The Last Defense (2018–…): Season 1, Episode 1 - Darlie Routier: The Crime - full transcript

[Indistinct conversations]

Look live. HBC five, four, three, two...

It was about 8:00 this morning

when Darlie Lynn Routier arrived here

at the Kerr County Courthouse --

a long trip that's come down to this now.

If they decide she should die,

she'll be the first woman placed on death row in Texas

in over two years.

They reached a verdict at 3:50.

We're just waiting to get into the courtroom now



to find out what it is.

[Indistinct conversations]

All 12 jurors raised their hand

when asked by the judge

if she should get the death penalty

for murdering her son.

Darlie Lynn's little sister was close to hysterical,

screaming insults at the prosecutors.

Her mother looked furious.

Darin still believes he's married to an innocent woman,

that an intruder killed his sons,

despite the decision by 12 members of a jury

that the two boys died by their mother's hand.

Darlie, do you have any comments?



Is there anything you would like to say?

I didn't murder my children.

Today, in America,

there are nearly 3,000 people on death row.

The fate of a man will now be

in the hands of the jury.

First-degree murder...

...and over again that it's the state's burden

to prove beyond a reasonable doubt.

The unanimous guilty verdict --

sentenced to death.

Every year, on average,

five of them are found innocent and set free.

New DNA evidence...

...that will likely be exonerated...

30 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit.

We know the system can get it wrong.

But for some who maintain their innocence,

there may be a chance to get it right.

This is "The Last Defense."

When I went to sleep, everything was perfect.

When I woke up, it's been a nightmare ever since.

That's what I have to live with every single day.

This didn't happen to somebody else.

This isn't a movie, this isn't

somebody else's family and their chaos.

This is mine.

This is my -- my hell.

All I know is that Darlie is 100% innocent.

She always has been, and she always will be.

The truth is -- is -- is always gonna be there.

It's still there now.

It's not too late, 'cause Darlie's not dead.

When I first heard about Darlie's case,

I just assumed from the tenor of the news that I saw

that she was some sad sack, emotionally damaged young mother

and she snapped.

After I got involved in the case and met Darlie,

I realized all those notions were wrong.

I've been working on Darlie's case for 19 years --

15 of it without being paid anything.

There's certain linchpins to the state's case

that if you pull those out, their whole case tumbles.

Good morning.

Thanks for picking me up.

This case is important

because it shows the limits of the criminal justice system

in a lot of really unflattering ways.

This whole implication was false from the beginning.

It was an absolute rush to judgment,

and it ended up with a person being convicted

and sent to death row

for a crime that I believe she did not commit.

I first learned about this case

the Monday following the murders.

My initial reaction was,

"Things like that just don't happen out there."

We rarely, if ever,

got a violent crime out of Rowlett,

and I don't remember --

Toby, do you remember us even handling

a murder case out of that city?

No, that was the first one.

Things like that don't happen Rowlett, Texas.

It's a quiet suburb.

I didn't want to believe

that Darlie Routier had killed her two children.

I really didn't.

But I can tell you this -- In this particular case,

there's no possibility that the wrong person got convicted.

I'm absolutely certain of this woman's guilt.

These are notes I wrote in the early spring of 2002

when I first began to get involved in the case.

Tons of interview notes,

versions of old stories,

handwritten notes,

transcripts of interviews --

just to write one 6,000-word story

for Texas Monthly Magazine.

One event with 100 different perspectives,

and everyone has some theory about what happened

that no one else knows.

Someone said to me, "What are you doing?"

And I said, "I'm doing what everybody else does

when they get involved in this case --

they become obsessed with trying to find out

what was going on that night -- obsessed."

What's your name?

Devon!

Devon what?

Devon Rush Routier.

And how old are you?

5.

Oh! That hurt.

-You okay?

-Yeah.

Damon, can you do something for us? Do a flip or something.

[Burps] Excuse me.

-Damon, can you do a flip?

-[Burps] Excuse me.

No.

What can you do?

[Boys speak indistinctly]

Okay. This is the house.

Isn't it wonderful?

