Crime Junkie - INFAMOUS: Darlie Routier (Part 1)

Episode Date: September 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. For current Fan Club membership options and policies, please visit https://crimejunkieapp.com/library/. 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/    

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, canceled 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. Darren and Darlie Routier lived in a beautiful, newly built home with their three sons. Devin, who's six, Damon, who's 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. Oh yeah, definitely. So Darlie decided that she was gonna 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. Darren 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 one 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, Devin, he ran over to where he last saw Devin 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, he said the first thing he did was like slap Devin across the face. It's like, wake up, wake up, but Devin is unresponsive. Trying to think on his feet, he leans over to start performing CPR on his son, but he blows into his mouth and air and blood just comes sputtering out of Devin's chest.

Now, Darren, 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 911. 911, what is your emergency? Hang on, hang on, hang on. Ma'am, I'm trying to get an emergency. What's going on, ma'am? What's going on? I'm trying to get an emergency.

Ma'am, is there any body in the house besides you and your children? Police arrive 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 try to tend to the boys, but Devin is pronounced dead upon their arrival, and although Damon was still breathing when they got there, 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 Darlie off in 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, seemed to have been taken right from the Routier's own 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 of 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'd 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 she had to undergo surgery for her neck wound. The statements from the doctors and nurses who attended to Darlie at the time that she came in and for the two days after were pretty mixed. Like some people thought she was devastated. Some said she was in shock. Some said she wasn't acting like they 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 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 routiers? 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. This 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 watched TV, made some popcorn. The boys ended 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 somewhere between 1230 and 1, Darren kissed her before going up to bed. Just like we said at the beginning of the story, which was based off of Darren's 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 instinctually just like got up right away, went after him, and that's when the wine glass broke 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 slash 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 Devin's name. So 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 even fully like alert his mind might have been processing things incorrectly.

And two, 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 someone's screaming and crying and yelling, yeah, totally. 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 911 and the rest is on tape.

And this is quite literally every parent's worst nightmare. Both Darlie and Darren just kept asking who would do this, who would want to kill their two little boys and for 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 sons 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 knife. Now, we didn't play the entire 911 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 mark 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? It wasn't making sense. Police believed that the whole story about her grabbing it was made up, but why make it up? Well, they had a theory about that, too.

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 911 call because that's something important that police pointed to when thinking that she was guilty. Yeah, when you told me that you were going to do this case, I knew that there was this really like kind of infamous 911 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, one of the things, again, when I was doing my research that everyone talks about probably most on that call is this part where she's talking about picking up the knife and the fingerprints. 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.

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. Yeah, 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 right, the way Darlie 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 even 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, she's 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 uses 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 when. What does that like, but what does that mean? I guess I don't understand the difference between babies and boys. I mean, the statement 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 even 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 watched her husband try CPR on her son, right? Like he he was trying blood and air 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 analysis is saying, but I also like totally see the other side of it. I mean, yes, but it just, I guess as a, like, and not to ever diminish anyone who is an apparent, but like, I can't imagine. 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 911 and be like, OK, 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 stabbed the boys, then they stabbed me, which like, OK, that's kind of what we're all assuming happened at that point.

But well, it's it's a little bit interesting because I don't know how you would know the order necessarily because then she doesn't wake up because she feels any kind of wound. She says she wakes up because she feels this 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 something that 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? Your children being stabbed. Yeah, both of your children being stabbed. Like it something isn't feeling right about that. Right. And 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 went to bed or coughed too hard and woke 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 air 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, wrestling 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 in like a double knife fist situation. I mean, I just, it just seems like one of them would have woken up and if a newborn in a crib rustling around in the night wakes Darlie 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 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. The fact that she feels so confident in the path of the boys, but then throws out like, oh, like, maybe I'm also this hurt is kind of her starting to shift the blame. And portray this 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. Please save my babies. Like, she's she's trying to pull some attention onto her, which just feels like icky, you know? So I did read somewhere though. And again, 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 nine on one call. That she was like so distracted that she didn't realize her throat was even cut or that she was bleeding so severely. So it could just be like the shock kind of like settling into her and 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 nine on one call, but since has been consistently one person in all of her statements. 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 Darlene 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 isn't 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 were that broken glass and the vacuum knocked over. And Darlene's 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 and not really being able to like 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 911 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 Darlene 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 Darlene 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 throat and one stab in the forearm. And why wait to kill her last and risk her waking up? You'd normally take out the adult first.

If you're again, 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 the screen 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 perp 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 the 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 there 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 an actual murder weapon. When that bread knife was examined, there were fibers 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. But 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. 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 this 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 right off the top, 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. She called 911 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 Darlie. And the boys got in the way of that. I mentioned at the top of the episode that Darlie and Darren recently built a brand new home. Well, they also had super nice cars and a boat and Darlie had all this jewelry and went on all these kinds of vacations. They were able to do all of 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. So like how much debt?

It got up to about $22,000 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 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 $5,000 per child, which in the end mostly went to covering expenses for their funeral. So I don't, the claim has never been that she was looking to get rich off her kids or like that their death was going to solve all their 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 too? 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 would have been too difficult. I honestly don't know, but here's what I do know. Those who believed 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 Darlie in 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 release 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 Retear 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 Devin's seventh birthday. This is barely one week after the murders, mind you. Darlie and her family decide to hold a graveside celebration.

They fill the gravesite 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 at heaven celebrating right now.

Oh, that's not a great look. It was not a good look. 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 almost flippant about the whole thing that it wasn't just me who felt it. The 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 release 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 backup plan. If they tried both of them together and they lost, it means 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.

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 911 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. Just 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 crimejunkiepodcast.com. There's also a direct link to the sources and pictures in this episode's show notes as well. 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 available for you right now through the fan club feed. 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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