But there was just one problem.
On the night of the murders, one of Darin’s socks was found down a back alley some 75 yards away from the house. It contained two small spots of blood from Damon and Devon, but none of Darlie’s blood.
What was it doing there?
The police initially speculated that Darlie had carried the sock three houses away to make it look as if the intruder had dropped it during his escape. But they couldn’t find any of Darlie’s blood—or anyone else’s blood—outside the house. There was no blood on the back patio, on the back fence or in the back alley. If Darlie had planted the sock, how did she avoid leaving a blood trail of her own, for once her throat was cut, she lost significant amounts of blood.
The detectives and the prosecutors came up with an interesting theory: Darlie stabbed her boys to death, took the sock down the alley—perhaps to give the impression that the intruder had used it to keep his prints off the knife—then cut herself at the kitchen sink.
Either before she stabbed the boys or before she stabbed herself, she cut the mesh screen with the bread knife, laid the red herrings, arranged the crime scene and, once all that was done, called 911, then screamed out for Darin.
However, Darlie’s well-meaning internet supporters argue, if she had wanted the police to find the sock, wouldn’t she have thrown it closer to the house, perhaps at the end of the driveway, instead of leaving it so far away, next to a garbage can, where the police might have overlooked it? And wouldn’t she have doused that sock in blood so that the police would know what they had found? And even then, would Darlie have had time to do everything before the police arrived?
In fact, had there been an intruder who used the sock to avoid leaving his fingerprints, he would have left his prints at the point of entry—but none was there. The stabbings were brutal and blood would have sprayed all over the sock, and on exiting the premises the blood-soaked sock would have smeared the window and its frame, as well as any door frame it might have touched. But there were only a few spots of blood on the sock. To suggest that an intruder slipped it on his hand before he killed the boys is ludicrous.
There was no intruder, so the only people who could have dropped the sock were Darlie and Darin. But there is no evidence to implicate Darin in the murders or any attempt to cover them up, so we must focus on Darlie. We have seen that she certainly spent some time arranging things and cleaning up before the police turned up, so we suggest that this is another of Darlie’s red herrings in her efforts to divert suspicion from herself. However, when the red herrings fail, the opposite occurs and she puts her head firmly in the noose.
The pro-Routier camp have been thorough, in one respect, by highlighting the police records, indicating that Darlie was on the phone with the 911 dispatcher for five minutes and 44 seconds. Just as that call was ending, a police officer came into the house, and he was there for at least a minute before the paramedics arrived. They found Damon still breathing; he died shortly thereafter. Why is that important? Darlie’s supporters ask.
According to a doctor who studied the severity and location of Damon’s stab wounds, the boy could not have lived longer than nine minutes once he was first stabbed and probably no more than six minutes.
“Let’s assume he lived nine minutes,” claim Darlie Routier and her friends. “If you subtract from that nine minutes her five-minute-and-44-second phone call to 911, then subtract the additional minute and ten seconds that she was in the presence of a police officer, Darlie had only two minutes and six seconds to stab her sons, head for the garage, step through the slit in the window screen, jump a back fence or go through a back gate, run barefoot for 75 yards down an alley, drop a bloody sock, run 75 yards back, stab herself, clean up the blood around the sink, and stage whatever crime scene there was left to be staged.”
The prosecutors certainly did not have a good answer to the timeline conundrum, except to say that the doctor was simply guessing about the nine minutes it took Damon to die and that even then Darlie could have had enough time to commit the murders and stage the crime scene.
Leaping on the prosecutor’s uncertainty, the pro-Routier camp asks, “But if she was smart enough to plant fake evidence, wouldn’t she have been ready with a more believable story about what the intruder looked like and how the killings occurred?”
But it is the sock we are interested in, and not the what-ifs.
The sock did belong to Damon. Forensic experts did find spots of both of the dead boys’ blood on it, and that blood could have only got there after the murders had been committed, therefore, before the mother injured herself.
With the alleged intruder now ruled out, the sock could have only been placed where it was found by one of the parents, so the pro-Routier followers have missed the point entirely.
In assuming that the suggested timeline proves her innocence, Darlie Routier shoots herself in both feet, because it was proved that only someone who lived in the house could have used the bread knife to slash the mesh screen, and that screen was not entered or exited by anyone. No one had stepped into the dew-wet mulch outside the window, rushed across the lawn, jumped a back fence or went through the back gate. So we can safely remove from the equation the time it would have taken to accomplish this alleged sequence of actions.
In fact, Darlie Routier simply opened her front door, dashed to where she dropped the sock and returned to the house, where she cut her throat, cleaned up the blood in the kitchen and called 911.
What really makes no sense was why their mother would choose to kill Damon and Devon at all. If, as the police and the prosecutors believed, Darlie had become increasingly upset about money, why didn’t she murder Darin and cash in his $800,000 life insurance policy? The policies on Damon and Devon totaled only $10,000, and their funerals alone cost more than $14,000. If she was overwhelmed by the stresses of motherhood—another theory—then why didn’t she also kill Drake, the baby, who required most of her attention?