[Siren wails in distance]

I was sleeping at my house in Plano

when I went to get the phone --

'cause who calls at 3:00 in the morning? --

and it was a woman

who lived across the street from Darlie,

and she started screaming and telling me

that Devon and Damon were dead

and Darlie was probably dead.

When we got over to Rowlett,

they were just putting the yellow tape up,

and they had the big spotlights on it.

And I saw all these police officers

and paramedics going in and out,

and there was a crowd of people.

I said, "Is it true? Are they really dead?"

She said, "Devon and Damon are dead,"

and she said, "Darlie may be dead, too, by now."

[Siren wails]

At approximately 2:30 this morning,

the Rowlett Police Department received a 911 call

from an adult female reporting

that she and her children had been stabbed.

Officers arriving at the residence

discovered the female caller and two male children

ages 4 and 7, had, in fact, all been stabbed at the residence.

There's a father and an infant that was also at the house,

and they were upstairs and were uninjured.

The 7-year-old male was dead at the scene.

The female adult along with the 4-year-old

were transported to Baylor Dallas for treatment.

The 4-year-old was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital.

[Monitor beeping, gurney rattling]

Before I could see her, I could hear her screaming --

"How could they kill them?

How could they kill them like this?"

She rounded the corner,

and she was just covered in blood head to toe.

As soon as I thought that perhaps

there was an arterial bleed in her neck,

we rushed her to surgery.

[Monitor beeping, respirator hissing]

I remember as I walked in

through the Baylor Emergency Room,

and my mother pulled me to the side and said,

"Somebody broke into Darlie's house,

and he killed the boys,

and he tried to kill Darlie,

and we don't know if Darlie's gonna make it."

I remember when she came out of surgery

and they told us that she was stable

and they were gonna put her in the intensive care unit

because of the amount of blood that she had lost.

They wanted to really monitor her closely

and it was the safest place for her.

We were at Darlie's side,

and she was a little bit groggy from just having the surgery.

And she wanted to touch the boys' picture

and just cry and cry, and she was asking,

"Why God? Why my boys? Why my boys?"

She had a gash on her arm that cut to the bone,

and she had a slash across her throat

that very narrowly missed her carotid artery.

She very nearly died that night.

[Police radio chatter]

7-year-old Devon Routier and his 4-year-old brother Damon,

asleep in the downstairs den --

both brutally stabbed to death in their sleep.

I'm gonna read you the press release,

and then we can go over a few other things we know.

The mother was conscious when we arrived.

She said that she had fought off the attack.

The only description of the attacker

was a white male wearing dark clothing --

dark clothing and possibly a ball cap --

and that she said she struggled with him

and that he left towards the garage.

[Police radio chatter]

When the police were there,

they saw a cut screen in the garage,

which seems to indicate that someone

cut the screen from the outside,

stepped through the screen, into the garage,

and headed for the main part of the house.

And they found bloody footprints on the kitchen floor,

broken glass,

bloody fingerprints,

and blood everywhere.

There's a father and an infant that was also at the house.

They were upstairs and were uninjured.

Well, based on her statement, yes.

I mean, she, you know, gave a vague,

but a description of a white male that was attacking her,

so we have to assume that's,

you know, that's where we're starting from.

It was front-page news for days,

and people were sucked into this mystery.

How could this have happened, and who did it?

To describe it as a heinous crime is an understatement.

7-year-old Devon and 4-year-old Damon Routier

were stabbed to death early Thursday morning.

Their mother, 26-year-old Darlie,

now in fair condition,

was critically wounded fighting off their attacker.

Her husband Darin and an infant son

were upstairs and not harmed.

When I got to work,

one of the nurses came into my office and said,

"I need to make you aware of this patient that we have.

Um, we're trying to protect her

because we don't know who did this to her,

and we want to be sure she's safe."

[Respirator hissing]

So I went down to her room.

Two of her kids were dead.

Nobody knew what happened.

I can't imagine how horrible it was for Darlie.

She had been through the worst time of her entire life.

That day, the medical examiner also wanted to come by

and take some pictures.

They wanted to compare her stab wounds with those of the boys.

As soon as we're released from the hospital,

the police call and say that

they want us to come and to give a statement.

