| Darlie Routier | |
|---|---|
| Born | January 4, 1970 Altoona, Pennsylvania |
| Conviction(s) | Capital murder, 1 count |
| Penalty | Death by lethal injection |
| Status | On death row |
Darlie Lynn Routier (born January 4, 1970) is an American woman from Rowlett, Texas, who was convicted of murdering her young son Damon, and is currently on death row awaiting execution by lethal injection. Two of her three children, Damon and Devon, were stabbed to death in the family's home on June 6, 1996. Routier was accused by police and local media of killing both children but was prosecuted for and convicted only of Damon's death. Routier also sustained knife wounds, which prosecutors claimed were self-inflicted.
Contents |
Prosecutors contend that Routier murdered her sons because of the financial difficulties her family faced. She was a full-time homemaker while her husband, Darin, a small business owner, earned a relatively high annual income. However, most of the money he earned was quickly spent. This was later referred to as "living large" by Darin Routier in an interview with Joe Munoz of KXAS Channel 5 on June 14, 1996. The family, from a lower-to-middle class background, lived in a typical two-story tract-style home in a middle class neighborhood, drove a mid-sized SUV and a used Jaguar, typically inoperable, and owned a used $24,000 boat.[1] Prosecutors argued that Darlie, described as a pampered and materialistic woman, with substantial debt, plummeting credit ratings, and little money in the bank, feared that her middle class lifestyle was about to end and killed two of her children to rid herself of a financial burden. This claim has been disputed by her family and other supporters. By the time of the murders, the money had practically run out, the Jaguar and the boat weren't running, and their income had fallen by $90,000 from the year before. In addition, they allegedly owed up to $10,000 in back taxes and $12,000 in credit card debt, were two months behind on their mortgage payments, and had just been denied a $5,000 loan by their bank.
Routier claimed that an intruder killed her children, but police became suspicious when they found inconsistencies between some of Darlie's report and crime scene evidence. Routier's children were killed with deep, penetrating knife wounds to their torsos, while the slashes to Routier's neck and arm were more superficial.
Routier claimed that at one point she ran barefoot through her kitchen to call for help. The floor of the kitchen was covered with broken glass, but Routier had no injuries to her feet. In addition, traces of the screen that the intruder supposedly cut were found on one of the knives in Routier's kitchen that had been placed back in the butcher block. The sink in the kitchen had been cleaned up, but blood was found down the front of the cabinets directly under the sink, so police suspected that she inflicted her wounds over the sink, then washed the blood down. Areas of blood around the sink had been wiped away, as revealed by a luminol test. Her claim for defensive wounds was the bruising on her arms. However, at trial, after looking at photos taken June 10, Dr. Alex Santos, the trauma surgeon who operated on Darlie, stated that the bruising looked to be only a day or two old at most, which would mean it occurred in the hospital. When questioned by the defense, however, Dr. Santos extended the timeline and said the bruising might have been inflicted up to four days before the photo was taken, that is, on June 6.[2]
There were other details:
Routier described the alleged attacker as a man of medium height, dressed entirely in black with a T-shirt and baseball cap. However, she later claimed to suffer from traumatic amnesia due to the event, and her account was of little use.
Routier was ultimately convicted of murdering one of her two sons, and sentenced to death. Prosecutors did not try Routier for the death of the second son, holding his murder in reserve in case of Routier's acquittal on the first murder trial.
As of 2010, Routier is incarcerated in the Mountain View Unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ); she has the TDCJ ID 00999220.[7]
Routier's defense attorney, Douglas Mulder, was the district attorney responsible for the wrongful death penalty conviction of Randall Adams in 1977. Adams' case is profiled in the documentary The Thin Blue Line.
Newscasts appeared of Routier and other family members holding a "birthday party" at the children's grave to celebrate posthumously Devon's 7th birthday, just eight days after the murder. The grave had been under hidden police surveillance to obtain evidence against Routier, in the event that she were to break down or otherwise make a confession near the graveside. Darlie arrived with a local television crew she had invited, essentially rendering moot any need for police surveillance. At the birthday party, Routier was shown laughing and spraying silly string on her sons' grave. Darlie yelled out to her dead children that she loved them, all the while grinning and chewing bubble gum. Four days later, she was charged with their murder. When the case was tried in court, the jury was shown the so-called "silly string videotape".
Routier's family created and maintains a website that proclaims her innocence. The claims are based on mistakes her defense attorneys allege were made during her trial and in the investigation of the murders, especially at the crime scene. Some have argued that Routier should be given a new trial, often alleging that her original trial was based heavily on circumstantial evidence and therefore unfair.
The story of Darlie Routier was covered on a 2004 episode of the CourtTV series The Investigators titled "Mother on Death Row: Darlie Routier". The episode ends with a screen noting that "In May 2003, despite forensics proving that the disputed finger print is not from the Routiers or investigators, Texas upheld Darlie Routier's conviction. The defense is appealing to federal courts."[8]
On September 10, 2008, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected, without comment, her attorney's motion for a second chance to make their case for more DNA testing.[9]
