RedHanded - Episode 72 - Darlie Routier: Beyond Reasonable Doubt?

Episode Date: November 29, 2018

In 1997 Darlie Routier was convicted of murdering her 5 year old son, Damon, and sentenced to death. But for 21 years she has sat on death row protesting her innocence, claiming that the real killer was a stranger who broke into the house and attacked her and her sons. Is she a lying cold-blooded killer, or a tragic victim of brutal injustice? The evidence seems to point in every direction. Join the girls this week as they tackle one of their most frustratingly convoluted cases yet.   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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I'm Hannah. And welcome to Red Handed. Dali Routier is currently sat on death row in Gatesville, Texas for the murder of her two sons. She's been there for 21 years and from the day she was arrested to today she has maintained her innocence. Law enforcement and state prosecutors however claim that she is an evil self-absorbed psychopath who deserves the needle. But there are several holes in this case that, in our opinion, raise serious questions about Dali's guilt, or, at the very least, the way in which this investigation was handled. And with Dali having exhausted two of her three allowed appeals,

the stakes right now are sky high. One more failed appeal, and Dali Routier will be headed to the death chamber. And finally, as of this month, November 2018, new DNA testing is being carried out, some on evidence that has never previously been examined. But let's rewind to the beginning so that we have the full picture. Dali was just 18 in 1988 when she married Darren Routier. The two had met several years before as teenagers in Lubbock, Texas, and when Darren hit success with his career testing circuit boards, the couple moved to Dallas. They went on to have three little boys, Devin, Damon, and Drake. They were just a totally ordinary family, and the 6th of June 1996 started out as a totally ordinary day.

Before, that is, it spiralled into a nightmare. That evening, 26-year-old Dali fell asleep downstairs in front of the TV with her two eldest sons, 6-year-old Devin and 5-year-old Damon. Darren was asleep upstairs with their baby, Drake, who was just 7 months old. Suddenly, Darren was woken up when he heard Dali screaming and the sound of glass breaking. He ran downstairs and found a total bloodbath and a hysterical Dali screaming about a man in the house. The blood-soaked Dali called 911 and the police were on the scene in minutes. David Waddell, one of the first responding officers from the Rowlett Police Department, said that when he arrived at the house,

he saw a man running out of the front door. He yelled at him to stop and asked him what he was doing. The running man was Darren Routier and he told them that he was running over the road to find a nurse who lived there. They let Darren go on his way to find the nurse neighbor and they went into the house. Okay, so is it weird that they just like take his word for it and let him go? He's a guy running out of a house they've been called to by a woman who's saying that somebody's come in and attack them. They arrive, a man's running out the door and they let him go. I mean, how do they know that he lives there? What if he was the killer? Unless they knew the family personally, they wouldn't know that he's not the intruder. It does seem really strange that he's just allowed to run out. Absolutely. So yeah,

they just let him run off. And you know, we're not sort of saying that Darren's up to anything. We're just saying it seems weird that they don't try control the scene from the minute they arrive. So the police let him run off and they enter the house. And this becomes a very important part of the timeline. They say that when they arrived, Darlie was still on the phone to 911 and in the living room were the two boys, Damon and Devin. David Waddell states that from what he could see, both of the boys were covered in blood. One of the boys was already dead and the other was crawling along the floor and gurgling for breath. At this point Darren returns to the house alone presumably not having found the nurse he was

allowed to run off and find and Waddell says that as he and his partner searched the house for the intruder Darren tried to do CPR on Devon but it was hopeless because with every breath Darren breathed into his son a shower of blood just poured from the boy's chest. And this is because Devon had two incredibly deep stab wounds in his chest. He hadn't stood a chance. He was already dead. Five-year-old Damon, who was still alive when the officers had arrived, had been stabbed multiple times in the back. And after a few minutes, he too died at the scene. Dali had also been injured. She had knife wounds to her arms and neck.

She was rushed to Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, where she was immediately taken into surgery. Her carotid artery had been nicked two more millimeters, and she would have bled to death in that house. So by all accounts at the hospital, Dali was lucky to have survived. Can you cut your own carotid artery? This is a very important question. I don't know. I'm sure you probably could. If Dali did cut herself, she wasn't doing it to cut her carotid artery because you would bleed to death, wouldn't

you? So I think maybe a better question is, could you accidentally nick your carotid artery? Like, is it deep enough that it would be so difficult for you to accidentally get near it, if you see what I mean, if you were just stabbing it yourself? Oh, I see. Because if it's like right under the skin and really near the surface, you could accidentally cut yourself if you just stabbed at your neck. You could accidentally nick your carotid artery. But I kept seeing conflicting things about this. And it does seem that your carotid artery, because it runs all the way from behind your ear,

all the way down through like your collarbone. And I haven't done anatomy, but I'm just, that's what I've read. And that's what I've heard from the people that I've asked about this. So at various points, it does seem closer to the surface than in other points and at the point where Dali has her cut it does seem to be quite well protected by your windpipe and quite a lot of cartilage. Yeah everyone's body's different though. I don't know I think it's entirely possible that on her particular body maybe it was a little bit more accessible than on what is considered normal. I have no idea. I think it's probably possible. And I think what we can comfortably say is yes if you stabbed at your neck there is a possibility that you could nick your carotid artery but the depth

and the sort of protection that it seems to have in the place that she cut herself seems to me that you would have to have a lot of fucking willpower and determination to stab it yourself at that part which doesn't necessarily fit with the idea that she's staging the injuries to get away with murder exactly her children when dali finally woke up after surgery two detectives were waiting there to interview her the story dali told was that she had fallen asleep downstairs with her two boys then she'd woken up in the middle of the night to find a man standing over her. He attacked her and she fought, but she couldn't remember anything about his face. She couldn't remember anything about anything, just that the attacker had been a white man. The investigation was immediately too much for the Rowlett Police Department. They had only

ever dealt with one multiple homicide investigation in their entire history. They were in over their heads and they knew it. So they requested the help of retired Dallas County Lieutenant James Cron. Within minutes of arriving at the scene, Cron had come up with a theory. He was convinced that someone in the family had killed the two little boys. And yes, when children are killed, you should always consider the parent. Most of the time it is them. But I do think that the jump that Cron took to saying that this had to be an inside job within minutes of arriving at the scene does seem a little bit premature to me. I think there's a difference between us being like, it's always

the parents and turning up to a homicide investigation crime scene and within minutes saying, it's always the parents. It's always the parents. I don't know. I think I'm probably sounding like a bit of a hypocrite, but it does seem... I think what you're saying is very fair. I think what it is, is you need to have an open mind that it could be the parents. But you also need to investigate the crime as to who it could have been or what could have happened. I think that's the frustration we see with other cases where, like say, JonBenet Ramsey, or maybe even Madeleine McCann, where people felt frustration that the police never look at the, or they don't look in enough detail at the parents or the family

