Darlie Routier
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In 2020, there are only 53 women on death row across the entire United States. In fact, women only make up about 14% of violent offenders. The latest crime figures report that mothers and stepmothers commit about half of all child killings.

Mothers are just as likely to kill their own children as the men they have in their lives. One of the 53 women currently sitting on death row is a woman by the name of Darlie Routier. Darlie fits into all three of these crime statistic categories. She's been sentenced to death by lethal injection. She's a classified violent offender.

She's been convicted of killing not just one of her children, but two. But Darlie says she shouldn't be a crime statistic at all. She says she's completely innocent and that forensic science will prove it. This is Forensic Tales, Episode 30, The Darlie Routier Story. ♪

Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell.

Forensic Tales is a weekly true crime podcast that discusses real, bone-chilling true crime stories and how forensic science has been used in the case. Some cases have been solved through cutting-edge forensic techniques, while other cases remain unsolved.

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Now, let's talk about Darlie Routier. Hi, Forensic Tales listeners. Before we get into this week's case, I've got to be completely honest with you. This is a case that I have gone back and forth on. I have listened to every podcast episode on the case, seen every television special on it.

And I'm not alone on this one. I know a lot of you out there are completely torn about this case too. But even though I've gone back and forth on it in the past, I have a clear opinion about what I believe. And I'm going to share it with you at the end of the episode. I'm talking about Darlie Routier. Now get ready because this story is a wild ride.

Before I even get into the actual story, I always like to provide just some sort of background to the case. So, Darlie Routier was born Darlie Lynn Peck on January 4th, 1970 in Pennsylvania. Her parents, Larry and her mother, who's also named Darlie, doted over little Darlie as a baby, right up until her parents divorced when she was seven years old.

After the divorce, Darlie went to go live with her mother and new stepfather, Dennis Stahl. The family moved to Texas, and that's where Darlie would grow up and stay right into her adulthood. In high school, Darlie met Darren Routier. Now, Darren actually worked at the same Western Sizzler restaurant that Darlie's mother worked at.

And Darlie's mom thought Darren was a sweet, hardworking young man and thought that he would make a perfect boyfriend for Darlie. So pretty much playing matchmaker, she set Darlie and Darren up on their first date together. And from there, it was pretty much love at first sight. They were instant high school sweethearts.

They continued dating throughout high school, even when Darren went off to college because he was actually two years older than Darlie. And after dating for a couple years, they got married in August of 1988, and shortly after the marriage, they moved to Rowlett, Texas. That's where Darren started working in the computer chip business.

which back in the late 1980s was an up-and-coming industry. And that's when he decided to branch off and start his very own electronics business, Tesnack. And well, business was going really, really well right from the very beginning.

The company that he started basically tested circuit boards for computers. And what was really nice was that the entire business was operated right out of his own home. So you could guess that the operating costs were extremely low. Even though Darlie and Darren were only in their 20s, because of Darren's business, they were making really good money.

This was the first time that they ever saw real money. They bought a $130,000 house in a great neighborhood. They drove around nice cars. They were able to go on lots of trips and vacations together. And Darlie had even got some plastic surgery done, which is going to come up again in a little bit.

But by all accounts, Darlie and Darren were just living the good life. Their first son was born on June 14th, 1989, Devin. And they quickly had a second son in 1991, Damon. A few years later, they would welcome another baby boy, Drake.

Now, I think you can pick up on a pattern here with the names, lots of D's going on, which is going to make some of the story a little hard to follow just because of the names, but I am going to do my absolute best to explain. So everyone who knew Darlie during this period of her life described her as a great mother. She doted on her three children.

And because Darren's electronics business was going so well, Darlie was able to stay at home full time with her three children, and she absolutely loved it. That was her dream job.

And not only was Darlie described as a great mother to her boys, she loved to have guests over at her house for whatever occasion, whether it was dinner parties or cocktail hour. She was just a great hostess and she really enjoyed it. Their house was always the best decorated on Halloween and Christmas.

