INFAMOUS: Darlie Routier (Part 1)

Sep 9, 2019

In 1996 a small Texas community was rocked by the tragic slaying of two young boys. The police and prosecution had their sights set on one person as the perpetrator: The boy's mother. And they would work tirelessly to make sure she paid the price. Sources for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/infamous-darlie-routier-part-one/    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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hi crime junkies I'm Ashley flowers and I'm Britt are you all ready for one of those cases that will make your head hurt because I didn't think that's what I was getting into when I started researching this case but I literally spiraled in circles over transcripts and evidence photos and case documents for six days straight and I eventually just had to like yeah I was gonna say you even like cancel a recording session because you were going to research more yeah and I literally had to like eventually just pull the plug and decide to tell you the story and

let you decide for yourself what you think because I'm not sure I can come up with a solid answer about what actually happened in the Routier home on June 6 1996

I want to start our story back just a couple of hours before everything unfolded this is June 5th in Rowlett Texas it's a normal day in a small suburb Town Darin and darlie Routier lived in a beautiful newly built home with their three sons Devin who six Damon whose five and a newborn Derek who's less than a year old now school's out for the summer so that night the two older boys wanted to have a camp out in the living room which if we can take just like two seconds to try and remember being

six living room campouts were the greatest oh my gosh I loved them I know I don't know why sleeping in your living room like over your bedroom is so much cooler but it's like Pure Freedom at that age so darlie decided that she was going to sleep with the boys downstairs she has been sleeping on the couch for the past week or so because she hasn't been sleeping well at all their youngest son Derek still slept in their bedroom and she said that he would wake her up a lot because of all the noises he made moving around in her crib so that night the family watched some TV till

the boys eventually passed out Darin and darlie stayed up a little bit just kind of like talking about adult things life bills a trip that darlie was planning on taking with her friends to Mexico then somewhere between 12:30 and 1:00 o'clock in the morning Darren went up to bed where he watched a little TV and then eventually fell asleep but his peaceful sleep didn't last long within an hour or two Darren would be woken up by his wife screaming out her son's name when he put his

glasses on and ran downstairs what he saw changed his life forever since his wife was yelling Devon he ran over to where he last Saw Devon laying on the floor before he went to bed and when he reaches him he sees blood and he sees that his son has two holes in his chest he tries literally the first thing he did was like slapped Evan across the face saying wake up wake up but Devon is unresponsive trying to think on his feet he leans over to start performing see

CPR on his son but he blows into his mouth and are and blood just comes sputtering out of Devon's chest now Darrin at this point looks around the room trying to see where Damon and darlie are and that's when he spots darlie covered in blood and on the phone with nine-one-one

okay how many Mobile Police arrived within minutes and it's not just the boys who've been injured even though darlie was the one who called for help and had been screaming on the phone they see that her throat has been slashed and she has a deep cut on her arm paramedics tried attend to the boys but Devin is pronounced

he's dead upon their arrival and although Damon was still breathing when they got their life-saving measures were of no help and he too would be pronounced dead at the scene eventually once there was nothing that the paramedics could do they ushered Arlie often an ambulance and turned over the house to police and detectives as a crime scene and the scene was bizarre blood everywhere the murder weapon which was a butcher knife that was left behind seem to have been taken right from the Routier Zone knife block

and from the first appearances it looked like maybe the point of entry for the Intruder was the garage where a screen had been slashed okay so was it just like a robbery gone bad well the theory at first was no everything in the home seemed relatively untouched I mean aside from a broken wine glass and a knocked over vacuum cleaner there wasn't really even much of a mess on the first floor of the house where all this took place and on top of that darlie used to wear all these like super

gaudy diamond rings on her hands all of them were left out on the counter right in plain sight and they didn't even look like they've been touched so the only motive was just to come in and kill the two little boys and their mom it was a mystery in those early days so police tried to collect whatever they could from the scene but they needed darlie to fill in the missing pieces I mean they couldn't decide what happened nothing was making sense however it would take them two days before they could get a statement from her because

he had to undergo surgery for her neck wound the statement from the doctors and nurses who attended to darlie at the time that she came in and for the two days after we're pretty mixed like some people thought she was devastated some said she was in shock some said she wasn't acting like be expected her to and I don't even know how much validity I can even give to these statements because I swear every place they're a little bit different and even like the clinicians notes versus what they're saying later on don't match up so just know like with everything people were viewing her

