The too short life of Chez Paree dancer Christina Mitrou

  The pre-dawn June air was still warm on the night Christina Mitrou worked her final shift after toiling two years at Chez Paree on Stanley Street on 18 June 1995. 

   The attractive and likable young Montrealer of Hellenic heritage was known in the club under her nom-de-bikini stage name Paulina.
   Christina came to Montreal with her parents and three siblings when the poor Greek family moved from Chicago in 1982 when she was 10.
  She got into dancing after dreaming of becoming a model. She posed for lingerie photos and worked retail in a store that sold erotic items on St. Catherine Street where she was recruited by another stripper, according to a Montreal Gazette profile by journalist Peggy Curran. 

  Chez Paree, at the time, was known as the classiest peeler joint in town, with the most glamorous talent. 

   During a period when other strip clubs were leaping to embrace the new raunchier lap dancing service, Chez Paree remained strictly old-style, look-but-don't-touch and was considered sufficiently respectable that tourists, businessmen and hockey players could drop in without a second thought. 

   As the shift ended at about 3 a.m. that Friday night Mitrou, 23, offered another dancer named Valerie a lift home. 

   The two started off in Mitrou's blue Toyota Tercel but were intercepted by a police officer who did a routine check. 

   The two then proceeded to drive to nearby Crescent to pick up another friend. 

   That friend wasn't there so they carried on towards Valerie's home in Verdun.

    After Valerie exited the vehicle, Mitrou embarked on the the 20-minute drive to her home in Park Extension, where she had been living alone since splitting with longtime boyfriend Alexander Szabo. 27.
   The two had an unstable relationship and had split up in January after four years together.

   He wanted to get back together but she was uninterested and had briefly dated a customer from the bar.  

   One of Mitrou's friends told Journal de Montreal reporter Yves Chartrand that Christina feared Alex, who visited her frequently at her work.

    So while Mitrou was exiting the Atwater Tunnel while motoring north from Verdun to Park Ex, something mysterious occurred.

   At about 4:20 a.m. someone shot her in the head with a small calibre gun with one or two shots.

   Mitrou slumped over onto the passenger seat and died instantly. 

  Police would not say whether the shooter was in her car at the time or not but there would be no reason to think he was.

   Her window was down and no windows were broken, which might suggest that she had rolled the window down to talk to someone in an adjacent vehicle. 

   Mitrou's Toyota ground to a halt as her lifeless body slumped across the seat. She was still strapped in with her seat belt.

   Two women saw the scene and alerted two other men, who in turn flagged down a passing taxi driver, who alerted police. 

    Homicide detectives shook every tree they could.

  They questioned her ex, who was neither charged nor considered a suspect.

    Christina was described as a respectable young woman who didn't drink, smoke or consume drugs. She was close to her mother and the two spoke on the phone frequently.

   Chez Paree manager Douglas Dobie attested to her good character, as did fellow dancer Christina Ramdass. 

   "She was a very straight girl and not a troublemaker. I don't know her background but she was very nice, she didn't drink or smoke."
   She had been saving up to open a fashion boutique according to her longtime friend Lorraine Land.
Land said that she noted that Mitrou had seemed "tense, angry and eagerly triggered" for the last few weeks before her death, from around the time she purchased her new Toyota.

Alex Szabo in 2001

 
  One unpublished narrative had it that Mitrou had suffered a misunderstanding with her boyfriend prior to the incident. In that version she had incurred his wrath by racking up a massive debt on his credit card while visiting Florida.
   Alexander Szabo was later convicted of the murder of Pouria Javanmard_Khezravani who was killed in his car during a drug deal on May 5, 2001 across from 4315 Benny in NDG.
   There has been no news about Szabo since 2004 when a court rejected his attempt to overturn his murder conviction.
   One source suggests Szabo was later killed in prison but there is no evidence of that.
   The family did not believe Szabo had anything to do with it and wept in sadness as he kissed Christina during the open casket funeral service in Park Extension. 
   Christina's brother, now deceased, believed the killing was the work of a stalker or someone obsessed with her. He kept a small shrine to her in his apartment.

   Whoever killed Christina Mitrou was never caught or punished.