Of course, Drake was in bed next to his father.
At her trial, Darlie’s lawyer, Doug Mulder, one of Dallas’s most prominent and charismatic criminal defense attorneys, kept asking the jurors if they really believed that a doting mother could, in the course of a single summer night, pop popcorn for her boys, watch a movie with them and then suddenly snap and turn into a knife-wielding nut?
A psychiatrist who interviewed Darlie for 14 hours after her arrest said that she was telling the truth about the attacks; that her loss of memory about certain details that night was the result of traumatic amnesia, which can occur after emotionally overwhelming events.
Vincent DiMaio, the chief medical examiner in San Antonio and the editor-in-chief of the prestigious Journal of Forensic Medicine Pathology, testified that Darlie’s injuries were not at all consistent with the self-inflicted wounds he had seen in the past. He said that the cut across her throat, in particular, was hardly “superficial,” as the prosecutors alleged.
Mulder produced notes taken by the nurses at the hospital that said that Darlie was “tearful,” “frightened,” “crying,” “visibly upset” and “very emotional” on the night she was brought in.
However, countering this, one of the prosecution’s expert witnesses aggressively promoted the theory that Darlie was guilty, and in the end the evidence, however circumstantial, was too much for the jurors—even if they could not figure out how the sock found its way into the alley.
During their deliberations, the jury watched the Silly String video a reported seven times.
Perhaps Mulder made a mistake in not introducing another videotape, secretly recorded by the police, that showed Darlie weeping over her sons’ graves.
Perhaps the outcome would have been different had he found more expert witnesses to counter the prosecution’s experts. But, even then, it’s hard to see how a jury would have gotten over the finely honed image of Darlie as a mentally unbalanced, gum-chewing bleach blonde who seemed to be unmoved by, if not outright exhilarated
over, the deaths of her children.
After the trial, it was proved that Darin Routier was looking for someone to burglarize the house before the murders. “Never,” Darin argued. But, according to an affidavit given by Darlie’s stepfather, Bob Kee, Darin said in the spring of 1996 that he had a plan in which he and his family would be gone from the house and that a “burglar,” hired by him, would pull up with a U-Haul truck, remove household items and keep them hidden until the insurance company paid the claim. All that was needed, Darin said, was someone to do the job.
Initially, Darin poured scorn on the suggestion that he wanted someone to burgle his house to cash in on the insurance. But finally he had to admit that he had worked out another scam a couple of years before the murders in which he had had his car stolen so that he could collect the insurance money. Darin says that he did not arrange for his Jaguar to be stolen, but he admitted saying to the person who he believed eventually stole the car, “It wouldn’t bother me if it was gone.” Darin would not deny that the person who broke into his house and murdered his sons could have been someone who had heard him discuss his would-be insurance scam. But he said he had no idea who that person might be—and, if such a crime did happen, it was without his assistance.
“Why would I do that if I had my kids and my wife downstairs?” he said. “That’s the craziest story I have ever heard.”
When he was told that the complete truth might help get his wife a new trial, he insisted that he wanted to do what he could for Darlie. “But I don’t want to end up with some kind of bullshit charges brought against me either,” he volunteered. “I don’t want to help her at the expense of my life.”
But what if Darlie really did it and Darin was her accomplice in covering it up—a scenario that prosecutors say they have also considered?
What if Darin came downstairs, saw what his wife had done to the boys and then planted false clues to try to keep her from being arrested? Because he had no blood on him, he could have taken the sock down the alley without leaving a trail. He could have been the one who carefully cut Darlie’s throat and inflicted her other wounds, after convincing her that the cops would be more likely to believe her story if she had also been stabbed.
Or maybe Darlie, who was in such a delicate emotional state only a month before, decided after one of her fights with Darin to murder the boys and then kill herself—only she couldn’t quite bring herself to commit suicide.
What if Darin came downstairs, begged her to put the knife down and then planted false clues and staged a crime scene before having her call 911? Darin said all the speculation is outlandish, and that he still believes an unknown assailant came into his house. “I love my wife and I loved my boys,” he has said. “My God, I loved them. How did this ever happen?”
Proof of motive is not necessary in the proof of a crime, and the absence of any discoverable motive is of little consequence in deciding whether or not the prisoner committed the crime. Darlie Routier killed her children for whatever motive—murder for insurance was never one of them—and her guilt is overwhelming.
At the beginning, I asked the reader to stand back to look at a somewhat incomplete painting of homicide which had been designed to fool the eye. We then moved closer to examine how the exercise had been completed and learned much. Various areas of the canvas were missing or deliberately obscured by the perpetrator—all attempts to show us a picture that didn’t really exist. A murderous trompe l’oeil indeed!
Yes, the couple had spats from time to time, but most couples have those and they make for healthy, open relationships. This couple were devoted to each other, despite the curtain-twitchers who claim otherwise. Of course, they might have discussed paying someone to rob their home for insurance purposes, but killing Darin, who was asleep close to Drake, for insurance reasons was the last thing on Darlie’s mind.
