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It was a quiet summer evening in Rowlett, Texas on June 6th, 1996 when the screams of Darlie Routier pierced through the walls of her family's home on Eagle Drive. "Devon! Devon! Devon!" She cried out, waking her husband, Darren, who was asleep upstairs. Knowing that something was wrong with his son, Darren jumped out of bed and ran down the stairs only to be confronted with a parent's worst nightmare.
His children, five-year-old Damon and six-year-old Devin, lie on the floor suffering from stab wounds to the chest and back. Listening intently to his frantic wife cry out for help to the 911 operator, he hears for the first time what Darlie says happened to her and the boys. Darlie can be heard on the 911 call shouting out to Damon, "Hold on, honey, hold on!"
Throughout the 911 call, she continued to talk to Damon and pleaded with the dispatcher to get someone there immediately, shouting things like, "My babies are dying!" Darren was in such shock about the state of his sons that he hadn't noticed Darlie's throat had been cut from the right side all the way over to the left. She had suffered stab wounds in different places in what she claims to be a struggle with an intruder. When first responders arrived at the scene, it was a terrible sight.
Darren had attempted to perform CPR on Devon, but when he would blow in, the air came out of Devon's chest wounds along with blood. He had already succumbed to his wounds, but Damon still had life left in his eyes, although it was very fragile. In Darren's statement about the events that unfolded, he said that Darley was wetting towels to compress Damon's wounds,
The first responder that attended to Damon said that he was fighting for his life, looking around the room and gasping for air. He was taken to the hospital in an ambulance but was unfortunately pronounced dead on arrival. Miraculously, Darlie survived the attack despite the cut on her throat being only two millimeters away from her carotid artery.
She also had been stabbed in the right forearm. Her arms were covered in severe bruising and cuts, and her left fingers had been sliced in a way that appeared to be a defensive wound. But who would do this to the Routier family? An hour before they were attacked by an intruder, there was an attempted break-in reported about a half a mile away from the Routier home.
Not only that, but neighbors had reported some suspicious activity outside of the Routier home on the day of June 6th. Several neighbors reported that a black car was spotted lingering around the home and driving away after being spotted. A woman named Darlene Potter recalled seeing two suspicious looking men in the early morning of the 6th. By all accounts, it appeared that this tragedy was a random break-in gone wrong.
Darlie, Damon and Devin had all been sleeping downstairs in the living room, while Darren slept upstairs with their seven-month-old son, Drake. With Darren and Drake being unharmed, some came to the conclusion that the intruder had only planned for a robbery, expecting that everyone would be asleep upstairs. What other explanation could there be for why a stranger would savagely murder two young boys and stab their mother?
unbeknownst to Darlie. The Rowlett Police Department had their eye on one suspect from the moment that she got out of surgery. While Darlie was hosting a gravesite birthday party for Devin, who would have been seven years old just eight days after his murder, law enforcement were piecing together everything they could to put her to death. The case of Darlie Routier is one of the most polarizing in true crime history, leaving us with the same questions 26 years later.
Did she actually kill her children? Part 1: Mommy Murderous Darlie was 15 years old when she met Darren. The ambitious 17-year-old was an assistant manager at the restaurant that Darlie's mother worked at, Western Sizzlin', and he also had his own business testing circuit boards. On Mother's Day, Darren told Darlie's mother that he had heard she had a very beautiful daughter.
Darlie's mother thought that the hardworking Darren would be a great match for her daughter, so she agreed to set up a date for that evening. The pair hit it off so well that they got married a year later in 1988, when Darlie was 18 years old. It wouldn't be long before they welcomed their firstborn child, Devin Rush Routier, to the world on June 14th, 1989. About a year later, Darlie would become pregnant a second time,
Damon Christian Routier was born on February 19, 1991.
Darren's business grew to be successful, allowing them to purchase their $130,000 roulette home and spent thousands on renovations, including marble in the bathroom, white carpet in the dining room, $12,000 on drapes for the living room, a fountain for the front yard, and a redwood spa for the back. Darren bought himself a 1982 Jaguar and a 30-foot cabin cruiser.
he treated Darlie as well, showering her in fancy jewelry and a breast augmentation surgery after the birth of Damon. Darlie and Darren welcomed their third youngest and only surviving son, Drake Routier, on October 18, 1995. By this point, Darren was paying himself an annual salary of $125,000 and his company was bringing in half a million dollars in gross revenues.
Both Darlie and Darren took time away from work to care for their babies when they were born. They were a glistening family portrait that others admired. Although the Routiers lived lavishly and could be considered flashy, they were thought of as kind and giving people. One time, the Routiers even assisted a cancer patient with a mortgage payment.