having been the culprits. They just assumed that it was somebody else. I think that's the issue, maybe. But let's look at his reasonings. In the kitchen, there was an island covered in watches, rings, and other jewelry, and it was all still there. So this didn't appear to have been a burglary. Darlie also told police that the assailant had dropped the knife in the utility room as he had run out of the garage door and that's where she had picked it up. But there was no evidence that the bloody knife had been dropped in the utility room but there was evidence that it had been laid on the carpet, on the sideboard and on the table in the living room. Another point that made Cron

suspicious was that Darren had heard glass breaking when he had been woken up by Dali screaming. And in keeping with Darren's account, there was glass from smashed wine glasses on the floor of the kitchen, but the glass was on top of Dali's bloody footprints. So it's as if she had been walking around downstairs with bloody feet and then the glass had broken. For James Cron, this all started to point to the fact that Dali wasn't telling the truth about what had happened that night. So after Dali was released from hospital, she and Darren were taken immediately to the Rowlett Police Department, where they were interviewed separately. And this was when Dali's story shifted. She now said that Damon had woken her up by shouting, mummy, mummy. And when her eyes opened, she saw a man in the doorway heading from the kitchen

towards the utility room, which was connected to the garage. She got up and followed him. And this was when he had attacked her. So her story had changed from her waking up to a man standing over her to a man having already attacked Devin and Damon now trying to escape the house. Twelve days after the murders Dali and Darren voluntarily returned to the Rowlett Police Department for more questioning.

After the interviews they let Darren go but they arrested Dali and charged her with capital murder. And it's capital murder in this case because Damon was under six years old. When the news broke that Dali Routier had been arrested for the murder of her two sons, the media went crazy. This all happened just two years after the case of Susan Smith and almost immediately Darlie was being called Dallas's Susan Smith. And if you don't know the Susan Smith case, it's definitely one that we'll cover in the future but for a very quick rundown. In 1994, this woman Susan Smith killed her two sons then said that a random black man had done it. Spoiler, she did it. And she did it because her kids

were standing in the way of a new man that she wanted who didn't want her kids. Thankfully, she was found out and she's currently serving life. Imagine another case like this coming out so soon. The media and the public were primed to drag Darlie through the murdery mud. I'm not saying that she did it or she didn't.

I'm just saying they were ready to pounce. They were ready for another Susan Smith. But Dali's family weren't having any of it. They were completely convinced of her innocence. And despite a gag order that had been placed on them, Dali's mum and Darren totally flouted it. And they went on the radio to defend her. And I understand that. Your loved one is being dragged through the media, being said, you know, she's a murderer. She's Dallas' Susan Smith. They go on the radio to stick up for her, to rebuke these claims. But was in, they hired supposedly legendary Dallas attorney Douglas Mulder. And he was very expensive. It was going to cost them $250,000.

So they sold everything. They thought they had to get him to give Darlie any chance. I understand that. If your loved ones in trouble they've been in your opinion wrongly accused of something you're going to pull out all the stops to get them off because again it's the faith in the justice system things like oh we just need to give her the best shot in the courtroom and then obviously she'll be released because she didn't do it however Mulder does come out of this looking a bit shit, in our opinion. From the start, the district attorney and the lead prosecutor, Greg Davis,

were all pushing hard for the death penalty. They split the trial and only tried Dali for the murder of Damon. Because in Texas, when the victim is under the age of six, it is immediately the death penalty. And from the prosecution's standpoint, this was a very smart thing to do. It was a way to ensure they could get Dali one way or another. If she was found not guilty of Damon's murder, they could try her again on Devon's without being stopped by double jeopardy. So they basically are giving themselves two shots at her if they can't get her the first time round. Unsurprisingly, this case created a

total media circus in Dallas, and the prosecution used this to their advantage. They argued that this meant that there was no way they could have the trial in Dallas and got it moved to Kerrville in Kerr County, which is a super tiny, super conservative town in Texas, about 284 miles away from Dallas. Let's just talk about this for a second. The media is not on Dali's side. The media are like, she did this. She's Dallas's Susan Smith. She fucking killed her kids. But the prosecution say there's no way that we can have a fair trial in Dallas because of the media circus. No, that's bollocks. If anything, that should have been the defense screaming that she couldn't have had a fair trial in Dallas. They wanted this

because they wanted to move it to Kerrville. And how this got okayed is beyond me. Why the hell did Darlie's defense attorney, the legendary Douglas Mulder, allow this? Apparently, and this is like a quote from another attorney who's worked with Douglas Mulder. Apparently, he used to joke that, quote, if I ever get murdered, make sure my murderer gets tried in Kerr County because it's so conservative. So why the hell is he letting the prosecution put his client's capital murder case, a case in which he is standing trial for murdering her two little boys in this town. Is it his call though? But I mean, why isn't he refuting? Fighting it. Yeah, fighting it. It

doesn't ever appear that he seems to fight it. Or at least say, if we have to move it outside of Dallas, why are we moving it 284 miles away to a super tiny conservative town in Kerr County? Why not to somewhere else, you know? I find that weird, but he does. He lets this happen. And on January 6th, 1997, the trial of Dali Routier began. Firstly, and is this normal? All of her family were banned from the trial. I understand maybe her mum and Darren, her husband, because, you know, they were all wrapped up in that subpoena situation for defying the gag order. But all of her family were banned. The only one who managed to slip in was a woman named Sandy, who was Darren's aunt. That is very strange, I think.

And she slipped in. Sandy didn't get in because she was allowed to be there. She didn't tell them that she was Darren's aunt and she managed to slip into court. It's very weird. And from the off during this trial, Greg Davis, the prosecutor, painted Dali as a psychopathic, materialistic, buxom blonde who only cared about herself, her appearance, her freedom and men. It fitted with the image of previous women who had killed their kids, like Susan Smith and Diane Downs. James Cron, the retired county lieutenant who had assisted the Rowlett Police Department with the original investigation,

also took the stand and talked about how he thought the house had looked like a staged crime scene. He took to the stand and told the jury that the murder weapon had been moved around, placed in multiple locations around the house like someone had moved it from point to point. Why it might be moving around could be pretty important in this case. Either it's because someone staged the crime scene and they're trying to figure out where to put the knife, or someone was carrying out the attack over an extended period of time and that's why the knife keeps being moved around with them but if Darlie had staged the crime scene why wouldn't she put it in the one place she said the attacker had dropped it because remember there was no evidence it had been on the floor in the utility room and that's what she says

I do think it's a specific thing to remember but I suppose if you're in that when I first read that I was oh that's a funny detail that she remembers exactly where he dropped the knife but I do think if you're in that sort of let's say she's telling the truth you've been stabbed yourself and your children have been stabbed you're in absolute survival mode you've got so much adrenaline that I do I think that, like, you probably would be able to remember specific details like that because everything slows down and you're on absolute high alert. So maybe it's not that weird that she remembers that.

But let's look at the other possibility. If the attacker, whether it was Dali or not, had been carrying out the attack over a sustained period of time and was moving around the room, placing the knife in all different spots. How did anyone sleep through that? And also, one of her kids is still alive when the police get there. And to me, that sounds like it was all quite quick, I think. So if it was Dali, how did Darren sleep through the noise of Darlie murdering their sons? Or, if it was an intruder, how did they both sleep through the noise of someone murdering their sons?