The Routiers during the early and mid-1990s were really the family we all wanted to be. Fast forward to the night of June 6, 1996.

Darlie had promised her two older sons, Devin and Damon, that they would have a sleepover downstairs because it was summertime and the boys didn't have to go to school in the morning. This situation totally reminds me of being a kid when you thought having a sleepover downstairs was fun.

So while the two older boys spent the night downstairs with their mom, seven-month-old Drake stayed upstairs in the master bedroom with Darren. According to Darlie, her and the kids stayed up watching television and they fell asleep sometime before midnight.

Darlie said she was woken up a little after 2 o'clock in the morning to her son Damon saying mommy, and he was crying. As she's waking up, she's suddenly being attacked by a man right there in her living room. According to Darlie, after the struggle with the man, the intruder ran through the house towards the kitchen. From the living room, Darlie could hear glass breaking.

She then chased after the man towards the kitchen and right away she knew she was hurt. She was profusely bleeding from her neck. Blood was everywhere throughout the living room and the kitchen. She said she followed the man into the kitchen and that's where she discovered a knife on the floor. She remembers picking the knife up and placing it on top of the kitchen counter.

She says she saw Devin, the older son, lying face up on the floor, not moving. She remembers that she screamed for her husband Darren to come downstairs, that there's been an intruder and he's attacked not only her, but both of their sons.

Now, Darlie will later admit that she doesn't exactly remember every little detail about that night. I can't say I blame her at all for the lack of memory because she's been injured as well. And we're going to talk so much more about Darlie's injuries in just a minute.

But she says that she doesn't remember being stabbed, but she does remember being injured and remembers being in a struggle with the intruder. Now, at this point, Darren comes running downstairs and immediately starts performing CPR on Devin, who at this point was still alive. Later on, Darren would describe Devin just clinging to life.

And while performing CPR, blood was just coming out of the little boy and the CPR didn't seem to be doing any good at this point. While Darren's performing CPR on Devin, Darlie grabs the phone and calls 911.

Now, what Darlie says and how she reacts on the 911 call is going to come up in a lot more detail at trial. But I wanted to go ahead and play a little portion of Darlie's 911 call to police that night.

Ma'am? They just stabbed me in my stomach. What? They just stabbed me in my stomach. Who did? My son. Hang on, hang on, hang on. Hang on, ma'am. Ma'am? A non-medical emergency, 58-01 Eagle Grove. Ma'am? Ma'am, I'm trying to get an ambulance to you. Hang on a minute. My God, my baby.

What's going on, ma'am? Oh, my God! Oh, my God!

Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

So the total 911 call is a little over six minutes long, but I wanted to play just a small portion of it so you could get a better idea of what Darlie sounded like.

This 911 call is going to play a much bigger role at trial, but Darlie clearly sounds hysterical. She's crying. She's super hard to understand at certain points, but she keeps saying that her and her babies have been stabbed. She says her babies are dying. Now, I know a lot of people like to judge a person's innocence on how they sound during a 911 phone call, but

But as I've mentioned in previous episodes of the show, I'm just not one of those people. Personally, I don't think you can judge a person's reaction in moments of complete trauma. There's been a lot of research on trauma and how reactions can be way different among people. If I was a mother of two young boys who had just been stabbed to death or nearly to death,

no idea how I would sound. And I would certainly hope that my reaction or the sound of my voice wouldn't be used as evidence to whether or not I'm guilty. We all respond to trauma differently. I just don't believe there's one wrong or right way to act.

But one thing that Darlie mentions on the 911 call that this portion didn't really get to, it comes a little bit later on, is that she's already touched the knife that was used to stab her and the boys. Now, this comment is going to become a big deal at trial.

People have judged this comment by saying, look, she's making it a point to tell police she's already touched the murder weapon and that's why her DNA and that's why her fingerprints are going to be on it. But we'll get into the murder weapon and what the DNA evidence is found on it in just a minute.

Police and paramedics arrived about six minutes after Darley placed the 911 call to the Routier's house at 5801 Eagle Drive. When they arrive at the house, they notice that a window screen in the garage has been cut, which initially looks like where the intruder was able to gain entry into the house.