The Routier home was the neighborhood kid's favorite hangout spot, which they called the Nintendo House because of a game room designed by Darren. Darlie would often cook for neighbors and bake the kids cookies. However, the Routier's financial situation would quickly change as Darren's business began losing money and their lifestyle would be threatened. In a desperate attempt to protect the way they had been able to live, Darren started a second business called Champagne Wishes.
He would take people out on the lake on his boat at sunset where they could sip champagne and he would allow them to use the boat's bedroom. Despite this, the financial troubles didn't end. Darren and Darley had been rejected for a loan shortly before the murders and were falling deeper and deeper into debt. They owed a whopping total of $22,000 between credit cards and back taxes and were behind on their mortgage payments.
Darlie continued to spend as if things were as good as ever, making plans to vacation in Cancun with friends. The Routier's financial struggles began to put stress on their marriage, which was an all-consuming weight on Darlie's shoulders, who was suffering from postpartum depression after the birth of Drake. Darlie had written a diary entry while contemplating suicide, in which she apologizes to her sons and tells them that they shouldn't feel responsible for her death.
Her exact wording would be one of the first of several things used as circumstantial evidence to prove her guilt, writing, "I'm so sorry for what I'm about to do." Although Darley was referencing ending her own life in the letter, Rowlett Police believed that it had a deeper meaning.
According to Darren, she contemplated taking pills but didn't take them. Instead, Darren came home and they cried together and talked about it and slept it off. Early on, people began to draw comparisons between Darlie Routier and Susan Smith, who murdered her two sons in 1994.
Susan initially alleged that a man hijacked her car and took off with her boys. But as new evidence came to light, it painted a much different picture. For nine days, she pleaded with the press for answers about her son's whereabouts. But when the pressure built up, she finally confessed.
According to Susan, she was feeling depressed and suicidal and planned to drive her car into a lake. Changing her mind, she got out but watched the car sink with her two sons inside. She was able to bring police to the lake and scuba divers recovered her sons' bodies. She was convicted in July of 1995 but did not receive the death penalty. This case shocked the nation as they asked the question, "How could a mother do this?"
Now, two years after Susan murdered her boys, the Rowlett Police Department found themselves asking the same thing. Darley told a couple of different versions of the events that took place during the murder. And instead of answers, the police were met with more questions. Darley initially said that the boys had decided to have a sleepover in the living room downstairs.
and Darren stayed downstairs until 12.30 a.m., talking to Darlie about their financial struggles, an upcoming trip she was going on with her friends, and her postpartum depression. Darlie fell asleep and said that she was woken up by Damon, putting pressure on her shoulder and saying, Mommy. She claims that when she woke up and fully came to, she saw a man standing at her feet. Darlie said that the man started running and she followed him.
Darlie claimed that she heard a shattering sound as the intruder allegedly bumped into a wine rack, knocking a wine glass to the ground. As Darlie moved through the house, she saw a knife and started calling out for Darren, immediately calling 911. According to Darlie, the intruder escaped through the garage. She mentioned to the operator that she picked up the knife and began talking about how she messed up the fingerprints. This was a red flag to investigators.
They also couldn't find a mark in the carpet or a spot of blood where Darlie said the knife had been dropped, which led them to believe that the knife had never been laying on the ground and that Darlie was lying to cover up her tracks. In this version of events, prosecutors didn't believe that Darlie could sleep through having her throat slit and her sons viciously murdered. In another version of Darlie's story, she says that she woke up to the attacker stabbing her and she fought with him to get him off her.
The more that Rowlett police looked into Darlie, the more their suspicion grew. First responders described Darlie as not helping her sons with their bleeding or wounds, all while holding a towel to her neck wound. Police also questioned how Darlie didn't wake up during her or her children being savagely attacked feet away from where she slept, but was woken up by her son applying pressure on her shoulder. Further,
Darlie had claimed that the reason she slept downstairs was because she was a light sleeper and the baby would wake her up at night. The police began to put together the physical evidence and it didn't match up with Darlie's story. Although Darlie claimed to have heard a wine glass shatter as the intruder ran away, there was a bloody footprint underneath the wine glass with no blood on top of the glass, which suggests that the glass had been purposely broken to imitate a break-in.