That slowly, that he was moving around the room, putting his knife down everywhere. A key question in the case becomes, Why were there blood smudges everywhere, indicating that the knife had been moved around. We'll come back to it. A second key point that the prosecution wanted to make was that none of the jewelry in the kitchen had been touched. In fact, nothing in the house at all had been touched. If it wasn't a burglary, what the hell was the motive for a random man to break into a house and murder two little boys? And that is a very fair point. But if the prosecution were pushing the idea that this was a staged crime scene, then why wouldn't Darlie

have hidden or chucked the jewelry? Why would she just leave it in the kitchen on that little island? Next to take the stand for the state was a medical examiner with Dallas County, Dr. Janice Townsend-Parchman. She was a medical examiner who would perform the autopsy on Damon. She told the court that she felt that Dali's wounds from the night were, quote, superficial. And Greg Davis alluded to the fact that there may have been hesitation wounds on Dali. Dr. Townsend agreed that they could be. But then when Mulder cross-examined her and asked Dr. Townsend, she accepted that most of the hesitation wounds that she has seen in her career were not as deep as the wounds sustained by Dali. So she's saying that the wounds

that Dali has are relatively superficial. But she also agrees because Greg Davies is then like, well, then maybe are they just hesitation marks? She couldn't really stab herself properly. She says they could be. But in my entire career, I've never seen hesitation marks that deep. They then moved on to talk about the bruising. And this is very, very important. Dr. Townsend had gone to the hospital on June 6th, so the day of the attack, to see Dali. She said that when she saw Dali that day, she didn't see any evidence of blunt force trauma or bruising consistent with someone having been in an attack. And the prosecution tried to make a big thing of the fact that Darlie didn't have any bruising at all. But when questioned by Mulder,

Dr. Townsend also accepted that if you have broken blood vessels in deeper structures, if you've sustained a more severe injury, that bruises are unlikely to show up within 24 hours. So the time within which she saw Dali, and therefore she had to accept that while she couldn't see the immediate signs of blunt force trauma, like obvious lacerations, that Dali may still have been injured.

And there are photos of Dali taken by the police on the 10th of july so four days after the night of the murders and she has massive amounts of bruising on her right arm that goes from basically under her armpit all the way up to her wrist and it's black it's intense bruising it's intense bruising i think that i know be wrong. I'm not a doctor. That to me seems more like that has been inflicted upon you. I think getting a bruise that significant from yourself in a weird place as well that to me seems like it's more like you've fallen. Something's happened to you rather than you've done it to yourself. I'm more convinced by that than I am by the shallow stab wounds.

But then people refute the bruising because Darley says that the attacker inflicted those bruises on her by beating her and by dragging her and grabbing her. And this is when the conspiracy theories started. The prosecution claimed that because the bruising hadn't been there on the 6th, the 7th, the 8th or the 9th and had suddenly appeared on the 10th, that she had realised the police were suspicious of her and had someone beat her arms up so they would bruise. Possible? Sure. Likely? Who knows? And this is the thing, it's a massive point of contention. Most of us can anecdotally say that when you get a bruise, it takes a couple of days for it to show

up. And like Dr Townshend admitted, the deeper it is, the longer it takes for it to become visible. But some doctors say on the day it would have been obvious. There would have been red marks. There would have been soreness. There would have been some sort of swelling if you've injured yourself that deeply that it takes four days for the bruises to come up. And they say that they didn't see any of that. They also say in trial, they have a nurse come forward for the state who says that she was a nurse who was, you know, dealing with Dali when she had been admitted. And she was moving her arms around. She was wiping her down. She was cleaning the blood off her.

And that never once did Dali complain that her arms were hurting. But, and you know, this is in trial. But my thing when I read that was, she's in fucking shock, surely. How much are your arms going to hurt? Or how much are you going to be concerned that your arms hurt when you're in severe shock from someone breaking into your house, stabbing you and killing your kids? Even if we don't want to give her the benefit of the doubt that she was in shock, I'm guessing when you get admitted into hospital with stab wounds, one to your neck, you're going to get given some pretty serious painkillers just to take the edge off. So would she even know that her arms were in pain? I don't know. You're going to get given some pretty serious painkillers just to take the edge off. So would she even know that her arms were in pain? I don't know.

Again, I'm not saying one way or another. I'm saying let's just question everything. The only thing I do think is strange is there being no surface marks. That is weird. At all. And then suddenly it comes out of nowhere. I think the worst bruise I've ever had in my life. Like falling down the stairs, which I am famous for.

Drunk. Not necessarily. On this particular occasion, I was. It's safer to fall down the stairs when you're drunk because you go ragdoll, top tip. Yeah, I still managed to hurt myself quite significantly on many occasions. But it was on the side of my leg. And the first day, it was just a bump, like a swelling. And then over the next week, it sort of grew into this massive giant black hole of death.

It blossomed. My mum was really pleased. She saw it. She was like, that's not a bruise, Hannah. It's a hematoma. Brilliant. But this is the thing that they do say. And Dr. Townsend says that it is weird that there was no surface lacerations.

There was no swelling, there was nothing evident on the like 24 hours after the attack, which does seem weird. But Dr. Townsend, even if we put aside the bruising, this part of the story does make me question Dali. This doesn't make Dali look good because Dr. Townsend was very much convinced that Dali's injuries were not a result of an attack because the most common type of defensive wound that she sees are deep incised wounds on the hands and forearms. And generally, these are very, very deep wounds on the fingers and the palms. And they go all the way through the subcutaneous tissue, sometimes cutting tendons and sometimes going all the way through to the bone.

Because people always grab the knife. Because the alternative, when you're being stabbed or someone is coming at you with a knife, the alternative to grabbing the knife is letting the knife come into your body, your neck, your head or your chest. That is the most logical thing. If somebody is coming at you with a knife, you are grabbing that knife with your hands, right? Yeah. And Dali didn't have any injuries to her hands. She had a slash across her neck, a slash across her shoulder and a slash across her right forearm. And she had the bruising that showed up days later, but she had nothing more. Even if she's got nothing on her hands, you would expect to see, I think, a bit more damage to her forearms, like she's thrown her arms up to defend herself. Absolutely. And I

thought about this. The only reason I could think why she maybe didn't have defensive wounds to her palms and her fingers was what if she was holding one of the boys? Oh, good point. She was covered in their blood. If she was holding one of the boys, her hands are no longer free. So someone can stab your neck. And maybe in that situation as a mother, she couldn't bring herself to drop her son. And he stabs her in the neck. Also, they do make a lot of the severity of her wounds or the lack of the severity of her wounds. But we have to remember the second story that she tells, which they make a big deal about her story shifting.

