Darlie Routier seemed to live a perfect life, that would leave her wanting for nothing. She was married to her high school sweetheart, had three beautiful sons, and a luxurious home in Rowlett, Texas. However, Darlie's perfect world would shatter in June of 1996, when her two sons, Damon and Devon, were murdered in their home. Darlie quickly became the prime suspect and was found guilty of capital murder.
She was a beautiful woman who married her high school sweetheart, Darin, in August of 1988. They had their first son, Devon, just one year after they got married. Their family continued to grow with the birth of their second son, Damon, in 1991. Finally, they completed their family with the birth of their youngest son, Drake, in 1995.
Darlie was known around the neighborhood as the kind housewife who would bake cookies for everyone and who would often let the neighborhood kids come over to play. Darin and Darlie even paid a neighbors mortgage payment when he was struggling with cancer.
The Routier's seemed to be a wonderful family that had it all.
But just underneath the surface, their world was crumbling.
Beginning in 1995, Darin’s business started to operate at a loss. The Routier's were suddenly out of money. By June of that year, they were behind on their mortgage payments and they could not pay the minimum payment of $12,000 on their credit card bill. To top it off, they were denied a loan from their bank due to their horrible financial situation.
As the Routier’s life began to deteriorate financially, Darlie’s life was falling apart emotionally as well.
Darlie had been battling with depression for the majority of 1995. She wrote that she felt unfulfilled in her life and often dreamed of more.
Her entries turned darker in May of 1996 when Darlie wrote a suicide note to her children.
“I hope that one day you will forgive me for what I am about to do. My life has been such a hard fight for a long time, and I just cannot find the strength to keep fighting anymore. I love you three more than anything else in this world…I don’t want you to see a miserable person every time you look at me. Your dad loves you all very much and I know in my heart he will take care of my babies. Please do not hate me or think in any way that this is your fault.”
A little over a month after Darlie wrote this entry contemplating suicide, another tragedy would befall the family.
On June 6th, 1996 Darlie and her two older boys, Damon and Devon, decided to have a fun night of movie watching in the living room. Darin and their youngest son, Drake, who was just 7 months old at the time, did not participate and slept upstairs that night. Eventually, Darlie, Damon, and Devon drifted off to sleep in the living room. However, their peaceful sleep wouldn’t last for long.
Damon (left) and Devon (right)
At 2:31 AM, the police received a frantic call from Darlie, telling the dispatcher that an intruder had stabbed her and her children.
Darlie was hysterical on the call. She was extremely emotional and kept varying how she referred to her children. Throughout the conversation, she referred to Devon and Damon as "my babies", "my kids", and "my little boys" but never referred to them by name.
Darlie also mentioned an intruder but she would vary how many intruders she believed she had seen. At the beginning of the call, Darlie said "they came here...they broke in". However, later in the call, she said, "some man came in and stabbed my babies."
While Darlie did call for help and told the dispatcher that her children were stabbed, she never asked for guidance regarding how to stop Damon's bleeding or how to get Devon to start breathing again.
Instead of asking the dispatcher how to aid her children, she told her about the intruder’s weapon, a knife. She mentioned that she had moved it and she was worried that by touching it she had destroyed any DNA evidence they may have been able to collect from it.
At the scene, the medics quickly turned their attention to Darlie, who had a neck wound as well as stab wounds on her right arm. She was taken to the Baylor University Medical Center in downtown Dallas where she underwent surgery.
After her surgery, Darlie was questioned by the police and told them her account of what had happened that night. Her statement went as follows,
...I wake up and feel a pressure on me. I felt Damon press on my right shoulder and heard him cry, this made me really come awake and realized there was a man standing down at my feet walking away from me. I walked after him and heard glass breaking. I got halfway through the kitchen and turned back around to run and turn on the light, I ran back towards the utility room and realized there was a big white handled knife lying on the floor, it was then that I realized I had blood all over me and I grabbed the knife thinking he was in the garage so I thought he might still be there and I yelled for Darin. I ran back through the kitchen and realized the entire living area had blood all over everything. I put the knife on the counter and ran into the entrance, turned on a light and started screaming for Darin, I think I screamed twice and he ran out of the bedroom with his jeans on and no glasses and was yelling, what is it, what is it. I remember saying he cut them, he tried to kill me, my neck, he ran down the stairs and into the room where the boys were. I grabbed the phone and called 911.