There was no blood on the couch that Darlie was lying on when she says that she was stabbed, but suspiciously, there was evidence of blood in the sink, which wasn't mentioned in the timeline she gave. A bread knife from the block in the kitchen tested positive for fibers from the screen window that the intruder had sliced open from the outside. As pieces of the puzzle stopped fitting together,
Police watched Darlie's every move. Staying close by during a memorial on Devin's birthday, a few minutes of fun in the graveyard caught on camera would change the way the public viewed this case forever. Part 2: The Silly String Tape Because Darlie had already sent invitations out for Devin's 7th birthday party, she decided to celebrate at the cemetery with friends and family.
following a traditional ceremony, Darlie's sister, Dana, brought her silly string since it was something that Devon really liked. A local news reporter captured a video of Darlie spraying silly string onto her son's shared grave, cheering, smiling, and smacking gum. A lot of viewers of this video have concluded that Darren looked embarrassed, withdrawn, and depressed, stepping away from Darlie as she sprays the silly string on the grave.
Without the context of a secret video captured of Devon's gravesite memorial prior to the Silly String video, Darlie appears very cold and callous. Although everyone grieves differently, many found it chilling that a mother suspected of murder could stand on her children's grave and laugh and spray Silly String. Darlie did not realize at the time that she was being looked at as a suspect, but to others, her cheery nature was a sign of moving on too soon.
Her sons had been savagely murdered only eight days earlier, and nobody could imagine being as carefree as Darlie seemed in this Silly String video in such a short time after losing not only one child, but two. This video shocked jurors so much that it was played for them seven times before it being sent out for deliberation. Because of this, many of Darlie's supporters believe that the Silly String tape is the reason that Darlie was convicted.
Darlie claims that she was trying to give Devin the birthday that he couldn't have and keep her composure so she wouldn't upset the other children. There was a second video taken the same day, with Darlie showing what some considered to be an appropriate display of grief at a longer and much more solemn graveside memorial. It is in this video that Darlie's sister Dana can be heard giving her the silly string and explaining why she bought it.
This video was not admitted as evidence to be shown during the trial due to Darley's defense team questioning the legality of the secretly recorded video. Some argue that this video not being shown and the silly string tape being emphasized tainted Darley's image in the eye of the media and as a result, in the courtroom as well.
The tape was shown in the media for the first time on June 14th, 1996, and Darley was arrested just four short days later. Supporters of Darley found it odd that there seemed to be no evidence, motive, or confession that led to her arrest. Dallas County Assistant District Attorney Greg Davis would later say, "Here's a mother who has supposedly been the victim of a violent crime. She has just lost two children, and yet she's out literally dancing on their graves.
Darlie went into the Rowlett police station willingly to give a statement, having no idea that she would never walk free again, but would soon appear all over the news in an unflattering fashion for the second time, this time being escorted from the building in handcuffs. Despite her arrest, both Darlie and Darren's family have always supported her and believed her to be innocent without a doubt.
They found the prosecution's claims that she was a spoiled woman who felt her life had been interrupted by her children to be ridiculous and baseless. In their eyes, she was a devoted mother, and her life revolved around her kids. Even the neighborhood children who spent a lot of time at the Nintendo house put signs up in Darlie's yard after her arrest, defending her innocence.
However, the prosecution argued that the entire break-in was staged by Darlie in an attempt to rid herself of the responsibilities of her two oldest children. They believe that Darlie cut the window screen open with the bread knife from the cutting block before returning it to where it belonged. They contribute the blood in the sink to Darlie's neck wound, stating, this is an explanation for why there was no blood found on the couch where Darlie claimed to be attacked.
The prosecution believes that after stabbing her two sons, Darlie stood over the sink and slashed her own throat as an attempt to cover up the crime. They also believe that Darlie took a sock from her home, put a little of both boys' blood on the sock, and then ran outside and dropped it in the alley. While the bloody sock found in the alley was initially used as proof that there truly was an intruder, it was later determined that the sock came from the house and belonged to Darren.
Darren quickly escaped the line of suspicion as police zeroed in on Darlie. They had no reason to suspect Darren. He had been sleeping upstairs when the crime occurred. He ran down the stairs and started administering CPR the moment he heard Darlie's screams, and she testifies to this as well. Even after all this time, Darlie has never once turned on her now ex-husband or implied his guilt. In fact, she has always defended his innocence as well as hers.
The pair stayed married for 15 years after Darlie's conviction, divorcing reluctantly to escape the limbo that becomes of a marriage when one's spouse is on death row. To this day, Darren Routier believes in his ex-wife's innocence and she believes in him. However, others find themselves suspicious of Darren.
