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Authors: M. William Phelps

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CHAPTER 59
C
HRISTINE PAOLILLA AND
Chris Snider began to argue, she claimed, while sitting in her car, parked somewhere between the murder scene and Walgreens. She didn't want to go to work. Chris wanted her to carry on as though nothing had happened. What became obvious throughout this part of the interview was Christine's hubristic sense of self and what was going to happen to
her.
Breck McDaniel was a master of subtly pointing out the fact that here was a girl who had just seen her two “best friends” murdered in a hail of gunfire (an evil of which she had, according to her, unwillingly participated in), and yet she was more concerned about getting caught than if her friends back at the house were dead or alive. According to her account, neither Christine nor Chris knew for certain that the four were dead.
The idea that her friends were dead didn't stop Christine Paolilla from going to work at Walgreens. Nor had she even attempted to call the police while at work and away from Snider all night long.
“I put on my best” was how Christine described her demeanor during those hours just after she watched two friends being shot to death. Not only did she put on her best, but she waited on customers and smoked cigarettes outside the building during her break.
She said Snider waited in the parking lot for her, and whenever she went outside for a smoke, there he was, staring at her from the front seat of her car, dangling the keys, as if to say,
You aren't going anywhere
.
And yet, at some point that night, she explained, Chris gave her the keys back and took a cab home.
McDaniel explained to Christine as the interview wound down that he needed to ask her several “hard” questions. Some things were not adding up.
She looked at him, startled.
The detective started by asking if she remembered whether those shots that she had fired had hit anyone?
She said she didn't know.
“Did you hit anyone with your fists?”
“No.”
“Did you hit anyone with the guns?”
“No.”
“Like hit 'em in the head?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“I'm sure.”
“Did you get anybody's blood on you?”
She paused, and thought about it. “Um, I felt like there was some, like, on my hand, but I . . .”
“There was blood on your hand?”
“Yeah.”
“Whose blood?”
“I don't know.”
“When did you realize there was blood on your hand?”
“I think it was toward my break. . . .”
“At work?”
“At work.”
They discussed this blood in detail. Christine called it “one or two spots.”
McDaniel asked where her clothes had been placed from that night.
She didn't know.
The other interesting lie she told here was that she and Chris Snider never saw each other again after the murders, which went against what several other witnesses had said. She also claimed that she pleaded with Snider to go to the police and admit what they'd done, and his response to that came as: “You're kidding me. You're
not
backing down.”
McDaniel asked if the cops had ever been summoned because of a fight between them.
There was one time, she admitted, when they fought on the side of the road. “He was starting to, like, you know, kind of like, you know . . . punch me.”
She said that she had told only one person—a guy she met in rehab whom everyone called “Waco”—about the murders.
Why had she spilled the beans to this Waco person?
“I had to get it out of my head.”
It was one thirty-five, the morning of July 21, 2006, by the time the interview concluded.
After being prompted, Christine Paolilla said she had lied in previous days because she was scared that Chris Snider would get to her or her family.
CHAPTER 60
H
PD CAPTAIN DALE
Brown released a statement on July 21, 2006, detailing Christine Paolilla's arrest on first-degree capital murder charges:
“Our investigators have a deep commitment to bringing these people to justice because one, they are accountable, and two, for the families. So much of what we do is for families, to bring as much closure as we can. But it's not over until we get this second person arrested and in jail.”
This second person, Chris Snider, was on the run, it could be safely said. Snider was allergic to Soma, a muscle relaxant used to relieve pain and discomfort caused by strains, sprains, and other physical injuries. This was something he knew, of course. Yet Snider had taken all of Haley Dawkins's Soma pills, along with prescription bottles full of Lortab (a pain med) and Xanax (anxiety smasher), culminating in some two hundred pills.
Grabbing these pills and taking off was the start of a story. What Snider didn't take, however—when he left Haley's house in Greenville, South Carolina—concluded that tale: the cash he had, his wallet, or his phone.
Chris Snider did not plan on returning.