When paramedics got inside of the house, Damon was still alive, although by this point he was just barely clinging to life. But his brother Devin had already passed, and he was pronounced dead at the scene.

Paramedics continued to perform CPR on Damon while they put him into the ambulance to the hospital, but he was also pronounced dead on the way to the hospital. So both Damon and Devin were now dead, which is just awful. And you guys, this whole story is just terribly sad.

But Damon and Devin weren't the only ones injured. Darlie had also been stabbed. Paramedics attended to a large cut across her throat. And while being treated in the living room, she described the intruder to the police as a man of medium to tall height, dressed entirely in black, wearing a t-shirt and jeans with a baseball cap on.

but she says she wasn't able to get a good look at the man's face. Darlie was transported to Baylor University Medical Center Hospital, and she was treated for some pretty serious injuries. She had a cut across her neck, and it was pretty bad. The cut had missed her carotid artery by only two millimeters. If it had hit her carotid, she would have died almost instantly.

She also had bruising all up and down her arm, like from her wrist all the way up to her shoulder was completely black. I don't think I've ever seen bruising on a human like that before. And she had a cut on her arm that went down to her bone. Like her bone was literally sticking out of her arm.

There's a ton of photos of her injuries online. I will post a handful of them to our website, ForensicTales.com, so you can check them out for yourself. And Darlie's injuries will come up a lot more at trial. While Darlie was being treated for her injuries in the hospital, police were busy searching the entire house for any possible forensic evidence or clues.

So here's what the police found during their initial search of the Routier house. The garage is where they discovered that a hole was cut in the screen to a side window, which they believed at first was a possible entry point for the intruder.

Inside of the kitchen, the place was a mess. The floor was covered in blood, a vacuum cleaner had been clearly knocked over, and the most obvious and important piece of evidence was the butcher knife, the murder weapon. When police searched the kitchen, the knife had already been placed on top of the kitchen countertop.

This is the same knife that Darlie admitted to 911 that she's already picked up and touched after the man ran out of the house. Police also found Darlie's purse and a set of women's jewelry right there on the kitchen table, completely untouched. Police also discovered a bread knife in the kitchen, which was actually in one of those knife blocks.

Later on, when the bread knife was tested, the prosecution will claim that they found fiberglass rods with a rubbery compound on the knife's blade. The same compound and materials you'd find on a window screen. So the story will become that the bread knife was used to cut the window screen from inside of the garage.

This bread knife is going to become a problem for Darlie at trial because her defense wouldn't really have any forensic expert to testify to this and how if an intruder broke in by cutting the screen window, why was it cut from the inside using a knife that was found inside of Darlie's kitchen?

When crime scene technicians were called in, they found it a little odd that despite the fact the kitchen floor and the edges of the countertops were soaked in blood, there wasn't even a single drop of blood inside of the kitchen sink. So a luminol test was performed on the kitchen sink to detect the presence of human blood that couldn't be seen with the naked eye.

And once the luminol was sprayed inside of the kitchen sink, the entire sink lit up like a Christmas tree, suggesting to police that blood had been cleaned up in the sink. According to Darlie's story, she believed the intruder entered and exited the house through the garage.

But the area around the slashed window screen in the garage was completely undisturbed, meaning the police found dust and dirt outside the window that was left completely untouched. If someone climbed through the window, you'd expect the area around the window to be somewhat disturbed.

The police, however, did find an unknown fingerprint on the windowsill that when they tested it did not belong to Darlie or anyone in the Routier family, suggesting that Darlie's story that someone entered through the window without disturbing the outside is possible.

And this unknown bloody fingerprint is going to play a big part in Darlie's defense at trial. The forensics team also found a bloody fingerprint on the coffee table in the living room near one of the boys' bodies. This fingerprint, however, was never compared to Devin and Damon's prints.

And Darley's defense would later argue that the fingerprint belonged to an adult, not a child. Again, which suggests that this second fingerprint could belong to the intruder. The police didn't find any traces or drops of blood anywhere outside of the Routier house.