A new theory would come forward after Darren admitted to a private investigator that he had asked someone to stage a burglary in his home to collect insurance money. This fact alone has convinced people that Darren is the one responsible for this horrific crime, or at the least, convinced others that maybe Darley didn't do it after all. Part three, insurance fraud gone wrong. Darley's attorney, Stephen Cooper, hired a private investigator named Richard Grena
When Raina spoke with Darren, he made a shocking admission. He told Raina that he was looking to hire someone to break into the family home while they were gone. He wanted the burglar to steal their furniture, electronics and jewelry. And once he collected the insurance money, he would retrieve his items and pay out the burglar with a portion of the insurance money. Darren asked Bob Key, Darley's stepfather, as well as reputable car thieves about his idea, but he never carried out his plan.
However, he had his car stolen years before and collected an insurance settlement. Darren didn't tell anybody about his plan, even after Darley was convicted and sentenced to death. He later told the Associated Press that his reason for not coming forward was, "I don't want to help her at the expense of my life." He did, however, pay out $250,000 in legal fees, losing their home, boat, and car.
Dallas County Prosecutor Tony Shook believed that this new information was simply a new way for Darlie supporters to defend her innocence. He said, "We disproved at trial that there was an intruder in the house that night. This is just another attempt to get the case reversed."
Bob Key said he didn't know why he hadn't thought about reporting it before when people questioned him about why he and Darren were coming clean about this so close to Darley's first appeal. While some thought this new theory was fabricated, others began to eye Darren a little more closely. A Waco billionaire dedicated $100,000 to an independent investigation of the murders of Damon and Devin Routier.
He administered a number of tests, including handwriting analysis and lie detectors. Darren took a lie detector test administered by a Waco police officer, and to their surprise, he failed horribly. He was asked four questions, and the lie detector test determined that he was lying about all four. The questions were, did he stab Darley? Was he involved in any plan to commit a crime at his home on June 6th, 1996?
Did he know who planted the sock in the alley? Could he name the person that stabbed Darley? Upon failing the test, Darren accepted the result, but claimed that he was manipulated by the officer that administered his test. He claimed that the officer asked him a million questions about the murders before he took the polygraph test.
Darren would later confess that he may have talked about his plans to hire someone to break into his house with his coworkers, but he couldn't remember exactly what he would have said, only that it was something that was on his mind.
A friend of the Routier's, Barbara Jovel, came forward and testified that Darren was planning the staged burglary for when they were in Altoona, Pennsylvania, for Darley's grandparents' golden anniversary. Jovel would be coming in and out of their house to feed the animals, water the plants, and take the mail inside. According to Darren's plan, he wanted Jovel to discover the break-in and call the police. She refused to play any role in his insurance fraud.
Because of this shocking information, some speculate that Darren may have had something to do with the murders of his sons and the attempted murder of Darlie. At the same time, some alleged that one of Darlie's possible motives for killing her sons was to collect life insurance money.
It is notable that Darren's life insurance policy was worth $800,000 and he and Drake were unharmed upstairs. This doesn't seem like a likely motive as both boys' policies together totaled $10,000. And according to Darlie's mother, it cost $13,000 to bury Damon and Devin.
They were buried together, holding hands. When the Routier family made this decision, they never would have imagined that it would contaminate evidence that could help to prove the intruder theory. In May of 2000, the bodies of Devin and Damon were exhumed in order to get fingerprints due to them not being obtained during the autopsy. Police found a bloody fingerprint at the scene that didn't seem to match Darley or Darren's prints.
Darlie and her defense team hoped that this fingerprint would prove to be an intruder. Unfortunately, due to the boys holding hands in their grave, the remains were too damaged to collect a fingerprint. Prosecutors speculate that the fingerprint was smudged, thus not matching Darlie's normal print. Much of the evidence in this case seems to be very black and white, which makes this case so interesting. You can give two people the same evidence and they will come to opposite conclusions.
In fact, many people that initially believed that Darlie murdered her sons would later say that they were wrong and that she is innocent. Part four, a never-ending debate. It has been 26 years since the murders of Devin and Damon Routier. And to this day, there are forums dedicated to picking apart the case and discussing theories. Unlike other true crime discussion forums, it seems to be split into two distinct camps.
people who believe in Darlie's innocence, and people who believe that she is guilty. There are numerous websites dedicated to breaking down the facts and fiction in these cases, some in support of Darlie and others that believe she is responsible for this heinous crime. When you first dive into the research, it can be overwhelming to spend hours reading through one website and walking away with one conclusion, only to find another link that is convincing of the opposite.
With most of the evidence being circumstantial, there is plenty of room for debate. A convincing account of Darlie's guilt was written in 1999 by Barbara Davis, titled "Precious Angels." Readers walked away from this true crime novel feeling confident in the fact that Darlie Routier was rightfully being sentenced to death after taking the lives of her two young boys.
