Hello everyone and welcome to Usual Disclaimer with Eleanor Neal, a true crime podcast where we crack

open some of the most notorious cases in history. Given the topics that we'll be investigating,

it goes without saying that this show comes with a content warning.

The details can get a bit heavy and you might find some of the themes we discuss triggering.

Listener discretion is strongly advised and check the description for some resources and further information.

So today's case is going to be the Christine Powell Lilla case and before we get into it, I just want to give my usual disclaimer that I mean absolutely no disrespect to anyone

that I talk about in this video. This video is for educational purposes and everything that I'm

about to say is just information that I have found on the internet and I'm compiling into one video.

So Christine Marie Powallila was born on March 31st, 1986 in Long Island, New York.

Her parents were Charles, a construction worker and Laurie, a stay-at-home mother.

When Christine was just two years old, her father, Charles, was out at work and sadly died in a tragic accident on the construction site and this changed Christine's life forever.

Her mother, Laurie, began abusing drugs and became addicted to a bunch of different drugs which eventually meant that she got her children taken off of her,

Christine and her older brother, and they were sent to live with their grandparents.

When Christine was around five years old, so she's still very, very young, her hair started

coming out in clumps during the night and so her grandparents took her to the doctors and

she was diagnosed with

alopecia aged five years old she lost quite a bit of the hair on her head like in

chunks so she had like bald spots she lost her eyebrows she lost her eyelashes

and as you can imagine on a five-year-old girl this really took a toll on like

her self-esteem and just her general happiness. She wasn't

quite as happy. And all the other kids obviously didn't really understand it and they started making

fun of her for it and Christine got really sad. She didn't feel girly anymore and so her grandparents

...