The police were instantly suspicious of her story and noted various inconsistencies between her narrative and the crime scene.
To begin with, the murders themselves were very unusual. Typically, an intruder would have killed the greater threat first, the adult, and then proceeded to kill the children. If rape had been his motive, he would have kept the children alive so that he would be able to keep Darlie complacent. However, this intruder decided to kill the children first.
Another red flag was the differences in the wounds found on Darlie and the children. While Devon and Damon suffered deep and penetrating wounds, Darlies wounds were found to be superficial in nature. Doctor Janice Townsend-Parchman, a medical examiner in Dallas, commented on Darlie's neck wound, saying that,
The neck wound was…possibly less than half an inch deep, but it’s hard to say. It is relatively superficial. It didn’t go very deep into her body and didn’t strike any vital structures.
The police were also suspicious of the broken wine glass that Darlie claims the intruder knocked over as he was running out of the home. Retired Detective James Cron, who was at the crime scene, tested the wine rack to see if it was stable, and the amount of force it would take to knock a glass out of the rack. He testified as follows,
Later in the evening after all the fingerprints were finished on it, I shoved the wine rack, rattled it, bumped into it and jarred it to see if any glasses would fall off and none did. I couldn’t dislodge any glasses without tilting it forward so far that they would all fall out of their rack.
Another inconsistency was Darlie's claim that the intruder dropped the butcher knife in the utility room as he was running out of the house.
When bloodstain expert Tom Bevel looked at the blood spatter patterns on the floor of the utility room, he believed they were inconsistent with an object being dropped by a fast-moving individual.
The blood on the floor was low-velocity and consisted of round drops, which are indicative of a slow-moving person holding the knife, not someone dropping the knife as they are running away.
The entry/exit window was also inconsistent with an intruder entering the home.
To begin with, there was undisturbed dust surrounding the window sill, suggesting that no one had climbed in or out. Similarly, there were no nearby footprints, outside debris, blood, or any other indicators that an intruder had entered or exited the window.
The screen had been slashed diagonally when cutting it near the bottom by the latches would be a more effective manner. Beyond this, the police realized that the screen could have easily been pulled off, so it was odd that the intruder chose to cut it in the first place.
An even more incriminating piece of evidence emerged when the knife that was used to cut the screen was found in the Routier's own butcher block. Charles Linch, a trace analyst with Southwestern Institute of Forensic Sciences, tested all of the knives in the Routier's kitchen. He discovered that the Routier's bread knife had fibers that were microscopically identical to the fibers from the window screen. If Darlie was telling the truth, then the intruder would have had to enter the house a different way (even though there were no signs of forced entry), get the bread knife from the Routier's kitchen, cut the screen, put it back, then choose a different knife to commit the murders with.
All of this led the police to believe that the crime scene had been staged and that Darlie was to blame for the murders of Devon and Damon.
The police were soon made aware of the Routier's financial situation. They believed Darlie may have desired to get rid of her children because they were an expense that would prevent her from continuing to live her luxurious lifestyle. They were also made aware of her mental state, and believed that this could have contributed to her committing the murders.
Just 8 days after the murder, a video would surface that would put the nail in the coffin for Darlie.
Darlie and Darin went to the graves where their sons were just buried and had a party to celebrate Damon’s 7th birthday. Unusual for a grieving mother, a video shows Darlie giggling, smiling, and shooting silly string onto her children's newly dug graves.
Just four days after this video surfaced, Darlie was charged with capital murder.
Darlie's Differing Accounts of the Attack
During the police investigation, one of the mistakes that hurt Darlie the most was that she gave several accounts and timelines of how the events occurred.