We wanted to help them.

We wanted to give them everything that we could

possibly help them with to -- to find out who killed the boys.

I was asleep upstairs,

and I didn't hear a sound from the boys,

I didn't hear a sound from Darlie

until she started screaming.

And I run down the stairs

and she meets me at the bottom of the stairs.

She was trying to tell me that Devon is hurt.

"Devon! Devon! Devon! Devon! Devon! Devon! Devon!"

I mean, she just -- The -- the look on her face

is just startling, freaky.

I get over to Devon and I start doing CPR.

I started blowing into his mouth,

and the first time I blew into his mouth

air comes out of his chest.

Blood splatters all over me,

and I look out across the room

and Damon is laying on his tummy.

He's not res-- responding to me, either.

He's just kind of laying there, kind of moaning and --

and I lift up his -- his pajama bottoms in the back,

and he's just got holes all in his back.

I don't have any information about what the father said.

What's his status?

Well, everybody's a suspect.

Everybody in this room is a suspect.

I think it's fair to say at the very beginning

everyone was a potential suspect.

But Darin, his version of events

that he had been upstairs with the baby

appeared to be accurate.

And secondly, she had never -- never told anyone,

including the police, that he had been the -- the assailant.

Pretty early on in this investigation, I think,

he was eliminated as a serious suspect.

A last goodbye to two little boys.

Devon, who would have turned 7 this week,

and his 5-year-old brother Damon,

stabbed as they slept in their home

with their parents close by.

Huge room, tons of people,

Devon and Damon's caskets there --

I remember going in,

and we were just all holding Darlie up,

keeping her from falling to the ground.

We chose to bury them together in one casket.

And, um...

we had this little saying put on there that, you know --

"They walked through life together,

now they'll walk through heaven together."

They just looked so grown up.

I mean, you know -- and they're just --

You look at them, and you look at them long enough,

you think they're gonna open their eyes,

and they're gonna

surprise you.

At the end of the service,

balloons were released into a clear blue sky --

a tribute to innocence lost,

and another reminder of just how special these little boys were

and how senseless their murders.

Police spent much of the day

meticulously investigating the crime scene.

They have taken some physical evidence from the home

but also admit they have as many questions as answers.

It's like something we watch on the news.

We never thought one day it'd hit us or whatever.

It's scary to think that -- that, you know --

I don't think they have any suspects yet.

The lead investigator, Jimmy Patterson,

and the Rowlett Police Department

had never handled a case like this.

The community was in a panic

pressuring the Rowlett Police Department

to solve this crime and solve it quickly.

Darin, Darlie, and Drake stayed at my house,

and they slept in the middle of the living room,

'cause it was the only place

that didn't have a window or a door.

Darlie, when she went to the restroom

or when she went to take a shower,

somebody had to go with her.

You know, she was afraid to be by herself.

Darlie was scared to death.

I ain't kidding.

I've never seen anybody that scared before.

Somebody tried to kill her -- killed her kids.

They're out there.

Who's the birthday boy? Let me see y'all's outfits.

Damon, how old are you?

3!

Yeah. And what's your name?

Say "Da"...

Da.

..."mon."

Muh!

A lot of families don't have the dynamic of what we had had,

as far being able to be tight

and spend as much time together as we possibly could.

I look back on it now, and it is the best time of my life.

[Indistinct conversations]

Go play, okay?

Okay.

Freeze!

Darlie, right off the bat --

I mean, she's just fun, you know, she's fun to be around.

She was just one of those natural-beauty kind of people.

It was her heart.

Just the way that she was.

Darlie was not that different

than a lot of Dallas women you would come across.

[Indistinct conversations]

She had frosted hair, cherry lipstick,

painted fingernails, she wore candy mules.

Oh, take that part out!

Don't show my butt.

She was bubbly, gregarious.

They had met in Lubbock at the Western Sizzlin' Steakhouse.

I was working there, and Darin was, like, an assistant manager,

and he said that he heard that I had a beautiful daughter,

and I said, "I do have a beautiful daughter." [Laughs]

She walked in the room, and I was just smitten.

