This podcast details true crime cases. It contains adult themes and may contain descriptions of violence.

It is not intended for children. Listener discretion is advised.

Thank you for joining me for today's episode of Once Upon a Crime. We're in the final chapter of

With Friends Like These. So far, we've seen Friends turn upon Friends for motivation. We're in the final chapter of with friends like these.

So far we've seen friends turn upon friends for motivation like jealousy, greed, and revenge.

This case, I think, is fascinating because it's not what you would expect at all.

The perpetrator was someone who no one would suspect, and in fact, it took years to even solve the mystery.

As well, many were hard-pressed to come up with a motivation for the crime.

I had to dive into the background of the murderer, including what friends and family had to say,

in order to come up with the reason this crime took place.

We'll consider some theories along the way,

but in the end, you will have to decide what you think is the most likely reason

for what took place in Clear Lake City, Texas, in the summer of 2003.

This is Chapter 4, Christine Paolilla.

It was July 19, 2006, in the San Antonio, Texas Police Department.

20-year-old Christine Paolilla was in an interview room with Detective Brian Harris from the Houston Police Department. Harris had been trying to solve a case for three years,

and it had brought him 200 miles west from Houston to San Antonio. After countless false leads

and mountains of paperwork, he was finally sitting down with someone who might hold the key

to the answers in his unsolved case. Christine looked tiny, sitting in a hard metal chair.

Her legs crisscrossed and tucked under her in a childlike way.

She wasn't much bigger than a child.

She was very thin, almost emaciated looking with pale, pasty skin, and no makeup.

...