In the first account, she awoke to see a man standing at the edge of the couch, walking away from her toward the kitchen.
In another account, she was awakened by Damon pushing on her shoulder, saying, "Mommy."
In yet another account, she was awoken by the sound of breaking glass.
In one account, she fought with the intruder.
In another, she has no memory of fighting with him.
A 2008 study showed that short-term stress can damage the brain, taking minutes not months to impact neurons responsible for learning and memory. Scientists at the University of California, Irvine, found that acute stress activates selective molecules called corticotropin-releasing hormones. Like cortisol, these hormones disrupt the process by which the brain collects and stores memories.
Some people theorize that the bruising was a result of Devon kicking at her while she was stabbing him, since he did show signs of defensive injuries. At the time of his death, Devon weighed 46 lbs. I'm not saying it's impossible for his kicking to have caused that bruising, but it is improbable. Aside from his weight, the attack on Devon was brutal and swift. If Devon had caused that kind of bruising, he had to have been kicking at her inner arms for a prolonged period of time a period of time that was longer than his actual attack.
"DNA map" of blood trails belonging to each of the injured Routiers.
According to the prosecution, Darlie cut her own throat while standing at the sink, and then attempted to clean it up. Now, when I look at the pictures of the sink, I see: the left side, the right side, and the front. None of these areas appear clean. It should be noted that two sponges were collected as evidence from the sink area; there was no blood found on either one. There was blood on the drawers beside the sink and on the cabinet doors underneath, which is consistent with Darlie's assertion that she was pulling out kitchen rags and towels for Darin to use on the boys.
Now that is one clean sink!
Aside from the supposed cleanup at the sink, there were other details that caused investigators to suspect the crime scene had been staged. Darlie told police that she heard the sound of breaking glass, and there were glass fragments strewn about the kitchen floor area. Darlie's bloody footprints were photographed underneath some of the glass, causing them to believe she broke the glass after the fact to make it look like there had been a struggle.
The location of the vacuum cleaner was another detail that caused investigators to suspect staging. The vacuum was photographed laying on its side, smack dab in the middle of the kitchen. Darlie's blood was found to have dripped onto it, and there were wheel marks where it appeared the vacuum had been rolled through wet blood. This caused the prosecution to claim that Darlie placed it there to further enhance evidence of a struggle.
David Waddell and Matt Walling were both asked if they saw the vacuum laying in the middle of the floor. Waddell's response was that he did not; Walling stated that he did remember seeing it, but wasn't sure if it was there when he first came in, or if it was there later when he did a walk-through. I submit to you that if there was a vacuum cleaner knocked over in the middle of the kitchen floor, they would have remembered seeing it at first glance.
That's the kind of thing you just don't miss; it's a large, incongruous object that clearly doesn't belong there. I also submit to you that if the vacuum was there and neither of these police officers noticed it, they're not very observant and perhaps should re-think their career choice.
If the two police officers did not see this laying in the middle of the kitchen, it wasn't there.
They thought the house was empty, and were taken by surprise. Darin's Jaguar was broken down and was not parked in its usual spot in the driveway. Darlie's Pathfinder was parked in the street; it would have appeared as if no one was home. After killing the kids and attacking Darlie, do you really think they are going to take anything with them that might possibly tie them to this house?
The circle indicates this is Devon's blood on the back of Darlie's night shirt. This is the totality of Devon's blood on the back of the shirt. It's not spatter, a splash, or even a drop. It is a minute, pinprick DOT. It proves nothing.
This tiny stain from the back of the shirt is a mixture of both Darlie's and Damon's blood.
Another drop from Damon, mixed with Darlie's. Guilters insist the only way this could happen is from Darlie raising the knife over her shoulder while stabbing Damon.
Tom Bevel was hired by the state as a blood spatter expert. Bevel met with the defense team prior to the trial, including Lloyd Harrell, who was the investigator for the defense. During this meeting, Bevel stated unequivocally that the blood mixture on the back of the shirt was the result of one single occurrence of spatter. In other words, Bevel was saying that both victims were injured and actively bleeding when the drops were deposited, and their mixed blood landed on the back of the shirt.