People would fall over themselves when they saw her.

And she never realized it, she never knew it,

but y-you'd have to let her get 20 feet ahead of me,

and then you'd just watch guys,
girls,

everybody just turn their head.

I believe she got pregnant on her honeymoon,

because she had, uh, Devon

right about nine months later. [Laughs]

And off they come to Dallas.

And Darin started his own electronics company.

When I got off of work, we would sit down on -- on the couch

and out on the coffee table and just start making parts.

So, Testnec was born.

They were making money for the first time in their lives.

They spend $130,000 on a new home in Rowlett.

Darin bought a used Jaguar,

he bought a 30-foot cabin cruiser

to cruise on the nearby Lake Ray Hubbard.

He was loving his life.

He loved treating Darlie.

After the birth of her second son,

she got oversized breast implants,

like, 36 DDDs, which made people laugh,

but she was proud of them, as was her husband.

Darlie was very popular in the neighborhood.

All the kids wanted to come there.

Darlie always had Popsicles and goodies for them.

She was just a real fun-loving, caring person.

[Babbles indistinctly]

Devon and Damon were killed on the 6th.

We had all this stuff happen --

the hospital, the viewing, the funeral.

And then Devon's birthday came.

Yay! Yay, hooray!

About a week after the murders, on June 14th,

the Routiers hold a birthday party at the cemetery

for Devon, who would have turned 7 that day.

And a local television station went out and caught it.

We had a graveside prayer service,

and then later had kind of a birthday party

because Devon's birthday invitations

had already gone out,

and there were kids that had already gotten

birthday gifts for Devon,

so some of the neighborhood kids came.

Let me spray some on Damon.

They're not gonna say nothing as long we don't spray it all over the place.

We'll clean it up.

As long as we just keep it right here, they won't say nothing.

Ready?

Happy birthday to you

Happy birthday to you

Happy birthday, dear Devon

Happy birthday to you.

Why the confetti?
Why the balloons?

Why the "Happy Birthday" song?

Well, because even though we're sad

because Devon and Damon aren't here,

we try to hang on to what we can to keep --

to get us through these times.

The hard work that these detectives and policemen

are putting into this is incredible.

It's beyond the call.

I mean -- you -- ugh --

They're doing some high-tech stuff on this investigation,

stuff that [laughs] that I-I wouldn't believe in

and hadn't even seen in the movies, that --

They're -- they're taking absolutely no...

[Stammering] It's all, you know, all expense.

I mean, they're -- they're doing the most --

and the best job that they possibly can, and --

They're gonna find this person.

They are gonna find this person.

I know that he's not gonna be free for long, and I feel it.

We were hoping and

praying that the police had some leads,

or they had a direction that they were going in.

So a couple of days after the birthday party,

we get a phone call.

"Need y'all to come up to the station."

We hopped in the car, we ran up there,

and we were excited that

they -- that they were getting close to catching who did this.

They took us into two different rooms.

Patterson is with Darlie, Frosch is with me.

He wanted to take me to the house and just walk through it.

I get into the car, they take me.

They stop at this convenience store.

They say, "Well, we're -- we're -- we're buying cigars."

"Oh, okay.

So we go to the house,

told them everything that I did that night.

And they go, "Yep, that's exactly what you did,

'cause the evidence 100% supports that."

"Good.

When are y'all gonna find out

who did this?"

I was at home that night watching television,

and they broke into the programming.

[TV beeps]

A significant event has now occurred

in this very intensive investigation.

At approximately 10:20 P.M. this evening,

investigators from the Rowlett Police Department

arrested Darlie Routier.

Mrs. Routier was charged with the counts of capital murder,

stemming from the stabbing death of her sons Damon, age 5,

and Devon, age 6.

I was just like, "What?"

H-How could she even be

a suspect? Why are they arresting her?"

I couldn't believe it, because I knew --

I knew there was no way she had done this.

I started screaming.

My youngest daughter started crying,

and we just --

We couldn't belive it.

We believe that the white male suspect

described by Darlie Routier as the man that attacked her

and murdered her children never existed.

