Murder.com

by Christopher Berry-Dee

  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 colour 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 centrefolds. All of this was a prop 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 for ever.

  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 post-natal depression, 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, I 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.

  I 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 jewellery she wore.

  Darlie Routier’s latest hearing centred 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.

  NANCY KISSEL: ‘THE MILKSHAKE KILLER’

  ‘A sham masquerading as the best marriage in the Universe.’

  NANCY KISSEL IN AN EMAIL TO A FRIEND

  ‘This case? It’s better than a Hollywood movie.’

  POLLY HUI, A REPORTER AT NANCY KISSEL’S TRIAL IN HONG KONG

  Her husband’s body was wrapped in plastic film and a sleeping bag and then rolled up in a carpet. Days later, Nancy Kissel hired four Chinese workmen to carry the bundle to a storeroom, coolly ignoring their complaints that it smelled like rotten fish.

  According to
their wealthy friends and work colleagues in the former British colony of Hong Kong, 41-year-old Nancy Kissel and her husband, Robert, 40, seemed to be the ideal couple. They had three children: Elaine, June and son Reis. But the couple both had dark secrets: Robert scoured the internet in search of weird sex with gay men; Nancy had a younger lover and trawled the web for drugs with which to kill her husband.

  New York-born Robert had been educated at the University of Rochester’s College of Engineering and had an MBA degree from the Leonard N Stern School of Business at New York University. He worked as a Vice President of Research for Lazard Freres & Co from 1992 to 1997, before he and Nancy moved to Hong Kong in 1998 with the Goldman Sachs Group Inc, to head its distressed asset business in the wake of the Asian financial crisis. In 2000, he was hired out to Merrill Lynch’s Global Principal Investment as managing director of the Asia-Pacific division.

  Born in Minneapolis, Nancy Kissel attended the University of Minnesota. She married her husband in 1989. A small, petite woman with raven-black hair, and a prominent member of Hong Kong’s Jewish community, she had owned her own photography business and carried out a string of volunteer activities, which included work for the Hong Kong International School – the $15,000-a-year school attended by two of the couple’s three children.

  The family lived in an expensive rented apartment within the Parkview complex, set into the lush green hills that overlook the harbour, and, according to Jane Clayton, Robert’s sister, at the time of his murder Robert’s estate was valued in the millions. The deceased held two life insurance policies in Hong Kong worth a total of US$1.75 million, as well as a personal insurance policy from the United States with a face value of about US$5 million. In 2003 the banker’s annual income was US$175,000, not including the US$5.9 million he had amassed in bonuses in his three years with Merrill Lynch.

  The principal beneficiary of Robert Kissel’s will was his wife, Nancy. It stated that, if he died before his wife, his entire estate would go to her. If she died before him, the estate would be distributed as 20 per cent to his brother, 20 per cent to his sister, 20 per cent to his father-in-law, 20 per cent to his mother-in-law and 20 per cent among friends. There was a lot at stake.

  In December 2002, Robert’s sister Jane noticed that her sister-in-law had become distant during a skiing trip to Whistler, Canada. ‘Nancy argued a lot with other people,’ she said. ‘I was very careful when I was with her.’ Jane added, ‘Nancy left the holiday without saying goodbye.’

  For his part, Robert Kissel had recently returned from Bali, Indonesia, where he had undergone a back operation.

  In January 2003, without Nancy’s knowledge, the banker, suspecting that his wife was having an affair, installed E-blaster spy software on both her laptop and her home computer. The software tracked her emails and sent reports to a Hotmail account read by himself.

  In March, Nancy Kissel and her children left Hong Kong to evade the SARS virus outbreak. Planning to stay away for several months, they moved to their holiday home in Stratton Mountain, Vermont, while Robert remained in Hong Kong long enough to continue his work, while at the same time monitoring his wife’s emails. Then, in June, he hired the New York private investigation company Alpha Group to spy on his wife for 11 days and confirm her infidelity. This surveillance would cost Kissel US$25,000.

  The investigation proved positive. PI Rocco Gatta confirmed that Nancy Kissel was having a fling with a television repairman named Michael del Priore. Younger than Robert, Michael had a good physique and lived at a trailer park near the Kissels’ Vermont home.

  During two sessions of surveillance, Gatta noted that a blue van was parked discreetly near the Kissels’ multi-million-dollar home. On each occasion, the vehicle would be parked either in a ditch or halfway up the long drive, out of sight of both the main road and the house. The driver of the van would take off in the middle of the night, without turning on the headlights until reaching the main road. The registration number of the van revealed the owner to be Michael del Priore, Nancy’s lover.

  Intercepted emails from the Romeo, which may be described as ‘love letters’, contained passages such as: ‘I love it when you call my name, it makes me melt.’ Other email exchanges between the lovers included small talk about their daily lives, food preferences and love talk in which they called each other ‘Baby’ and ‘Honey’. In one email Nancy wrote, ‘I think about you so much, Michael…’ At one point Michael writes, ‘I am going crazy… when customers ask me questions, I want to tell them, “Leave me alone, I am busy thinking about Nancy.”’