However, when it came time for Bevel to testify, his "expert" opinion was drastically different from what he had said to the defense previously. On the stand, Bevel testified that the mixture was actually the result of two separate occurrences, Darlie's blood having landed on the shirt first and then Damon's blood landing on the exact same spot of the shirt on top of Darlie's (or vice versa).
Another puzzling clue was discovered in an alley three houses down from Darlie’s home. There investigators found a tube sock with small amounts of blood from the two murdered boys. According to Sgt. Poos, the sock was part of a cover-up:
“One of the characteristics of cases, where mothers are involved in the killing of children is that after the fact, there’s a very amateuristic cover-up… No one wants to believe that a mother would do something like this to their children. But at some point, when you’re presented with this type of overwhelming physical evidence, you have to start accepting some of it.”
A week and a half after the murders, Darlie was interrogated by a detective reportedly known for extracting confessions from suspects. According to Sgt. Poos, Darlie stated that if she did commit the murders, she had no recollection. The detective who conducted the interview said it was never recorded.
The chain of custody for her nightshirt was problematic. It was cut and removed by a paramedic and the bloodstains not preserved. Instead, it was placed in bags and taken to the fire station. We don’t even know if it was mixed with Damon’s clothing or not.
There was blood at the bottom of the bag meaning it could have seeped from one area to the other. It should have been inadmissible because of the possibility of cross-contamination.
It later emerged Devon was stabbed repeatedly in the chest, while Damon was stabbed in the back. Devon tragically died at the scene, while his younger brother passed away in hospital.
Paramedic Kolbye went to Damon located to the left of the entry hallway in the family room close to a wall and paramedic Koschak went to Devon on the other side of the room at the foot of the couch. Kolbye testified that Damon was face down and took his last breath as he turned him over. He began trying to ventilate Damon with a bag valve mask but he stated that Darin and Darlie were both shouting which was distracting so he picked Damon up and carried him outside to a stretcher and began CPR.
Koschak testified that after assessing Devon and noticing that he was obviously dead, he went over to Darlie in the kitchen to look at her neck. He also wanted to get her away from the shouting so he took her out on the front porch to assess her wounds. Both medics’ were asked in court if Darlie was visibly upset and crying in the house and they both said she wasn't crying but there was a lot of shouting going on.
Most people who follow this case have heard about the “unidentified print” found at the crime scene. They are referring to the bloody fingerprint found on the glass-top table behind one of the sofas in the Roman Room (family room). But, what a lot of people don’t realise is that this was not the only unidentified print found at the crime scene. In this document, we will be identifying all the unidentified prints found at the Routier home.
On June 6, 1996, Officer Charles Hamilton of the Rowlett Police Department was tasked with processing the crime scene for latent fingerprints. Hamilton, who had approximately five years’ experience collecting latent prints, spent about five hours dusting the house. By the end of the day, he had found a number of prints.
Bloody fingerprint on the utility room door
In conclusion, there are several unidentified prints at the crime scene which could have been left by an intruder. Those prints include—
Two latent prints from the window frame in the garage;
One bloody print from the utility room door;
One latent print from the utility room door, which could be Darin Routier’s;
One latent print from the sliding glass door;
One bloody print from the glass-top table in the Roman Room; and
Six latent prints from the upstairs bathroom.
That is a total of twelve prints—all unidentified.
Here are the areas Brown pointed out in his book. The arrow depicts the smudge of blood on the utility room door. Brown used an overlay of a shoe print to demonstrate how the impressions made in blood match up to a shoe or boot print.
James Cron testified about a possible shoe or boot print on the floor of the garage as well. He described a single smudge of blood about two feet into the garage (from the utility room). He claimed it had not been there previously and dismissed it as having been tracked into the garage by one of the investigators. He surmised the transfer of blood occurred as a result of someone stepping onto a small drop of blood and then walking into the garage area. However, he was asked if he went back to check to see if it appeared a drop of blood had been stepped on and he said he did not.
