Darlie Routier
Encyclopedia
Darlie Lynn Routier is an American woman from Rowlett
, Texas
, who was convicted of murdering her young son Damon, and is currently on death row
awaiting execution by lethal injection
. Two of her three children, Damon and Devon, were stabbed
to death in the family's home on June 6, 1996. Routier was accused by police and local media of killing both children but was prosecuted for and convicted only of Damon's death. Routier also sustained knife wounds, which prosecutors claimed were self-inflicted.
while her husband, Darin, a small business owner, earned a relatively high annual income. However, most of the money he earned was quickly spent. This was later referred to as "living large" by Darin Routier in an interview with Joe Munoz of KXAS Channel 5 on June 14, 1996. The family, from a lower-to-middle class background, lived in a typical two-story tract-style home in a middle class neighborhood, drove a mid-sized SUV and a used Jaguar
, typically inoperable, and owned a used $24,000 boat. Prosecutors argued that Darlie, described as a pampered and materialistic woman, with substantial debt, plummeting credit ratings, and little money in the bank, feared that her middle class lifestyle was about to end and killed two of her children to rid herself of a financial burden. This claim has been disputed by her family and other supporters. By the time of the murders, the money had practically run out, the Jaguar and the boat weren't running, and their income had fallen by $90,000 from the year before. In addition, they allegedly owed up to $10,000 in back taxes
and $12,000 in credit card debt, were two months behind on their mortgage
payments, and had just been denied a $5,000 loan by their bank.
wounds to their torsos, while the slashes to Routier's neck and arm were more superficial.
Routier claimed that at one point she ran barefoot through her kitchen to call for help. The floor of the kitchen was covered with broken glass, but Routier had no injuries to her feet. In addition, traces of the screen that the intruder supposedly cut were found on one of the knives in Routier's kitchen that had been placed back in the butcher block. The sink in the kitchen had been cleaned up, but blood was found down the front of the cabinets directly under the sink, so police suspected that she inflicted her wounds over the sink, then washed the blood down. Areas of blood around the sink had been wiped away, as revealed by a luminol
test. Her claim for defensive wounds was the bruising on her arms. However, at trial, after looking at photos taken June 10, Dr. Alex Santos, the trauma surgeon who operated on Darlie, stated that the bruising looked to be only a day or two old at most, which would mean it occurred in the hospital. When questioned by the defense, however, Dr. Santos extended the timeline and said the bruising might have been inflicted up to four days before the photo was taken, that is, on June 6.
There were other details:
Routier described the alleged attacker as a man of medium height, dressed entirely in black with a T-shirt and baseball cap. However, she later claimed to suffer from traumatic amnesia due to the event, and her account was of little use.
. Prosecutors did not try Routier for the death of the second son, holding his murder in reserve in case of Routier's acquittal
on the first murder trial.
As of 2010, Routier is incarcerated in the Mountain View Unit
of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice
(TDCJ); she has the TDCJ ID 00999220.
Routier's defense attorney, Douglas Mulder, was the district attorney responsible for the wrongful death penalty conviction of Randall Adams in 1977. Adams' case is profiled in the documentary The Thin Blue Line
.
on her sons' grave. Darlie yelled out to her dead children that she loved them, all the while grinning and chewing bubble gum. Four days later, she was charged with their murder. When the case was tried in court, the jury was shown the so-called "silly string videotape".
. Some have argued that Routier should be given a new trial, often alleging that her original trial was based heavily on circumstantial evidence
and therefore unfair.
The story of Darlie Routier was covered on a 2004 episode of the CourtTV series The Investigators
titled "Mother on Death Row: Darlie Routier". The episode ends with a screen noting that "In May 2003, despite forensics proving that the disputed finger print is not from the Routiers or investigators, Texas upheld Darlie Routier's conviction. The defense is appealing to federal courts."
On September 10, 2008, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected, without comment, her attorney's motion for a second chance to make their case for more DNA testing.
Rowlett, Texas
-External links:*...
, Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
, who was convicted of murdering her young son Damon, and is currently on death row
Death row
Death row signifies the place, often a section of a prison, that houses individuals awaiting execution. The term is also used figuratively to describe the state of awaiting execution , even in places where no special facility or separate unit for condemned inmates exists.After individuals are found...
awaiting execution by lethal injection
Lethal injection
Lethal injection is the practice of injecting a person with a fatal dose of drugs for the express purpose of causing the immediate death of the subject. The main application for this procedure is capital punishment, but the term may also be applied in a broad sense to euthanasia and suicide...
. Two of her three children, Damon and Devon, were stabbed
Stabbing
A stabbing is penetration with a sharp or pointed object at close range. Stab connotes purposeful action, as by an assassin or murderer, but it is also possible to accidentally stab oneself or others.Stabbing differs from slashing or cutting in that the motion of the object used in a stabbing...
to death in the family's home on June 6, 1996. Routier was accused by police and local media of killing both children but was prosecuted for and convicted only of Damon's death. Routier also sustained knife wounds, which prosecutors claimed were self-inflicted.
Motives
Prosecutors contend that Routier murdered her sons because of the financial difficulties her family faced. She was a full-time homemakerHomemaker
Homemaking is a mainly American term for the management of a home, otherwise known as housework, housekeeping or household management...
while her husband, Darin, a small business owner, earned a relatively high annual income. However, most of the money he earned was quickly spent. This was later referred to as "living large" by Darin Routier in an interview with Joe Munoz of KXAS Channel 5 on June 14, 1996. The family, from a lower-to-middle class background, lived in a typical two-story tract-style home in a middle class neighborhood, drove a mid-sized SUV and a used Jaguar
Jaguar (car)
Jaguar Cars Ltd, known simply as Jaguar , is a British luxury car manufacturer, headquartered in Whitley, Coventry, England. It is part of the Jaguar Land Rover business, a subsidiary of the Indian company Tata Motors....
, typically inoperable, and owned a used $24,000 boat. Prosecutors argued that Darlie, described as a pampered and materialistic woman, with substantial debt, plummeting credit ratings, and little money in the bank, feared that her middle class lifestyle was about to end and killed two of her children to rid herself of a financial burden. This claim has been disputed by her family and other supporters. By the time of the murders, the money had practically run out, the Jaguar and the boat weren't running, and their income had fallen by $90,000 from the year before. In addition, they allegedly owed up to $10,000 in back taxes
Back taxes
Back taxes is a term for taxes that were not paid when due. They are typically taxes that are owed from a prior year....
and $12,000 in credit card debt, were two months behind on their mortgage
Mortgage loan
A mortgage loan is a loan secured by real property through the use of a mortgage note which evidences the existence of the loan and the encumbrance of that realty through the granting of a mortgage which secures the loan...
payments, and had just been denied a $5,000 loan by their bank.
Murder
Routier claimed that an intruder killed her children, but police became suspicious when they found inconsistencies between some of Darlie's report and crime scene evidence. Routier's children were killed with deep, penetrating knifeKnife
A knife is a cutting tool with an exposed cutting edge or blade, hand-held or otherwise, with or without a handle. Knives were used at least two-and-a-half million years ago, as evidenced by the Oldowan tools...
wounds to their torsos, while the slashes to Routier's neck and arm were more superficial.
Routier claimed that at one point she ran barefoot through her kitchen to call for help. The floor of the kitchen was covered with broken glass, but Routier had no injuries to her feet. In addition, traces of the screen that the intruder supposedly cut were found on one of the knives in Routier's kitchen that had been placed back in the butcher block. The sink in the kitchen had been cleaned up, but blood was found down the front of the cabinets directly under the sink, so police suspected that she inflicted her wounds over the sink, then washed the blood down. Areas of blood around the sink had been wiped away, as revealed by a luminol
Luminol
Luminol is a versatile chemical that exhibits chemiluminescence, with a striking blue glow, when mixed with an appropriate oxidizing agent...
test. Her claim for defensive wounds was the bruising on her arms. However, at trial, after looking at photos taken June 10, Dr. Alex Santos, the trauma surgeon who operated on Darlie, stated that the bruising looked to be only a day or two old at most, which would mean it occurred in the hospital. When questioned by the defense, however, Dr. Santos extended the timeline and said the bruising might have been inflicted up to four days before the photo was taken, that is, on June 6.