  After the all-clear for the SARS outbreak was given, Nancy returned to Hong Kong, but continued her relationship with Michael del Priore over the internet.

  On 28 July 2003, Robert Kissel contacted Sharon Ser, a senior partner at attorneys Hampton, Winter and Glynn, to enquire about divorce proceedings and custody of his children. By late September, he had twice told Frank Shea, the owner of Alpha Group Investigations, that he feared for his safety and suspected his wife of trying to poison him.

  Robert discovered on 28 August that Nancy had indeed been searching the internet using keywords such as ‘sleeping pills’, ‘overdose medication causing heart attack’ and ‘drug overdose’. He also told Shea that, when he returned home from work and had his usual glass of Scotch, he felt ‘woozy and disorientated’. The investigator advised him to report to the police with blood and urine samples. Sadly, Robert did not heed the advice because he felt guilty for suspecting his wife.

  This was a mistake that would cost him his life.

  On 20 October, Fung Yuet-seung, an assistant in a clinic on Icehouse Street, gave Nancy Kissel a prescription for Stilnox, a short-term treatment for insomnia, and for the antidepressants Amitriptyline and Lorizan, all in tablet form.

  Three days later, Nancy Kissel visited a doctor, who prescribed her ten tablets of Rohypnol, the so-called ‘date rape’ drug. That night she searched the internet for any contraindicative effects the drug might have.

  Again, Robert spotted his wife’s internet search and contacted Frank O’Shea, this time also confirming that Nancy had been using another mobile phone to communicate with her lover, and that he was again concerned about his safety.

  Robert Kissel had told lawyer Roger Egerton that he had informed his wife about his suspicions that she was having an affair. Nancy seemed ‘unfazed’ when he showed her the telephone bills with the details of her television repairman lover in the US, and he explained to Egerton that he was going to discuss the divorce arrangements on the afternoon of 2 November.

  But Robert was now doomed. It was the countdown for murder. At Nancy Kissel’s trial, the picture painted by the prosecution was one of ice-cold calculation on the defendant’s part for the act of premeditated murder.

  On Saturday, 1 November, Samantha Kriegel, an accomplished photographer and a member of the same United Jewish Congregation in Robinson Road as the Kissels, was asked to take some photos of the couple’s children in the Parkview garden. ‘At this time, everything seemed perfect,’ said Kriegel, ‘and the kids got on very well with me.’

  The next day, Nancy Kissel went to the synagogue. Robert emailed his brother, Andrew, and one of his friends about his intention to divorce his wife.

  Around 4pm – it may have been a little earlier but not much later – the Kissels’ neighbour Andrew Tanzer and his daughter, Leah, called on them for the first time. Tanzer introduced Leah to Kissel’s six-year-old daughter, June, suggesting that they get to know each other. The children wanted ice cream and took several containers from the freezer, but they decided to make sundaes instead, while Nancy prepared a milkshake.

  All the children helped, with the girls in charge of peeling the bananas and the son breaking up the cookies. Since it was Halloween, they decided to add red and black food colouring to make a ‘Halloweeny’ milkshake. Robert came into the kitchen several times and rolled his eyes at the chaos that was going on.

  Tanzer asked for a glass
of water, but both he and Robert were offered the large pink milkshake, which Nancy said was ‘a secret recipe’. The girls took the drinks to their respective fathers, who knocked them back in two gulps, and then Tanzer said his goodbyes and left with Leah. Tanzer would later describe the drink as ‘a strange milkshake – fairly heavy, sweet, thickened… with banana taste, crushed cookies, reddish, which I guess was from some strawberries or flavouring… I have never drunk something like this before.’

  Later, Robert Kissel and his two-year-old son both drank the remainder of the milkshake from the blender, and at about 4.50 neighbour David Friedland spotted Robert playing with his son at the Parkview clubhouse. ‘Bob was in a chair, with his feet up, on the phone,’ said Friedland. The two men chatted for a moment, then the banker signalled ‘OK’ as a parting gesture.

  Back at home afterwards, Robert was feeling woozy. He told his wife that he was going to divorce her, saying that it was a done deal and that he had been talking to the lawyers.

  When Tanzer returned to his own flat, his wife, Kazuko Ouchi, noticed that he had a very red face and seemed overly sleepy. He seemed so ill she even considered calling for an ambulance. The strange symptoms ‘continued well into the evening’ and this worried her. Her husband had drifted in and out of consciousness. He talked incoherently and then turned into a ‘temperamental baby’ as he devoured three tubs of ice cream, then vomited over the furniture. When Tanzer awoke the next morning, he was ‘confused about the events after he had drunk the milkshake’.

  David Noh, a close friend and colleague of Robert Kissel, phoned Robert at 5pm that Sunday to remind him of a planned conference call later. Noh later claimed at Nancy Kissel’s trial that during the conversation he thought Robert Kissel was ‘vague, tired and sleepy. He started talking about export growth instead of real estate prices. It was bizarre. I found him strange. He was not responding to my questions. He sounded slow in his speech and very mellow.’ But, Noh added, ‘being good friends, I actually made fun of him’.