We also believe that the wounds present on Darlie Routier

were self-inflicted.

As for the father, Darin Routier,

at this point we do not believe that he was involved in

or participated in the murders.

At the police station, I could see down the hallway --

They're all jumping up, high-fiving each other,

lighting the cigars,

celebrating

that they had arrested Darlie.

Made me sick.

I yelled down the hallway and they all came running,

and I just told them.

I said, "You -- you guys, y'all got the wrong person.

You guys are making a big mistake."

In Texas, a bizarre development

in the stabbing deaths of two young boys.

Officials have now charged their mother with the murders.

She says an intruder committed the murders,

but police have complied enough evidence

to charge her with the crimes.

The crime scene tells a story.

And it -- it t-tells a hard story,

and our thing is that story's

not the same story that she's telling.

The national press descended upon Rowlett.

In Texas, a housewife --

In Texas, a mother who claimed that an intruder --

What could make mother kill her own children?

It doesn't make any sense at all.

26-year-old woman, perfectly happy,

no criminal record, no history of abuse,

no history of any kind of psychotic disorder --

nothing --

suddenly grabs a butcher knife

and destroys her own children.

The media coverage of Darlie Routier

did not happen in a vacuum.

It occurred one year after the verdict on Susan Smith.

I would like to say to whoever has my children

that they please -- I mean, please -- bring them home.

Susan Smith told police

that some black man had hijacked her car

and driven away with her two sons in it.

It has now been seven days

since Michael and Alex Smith disappeared.

Nothing has turned up,

but authorities show no signs of giving up the search.

The South Carolina community was grieving,

they put on lengthy countywide searches,

and then they realized they had been duped.

Susan Smith has confessed to murdering her two young boys.

And it's very fair to say that they were angry

that this young mother had done such a thing.

So, 11 months later,

here comes the murder of Darlie's sons,

and everyone is thinking,

"This was the Dallas version of Susan Smith."

There are unavoidable comparisons with Susan Smith.

Susan Smith claimed they were abducted by a man --

Routier insisted that an unknown intruder

attacked her and the children and got away.

The last thing that I wanted to believe

was that a mother was going to

intentionally kill her two children.

I didn't want to believe that.

And so the very first Monday after the murders had occurred,

I drove out to the crime scene.

Honestly, I didn't really know what to expect.

[Police radio chatter]

Channel 8 News has learned that

shortly after arriving on the crime scene two weeks ago,

detectives suspected that

someone inside that house in Rowlett

had killed the little boys.

Rowlett had the good judgment to call in James Cron.

He had been to literally thousands of crime scenes

during his career,

and he had been asked by the Rowlett Police Department

to come in there, to view the crime scene,

and to assist them in processing the crime scene.

The primary evidence in the case was Darlie Routier --

the statements she made and the inconsistences.

What she told the police was she woke up on the couch,

the man was standing over her,

and he attacked her on the couch.

Even though this woman has had her throat slashed,

bleeding heavily,

there's very little blood on the couch.

Darlie Routier told the investigators

that as the intruder was running through the kitchen,

she heard a loud sound like broken glass.

[Glass shatters]

She then enters the kitchen,

chasing down this intruder,

whose blood's underneath pieces of the glass.

It's Darlie Routier.

Even though it should be reversed --

Darlie's blood, if anything, should be on top of the glass --

it's underneath.

She said that she stopped at the utility room,

picked up the knife, goes back into the kitchen,

and then calls 911.

In the utility room, there was absolutely no indication

that a knife's ever been dropped on that floor.

She said the man went through the kitchen

and the utility room and out the garage.

We go back to the screen

that's been cut by this supposed intruder.

There's no indication whatsoever

that anyone either entered through that window

or exited out that window.

The dust that's on that windowsill is undisturbed.

If you assume that he exited out that window,

he would've stepped very quickly

into a flower bed with mulch on it.

The mulch has not been disturbed,

there are no footprints, nothing

to indicate that that area has been traveled through at all.

So looking at it, analyzing it,

comparing it against the defendant's story,

Mr. Cron was faced with physical evidence

that just didn't match what she was telling us.

