Darlie Routier, also called the Dallas Susan Smith because of the similarities in the two crimes, is on death row and is waiting for an appeal in the case of the bloody murder of her two oldest sons.
Darlie Routier is back in the news now that CNN is featuring her case in their series, Death Row Stories.
Since her arrest in 1996, Darlie Routier has maintained that she is innocent and that a home intruder is to blame for her sons’ deaths.
On June 6th, 1996, Darlie Routier said she fell asleep in front of the TV with her two oldest sons, Devon, 6, and Damon, 5, while her husband, Darin, and their infant son, Drake, slept upstairs.
Darlie Routier then said that an intruder broke in, sliced her arms and throat, and viciously stabbed her two young sons to death.
A necklace saved Darlie Routier’s life, as it stopped the knife only 2 millimeters away from her carotid artery. However, it was embedded so deep in her neck that it had to be surgically removed.
Shortly after the murders, police began to suspect Darlie Routier of committing the murders herself after inconsistencies in her story surfaced.
Add to that, Toby Shook, the assistant district attorney at the time, told CNN, “It was a bloodbath. And when a crime like that happens, it’s someone in the house that did this.”
While there were a few things that made prosecutors question Darlie Routier’s story, including an incident just eight days after the murder wherein Routier was recorded singing “Happy Birthday” and shooting Silly String at her sons’ gravesite.
A jury quickly found Darlie Routier guilty and sentenced her to death.
However, an appeal is being built by attorney Stephen Cooper, and some of the things he has discovered in his research suggest that not only was Darlie Routier possibly not the killer of her sons, but that her husband is much more likely.
For one thing, the court reporter at Darlie Routier’s trial made a whopping 30,000 mistakes in the transcript, 40-50 percent of them substantial.
Add to that, Darlie Routier had two hours of memorial videos on the recording before the short clip of the Silly String incident, which was the part shown in court, and Cooper doubts that Darlie could have inflicted the gruesome wounds she suffered on herself.
Also, he discovered that Darin Routier, the husband, previously admitted to one insurance scam as well as a plot for a staged home robbery so he could collect an insurance claim.
Darin Routier would have collected $250,000 in the event of Darlie Routier’s death.
Such an interesting case. Will you be tuning in on Sunday to watch how the story of Darlie Routier unfolds?