And it was theorized that the intruder must have had a lot of blood on their clothing after attacking and stabbing Darlie and her two boys. But there wasn't any blood found outside. Nothing on their lawn, not a drop of blood on the fence, nowhere.

The living room where Darlie and the boys slept appeared to be practically untouched. The only things out of place were a lampshade and a flower arrangement had fallen off of the coffee table. But that was pretty much it.

Not much was disturbed given the fact that there had been a triple stabbing in that very room, which again is going to become a big part of the prosecution's case at trial and really support their claim that there was no intruder inside of that house that night.

The only piece of evidence that was found outside of the Routier house was a bloody sock about 75 yards away from the house. It was like a large men's athletic sock. And when the sock was tested, it came back positive for both Damon and Devin's blood.

This is a huge piece of evidence for Darley and her defense at trial. And even while Darley was still in the hospital recovering from her injuries, police didn't buy this intruder theory.

Right from the very beginning, police suspected that Darlie was lying, that there was no intruder. And from the very beginning, police really didn't consider any other possible suspects in the case. Darlie was released from the hospital and her, Darren, and seven-month-old Drake went to go stay at Darlie's mother's house.

In fact, Darlie and Darren never returned back to their house where the boys were killed. Just about one week after Darlie was released from the hospital, Darlie does something that she will later regret for the rest of her life. A week after the boys' death,

Darlie, Darren, and several other family members held a graveside birthday party for Devin, who would have just turned seven years old. Now, if you've watched anything about the Darlie Routier story, you've definitely seen this so-called silly string video. If not, there's probably 101 videos of it on YouTube.

So at this gravesite birthday party, Darlie is captured on police surveillance footage, spraying silly string, singing happy birthday, and smiling from ear to ear over the boy's graveside.

Now, what the video doesn't capture is that the family was literally crying and holding each other over the graves for a long time before the silly string and singing happy birthday thing.

And actually, one of the Routier family members said later on that they wanted to do something to celebrate Devin's birthday. That they didn't just want to be crying over his grave on this little boy's birthday. But these 20 to 30 seconds were

People see Darlie Routier spraying silly string and smiling over her two dead sons' graves. Now, I admit, if this was the only thing I saw or heard about Darlie and her case, I get why this is a huge problem for Darlie and her defense.

So Darlie was arrested four days later and charged with two counts of capital murder for murdering her sons, Devin and Damon. Darlie's trial began in January 1997, only six months after the murders.

This is really rare. When it comes to capital murder charges, it typically takes two, three, sometimes four or more years to get to trial. So for a capital murder trial to get started in only six months is almost unheard of in our criminal justice system. And to me, it's extremely problematic.

Because I don't think either side, the prosecution or the defense, can gather the proper amount of evidence they need to build their cases in such a short amount of time. Especially since we've already talked about evidence in the case. The knives, the bloody sock found down the street,

That's going to require a significant amount of forensic work to be done, which doesn't happen overnight. Darlie's trial gets started in Kerrville, Texas, which is another problem for Darlie's defense. Because Kerrville is an extremely small town in Texas, extremely conservative town.

Darley's defense would have much rather had the trial take place in a more liberal city like Dallas. Kerrville, Texas is a place that isn't going to be forgiving to Darley's blonde hair and breast implants who wore fancy clothes and flashy jewelry.

At trial, prosecutors argued that Darlie's motive to murder her sons was purely financial. That at the time of the murders, Darren's electronics business wasn't doing too well. And even though the Routiers had nice things, they weren't in a great financial situation in 1996.

Prosecutors painted Darlie as, quote, a pampered, materialistic woman with substantial debt, plummeting credit rating, and little money in the bank who feared that her lavish lifestyle was about to end. So remember how I mentioned Darlie had gotten some plastic surgery done?

Well, the prosecution definitely used that and her big blonde hair, her nice jewelry, as all as a way to say she was a very money hungry person. The prosecution even stated during trial that she didn't take her kids to church and that she went out with her girlfriends the night before Mother's Day.