The suicide note in Darlie’s diary proves that she was falling apart at the seams a month before the murders. Her words are sad, and perhaps those of a sincere woman. But was this yet another warped way of getting attention, for she wrote the letter then telephoned her husband begging him to come home? When he did, she showed him the letter and he comforted her, giving her the reassurance she craved.
Darlie Routier was, and still is, a very materialistic woman with an underlying sense of low esteem. Her ego was fragile. To compensate for this, she indulged in expensive trinkets, clothes and other excesses, which others would describe as “showy.” She dyed her hair to match the color of her dog. She was an attention seeker who years beforehand had claimed she had been raped to gain the sympathy and attention of her peers. She had her breasts enlarged to a size that would outdo most raunchy centerfolds. All of these were props to support her own self-admitted inadequacies.
She knew there was no way out of the financial abyss into which they had plunged. They always say that a flame burns brightest before it goes out, and Darlie certainly burned bright, with high spirits, during the week before she killed her children. This was Darlie Routier to a T: showy on the outside, now a psychological wreck inside; a woman who needed sympathy and attention.
It was an inescapable fact that the Routiers were on the verge of bankruptcy. The IRS demanded hefty tax arrears. They owed their bank and credit card companies a small fortune. And the bank had refused them the lifeboat of a $5,000 loan. They would lose the house. All that they had worked so hard together for would soon be lost, probably forever.
Darlie Routier once prided herself on her beautiful figure, but now she had put on weight she could not lose. She admitted to suffering from postpartum depression and her periods had stopped completely, and as every woman knows, the symptoms can become mentally debilitating. Society has witnessed time and again a parent killing their children in moments of deep despair.
Darin Routier is an extremely intelligent and mentally well-balanced man. His work in the electronic industry demands that he is methodical and thorough. Indeed, until he fell into financial difficulties, he was highly successful and motivated.
From their history together, we know that Darin was emotionally far better equipped to handle the family financial crisis than his materialistic and showy wife. Sadly, this case has the indelible stamp of “familicide” writ large throughout.
Having filled in all of the missing pieces, we now suggest that Darlie Routier′s mind had become a pressure-filling cylinder and the relief valve finally closed shut. In effect, her mind blew.
We do not believe that she had ever seriously considered suicide. She loved herself far too much to do that. The note and phone call to her husband were simply an attention-seeking exercise.
If there was a motive, as cold, dispassionate and brutal as this may seem, I believe that Darlie Routier killed her two sons and then mutilated herself to gain sympathy and attention as her materialistic world collapsed in ruins.
The murders were premeditated, and the intruder scenario was hastily invented with little thought to careful planning, as has been proven. In all that followed the stabbings, we can picture a cold-blooded, calculating woman meticulously rearranging her home, taking care not to damage the items she held so dear to her heart: she could easily destroy her sons’ lives, but not a spot of blood should contaminate the couch on which she slept or the flashy jewelry she wore.
Darlie Routier’s latest hearing centered not on fingerprint evidence but on the thousands of errors made by the original trial stenographer. She and her internet supporters claimed that she could not receive a fair consideration of her appeal because the transcript was tainted. However, months of reconstructive work brought the transcript up to scratch, and on this basis the judge ruled against the appellant.
The rest is history, but the full picture certainly explains why the dog didn’t bark in the night.
Inmate #999220, Darlie Routier, is at Texas Department of Corrections, Mountain View Unit DR, 2305 Ransom Road, Gatesville, TX 76528, USA.
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Susan Gr
ay and The Featherman
“I had never had a climax in my life until I met ‘The Featherman’ on the internet. We met, he raped me and returned to almost kill me.”
—SUSAN GRAY, TO THE AUTHORS
As most people will agree, the feeling of emptiness when one has been rejected by a loved one may be misinterpreted as a need to go shopping or as a need to eat. The need for companionship and love and the sense of loss that is now associated with this need may be too painful to scrutinize consciously. The person engages in unrelated behavior that results in a temporary reduction of the feelings associated with loneliness and tends to bring pleasure. Feeling good about one thing masks the pain being felt elsewhere.
We will soon learn a lot about Susan Gray (not her real name) and how, spurned by three husbands, she found herself in an internet chat room unknowingly talking to a sexual predator. We will learn even more about the man himself—and it is a story that provides a salutary lesson to women looking for relationships in the chat rooms of the world.
Susan Gray and at least two other British women fell for a smooth-talking American on the internet. During a five-week visit he raped all of them—there were probably others too—and Susan almost lost her life. Later in this book we encounter two men, a London doctor and a U.S. mechanic, who did.
Susan was born 47 years ago in Maidstone, Kent. Today a tall, natural blonde with blue eyes, she could readily be described as “classy” and “hot stuff,” and the combination of her slim figure with sexy clothes, short skirts and high-heeled black boots has always drawn admiring glances from men and women alike.
Intelligent, house-proud and generous to a fault, Susan has a teenage son, although, sadly, by the age of 40 she had three failed marriages behind her.
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