on trial for the murders of four people. This is a trial five years in the making.

It's Parlilo. To the charge of capital murder, how do you plead? Guilty or not guilty? Not guilty.

She killed anybody. Mike Daguerreon, Christine's attorney, argues that law enforcement used deceptive techniques to try to get a confession out of Christine. And you lied to miss Polia about Chris Snyder saying that it was all her fault, right? Yes. All I can go by is what Chris has told me.

There is no law that would restrict me in regards to those questions. What were they supposed to do? Say, hey, we don't have any idea where Snyder is? I mean, you don't have to tell me anything. I'll just go with what we have.

The defense and the prosecution would spar over this idea of the guns. He puts her hands, his hands over hers, and he goes, one, two, three, bam. One, two, three, bam. It defies logic that this gun is empty first and this gun is empty second. These two guns were fired simultaneously, and they found Rachel Colorudas DNA inside the barrel of one of the guns.

Her DNA on the gun matched with the crime stopper tips. It was used as a blunt force object to bludgeon her in the head. That's why that DNA was there. So it all tied together with the prosecution's case. It was savage as to what happened to all four of them.

Rachel Colerida stood out from the other three. She's shot in the crotch area directly. She shot in the back. She shot in the legs and the buttocks. But her head is also bashed in.

Christine was out of bullets and so started beating her til she no longer was moving. Now, that was. That was such details in that tip that only somebody that was either there or that the killers had told would know. Those details need to be sworn in. Authorities couldn't get the anonymous tipster to come forward, so that made Justin Roth their star witness, who was able to corroborate what they learned through those tips and their investigation.

She said that before they walked in the house, Chris handed her a gun. Did she say at this point, did she say Chris forced it on her or. No, threatened her? No. She said they both started shooting.

And she told me that she told Chris they had to go back. She said she had to make sure they're all dead. She said when she went back in, Rachel was there and she was still alive, and she was choking on her own blood. She was gagging. Rachel said she just kept asking, why this defendant tell you that after hearing that, what she did after that?

She beat her to death. How? It's a gun. She told me she kept hitting her and hitting her. Christine was taken under the wing by Rachel and Tiffany, and, you know, perhaps they weren't spending as much time with her anymore.

And Chris Snyder, out of Christine's own words to me, she thought that perhaps her own boyfriend was kind of sweet on Rachel. I thought that, like, maybe he had, you know, messed around with one of the girls or something. And you take all those factors, and it's just a deadly cocktail of jealousy, of greed, and revenge all coming out. Jury was out for about two and a half hours.

We, the jury, find the defendant, Christine Marie Paolilla, guilty of capital murder as charged in the indictment. So say you all to this verdict? Yes. Yes, sir. Palola approached the bench.

The jury having found you guilty of capital murder, it's not my duty to sentence you to life confinement. Do you have anything to say before I sentence you? Christine Paolilla was ultimately convicted of capital murder, where she would get life in prison or at least 40 years before she has a possibility of parole.

It's in here somewhere. There's a framed picture of her.

We represent parents who have young adult children who are living in a world that was much different from when I grew up. Keep them away from the ones that you know in your heart are gonna be the ones that are gonna break them.

Christine ended up appealing, and unfortunately for her, losing her appeals for the conviction. Now she was serving that life sentence in Gainesville, Texas. I felt like justice was served.

The interrogation tapes was produced by ABC News Studios in partnership with 2020. The series is streaming on Hulu.