It didn't shift that much. The story that she gives is that the intruder is leaving the house. She goes after him and then he attacks her. So if he's trying to leave, maybe he's not trying to kill her. He's just trying to slash at her to get her away so he can get out. Don't know. There's also another bit of this that doesn't make Dali look good. And this is the important thing when covering this case. A lot of documentaries you watch, a lot of articles you read, depending on their particular agenda with the is Dali innocent, is she not, they leave out a lot of evidence. We have done our best to cover the evidence that makes Dali look innocent and covered the evidence that makes Dali look fucking guilty as fuck. This would be one of those bits, I think, because there was blood in the sink,

or at least there had been. Charles Lynch, a forensic analyst, testified that when he was at the crime scene, he noticed that it looked weird that there was blood in the sink and around the taps of the kitchen that looked like it had been smudged about and looked like it had been cleaned. He said that there was blood in the sink, on the tabs, and on the front cupboard doors under the sink. There was also blood on the door handles of the cupboard, and there was blood inside the cupboard, consistent with someone opening the cupboard door as they were bleeding. And what was in the cupboard, you might ask?

Well, what's in the cupboard under your kitchen sink? J-cloths. J-cloths in a bucket. Cleaning supplies. Yep. Somebody's trying to clean up this blood. And the thing is, you know, again, immediately when I read this, I thought, right, how do you know when that blood arrived there? They live in a house with three little boys.

That blood could have happened at any time. How many times have you cut your finger chopping garlic? Several in my case. That blood could have happened at any time. But Lynch refused this because he says, firstly, they can see some of it. So it's quite recent. And secondly, he says that the chemical they used to test for the blood being there, if it has old blood, it will go like a dull color. It will show like a dull color reaction. But the fresher the blood is, the darker and more intense the reaction will be.

And he said when he tested that blood, it went dark green immediately. And that's proof that it's fresh blood. It seems weird on both counts, though, because if she's done it, she's staging the crime scene. Why would she clean any of it? That makes no sense. And then if it's an assailant, why would they clean any of it? Also makes no sense. It's such a weird detail. It is a weird detail. But if you think, right, we don't understand why, but who makes less sense? It makes less sense than an assailant would clean that blood, surely. Yeah, that's a good point. That's a good point.

But it still makes no sense. And then it's the defense's turn. They started with a massive point of contention in this case. It's the issue of the window screen in the garage. The screen had been slashed and the defence said that this was how the intruder had come into the house. It's important to say that a lot of the media mistakenly reported that the window had been cut from the inside. But when tests were conducted, it was shown that the window had in fact been cut from the outside.

So I understand why the defence were quick to bring this up and set the record straight. But to be honest, this all seems pretty irrelevant when the prosecution came in at this point in court and simply asked why anyone would even bother to cut the screen at all. Because apparently you can just move these screens. It's not like it was locked. It would have been obvious that you could have just removed it. So even if it's in a salient, it would have been a quick assessment of, oh, I can just move this. I don't need to cut it. Might be quicker to cut it though. That might be an argument. So the prosecution make the case that wasn't it more likely that someone had just stabbed at the screen to make it look like it had been an entry point for an

intruder. And then there was even more controversy around the screen. The it look like it had been an entry point for an intruder. And then there was even more controversy around the screen. The prosecution claimed that a bread knife found in the kitchen, literally in the knife holder, had been used to cut the screen. So whether it was cut from the outside or the inside, they claimed that this proved that it was a staged crime scene. So this bread knife is separate to the murder weapon? Yes, yes it is. It's just another knife that they find, the knife block in the kitchen. How did this supposed intruder break in? They break in, they get a knife, they break out with the bread knife,

slash the screen and then break back in? That seems... And then put it in the knife block. Yeah, then put it back in the knife holder and then escape while the kid is still alive. But the thing is, they had forens forensics they claimed to back it up because the prosecution had tested the fibers from the screen with the fiber from the knife and the fiber on the knife was consistent with that from the screen. So that's interesting. They're basically saying the fibers found on the bread knife match or are consistent with that from the screen. So therefore it's proof that that was the knife used to cut the screen and it's back in the kitchen so this is a staged crime scene there's

lots of people who yell about the fact that why would you use a bread knife to slash a screen because it's got a blunt front but like what the fuck that's the least bit of crazy in this case the only thing i keep coming back to is that obviously we can't prove when it was cut but if say darlie's done it and maybe her and Darren are in it together maybe but for one of the children to still be alive makes it seem like it's quite a short time frame so absolutely who's got time to get the bread knife slashed to the screen and put it back in however who's to say they didn't do it earlier if they're planning it definitely absolutely these are all really good questions. And actually, with the bread

knife and with the timeline, hold on to these because we do come back to this. But let's move on for the moment. So in the trial, Mulder, who at this point just seems to be letting the fucking prosecution run riot, did decide to use Darlie's 911 call as a central focus of his defence. And in the 911 call, she sounds hysterical. She sounds, and talk to me. They're dying. What is going on? Somebody keep it low. I'm speaking to you. I'm not going to listen to you. Just do it.

I'm not going to listen to you. Stand up, David. Stand up. Look up. I'm trying to get you up to the ground. Do it now for us. My daughter is going to die. They're dead.

Oh, my God. Stand up. Oh, my God! Oh, my God! But then the prosecution also decided to use part of the 911 call, because listen to this. They left a knife right in the... There's a knife. Don't touch anything. Oh, I can't make it up!

I don't know! So when Hannah, you asked earlier, why is she so specifically remembering where the knife had been dropped in the utility room and that she had picked it up? She seems very concerned now that her fingerprints are on the knife. So was she saying that the knife was dropped in the utility room and she picked it up so that she can have a reason

as to why her fingerprints are on the blood-soaked knife. But why the fuck? If she's innocent, who would even think this? In this situation, what mother would even have this thought that her fingerprints are on that knife? Whose mind would that even cross? What the fuck? This looks, I think this is one of the things that makes Dali look really, really fucking bad. It's a difficult one because obviously her saying, thinking about her fingerprints and her culpability in the situation does make her look bad. But then equally, you could argue that she's in a high stress situation

and people say all sorts of things when they're in shock. You know, we can give her the benefit of the doubt, but this is the thing is it's still weird behaviour. And it's not the only thing in this case that makes her look bad. No, if you put that with some of the other things, she doesn't look fantastic. Absolutely. So yeah, the prosecution bringing this up is very smart. When I heard that bit of the 911 call, because I just listened to the 911 call all the way through, I was like, yeah, genuine. She sounds pretty hysterical. She sounds like how I assume you would sound.

When I heard that bit, my jaw dropped open. Like I genuinely was like, what the fuck are you saying? Why are you asking that? Then it got worse for Dali. So much worse. And this next piece of evidence was genuinely the final nail in the coffin for Dali, I think. The prosecution showed the jury a video of Dali and Darren at the graves of Damon and Devin just over a week after the boys had been murdered. It was on the day that would have and Devin just over a week after the boys had been murdered. It was on the day that would have been Devin's birthday and Darlie was playing with silly string. She was spraying it all over the graves and singing happy birthday Devin. She's laughing and she's giggling and she's playing. It's strange but it is important to note that she wasn't the only one doing this. Her family, Darren and Darren's family were there too and

they were all laughing. All of them presumably hadn't been involved in this murder. And all of them had lost two little boys. So it is weird. I'm not sure if it is that weird. I think that when someone in a family dies, and before anyone tells me, I don't know what I'm talking about,

that has genuinely happened to me. And when there are children involved, someone's died. In this case, multiple people have died. That is a fixture of your life forever. That's never going anywhere. And you can't cry about it forever. So you have to think of a different way of dealing with it.

