The pre-dawn June air was still warm on the night Christina Mitriou 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.
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 Mitriou, 23, offered another dancer named Valerie a lift home.
The two started off in Mitriou's 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 Mitriou embarked on the the 20 minute drive to her home in Park Extension where she had been living alone since splitting with her boyfriend a few months before.
One report referred to the boyfriend as Alex. The two had an unstable relationship and had either broken up or were on the rocks.
One of Mitriou's friends told Journal de Montreal reporter Yves Chartrand that Christina feared Alex, who visited her frequently at her work.
So while Mitriou 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.
Mitriou 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.
Mitriou'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. "
One unpublished narrative had it that Mitriou 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. There's no reason to think that story has any truth to it however.
Whoever killed Christina Mitriou was never caught or punished.