When cops reached Haley's house and asked her to describe Snider, she said, “Useless. He had even gotten lost while walking a few times since he'd been living with me.” She further elaborated, “After he left, I called his sister, who told me that this was all about a murder. She told me that he expressed to her the last time they spoke, ‘They will find me dead somewhere.' As a matter of fact,” Haley added, “he liked to talk about death and suicide. We were arguing before he took off. He told me the cops were looking for him because of a probation violation.”
The area around Haley's house—the region of Wade Hampton Boulevard and Chuck Springs Road—was a densely populated suburban section of the town, with streets crisscrossing and wrapping around one another as tangled as veins. There were several thickly wooded areas spread out among the denizens of this rural, middle-class American town, though. And for a man who supposedly got lost walking into the next room, on top of running from having murdered four people, finding him—or his corpse—was going to take some serious effort. Maybe even a few bloodhounds.
Which was where problems between HPD—those good ol' boys from Texas—and the tried-and-true Southern cops in South Carolina began. The main issue, according to some of the HPD detectives now having to deal with them, was that South Carolina lawmen liked to do things their own way. They did not like being told how to run a search party.
Brian Harris and Tom McCorvey had been traveling for most of this period; they didn't yet know the status of Snider. They had gone home that night to get what turned out to be three hours' worth of sleep. When they got up early the next morning, as Christine slept off her Happy Meal and confession, Harris and McCorvey drove straight to the airport and flew to Kentucky.
After they landed in Louisville, all set to head over to Snider's parents' house to get a handle on what was going on there, they were told via radio that the guns had been recovered, but Snider was nowhere in sight. Then they were brought up to speed on everything that had taken place in South Carolina. In lieu of not getting anything additional at Snider's parents' house, Harris and McCorvey drove to the Louisville police station, where they sat and went over all of the evidence they had, up to that point.
Harris turned to McCorvey and said, “You know, we're no good here. Let's head back to Houston and work this thing from there.”
It was 5:45
P.M.
The last flight of the day, Harris soon found out, left Louisville at six o'clock.
“Damn, we're stuck.”
The next morning, as Harris and McCorvey killed some time during a layover in St. Louis, they figured the best place for them would be in South Carolina. Why not help the locals out?
So, after discussing it with U.S. Marshals Service, who had an outstanding warrant for Snider, Harris decided that he and McCorvey would fly to Greenville. The U.S. Marshals were already set up on Haley's house (“Actually,” Harris said later, “it was one U.S. Marshal—the locals would not help.”) When Harris and McCorvey got there later that same day, July 22, a Saturday, law enforcement “took the house,” sat Haley down, and interviewed her for a second time.
Harris knew Snider was dead by listening to Haley talk through the circumstances surrounding Snider's departure from the home. Chris Snider was likely on his way to never-never land. Harris didn't need any more evidence than seeing Snider's wallet, keys, and cash left on the counter. No man in Snider's position would leave without those items.
“We need to get dogs in here,” Harris suggested.
By now the Greenville Police Department was at Haley's house, along with the U.S. Marshals Service. One of Greenville's officers, a rank-and-file supervisor, explained to Harris, “Hell, I don't know who we would call to get y'all some dogs.”
They decided that Greenville officers would conduct a cursory search of the area to see if they could locate Snider or his corpse. There was no need for dogs yet, the Greenville officer told Harris. Plus, it was a Saturday. No one knew where to begin looking for “dog people,” as they were described, during the week; better yet, on the weekend.
“They had no idea how to conduct a search with dogs,” said one officer. “And the funny thing is, the State Police Dog Unit was housed in the same building as the Greenville Police Department.”
As they were out in the neighborhood helping to search, Harris pulled McCorvey aside. Frustrated, he said, “We need to get cadaver dogs out here. The sun is setting. It's getting dark.”
They stood on the top of a hill in the Westview area of Greenville, looking around. They were perched on the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, across the street from Haley's house, on a hillside by a creek, in a heavily wooded area. At any other time Harris might have looked out and took a moment to appreciate what was, truly, God's country: a thin sheen of fog, green trees as far as the eye could see, the magical transcendence and curvature, jagged and perfect, of the mountain range off in the distance. But today they were in search of a quadruple murderer, a case that was so close to the finish line that Harris could see it coming together—and finishing here—without any additional pain for the victims' families.