And yeah, it was only a week later, but if it was his birthday, he's a kid, he's dead. Maybe celebrating his birthday in a different way that isn't crying is a way of grieving, I think, possibly. I'm not sure it's that strange. No, I think it's just this isolated bit of evidence doesn't make Dali look good. It doesn't make Dali look particularly distraught. No. But I think we come on to talk about this in a bit more detail later in the episode. But I think a lot was made of this video. She's laughing, she's giggling, she's spraying this silly string. And

a lot was also made of the fact that she was quite smacking gum. You have to remember this trial is playing out in quite a small conservative town. A lot of people maybe haven't faced the death in such a brutal way of a child. Like how could we imagine what she's going through? And how could we therefore rationalize whether this is okay behavior or not? People just looking at that will think this isn't okay behavior, because I think that's not how I would react. And we see this time and time again. And I think the jury in particular just couldn't understand how a mother whose sons had been brutally murdered a week before could be doing this, could be acting like this. And during deliberations, the jury asked to see the Silly String video nine times.

That proves how much they were focusing on her. In just eight hours, they returned with their unanimous verdict, guilty. And with that, Dali Routier was sentenced to death. She was immediately taken to Mountview Correctional Facility in Gatesfield, Texas. And there's this footage of her being walked onto death row in a white paper dress because she's a suicide risk. And it seriously looks like some medieval shit. As she's walking, all of these reporters shouting questions at her. But all she says over and over again is, I didn't kill my children. Soon after Darley was placed on death row, her family ran out of money to keep paying Douglas Mulder. So the court appointed J. Stephen Cooper to lead her appeals. And despite all the money they had paid Mulder, Cooper immediately seems to provide Dali with a better defence.

As any appellate lawyer would do, Cooper requested the full transcript from the original trial to help him start to consider Dali's appeals. But there was an immediate and obvious issue. Cooper and his team had real difficulties reconstructing the trial transcripts because the transcripts had 30,000 mistakes, like omitting words and phrases to inaudible speech. And when I read this, I was like, fuck, that sounds like a lot. And so I did some digging to try to understand the average number of errors you'd expect to see on trial transcripts. And I found this one paper that was called Quality Issues of Court Reporters and Transcriptionists for Qualitative Research. And in this study, they seem to find that the average number of mistakes is somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000. Now, this is by no means a definitive comparison. I know that before

anybody yells at me. I don't know the nature of the transcripts they were analyzing, so it's really hard to say. But what we can say, there were over 30,000 mistakes and 40 to 50% of those mistakes were judged to be substantial. And Cooper and his team say that this was unprecedented. Cooper says in the 25 years of practicing law, he'd never seen anything like it. And he's an appellant lawyer. He must read over transcripts all the time. And many experts agree that on these grounds alone, such a fucked up transcript,

Darley could have been granted a retrial because we cannot stress enough the immense importance of accurate court records. They are one of the most important elements of the trial because in cases like this that will almost certainly go to appeals, the appellant courts and appellant lawyers will depend on the transcripts to provide a verbatim record of exactly what everyone involved in that original trial said in court. So mistakes can be monumentally disruptive. When the court reporter, a woman named Sandra Halsey, was questioned, she pled the fifth, which basically means you can decline to

answer a question because answering them may incriminate you. So this Sandra lady, is she the one that's made the 30,000 mistakes? So people are talking, she's typing and she's getting it wrong. Yes, exactly. So Sandra Halsey was the court reporter during Dali Routier's trial. And when this all came out, the courts offered Dali life instead of death if she just pleaded guilty and didn't demand any appeals or retrials. That's mad. That's their offer to her. They're like, yeah, we fucked up.

There are so many mistakes in your transcripts. Your appeals are therefore going to be fucked slash impossible to accurately or adequately make. So we'll just give you life. How's that sound? And also to say you can't appeal this decision to make that a condition of the sentence seems wildly unfair. And Dali's like, fuck off. No. Yeah.

So to right, she says no, which seems like the right decision. Obviously, these transcripts being so wrong, the courts are liable for that. It's their employee that's got it wrong. So this is them stitching her up, saying we're still going to get you for this crime that the media is nuts about. And on top of that, we're going to make sure you can't appeal it. And I specifically checked this. If your transcripts, if there is evidence missing, if there's issues with the transcripts, all of these can be reason

for a mistrial, can be reason at least for a retrial. I think they're just desperately trying to make sure she doesn't get another trial and she can't appeal because they know they fucked it. Cooper, though, using the issues they found in the court's transcripts, filed a motion for a new trial, but it was denied. And honestly, people are astounded that the court transcript fuck-up didn't lead to a new trial. Sandra Halsey was decertified as a court reporter because of this case. And this incident also changed the court reporting industry inS. forever. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made, a seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. When TV producer Roy Radin was found

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So with the retrial a no-go, the only option Cooper and Darley now had was appeals. And like we said at the start, in Texas, you get three shots, three appeals, then you're done. And to appeal, you must have a valid reason, such as number one, prejudicial error. This kind of error is a mistake about the law or court procedures that caused you substantial harm, such as mistakes made by the judge about the law, incorrect instructions given to the jury, or errors or misconduct either by the prosecutor or by the jury. Or, secondly, there having been no substantial evidence. So, you claim there wasn't enough evidence that reasonably supported the trial's court decision.

Or three, ineffective assistance of counsel. So you say that you believe there were errors or misconduct by your criminal defense attorney, which were so bad that they affected your right to competent legal counsel. And Cooper went for a combination of two and three. So saying that there wasn't enough substantial evidence to match the trial court's verdict and sentence and three ineffective assistance of counsel. And whilst preparing for the first appeal, a new video surfaced that had not been shown to the jury during the original trial. It was the video of a two-hour memorial that had taken place before the Silly String video had been shot. The Silly String video

that had been played nine times to the jury. This video showed Dali and Darren and their families with a priest conducting an incredibly somber memorial service. And there's lots of crying from Dali. And just like with the Silly String video, it had been filmed secretly. So the Silly String video had been filmed secretly by the media.illy String video had been filmed secretly by the media. And this memorial service had been secretly filmed by the police. But this had never, ever been shown. And they happen, like, side by side. They have the memorial, then they go to the graves, and then they spray the Silly String.