Which, I have to say, I don't get how any of this makes her to be a quote-unquote bad mom. But, Darlie's defense attorney, Douglas Mulder, who was once a prosecutor himself, argued that Darlie was a doting mother, that she adored her three sons, and that she would never murder them for money.

Besides, the life insurance policies on the boys only totaled $10,000, $5,000 on each kid. Basically saying $10,000 isn't nearly enough financial motive to murder your own kids. Mulder even argued that if Darlie was willing to murder for money, why didn't she murder her husband instead?

he had an $800,000 life insurance policy on his life, Darlie would have stood to gain a lot more from killing Darren, not her sons. So what about Darlie's injuries? We know that Darlie had some pretty serious injuries, especially the slash across her throat that just barely missed her carotid artery.

I know there's discussion out there, especially on the internet when you look this case up, that Darlie's wounds across her neck was superficial. But a slash that just barely misses an artery, that when cut, will kill you, doesn't sound too superficial.

But the prosecution argued that Darlie killed her boys and then committed the self-inflicted wounds on herself to stage it to look like there was an intruder. Normally, when we see people inflict wounds on themselves to stage a crime, we typically see the wounds on places like their arms or their legs, definitely not near a major artery.

And wow, if we could just take a moment to think about someone being able to take a butcher knife and cut across their own throat like that, I just can't even imagine. Even the San Antonio chief medical examiner testified that the wound on Darley's neck isn't consistent with any self-inflicted wound he's ever seen in the past.

And he reminded the jury that this wound came within two millimeters of her carotid. Now, that is one heck of a self-inflicted wound. So this is a great time to talk more about the knife. The knife that Darlie said she found on the kitchen floor and picked it up.

Well, when the knife was tested for DNA and forensic evidence, they only found Darley and Damon's blood on the knife. They didn't find a drop of Devin's DNA. But also important here is that they didn't find anyone else's DNA on the knife.

Now, this is also something that Darley's defense really didn't address at trial. They didn't call any forensic experts. Again, this is in the 1990s to explain the DNA evidence found on the knife. And remember, Darley already told 911 that she picked up and handled the murder weapon. So we would already expect her DNA to be on it.

By far, the biggest aspect at trial was the silly string video. The video of Darlie spraying silly string and smiling over her son's gravesite just did not look good for Darlie in her defense.

But like I said, the jury watched the part of the video with Darlie and the silly string, but they didn't see anything before. The crying, the mourning, the hugging, they didn't see any of that. The prosecution basically introduced the video by saying to the jury that they're about to watch a mother literally dance over her two dead sons.

Darley's lawyer, Doug Mulder, put Detective Patterson on the stand. And Detective Patterson was one of the lead detectives on Darley's case and was one who placed the audio and visual recording on the boys' gravesite that day. And when Darley's lawyer asked Patterson about the recording, Patterson took the Fifth Amendment.

meaning he is asserting his right to not self-incriminate himself. And when the second detective took the stand and Darley's attorney asked the same questions about the video, he also pled the Fifth. Okay, so why would they plead the Fifth Amendment regarding the Silly String video?

Well, because they placed the recording device literally on top of the boy's grave. This was a huge invasion of privacy. People are entitled to privacy while standing over a loved one's grave site in mourning, especially a child's grave. There is a reasonable expectation of privacy in a moment like this.

And the police didn't just record visuals. They also took audio of an entire family mourning over two young children's graves. Prosecutors also pointed to the 911 call that they believe pointed towards Darlie's guilt. Prosecutors said Darlie was worried about police finding her fingerprints on the knife and

And that's why she told the 911 operator that she already touched it. But the defense argued that she only mentioned touching the knife because the operator had told her not to, but not before she already picked the knife up off the floor. So basically, the operator said, don't touch anything. And the defense is saying, well, okay,

Because the operator told her don't touch anything, Darlie's just saying, oh my gosh, I've already touched it. So since Darlie's trial, there's been a ton of statement analysis done on this 911 call. There's also been the argument that on the call, Darlie refers to her boys in the past tense. When she really didn't know whether or not they were dead,

And there's also been several things pointed out about the call that the prosecution truly believes points towards Darlie's guilt. So Darlie took the stand in her own defense and she really didn't make a good witness. The jury described her as argumentative and defensive and just didn't do any good for her case.