Harris pulled out his cell. He dialed.
“Tom,” Harris said, “it's Harris.” The one guy Harris wanted to give this information to was Tom Ladd. The guy had worked doggedly on the case. Harris wanted to assure him that, as Ladd had suspected long ago, Harris had finished the job. “We got 'em!” Harris said.
“Son of a bitch,” Tom Ladd said, realizing he hadn't a clue as to who these two murderers were.
There was a house, someone's backyard, near the small hill Harris and McCorvey stood on, which led down into a ravine and densely wooded area, a welcome mat into Blue Ridge territory.
“That son of a bitch is in there somewhere,” Harris told McCorvey, staring into the thickly settled woods.
McCorvey nodded, agreeing.
The region was perfect. It was close enough to Haley's house. You could hide, Harris noted, in this small area and not be found but for a dog sniffing you out.
Finding someone from the Greenville PD who was in charge, Harris asked again about getting a couple of dogs out there. Maybe a cadaver dog or two to search the area where his gut told him Chris Snider was.
“Yeah, sure,” the cop said, according to Harris. “But, you know, how do y'all go about getting one?”
Are you kidding me?
Harris looked at McCorvey.
“Call Search and Rescue,” Harris suggested. “They would probably have a cadaver dog or two.”
“Ah, okay. Yes. We'll take care of it.”
“You sure?” Harris asked. He had a feeling he was being stonewalled and patronized.
“Yeah. Yeah. No problem.”
Harris and McCorvey flew back to Houston the following morning. They were no good to anyone in South Carolina. Finally able to get some rest, both men went back into the office on that Monday, July 24, still certain Chris Snider was dead, and in those woods. Nothing had happened over the weekend since they'd left Greenville. They had been told by the Greenville Police Department that a few dogs would be brought in and a search would be conducted. One cadaver dog, Harris knew, could run into that brush and sniff out a dead man within ten minutes.
But no dogs had been brought in.
Harris was livid.
Then another problem arose. One of the powers-that-be inside the Greenville Police Department had called an HPD white shirt and complained that the Texans were “trying to ride roughshod” over the local Greenville police. His boys in South Carolina were not going to have any of it. The idea was that Harris and McCorvey had ridden into town on their horses and barked orders at the local yokels.
“You need to call the Greenville police chief and straighten this mess out,” Harris was told.
The two men spoke cordially.
“Listen,” the chief told Harris, “I'll provide you with
one
detective, but you are going to have to find your own cadaver dogs and find this guy yourselves. Unless there's evidence of a body, we're not getting involved.”
To the Greenville authorities, Chris Snider did not exist. They had no record of him being in their town. Why should they use town resources to help locate him?
I wouldn't need a cadaver dog,
Harris thought,
if I had evidence of a body.
But he kept his mouth shut.
HPD was on its own.
Harris spent a better part of that week—July 24, Monday, through Friday, July 28—searching for the right person to locate Chris Snider.
By July 26, Wednesday, Harris found the South Carolina Search and Rescue Dog Association, Inc. (SCSARDA). Snider had not been seen for six days. SCSARDA contacted the Greenville Police Department and were told they had searched Dumpsters and the periphery of the woods around Haley's house, but they had come up with nothing. The SCSARDA supervisor decided from there that, yes, the dogs were needed. But they were not going to be able to get the dogs out there until that coming weekend.
“It's volunteer,” the woman explained to Harris. “They can only work on weekends.”
“Okay.”
Harris called the Greenville Police Department, which told him, “No, no, no. They can only search during the week when our detectives are on duty.”
What the heck?
Harris thought he was going to have to fly back out to Greenville.
The plan Harris suggested was to use the four dogs the woman from SCSARDA suggested for the job and spread out across that area Harris had pointed out on day one.
The Greenville Police Department, however, decided that Chris Snider was somewhere else and sent SCSARDA to the town park.

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