However, everything changed for the author when she received a phone call urging her to come look at hidden evidence that wasn't shown during the trial. Included in this evidence were photos of Darlie's bruised arms and stab wounds. Barbara claimed that these photos weren't shown at the trial. Upon seeing this new evidence, Barbara changed her mind about everything she had previously written.
A juror on the trial has also since come forward and said that he and other jurors were wrong about convicting Darley. One piece of evidence that caused some confusion in the case was a piece of blonde, color-treated hair that was found in the screen window that had been sliced open.
This piece of evidence alone prevented Darley from having a reduction of her $1 million bail granted. Prosecutors came to the conclusion that this piece of hair came from Darley as she struggled with the window in an attempt to cover up the crime. Later, DNA tests were run on the piece of hair, and it was found to belong to Officer Sarah Jones with the Rowlett Police Department.
This revelation was bizarre as Officer Jones did not work on the Routier case, nor could they find any documents placing her on Eagle Drive. Another piece of evidence that is heavily debated was taken from the 911 call. Many people find it odd that Darlie seems fixated on the fingerprints on the knife. Others point out that Darlie's rambling about the fingerprints takes place after the 911 operator reminds her not to touch anything, to which she responds that she already had.
She would later bring up the fingerprints to others as well, seeming to dwell on the fact that she had messed up the fingerprints on the murder weapon used to kill her sons. People believed that this was a form of staging, her being able to explain both why her fingerprints are there and why the intruders are not. In Darley's testimony, she mentions hearing a wine glass shattering. There has been a lot of debate about how difficult it would have been to remove a wine glass from the rack and break it on the ground.
Investigators rattled the wine rack, tipped it, and bumped into it attempting to drop a glass. None of the glasses could be removed from the rack unless they were physically removed. At the crime scene, the wine glass was not pushed away from the wall, nor did it show any evidence of being bumped into or knocked over. None of the glasses or bottles inside of the rack had been broken. There were a pair of tongs balanced on an ice canister on top of the wine rack that remained undisturbed.
According to the prosecution, this evidence showed that Darley removed a wine glass and broke it in an attempt to make the crime scene look more like a break-in. With the bloody footprints being underneath the glass and not above it, this theory was further validated. The blood in the sink is yet another answer that leads to more questions. A luminal spray in the sink determined that it was full of blood that had been washed away,
The prosecution's theory was that Darlie had stood over the sink to cut her throat after stabbing her sons. This would explain both why the blood had been washed away and why there was no blood on the couch where Darlie claimed to be attacked.
Darlie's defense states that the sink was full of blood due to Darlie wetting towels used to compress her son's stab wounds. However, Officer Waddell arrived two minutes after the 911 call was placed, and he testified to seeing Darlie holding a towel to her neck and a mobile phone to her ear while Damon lay face down just feet away from her. Waddell claims that he told Darlie multiple times to assist with her child's wounds, but she remained in the same place.
According to the officer, Darley had not applied the towels like she claimed to. Ultimately, despite ongoing public debate, Darley Routier was sentenced to death by lethal injection in February of 1997 for the death of Damon. The prosecution decided to only try her for the death of Damon because it was a capital charge due to him being five years old.
Two appeals have since been denied. And as of 2022, Darlie is awaiting new DNA evidence. Darren officially filed for divorce in June 2011, stating that he still believed that she was innocent, but it was a difficult situation. He stated that neither planned to remarry. However, as of 2022, he does have a new partner.
Drake Routier, who was seven months old and asleep upstairs in his crib at the time of the murders, was greatly affected by the deaths of his brothers, going back and forth between family friends and foster care after the tragedy. Darren did not immediately take custody of Drake after Darley's arrest so that he could get his finances and emotional health in order. But by July of 1996, a court granted temporary custody to Darren's parents.
Darren was allowed supervised visitation for a few months before Drake moved into his new house with him. He continued to visit and speak to his mother. When he was six, Darlie read Harry Potter while in prison so she could discuss the book with him. In 2013, Drake was diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia, a blood and bone marrow cancer. His cancer is now in remission thanks to years of chemotherapy.
Now at 25 years old, he still visits Darlie at Mountain View Unit in Gatesville, Texas. As of 2022, Darlie's entire family, including her ex-in-laws, ex-husband, and son, defend her innocence. They still hope that new DNA evidence will prove that an intruder broke into the Routier home in the summer of 1996. But until that happens, Darlie Routier remains on death row.