Now, if Darlie really is innocent of killing her own kids, then I can totally see why she might come across to the jury as argumentative and defensive. But a jury doesn't like to see a defendant act defensive. To the jury, that screams guilt.

Darley also never made eye contact with the jury, and juries tend to associate that with a guilty defendant. Darley's defense team really didn't present a strong case with forensics. A big part of that has to do with the trial taking place in the late 1990s. We just didn't have the forensic experts and techniques back then like we do now in 2020.

But the biggest piece of evidence Darley's defense relied on was the men's athletic sock found near a drain about 75 yards away from the Routier house. The sock that contained Damon and Devin's DNA on it. The police contributed the sock to a ruse to basically further Darley's story of this intruder. But Darley

The defense argues the sock actually proves Darley couldn't have committed the murders. So here's how it goes according to the defense. Damon was alive when paramedics arrived that morning, and the medical examiner testified that he could only have stayed alive for approximately eight minutes after sustaining his injuries.

Darlie was on the phone with 911 for nearly six minutes before paramedics arrived. So the defense argued that it would have been impossible for Darlie to cut herself, stage the scene, plant the sock 75 yards away from the house, and then return before paramedics arrived. And she would have had to do this

all in less than two minutes. Plus, Darlie's husband was home during all of this. He was right upstairs with the baby. Defense also pointed to the unknown fingerprint that was found on the window in the garage and the unknown fingerprint on the coffee table in the living room.

The police knew the fingerprint on the window didn't match Darlie or anyone in the Routier family for that matter, but they never tested the fingerprint on the coffee table. So the defense's case really relied on the intruder theory, the unknown fingerprints, the bloody sock found outside, and Darlie's own injuries.

At the end of trial, the prosecution sent the jury away with reminding them that the last thing Devin and Damon saw before they died was their very own mother killing them. As soon as the prosecutor said this, Darlie jumped out of her chair in the courtroom and screamed, liar.

Again, not helping Darlie's perception in the eyes of the jury. So while the jury deliberated, they kept going back to one piece of evidence from the trial, the silly string video. The jury requested to watch that video seven different times while deliberating.

The jury just couldn't stop watching Darlie dance and smile over her own son's graves. And honestly, it's this video that ultimately cost Darlie her life. The jury found Darlie guilty of capital murder and she was sentenced to death on February 4th, 1977.

So Darlie's been on death row in Texas for over 23 years, which is a really, really long time. And she's only one of a handful of women in the country who's been sentenced to death. And part of the reason why Darlie has not been executed are her appeals.

So Darley's defense team argued on direct appeal that the trial court made several judicial errors that would have likely changed the case's outcome. But the appellate court denied the direct appeal and they ended up affirming the trial court's finding. They didn't find any judicial errors that would have changed the outcome of Darley's conviction.

In 2008, Darlie and her defense team were granted new DNA tests to be done in her case. Then again, in January 2014, the court granted even further DNA testing to be done. Remember, our DNA testing abilities have changed a lot over the years, especially since 1996. And in Darlie's case...

Both the defense and the prosecution agreed to this further DNA testing. This DNA test would further test the blood samples, the fingerprints, everything containing DNA evidence from inside of the house. These DNA tests will be performed on the unknown fingerprints found in the house, the bloody sock found outside of the house, and

and on the nightshirt that Darlie was wearing on the night of the murders. In 2018, so just about two years ago, the court ordered a third round of DNA testing in the case that, again, has to support of both the defense and the prosecution.

Which, especially when the state is supporting additional DNA testing of a convicted defendant, that really says something about this case with Darley. But even with these three separate court orders for additional DNA testing, Darley is still sitting on death row. And that's because this type of DNA testing doesn't happen overnight.