And so we know from the physical evidence

that she attempted to stage the crime scene.

You take one wine glass and toss it on the floor

after you've already cut yourself, probably by the sink.

And at some point in time,

probably prior to the stabbing, she cut the screen.

Everything she did that evening

I think was a concerted effort to deceive the police

into believing that an intruder came into that home.

Darlie Routier was charged with two counts of capital murder.

If convicted, she could face the death penalty.

I'm wanting whatever it's gonna take

in order to find out who did this.

Darlie said that there was an intruder,

and I 100% believe her.

I'm a criminal defense lawyer --

been doing that since 1970.

I've never done anything but

criminal defense work in the law.

I've probably tried

close to 200 murder cases over the years,

uh, as well as about 25 capital murder cases --

Pretty tough cases.

Sometimes you get a clear picture

right away of what happened.

In Darlie's case, it became obvious

that the prosecution theory just did not fit together.

There are just a lot of nagging things about this case

that do not make any real sense.

You know, prosecutors always in voir dire like to say,

"Well, trying a case is just like putting a puzzle together.

You put this piece in and that piece in and this piece in,

and pretty soon the picture emerges

and you know beyond reasonable doubt

that the defendant did it."

Well, in Darlie's case,

that picture was never filled in to my satisfaction.

So we immediately began looking for crime scene analysts

and found Bart Epstein and Terry Laber up in Minnesota.

Our testimony today would be the same

as it would've been 20 years ago.

The forensic evidence does not point to her guilt.

I'd spent 43 years

at the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension,

head of research and training for blood spatter.

I worked with Terry in the crime laboratory for 32 years,

beginning an an analyst specializing, really,

in trace evidence, glass, hairs, fibers,

and then blood and blood spatter.

Parks sent us the arrest warrant.

That explained a lot of

the prosecution's theory in the case.

We also got the autopsy reports of Devon and Damon.

We got the report of Darlie's wounds.

We also got 300-plus photographs,

and so we reviewed all of that material,

and it was then Bart and I went to Texas.

We analyzed a lot of evidence.

We examined various bloodstains in various locations,

and we collected a number of blood samples.

If we could get a full picture

through the forensic evidence

of what happened there,

it could save her life.

Doug Parks and his experts had done a pretty good job

of starting to work up an actual forensic defense of the case,

but they still need more time to complete that testing.

I think that Epstein and Laber

could present the true facts about the scene.

I understand that after walking through the scene

for 20 or 30 minutes,

James Cron decided that it was an inside job

and that someone in the house had perpetrated the offense.

It's surprising to me

that Cron could've come to that conclusion that rapidly

about Darlie's apparent guilt

without having gone through all of that evidence,

and there was a ton of it.

There is a suspicion that the Susan Smith case

played a role in why the Rowlett Police Department

and Dallas County prosecutors very quickly honed in on Darlie.

It's very possible that the police,

that James Cron as they were headed to Darlie's home thought,

"We've got another Susan Smith on our hands."

James Cron said, "There was no intruder here.

This was done by someone in the house."

And he determined that

before that sock down the alley was found.

An adult's athletic sock was found

with a small bloodstain from both boys

in the alley a few doors away.

The investigators were coming up with all these conclusions

about what happened inside the house,

and then one cop found a bloody sock

75 yards away from the Routier house.

And the blood belonged to two people -- Damon and Devon.

How did that sock get down there?

Once it came to light

that the sock that was found down the alley

was from the Routier house and contained both boys' blood,

what should have happened is that

they should have stopped right then and said,

"Okay, this may not be what we thought it was."

Next on The Last Defense

every defendant starts out

with the presumption of innocence.

Period.

The evidence will show you that the real Darlie Routier is,

in fact, a self-centered woman, a materialistic woman,

There's not a fiber in my being that believes

that Darlie is guilty.

They had no eyewitness,

no motive,

but they knew how to make a jury despise a defendant.

One month before these killings,

she had the diary

and she said forgive me for I am about to do.

I'm perplexed that a prosecutor

would think that this is something

that she had inflicted on herself.

Darlie didn't stage any crime scene.

She's either innocent

or she's teh devil.