But they completely omit no one ever showed the first video. It also came to Cooper's attention that Dali's sister was the one who had brought the silly string. It hadn't been Dali. And she said, so this Dali's sister, I bought the silly string because my nephew loved silly string. Like, why wasn't Dali's sister called as a fucking witness by the defense in the original trial? And why hadn't the defense shown the video of the memorial to put the silly string video in perspective? Because guess what? Mulder knew that that memorial service video existed. He just didn't use it. What the fuck? Whether you think Dali is guilty or innocent,

I think we can safely say she did not have good representation in that trial. It's a really good sort of gotcha moment for a lawyer, isn't it? If they see the silly string video and then you'd say, oh, well, exhibit F, this is what happened just before it. And we know that Mulder knew that it existed because the prosecution, get this, had actually given it to him. That's right. Greg Davis, the lead prosecutor, gave the tape to Mulder and told him that he could use it. Instead, Mulder tried to attack the lead detectives for illegally, without a court order, bugging and filming Dali at the memorial. What a huge miscalculation. All that happened was that the detectives then took the fifth. Why Mulder focused on trying to tarnish the detectives rather than use the tape to visually show them what had

happened during the memorial is beyond me. Because I really think that if the jury had seen the tape of the memorial service, it would have voided the impact of the silly string video. And there was even more evidence that Mulder had that he hadn't used. In the photos from the crime scene that had been taken by police, you could see that major bits of evidence had been moved around the room as the photos had been snapped. In one photo, for example, the bloody knife is in one place. Then in another photo, it's in a totally different place. This explains why the police found bloody smudges from the knife all over the place. And it completely throws out claims of a staged crime scene, or at least it

throws some very reasonable doubt over that claim. So this is it. This is the reason. So when the bloody smudges are all over the place, and that becomes a key part of the prosecution's case against Darlie, saying she staged this crime scene, she did the stabbing, she kept moving the knife around, her fingerprints are on it, they fucking moved the knife around. And they took the photos to prove it. Because at the start of their photographing part of the forensic investigation the knife is in one place then in the next photo it's in a totally different fucking place so it hadn't been moved around the night of the attack it'd been moved around when

the police were handling the crime scene by police and then they were like there's bloody smudges all over the place she fucking staged this you did it again i don't know if she's innocent or not but i'm really angry about how this case was dealt with now also remember the photos of dali that were taken by police four days after the night of the attack the one where her arms are basically black they were barely shown to the jury they were there but at no point were they pointed out to the jury and shown to them. What the fuck was Mulder doing? And also, Mulder made no point of the fact that the way Dali's throat had been slashed was highly odd. Dali was right-handed, and the way she had been slashed would have meant that she would have had to cut her throat with her left hand.

I don't think anyone would do that. I'm right-handed. My left hand is basically useless. I couldn't pick up a knife. It just flops around. It's completely useless. I can't think anyone would do that. I'm right-handed. My left hand is basically useless. I couldn't pick up a knife. Just flops around. It just, it's completely useless. Like I can't do anything. I can barely hold a pen with it.

But I couldn't pick up a knife and stab. I don't think, why would I do, why? I think slashing your own throat is a difficult enough task without doing it with your undominant hand. Especially remember the fact that when Greg Davis tries to push Dr. Townsend to say that these might have just been hesitation marks, she says they could be, but they were deep. They were deeper than most hesitation marks. Maybe Dali is ambidextrous and we just don't know. It doesn't

prove anything, but I'm just saying he doesn't point this out. For the point of fucking reasonable doubt, he doesn't point this out. And like I said, none of these injury photos were shown to the jurors. And now, years later, jurors who were interviewed for this documentary I watched say that if they had been shown those pictures, that on that alone, they would have found Dali not guilty. Then there was the issue of why Mulder had never raised Darren as a possible suspect. Dali was hurt that night, so surely Darren was the next logical suspect. And I appreciate that this would have been tough with the person on trial saying that it was a stranger and that her husband had nothing to do with it. But once again, Mulder looked suspect because he had a serious conflict of interest.

He was representing Darren in his gag order case. Remember when Darren went on the radio to defend Darlie? And I'm not saying that Darren did it, but what sort of defense attorney doesn't even try and throw light on another potential suspect? I think he just shouldn't have been allowed to represent him in the gag order case full stop. What's happening that Doug Mulder is allowed to represent Darren on the gag order case and represent Darlie in a fucking capital murder case? Like that is a huge conflict of interest. Like why is that being allowed to happen? It's very odd. And this might sound like a bit of a rabbit hole, but follow us down it for a second. It gets even more interesting because there was a $250,000 life insurance policy out on Dali,

for which you guessed it, Darren was the beneficiary. And also guess what? They were in huge amounts of debt, like massive. If the state executes you, does your life insurance policy pay out? No. I've never looked into it, but I can confidently say no. And guess who else they had life insurance policies on? Damon and Devin. Here's the thing. I could be wrong here, but I believe, maybe it's not now, but certainly at some point in British history insuring children was illegal because people were just having babies to kill them off to claim the money I think that was brought in by Lloyd George in the National Insurance Act I think however I

had a little route around this morning and I found policies in the UK where in which you could insure your children so maybe the law has changed but I'm sure that at one point it was illegal to insure your children. It sounds like it should be. Yeah. It sounds like it should be illegal to have life insurance on your children because having life insurance, it seems like the reason you would do it is so this person is the breadwinner and if they die, we're going to be fucked.

So I need life insurance on this person. Why do you need life insurance on children? The only thing I can think is like, no, why? Why would you need life insurance on this person why do you need life insurance on children the only thing i can think is like no why why would you need life insurance on children the only thing i could see that sort of made sense is the life insurances the life insurance policies that you may have on your children will pay out if your child is gravely ill and you need that money to pay for the medical bills or whatever but i completely agree with you if the child's policy only pays out after they're dead that doesn't really seem to serve any purpose.

Unless you're sending your child down the mine. Like, I don't know. Literally, like, I don't understand why. And when this came out, because this was a huge turning point, when this came out, even Darren's aunt, remember Aunt Sandy, the one who had been allowed or had snuck into court that day as Darlie's only family member? Well, even Sandy

became a bit suspicious of her nephew. So 15 months after Dali went to jail, Aunt Sandy contacted a man named Brian Pardoe. And he is a very interesting character. He's a multimillionaire who supports the death penalty, but he also funds private investigations for people he thinks might be innocent. He said when Darlie called him that he didn't know if Darlie was guilty or not, but that he simply wanted to rule Darren in or out. So Brian Pardoe paid for Darren to have a polygraph. The polygraph examiner told Darren after his test, you have utterly failed this polygraph. And this is a quote, it looks to me like you did this, like you planned this, you carried it out and you killed your sons and stabbed And this is a quote.