her and the situation through their own personal lens in those first few days darlie's family was there in the hospital supporting her and everyone was completely devastated and confused why would this happen why the route ears why the boys who did this and what did they want like I said police were hoping to fill in the gaps and get answers to these questions when darlie was released from the hospital but the problem was after darlie got out of surgery they really had more questions than answers she was

released on June 8th is just two days after the incident and her statement to police was that on the night of the 5th the boys wanted to go to sleep in the living room they all watch TV made some popcorn the boys end up falling asleep Darren took the baby to bed upstairs after the baby was down he came back down the two stayed up for a while longer talked about again like I said money problems adult stuff their vacation she's taking and they all talked a little bit about the postpartum depression that darlie was having as well so she said that they laid together a while and then

in somewhere between 12:30 and 1:00 Darren kissed her before going up to bed just like we said at the beginning of the story which was based off of Darren statement she said the next thing she remembers was feeling pressure on her and waking up to Damon pressing on her shoulder and he was crying and when she fully came to there was a man standing near the end of the couch where her feet were and she could see him walking away so she said she instinctively just like God up right away went after him and that's when the wine glass

wrote before she keeps going after him in the dark then she decides to turn around turn a light on then go back for him again and she says she's like following this path that the man took she makes her way like through the kitchen into the laundry / utility room and she says she sees the knife on the floor so instinctually she just like grabs the knife and starts yelling for her husband calling out his name Darren Darren wait I thought you said that he woke up because he heard her yell Devon's name so I

I did their statements are actually different here some people point to this to say that maybe the stories are made up or whatever but I don't think to me this isn't a detail that like means anything really like one Darren was in a deep sleep and coming out of it when he's hearing these screams so he's not been fully like alert his mind might have been processing things incorrectly and to darlie could have been in total shock and maybe he wanted to say Darren thought she said Darren but it came out her son's name yeah and honestly the names almost even sound kind of similar so

yeah if you have someone's screaming and crying and yelling yeah totally could it could absolutely just be a misunderstanding so she calls for her husband as she's heading back to the living room and that's when she sees the boys as Darren is like running down the stairs I already told you that he tried to perform CPR she calls 9-1-1 and the rest is on tape and this is quite literally every parent's worst nightmare both Darley and Darren just kept asking who would do this who would want to kill their two little boys and for what

what but almost right away police weren't asking those same questions because they thought they knew exactly who and they had her right in their station giving them a statement police believed almost from the start that there was no mystery Intruder they believe that darlie was the one who stabbed her son's and then inflicted her own wounds to throw off suspicion and they felt like they had a ton to prove it the first thing we should point out is the

life now we didn't play the entire 9-1-1 call for you but on the call she told the operator that she moved the knife and she told investigators in her statement that she had picked it up from the floor of the utility room as she was running after the man so okay sure maybe but what stuck out to investigators was why was there no evidence of the knife being on the floor well what do you mean well according to police and later the state prosecutor there was like this

work and blood transfer from the knife somewhere on the carpet and where darlie had ended up setting it down after she picked it up but there was no Mark or blood where she said she picked it up from like how would the knife leave no residue on the floor where she grabbed it wasn't making sense police believe that the whole story about her grabbing it was made up but why make it up well they had a theory about that to the theory was that she was trying to cover her tracks and maybe to have a valid reason on why her fingerprints would be

on it and no one else's were and this might be a good point to talk about the whole like 9-1-1 call because that's something important that police pointed to when thinking that she was guilty yeah when you told me that you're going to do this case I knew that there was this really like kind of Infamous 9-1-1 call so of course I went over to my favorite statement analysis blog and did some digging and they did Analyze This call and there were some really interesting points about the knife yeah I mean I one of the things again when I was doing my research that

one talks about probably most on that call is this part where she's talking about picking up the knife and the fingerprint so do you want to touch on that a little bit Yeah so she always kind of defends her like decision to pick up the knife and the operator even says like don't touch anything literally everything I was that is and she's like oh well I already touched it and he was like okay like that's fine and she was like there's this one line where she goes like Oh no like if I hadn't touched it maybe we could have caught the guy

like maybe we could have gotten prints like she's thinking about evidence in this moment of trauma which a lot of people think was super bizarre yeah and I feel like that's not even like the only weird thing and I know we bring this up a lot like No One Ever Knows how they're going to respond you know in this traumatic life-altering moment but re the way Darley responds just feels off from the beginning through the entire call she like never says her children's names which I think I've said it before

