20 years later the mystery remains

She was Miss Irresistible, she became a murderer: 20 years later the mystery of the motive remains

A 2003 quadruple homicide went unsolved for years before a tip led investigators to the killers. Sean Neumann on People reconstructs the story.

The July 2003 quadruple murders of Rachael Koloroutis, Tiffany Rowell, Marcus Precella and Adelbert Sanchez went unsolved for three years before a call from an informant led Texas police to search for a once-troubled teenager who she seemed to have seen her fortunes reversed, going from being bullied to being voted “Miss Irresistible” by her high school classmates.

Killer of classmates

She was Miss Irresistible, she became a murderer: 20 years later the mystery of the motive remains, in the photo Christine Paolilla cries at the trial (Julio Cortez/Houston Chronicle)

But the same classmates who seemed to have taken Christine Paolilla under their wing found themselves shot to death by her ex-boyfriend, Christopher Snider, during what investigators believe was a drug deal ended badly.

More than 20 years later, PEOPLE looks back on that heartbreaking crime, which left the victims’ families searching for answers for years, before Paolilla herself was sentenced to life in prison.

Paolilla appeared to struggle in her early high school years, according to ABC News. The broadcaster reported that the teenager was a secretive outsider whose father had died at a young age and whose mother was a drug addict.

The girl also had insecurities about her appearance stemming from her alopecia, a condition that leads to premature hair loss. At school, Paolilla wore wigs.

But Rowell and Koloroutis, two popular kids at Clear Lake High School who were a year older than Paolilla, suddenly befriended the teen, ABC reported, sparking a friendship that would end tragically.

“She was elected by the school, in 2003, Miss Irresistible at Clear Lake High School,” Paolilla’s mother told 20/20 during a segment on her daughter’s crime, according to ABC. “They did it because they felt he was the person they loved, the way he was, the person he was.”

The murders

Police responded to a Houston-area home on July 18, 2003, finding the bodies of the four victims. Investigators believed that Sanchez and Precella were drug dealers and that Paolilla and Snider, her then-boyfriend, had gone to the home to buy drugs, according to The Houston Chronicle. But something went wrong, leading Snider to pull out a gun and start shooting, the newspaper reported.

The newspaper reported that officers testified how each victim was shot “multiple times”: Sanchez and Rowell were unable to get up from the couch before they were killed, while Snider allegedly shot Precella and Paolilla pistol-whipped Koloroutis while she was trying to crawl away after being hit by bullets. “Why are you doing this to me?” he asked Paolilla before his friend pistol-whipped her, Harris County Assistant District Attorney Rob Freyer testified, according to the Chronicle.

The victims’ families searched relentlessly for answers over the next three years as police failed to solve the case, according to ABC News. The station reported that George Koloroutis, Rachael Koloroutis’ father, had printed and distributed fliers to local residents and put up several billboards along a Houston-area highway to raise awareness of the case, even offering a $100,000 reward for information who could help solve his daughter’s murder.

Three years after the investigation ended, a man called the police hotline to alert police to Paolilla’s involvement, recounting details about the murders that only investigators knew, such as how Koloroutis had tried to crawl away from his killer after being been hit.

Paolilla confessed to involvement in the crime, but at trial a defense psychiatrist testified that her confession was due to heroin withdrawal she was experiencing during police interrogation, the Houston Chronicle reported.

But the jury was not swayed. Paolilla was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to life in prison after being convicted of capital murder in 2008, avoiding a potential death sentence because she was 17 at the time of the quadruple homicide, ABC 13 reported.

Snider, who was 21 at the time of the murders, died by suicide in 2006, around the same time police received the tip that opened the case.

Prison records reviewed by PEOPLE show that Paolilla, now 38, remains behind bars in a Texas prison and will not be eligible for parole until 2046.