The family freaked out at Sandy. Even Dali wrote to Sandy from prison to tell her you need to think about what you're doing. And Sandy wrote back saying, What a clap back. Why are you kicking her when she's down i fucking like sandy you know i think yes her family like what the fuck is this crazy aren't doing why is she getting this guy involved why is she suspecting darren her nephew but i don't know the police weren't looking into darren maybe sandy felt like someone had to yeah but a polygraph, I know. Because we've talked about our feelings on polygraphs before, so we won't, we don't need to do it again. But they don't really

prove anything. And they are especially ineffective when a person has recently gone through a traumatic experience. Having someone murder your two sons is pretty traumatic. I don't really know if I care too much about the results of the polygraph test. However, there are lots and lots and lots of people who do think polygraph tests mean something. So I can see how this could have been presented in a way that would make him look very guilty. Absolutely. But the polygraph wasn't all. And this is the important thing, because Brian also hired a PI who found out that before the murders, Darren had suggested hiring someone to fake rob his house so that they could claim on the insurance. And he even had form. Darren had previously admitted to

Darlie that he had had his Jaguar stolen and got the insurance money. Fucking hell. So Darren was talking about in the weeks before, in the months before the murder, having someone fake rob his house to claim on the insurance. How did the police never even get to this bit of information? Oh wait, because they didn't look at anybody else apart from Dali. And when confronted with this information, so we know it's true because when he was confronted with this information, Darren signed a sworn affidavit admitting to the car scam and the house burglary scam. And Pardo makes a good point. Dali had no motive. Even the prosecution never point out a very clear motive. But Darren had at least 250,000 reasons. And when Pardo told Dali what he had found, she totally fucking lost

it. She said that she felt betrayed and she was adamant that she knew nothing about the house burglary scam. And there's even more. During the trial, no forensic evidence was used by the defence. And remember that the state said that fibres found on the bread knife in the kitchen were from the window screen in the garage. Well, it turned out that they hadn't actually tested the fibres found on the knife against the screen to be able to really pin it down as the material that the fibre had come from. The prosecution hadn't been able to rule out other material in the kitchen or house. So essentially, whilst the fibre on the knife was consistent with the screen,

it wasn't a definitive match. And all the defence would have had to have shown was that the fibre was also consistent with something else in the house. But they didn't even try. But Cooper did, and guess what he found? His team randomly tested seven fingerprint brushes used by law enforcement, and four of them matched the fibre that had been found on the bread knife. And the defence never raised any of this, or brought forward any experts or witnesses to refute any of the evidence

that was posed by the prosecution. Surely this is grounds for an appeal on the fact of ineffective assistance of counsel. But two appeals have already been denied for Dali. So she's running out. Like we said at the start, she's got one last appeal left. And this brings us on to a very infamous part of this case for Dali. So she's running out, like we said at the start, she's got one last appeal left.

And this brings us on to a very infamous part of this case, because three fingerprints were found at the crime scene that still haven't been conclusively matched to anyone in the family. Cron testified that there was not enough detail to make an identification because the fingerprints were smudged and they were in blood, which is a good substance for fingerprints to fall in, but it's also quite smudgy. And it was suggested at the trial that the prints had been left by one of the two boys. The investigators working the case failed to take fingerprint samples from the boys before they were buried.

So there was no way to test Kron's theory that these unidentified fingerprints were that of the boys. So they had to exhume the boys to take their prints. But the boys, and this is so heartbreaking, the boys had been buried together holding hands and the vault had flooded and this had completely destroyed the fingerprints. But when the prints were closely examined,

it became fairly clear that they had come from an adult anyway. But whether it was Darlie or a stranger fell into contention. And expert after expert go back and forth over this. And when Cooper got his hands on the infamous mystery prints, he too was able to find three fingerprint experts who excluded Darley as the source. And this seems quite non, but it's important because these fingerprints formed Darley's final real shot at a successful appeal. In 2008, the federal court granted Dali's request to test the fingerprint evidence.

The motion stated that, quote, the bloody fingerprint deserves to be examined with the most modern techniques available, including DNA testing, as any identification of this print as belonging to a male outside the Routier family will provide powerful corroboration of Ms Routier's account and destroy the prosecution's theory that there was not an intruder. But this had to be put on hold until the state was finished with their other approved testing. And that finally happened a few weeks ago in November 2018. But until we have that information, because it's only just gone into that new DNA testing, there's still more from the original trial to dig into.

And these are the bits of evidence that I think confuse me the most. First, let's talk about a bloody sock that was found in an alley 75 yards away from the Routier home. Both boys' blood was found on the sock when the sock was brought up in court cron was like the sock was found next to a storm drain and a bin if you were trying to get rid of it wouldn't you have just thrown it down the drain or in the bin it looks more to me like it was planted by dali at some point in the night because his whole thing is it's a big look at me i'm a sock covered in blood lying in an alley. I do kind of understand that it is a very good clue because it's got both of the boy's blood on it and it's readily

available to just be plucked from the street. I do I do kind of get where he's coming from when I first read about the sock I was like that's it I'm convinced she's innocent the sock does it but I don't know if I think that anymore. No it's just like every other bit of evidence in this case nothing really is definitive but as I keep saying there was so much reasonable doubt and if her lawyer had done a good job in the first place she wouldn't be sat on death row. Whether she should be or shouldn't be I don't know I'm just saying. And maybe we can make the case with the whole sock being found in the alley that Dali ran out in the middle of the night and had the forethought to hide a bloody sock in the alley around the corner. So, you know, the forethought that the police were going to need some bit of evidence found away from the house

that she could point to to say, oh, well, obviously it wasn't me. But when you start to consider the timeline, it becomes increasingly questionable. And this is the timeline as drawn by the state. Darlie was on the 911 call for 5 minutes and 44 seconds. Damon, the little boy who had been stabbed and was still alive when the police arrived, according to expert witnesses, could only have lived for 8 or 9 minutes

given the injuries that he had sustained, and he was still alive when the police arrived. Sounds like, surely, then Darlie had quite a lot to do that night. So say she slashed the screen first, then she stabbed the boys, then she ran down the street and hid the sock, then stabbed herself, then she staged the crime scene and called 911 and was on the phone for almost six minutes, and Damon is still alive when the police arrive? That seems like a lot. However, I do think that the sock could have been planted any other time.

But why is it covered in their blood? Maybe that's why the sink has got blood in it. Maybe they've, earlier in the day, she's like, oh no, you've accidentally cut yourselves, but I've cut you. And we're washing it in the sink, putting it on the sock, hiding the sock. And I'm rubbing it on the sock.

And then we clean it up and then no one's going to be checking their hands because they've been stabbed to death. She's a fucking criminal genius if she did that. She's a fucking genius. And if she did do it before, why not fucking take the socks somewhere further? Why just 75 yards? Because then it's like, oh, he's run away and it fell out of his sock collecting bag.