like I can't imagine not just being like screaming my children's names and not being helpful at all you know like really just kind of calling them like her boys and her children and there's this really interesting point that the blog made that when she says that they're dying they're always children or boys like oh no my children have been stabbed my boys are dying but when it comes to when she used the word babies

she always says that they're dead like it's already done we're not talking about it this is over and done with and what does that like what does that mean I guess I don't understand the difference between babies and boys I mean the same analysis was basically saying stuff like you know the children and the boys are active and she is maybe putting out hope for them but she's personalizing the death with babies and even then like it's just so bizarre the way that she doesn't like ask for ways to

help them at like how do I stop the blood he's not breathing can I do CPR can you walk me through that which is like a really basic thing that you would be expected to kind of want to do for your children like I mean to like jump in though and take the other side of this like she just watch her husband try CPR on her son right like he was trying blood and are were coming out that the knife was like through and through I mean at some point at least I think I'd just be like get me professionals like I don't know what I'm doing I can't even function right now so I mean I get what the statement and

the same but I also like totally see the other side of it I mean yes but it just I guess as a like a not to ever diminish anyone who isn't a parent but like I can't wear your hat I don't know I just can't imagine not wanting to help in that situation like honestly not even as a parent but as a friend like if I walked in a room and you were stabbed like I call 9-1-1 and be like okay what can I do other than just sit here and watch her die you know like that's essentially what she's doing to her own children she also kind of like

lays out what happened that night in that like someone came in while they were sleeping they stopped the boys and they stabbed me which like okay that's kind of what we're all assuming happened at that point but well it's a little bit interesting because I don't know how you would know the order necessarily because again she doesn't wake up because she feels any kind of wound she said she wakes up because she feels his pressure on her arm where her son's touching her and even in this whole thing this is what the little bizarre to me is in some

people bring up a lot online is she said she's sleeping downstairs because she's such a light sleeper that her infant son wakes her up moving around his crib and everyone's like how would you have slept through yourself getting cut children being stabbed both of your children being stabbed like it something isn't feeling right about that right I like the kids are little like obviously as soon as they get hurt they're going to wake up and be loud like I remember when we fostered a two-year-old when she wet the bed or coughed too hard and work herself up

she would start crying you know like is it possible though that their injuries were inflicted like so severely so quickly that that they couldn't I mean if they're going through like their lungs I mean are spurting out that they couldn't scream I mean that that is possible right I mean I'm not a medical personnel at all but I mean there's a really good chance but even at that like I think of like the tents that we would make in our living room growing up and like we were all over each other like in my mind visualizing it it almost be difficult to

wound one of them without you know rustling or waking up or startling the other one because I mean I'm not at least I didn't think until now that they were going like a double knife fist situation yeah I just it just seems like one of them were woken up and if a newborn in a crib rustling around in the night wake Starly up how could she have slept through this and towards the end of the call I think she says what I find most interesting she says that she feels really

we bad and she thinks that she's dying and obviously we know she's not dying but she thinks she's dying but has basically said over and over and over that her boys are dying or are dead mmm the fact that she feels so confident in the path of the boys but then throws out that oh like maybe I'm also this hurt is kind of hurt starting to shift the blame and

for trailers innocence by making herself look or sound as severely injured as the boys which kind of goes against again like any sort of maternal or loving Instinct like oh like they're really hurt I'm really hurt too like I'm just like them you should be worried about me too as opposed to you know like don't worry about me I'm fine yeah save my babies like she's trying to pull some attention on to her which just feels like icky you know

so I did read somewhere though and I don't know how valid this is that she didn't even realize she was hurt until someone like points it out to her while she's on the 9-1-1 call that she was like so distracted that she didn't realize her that was even caught or that she was bleeding so severely so it could just be like the shock kind of like settling into her and yeah her realizing that the blood that she's covered in is partially her own yeah so one of the things that that I haven't seen pointed out anywhere and you didn't bring up in the statement blog and nobody seems to really care about but

really stuck with me is throughout the call she keeps referring to this attacker as they they they they like two people or more than one person and every statement she's ever given has been that there's this one man one attacker but I don't know why she kept saying they on the call again I don't know if it's in this moment of trauma she's very confused I don't I have no idea what's going through her mind but I thought it was super weird that it was consistently they on the 9-1-1 call but since has been consistently one person

in all of her statement right right so just like you just like the guy who does the statement analysis blog police don't like the call the physical evidence doesn't match her story about picking up the knife it also doesn't match her story about the glass breaking so darlie said that the wine glass broke as all of this commotion is like happening as she's running after this guy and here's the problem though and why the physical evidence doesn't match that if you look at the crime scene photos there are bloody Footprints under the broken glass and there