There were other details:
- Officers at the scene, paramedics, nurses, doctors and neighbors were all struck by the fact that Routier never asked how the boys were or inquired whether they were alive.
- First responder Officer David Waddell asked Routier repeatedly to apply pressure to her son Damon's back and to tend to him, but received no response from her. However, she continued to apply pressure to her own neck wounds.
- After the operator told Darlie not to touch anything, Routier told the 9-1-19-1-19-1-1 is the emergency telephone number for the North American Numbering Plan .It is one of eight N11 codes.The use of this number is for emergency circumstances only, and to use it for any other purpose can be a crime.-History:In the earliest days of telephone technology, prior to the...
operator that she had already picked up the murder weapon (thus removing any prints), which made police suspicious. - Darlie told police that she believed the killer escaped through the garage. Investigators found a slit window screen in the garage, presumably the intruder's point of exit. However, upon closer inspection they found that the sliced screen showed no signs of being forced in or out (to allow to a body to pass through its slit netting). The screen was also easily removable; an intruder could've easily knocked the screen off its setting without having to cut his way out. Additionally, the ground beneath the window contained a wet mulch that was found undisturbed, making it impossible for someone to have exited through the window without leaving noticeable footprints.
- The killer's "trail of blood" led into the garage and stopped cold at the window that Darlie told police the killer escaped through. The blood trail did not extend beyond the interior of the house; not a single drop of blood was found anywhere on the property's exterior. All of the blood found at the crime scene was contained inside the house.
- Darlie's claim that the killer dropped the knife as she chased him through the kitchen was seen by investigators as wildly inconsistent. They questioned why an intruder would drop the murder weapon in plain sight, thus giving Darlie, the pursuer, a weapon with which to fight back.
- Darlie's purse and several pieces of her jewelry were found on the kitchen counter, untouched. This cast suspicion on the idea that the family was the victim of a home invasionHome invasionHome invasion is the act of illegally burgling or entering a private and occupied dwelling for the purpose of committing a crime Home invasion is the act of illegally burgling or entering a private and occupied dwelling for the purpose of committing a crime Home invasion is the act of illegally...
. - The surgeon who attended her referred to her wounds as "superficial". They were described by prosecutors as "hesitation wounds". While the boys were savagely and forcefully attacked, the "hesitation wounds" found on Darlie were slowly and deliberately inflicted.
- Spots of blood found on her clothing demonstrated she had, at the very least, been very close to her sons while they were stabbed. The blood from both sons was deposited in a projected bloodstain pattern on the back and shoulder of her nightdress, indicating blood cast off from the weapon.
- Blood found under a vacuum cleaner and blood spots on the cleaner itself, indicating that the vacuum cleaner had been placed there after the crime was committed.
- Routier told her ex-maid that she wasn't worried about the cost of the funeral as she could claim $10,000 in funeral insurance.
- Routier was considering suicide two months before killing her sons.
- The very evening before the murder, Routier squabbled with her husband and asked him for a separation, as he admitted. The couple's relationship was in trouble, with public fights and rumors of mutual cheating by both partners.
- In the 911 call, she stated she was 'fighting' the intruder; however, at trial this was heavily disputed by the defense team, who said she stated she was 'frightening.' Prosecutors stated this was said to explain the lack of blood on the sofa and surrounding areas where she was supposedly stabbed.
- Another steadfast argument by the police was that the slash on Darlie's throat was at a downward 45-degree angle, consistent with having made the slash herself.
Routier described the alleged attacker as a man of medium height, dressed entirely in black with a T-shirt and baseball cap. However, she later claimed to suffer from traumatic amnesia due to the event, and her account was of little use.