Yeah, but I would drive it somewhere even further because this is like the timeline is tight but it's it could be doable because the prosecution realized that they were painting a fine timeline so they found an expert witness to testify that there was no evidence to suggest that all of damon stab wounds had occurred at the same time implying that dali had stabbed him staged the crime scene stabbed him again and then called 911. Hence why he was still alive when the police officers arrived. But like, what the fuck? They're like, it's such a convoluted web. All they're doing is showing that there was no evidence to suggest that that hadn't happened. Because the witness also admitted that there was no evidence to suggest

that he hadn't sustained all the wounds at the same time. So like, it's just leaving open the opportunity that this could have fit within this timeline. And this is the frustrating thing with this case. Nothing proves anything one way or the other. So now all Dali and her family can do is wait for the results of the DNA testing. There were more than a hundred DNA samples tested for the original trial, the most ever in that state's history at the time. And the prosecution kept saying at the trial that none of the DNA was unidentified, but not all of the DNA was tested. So that's a very interesting way to state that fact. The issue is now that although the DNA and fingerprint testing is being carried out it's been over 20 years so how feasible

it will be to get anything from the evidence is yet to be seen and aside from all of the courtroom drama of this case there is so much more sadness in 2011 Darren and Darlie divorced luckily Darren had been able to get custody back of Drake so so at least he grew up with his father. Luckily, assuming Darren wasn't the murderer, of course. And Drake has been visiting his mum in prison for 20 years because he's sure she's innocent. But Dali has never been allowed to even touch Drake. He was only seven months when the murders happened. And in another cruel twist,

in 2013, Drake was diagnosed with cancer. And whilst he's now in remission, he's desperate in remission, he's desperate for Dali to be set free, to make up for all the time that they have missed. And this case, like we keep saying, is completely confusing. I personally don't know if Dali did it or not, because one of the key questions is, what was the motive? To violently murder your two sons, what is the motive, right?

Money? The boys, yes, had life insurance policies out on them but i looked into this the life insurance policies were only worth about five thousand dollars each that would barely even cover the funeral cost surely and what else dali was a woman who wanted her freedom back was she uh you know a susan smith a diane downs a casey anthony i don't know if i buy this. I don't know if I do either. And on the life insurance idea, I would be more convinced if Darren had attempted to kill her and wanted her life insurance policy, which is a quarter of a million dollars. But then why would she not say he tried to kill me? Yeah, unless he hired somebody to do it. But even then, like, why would they stab the kids that are worth 10 grand and leave the woman who's worth a quarter of a million? Exactly.

If I had been briefing this assailant, I would have said, leave the kids, fucking stab her. Or take the kids out if you're a piece of shit, cold-hearted psychopath who doesn't love his family. But why leave Dali? Surely she would have been the first port of call for this assailant. So I don't think we can accurately think of a motive why Darlie would have done this. But also, why would a stranger have done this? Why would somebody have broken into this house to stab those two kids? Apart from it was to do maybe with Darren's burglary scam and it went completely awry.

He picked the wrong person. He just came in and stabbed the kids and ran off. I don't know. And I don't think that the prosecution had much idea either. This is very head-scratching. One officer in a recent interview said that, I've known mothers who kill children over stealing some change or because they want to be free.

It's difficult. You'll burn up a lot of brain cells trying to think about it and trying to think of a motive. It's impossible for us as normal people to think of one. What? Isn't that your fucking job? To think of a motive. It's impossible for us as normal people to think of one. What? Isn't that your fucking job? To think of a motive. You're going to burn up a lot of brain cells trying to think of a motive.

Don't think about it. Don't think about it. Just put her away. Just kill her. Like what? But it gets better. Because he goes on to say, Maybe she decided that Darren was falling down on his side of their marriage agreement.

That he needed to be providing for them and he wasn't. So she decided to drop her end and, quote, let God repossess the children, but that's just a wild guess. Yeah, that's a pretty wild guess, my friend. Wow. There's not much we can say definitively, but I think what we can say is that there was bias and blinkering the whole investigation. From the start they were looking for evidence to prove Darley's guilt rather than

to investigate what happened and they already decided that they knew what had happened before they even started working on the scene. The burden of proof in a criminal trial is on the prosecution to show beyond a reasonable doubt that there was no one else who could have done this. The prosecution had the burden of proving Dali's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. It did not, however, though, have the burden of proving how or why she committed the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. But if Dali had had a proper defense, as we keep saying, if she'd have had a proper defense in her original trial one that had adequately represented her reasonable doubt would have been literally everywhere and

i believe that she would have walked free that's my thing i don't know if she did it or not i'm pretty certain i have a reasonable doubt yes this is the thing my brain is like vibrating from having done this case. When we were doing the research for it, there is so much information. Everything, every point can be come out from either way. Can use it to prove something, can use it to disprove something. It just pulls you in every direction. I'm knackered. And I guess the jury reading some of the transcripts, which I did read some of the transcripts, given all their errors.

I reckon the jury felt the same. So all Mulder had to have done was to keep hold of that reasonable doubt. And he didn't. He fucking didn't do it. And she's now on death row. And honestly, I don't know. I started this case thinking she'd definitely done it. Then I went to she definitely hadn't. And then now I'm somewhere in between. I think I'm in in between town too. Yeah. So that is the case of Dali Routier. And whatever happens with the new DNA, with the new testing, we'll know pretty soon what's going to be the outcome. Let us know what you think, whether you're in in-between town or not. And you can let us know what you think by following us on all the social medias at Red Handed The Pod. We're on Instagram, we're on Twitter.

We've got a great Facebook group. Come join us. Tell us what you think. And also, before you all stop listening, because no one ever listens to the last five minutes, we're doing a live show. We're doing our first ever live show. It's going to be in London on the 8th of February. Tickets are going on sale on the 4th of December.

And we're quite scared. So please come and be supportive and nice. It's at the Vault Festival, which is in Waterloo, right? Yeah, it's underneath Waterloo Station. It's a the Vault Festival, which is, it's in Waterloo, right? Yeah, it's underneath Waterloo Station. It's a really cool venue, basically underground. And we're in the venue called The Pit. Yes, we are. There are like 70 odd seats. So hopefully they'll go quickly. Tickets are like £10. So they're not expensive. We wouldn't do that to you guys. We don't know if we're going to be any good, firstly. And also, what was I going to say? It's a Friday night. It's a Friday night.

And the Vault Festival has a wicked bar. And we'll be there. So come for that. Absolutely. After the show, we'll definitely hang out and have drinks. So come watch us. We're going to do a really cool case that we're super excited about. And afterwards, we'll hang out and get drunk with you guys.

So get some tickets. So we will post where you can buy tickets from when they go on sale on the 4th of december so keep an eye out for that absolutely we'll do it on the social medias but if you aren't on there don't worry we'll also keep posting it in the episode descriptions for these shows so you can get your tickets there so yeah and if you just can't wait until the vault festival to support us you can also do so on patreon.com slash red handed we honestly it's turning into like a monumental life-changing amount of money that you guys are yeah that's exactly what it is it's life-changing exactly so here are some people who have been life-changing

this week katrina goodall emin richards eugenia van bremen christian turner victoria stephen Oh, hard name. Fabiola J... How do you think? How... Vakes? Vakes? Oh, well done. Jessica Rabbit, Samantha Dannen, Tracy Desoy, Leilani McGorman, Elise Pantino, Laura Roman,

Kat Duncan, and E. Kirkusgaard. Thank you very much, guys. And we will see you next week. And hopefully we'll see you at the live show, too. Bye. Bye. Bye. Harvard is the oldest and richest university in America.

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