any blood on top of the glass so to police this tells them that the glass was broken after she had walked around you mean like to Stage the scene yeah that's what they're thinking because remember the only things that were messed up where that broken glass and the vacuum knocked over and darlie statement is that she used the vacuum as like a crutch but also police are like why there's nothing wrong with your legs I mean yeah but the woman is bleeding from her like neck I could see her being you know weak or feeling faint

faint and not really being able to like yeah keep herself up especially like you said she's not even aware that she's injured no I totally get that I'm not saying that this like knocked over vacuum cleaner or the glass on its own is like the nail in the coffin but police don't love it in combination with everything else because there is more

so in addition to the nine one one call and the lack of blood where she said the knife was and the glass on top of the blood there are a couple more really important issues that I want to touch on so first is the blood evidence police say that there was a surprisingly small amount of Blood on the couch where darlie said that she was sleeping and her assertion this whole time is that she was cut while she was laying on the couch now you would expect if you have this deep neck wound that that's where a lot of the blood would be but

it seems that there was a large amount of blood like the most amount of blood from darlie was over the kitchen sink which doesn't fit a ton into her story at all so the police's theory is that after she perpetrated this attack herself she stood over the kitchen sink and made her own injuries I just feel like that would be so hard to do to yourself well later police and prosecutors described her injuries as superficial and they point out like the boys

had been stabbed almost through and through with the knife plunging into them why would the attacker not kill their mother in the same way like hers were just a slice to the throw and one stabbed in the forearm and why wait to kill her last and risk her waking up you'd normally take out the adult first if if you're a gay your only goal is to kill these people you would want to take out the adult and then go after the kids so in addition to the blood evidence not adding up they also didn't buy the story about this mystery Intruder cutting through this

green to gain entry into the house the investigators said that perps don't usually cut screens like I guess they know it's like well known in part community that you can I guess just pop off screens and the whole thing gets removed okay well one I'm terrified but that doesn't mean that like slicing through his screen never happens right I agree but that's not the only problem investigators also say that there was a layer of dust that was undisturbed on the windowsill and police said that

are was mulch right under the window and under that there were no Footprints there was nothing that was Disturbed nothing that would indicate to them that anyone ever crawled in or out of that window and if they never left that way it means they never came in that way either now the most incriminating thing about the window though was this there was a bread knife in the knife block that the family had this is the same knife block that the butcher knife was used that was the actual murder weapon when that bread knife was examined there were five

is on it that were made of fiberglass rods and a rubbery compound well in this ABC documentary called last defense that I watched about this case according to the state that's the same compound you would see in screens and it would have been impossible for an intruder to cut the screen to gain entry to the home with a knife that was already inside the house like that doesn't add up if we're seeing compounds from the knife inside they're not in they're not cutting to get out right how would that have happened

now all of this added up to just one thing to them darlie was guilty of murder okay I'm not saying that all the stuff like isn't completely fishy and obviously we've talked about family annihilators before I know it happens but what was her motive so there are theories and I'll say off the like right off the topic I don't think she was a family Annihilator from that study I found last time I think it was when we did the Chris Watts episode it said that most family annihilators

do kill themselves as well so if she inflicted her injuries on herself that tracks with that whole thing but there's a lot that doesn't like she called 9-1-1 to save herself and she didn't go after her husband and her infant son so I think at least in my mind we can completely rule out that theory and police never even try and make that theory they say that it was about Financial Freedom and upholding a certain type of Lifestyle for Darley and the boys got in the way of that

that I mentioned at the top of the episode that darlie and Darren recently built a brand new home will they also had super nice cars and a boat and darlie had all this jewelry and went all these kinds of vacations they were able to do all that for a long time because Darren made really good money from the company that he owned and operated but in the time before the murders things were really slow for them the money wasn't flowing in like they were used to and they were starting to rack up debt through credit cards and unpaid back taxes like how much debt

it got up to about 22,000 dollars at the time of the murders in 1996 but here's the thing darlie wasn't slowing down her spending she still shopped she like I said earlier was planning a trip to Mexico with her friends so again you can look at this two ways darlie says yeah I wasn't slowing down because I wasn't worried I knew the business would pick back up everything was fine the police on the other hand say that she wasn't slowing down even though she should have been and things were just getting worse and worse and now