Sentence
Routier was ultimately convicted of murdering one of her two sons, and sentenced to deathCapital punishment
Capital punishment, the death penalty, or execution is the sentence of death upon a person by the state as a punishment for an offence. Crimes that can result in a death penalty are known as capital crimes or capital offences. The term capital originates from the Latin capitalis, literally...
. Prosecutors did not try Routier for the death of the second son, holding his murder in reserve in case of Routier's acquittal
Acquittal
In the common law tradition, an acquittal formally certifies the accused is free from the charge of an offense, as far as the criminal law is concerned. This is so even where the prosecution is abandoned nolle prosequi...
on the first murder trial.
As of 2010, Routier is incarcerated in the Mountain View Unit
Mountain View Unit
Mountain View Unit is a Texas Department of Criminal Justice prison housing female offenders in Gatesville, Texas. The unit, with about of land, is located north of central Gatesville on Farm to Market Road 215. The prison is located in a 45 minute driving distance from Waco...
of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice
Texas Department of Criminal Justice
The Texas Department of Criminal Justice is a department of the government of the state of Texas. The TDCJ is responsible for statewide criminal justice for adult offenders, including managing offenders in state prisons, state jails and private correctional facilities, funding and certain...
(TDCJ); she has the TDCJ ID 00999220.
Routier's defense attorney, Douglas Mulder, was the district attorney responsible for the wrongful death penalty conviction of Randall Adams in 1977. Adams' case is profiled in the documentary The Thin Blue Line
The Thin Blue Line
The Thin Blue Line is a colloquial term for police and police forces, designed by a police officer after seeing a blue light reflecting on a black marble wall during the first Official Police weeks in Washington DC...
.
Scandal
Newscasts appeared of Routier and other family members holding a "birthday party" at the children's grave to celebrate posthumously Devon's 7th birthday, just eight days after the murder. The grave had been under hidden police surveillance to obtain evidence against Routier, in the event that she were to break down or otherwise make a confession near the graveside. Darlie arrived with a local television crew she had invited, essentially rendering moot any need for police surveillance. At the birthday party, Routier was shown laughing and spraying silly stringSilly String
Silly String is a children's toy of flexible, sometimes brightly-coloured, plastic string propelled as a stream of liquid from an aerosol can. The solvent in the string quickly evaporates in mid-air, creating a continuous strand. Silly String is often used during weddings, birthday parties,...
on her sons' grave. Darlie yelled out to her dead children that she loved them, all the while grinning and chewing bubble gum. Four days later, she was charged with their murder. When the case was tried in court, the jury was shown the so-called "silly string videotape".
Innocence claims
Routier's family created and maintains a website that proclaims her innocence. The claims are based on mistakes her defense attorneys allege were made during her trial and in the investigation of the murders, especially at the crime sceneCrime scene
A crime scene is a location where an illegal act took place, and comprises the area from which most of the physical evidence is retrieved by trained law enforcement personnel, crime scene investigators or in rare circumstances, forensic scientists....
. Some have argued that Routier should be given a new trial, often alleging that her original trial was based heavily on circumstantial evidence
Circumstantial evidence
Circumstantial evidence is evidence in which an inference is required to connect it to a conclusion of fact, like a fingerprint at the scene of a crime...
and therefore unfair.
The story of Darlie Routier was covered on a 2004 episode of the CourtTV series The Investigators
The Investigators (TruTV series)
The Investigators is a true crime television series that airs on TruTV.The series involves sit-down interviews with the people involved in the investigation of a murder as well as family members of the victim...
titled "Mother on Death Row: Darlie Routier". The episode ends with a screen noting that "In May 2003, despite forensics proving that the disputed finger print is not from the Routiers or investigators, Texas upheld Darlie Routier's conviction. The defense is appealing to federal courts."
On September 10, 2008, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected, without comment, her attorney's motion for a second chance to make their case for more DNA testing.