DNA testing, even now in 2020, can take five years, ten years, even longer in some cases. And even given how long it takes for proper DNA testing to be done, it's also really, really expensive. So just because Darlie's been afforded the right to DNA testing by the court doesn't mean her appellate team has the proper financial resources to do so.

Right now, across the country, we have literally thousands and thousands of criminal cases that are pending DNA test results. All the way from brand new criminal cases to cases like Darlie Routier, who's been on death row for over 20 years. So since there are still DNA tests pending on her case that could possibly prove her innocence,

Darlie has been granted numerous stays of execution, and these stays are likely to continue throughout the process of the new DNA testing. Since Darlie's conviction, Darren has remained by her side and has maintained his belief in her innocence.

Even though Darlie and Darren divorced in 2011, and since then Darren has remarried, he still believes Darlie is innocent. And even Darlie's youngest son, Drake, who was only seven months at the time of the murders, has a relationship with his mother and believes she is innocent.

To this day, Drake regularly visits Darlie in prison, even though their relationship is through a glass window while she sits on Texas death row. Now in 2020, Darlie remains on death row, and that's how her case currently stands. She doesn't have a scheduled execution date, and it's unclear when her case will go in front of a judge.

Until the DNA tests are complete on the fingerprints and the bloody sock, Darley will likely remain on death row just waiting. Darley's case has captured the attention of many people, including organizations like the Innocence Project, who work on cases of wrongful convictions.

The Innocence Project has been working with Darlie's case alongside her appellate attorneys, Steve Cooper and Richard Smith, both of which have continued to work on the case pro bono. Darlie is now 50 years old and to this day has maintained her innocence. So as I mentioned at the beginning of the episode, Darlie

As much as I've gone back and forth on whether I think Darlie is innocent or not, I've got an opinion. And again, this is my opinion based on the evidence and research I've been able to find on the case. Until the new DNA testing can be done, the only person who truly knows whether Darlie is innocent or not is her. But in my opinion, Darlie

I believe Darlie just might be a wrongfully convicted woman. Or, at the very least, I don't think she should have been convicted on the evidence presented at trial. I believe her defense did a poor job of presenting and arguing the forensic evidence in the case. And I believe the jury put way too much weight into the Silly String video.

got a lot of questions when it comes to the unknown fingerprints found in the house and an even bigger issue with the bloody sock found down the street from the house. I just don't think Darlie could have done what she did and then take a bloody sock 75 yards away from the house given the time that she had before the paramedics arrived. I don't think the state put on a strong enough case or motive.

If Darlie's motive to murdering her two children was financial, she was only going to get $10,000. That's it. Now, I know people have killed for much less money, but Darlie and Darren weren't in that kind of financial struggle that's going to validate killing your two sons for $10,000. Also, I really don't believe...

that Darlie's injuries are consistent with self-inflicted injuries. I think a murder-suicide is more likely than a self-inflicted neck wound staged to look like an intruder. I think if Darlie was going to cut her own throat like that, missing her carotid artery by just two millimeters, she was doing it to kill herself, not to stage it to look like an intruder.

Of course, I do have many unanswered questions when it comes to Darlie's story that an intruder broke in and did this. No evidence was presented at trial about any possible potential suspects. Now, I don't know who would have had the motive to kill those boys and try to kill Darlie. So I do have a lot of questions. I would love to hear your thoughts and opinions on Darlie Routier's case.

Do you think she's guilty? Or a wrongfully convicted woman who now sits on death row? Let me know your thoughts on Instagram at Forensic Tales or shoot me an email, Courtney at ForensicTales.com. Because this is an ongoing case, if there are any updates to Darlie's story and her case, I will be sure to provide it in a future episode of the show.

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Leaving us a rating with a review greatly helps support my show. Forensic Tales is a podcast made possible by our Patreon producers, Tony A., Nicole L., and William R. If you'd like to become a producer of the show, head over to our Patreon page or email me at Courtney at ForensicTales.com to find out how you can become involved.

Please join me next week. We release a new episode every Monday. Until then, remember, not all stories have happy endings.

Thank you.