now she sees the boys as a financial burden did they have any life insurance policies on the kids so they did but nothing significant I think it was something like five thousand dollars per child which in the end mostly went to covering expenses for their funerals so I don't the claim has never been that she was looking to get rich off her kids or like that that their death was going to solve all their to financial problems it was just more that she wanted them out of the way so they could stop being an expense to her okay but then why not kill

the infant to they don't really give an explanation for that other than maybe it was because the youngest son was in the same room as Darren and maybe it'll been too difficult I honestly don't know but here's what I do know those who believe darlie to be guilty found a note in her diary that they said was as good as a confession and the note in darlie's diary that the part that everyone points out is a point where she says I hope that you'll forgive me for what I'm about

to do and this was written just one month before so police say that she knew she was going to kill her kids and she'd been planning it and they said that note proved it now we have a lot of stuff building up against Darley and just the first couple of weeks of the investigation evidence had started being collected on that very first day on the 6th they kept the house sealed off then darlie's released from the hospital on the 8th she gives her statement on the 9th they have a graveside service for the boys

then then comes the thing that would seal darlie's fate and go on to Define this case for decades

what this case is most known for and truthfully how I knew this case like I'll tell you I decided to do this case because I was at a cookout at my dad's house and our neighbor found out that I did this crime podcast and was like you know you should do the darlie Routier case my wife's sister was one of the nurses who took care of her in the hospital and I was totally confused I was like I don't know if I've ever heard of that one it doesn't sound super familiar and he says no no no it was really popular it was the Silly String case and immediately

I knew it because the Silly String defined this case it defined it in 1996 and it still defines it in 2019 and this is what all the Silly String stuff is about so on June 14th this would have been Devon's 7th birthday this is barely one week after the murders mind you darlie and her family decided to hold a graveside celebration they fill the grave site with balloons and they invite new stations to come

view it like all the friends and family are there and it's not settling to watch they sing Happy Birthday they're spraying Silly String over the graves kids are running around laughing and darlie gives a smiling interview saying that the boys wouldn't have wanted them to be sad and basically they know they're up in heaven celebrating right now oh that's not a great look it was not a good luck no and even now watching it even knowing the whole case still

makes me cringe and I have to tell you it's so petty and I'm going to let my human show but not only is she smiling and acting all jovial but the thing that drives me insane and I heard like jurors and other people talk about as well is like the way she's just like chomping on her gum the whole time like this is the most casual thing in the whole world that's also your biggest pet peeve no I know it's like my thing but there is something just so nonchalant and it was flipping about the whole thing that it wasn't just me who felt it like I

said police felt it the jurors felt it the da felt it the public felt it just a couple of days after this silly string celebration now this is on the 17th police finally released the house because they have everything they need and they arrest darlie the very next day she said she was shocked when they arrested her she never saw it coming she couldn't believe they thought she was guilty of this but they did darlie was taken to court and tried for just the murder of

Damon why just one of them so the prosecution wanted a back-up plan if they tried both of them together and they lost it was Double Jeopardy they had no chance again but they were basically I can't believe they can do this like to me if it happens at the same time and there's like only one theory of what could have happened I would think you'd have to do it together but no they went just for Damon so that way if for some reason they lost they could try her again for again the exact same crime just the other child perpetrated on another

child wow so the prosecution shows the jury everything they have the bread knife with the screen fibers the blood evidence that doesn't make sense her 9-1-1 call all the jewelry that wasn't taken there was no motive they told the jury the only person who had motive was darlie and they showed the tape of the graveside birthday party the jury watched that tape at trial and asked to see it again during deliberations they replayed it over and over and over eventually watching it

11 times in total and it was that that made them decide darlie was no grieving mother she was a killer they found her guilty of murder and sentenced her to death but there are two sides to every story back when darlie was convicted what we told you today was the only side anyone ever heard but there's so much more you don't know and over the last 22 years darlie's defense team has worked diligently to present a very different picture of the case

it will make you question everything we told you today and it will make you wonder if an innocent woman is currently sitting on death row and if so where and who is the real killer of the Routier boys we're going to tell you that side of the story and everything that points to darlie's innocence next week

you can find all of our sources for this two-part story on our website crime junkie podcast.com there's also a direct link to the sources and pictures and it's episodes show notes as well yep and good news for everyone who is part of our fan club you do not have to wait till next week the second part is

you right now through the fan club feet yep if you're not a part of the fan club but dying to hear what happens you can join by going to our website and clicking the fan club tab for everyone else we will be back next week

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