The only proof the jury had that the blood was tracked in by an officer was Cron’s testimony. This print was not investigated as though it were a part of the crime scene (which it well may have been) and it was not attributed to any particular investigator. It is also not entirely clear if Linch and Cron referenced the same print since Cron did not say anything about the sign Linch mentioned.
Routier's family maintains a website which proclaims her innocence and a new site has been created by Routier's supporters to present their views and claims of her innocence.
Defense attorneys allege that errors were made during her trial and the investigation of the murders, especially at the crime scene. They also claim that there is significant exculpatory evidence which was improperly excluded, while questionable prosecution evidence was improperly allowed into evidence. Despite these claims, Routier's appeals have continually failed.
Rowlett police officer Steve Wade stands guard at the front door of the Routier home as the crime scene is being processed in the early morning hours of the murders
The crime scene was secured immediately after the murders took place on June 6, 1996 and was still being investigated as late as Nov 21, 1996, less than 2 months before the trial.
Officers Waddell and Walling searched the upstairs areas of the house and discovered Darin and Darlie's youngest son, 6-month old Drake, in his crib. Fortunately he had not been harmed. No intruder was discovered upstairs or anywhere else in the home.
Routier was ultimately convicted of murdering the younger of her two sons, and was sentenced to death by lethal injection. Prosecutors did not try Routier for the death of her older son, holding his murder in reserve in the event she was acquitted in the first murder trial or her conviction was overturned on appeal, as there is no statute of limitations on any murder charge in Texas. Routier's defense attorney, Douglas Mulder, was the prosecutor responsible for the wrongful conviction and subsequent death penalty (both since overturned) of Randall Adams in 1977. In 1997, a court found Darlie Lynn Routier guilty of probably the worst of human crimes: killing two of her natural children in cold-blood. Motive is still a mystery, but the prosecution painted her as a shrewish, materialistic young woman who, sensing her lavish lifestyle crumbling, slew her two sons Damon and Devon in a mad attempt to resuscitate her and her husband's personal economy.
The following story relates the events of the murder and those leading up to her sensational trial, resulting in her conveyance to death row in Dallas, where she awaits death through lethal injection. The evidence against Darlie was damaging and, in retrospect, her defending counsel had little hope for her acquittal.
But, recent findings in her case have cast a doubt over her guilt at least over the legalities that brought her thumbs down to death row. Therefore, the final chapter in this report is dedicated to the most recent controversy that may result in a new trial for Darlie Lynn Routier.
In June 2011 Darin Routier filed for divorce, having remained married to Routier after the murder of their sons. Darin Routier stated that the decision to divorce was mutual and "very difficult," and that he still believes his wife is innocent. He went on to say that they decided on the divorce to move on from the "limbo" they've been in since her arrest and conviction.
Routier's appeals have been remanded to the state level for improved DNA testing. Once all state-level testing has been completed, the testing ordered by the federal courts will begin. Routier remains incarcerated on death row located in Gatesville, Texas at the Mountain View Unit of the Texas Department Of Criminal Justice. She is assigned Department of Criminal Justice Identification Number 00999220.
In July, 2002, Darlie's lawyers argued that prosecutors should turn over evidence for new forensic tests. One item requested was the nightgown Darlie had on at the time of the murders. Her lawyers would like to conduct tests that they hope will indicate that her wounds were not self-inflicted. Defense lawyers also want to test the murder knife, the window screen and carpet samples.
Also, at this time, Darin Routier admitted that he had looked for someone to burglarize the family home to benefit from an insurance scam, but that he planned to have the burglary occur when the family was not at home.
The court may require up to 6 months to formulate its reply to Darlie Routier's request.
In the meantime, she sits on Texas' death row, waiting.
Is she one of the most heartless criminals in the state's history or a victim of an overly-aggressive prosecution?
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