Crime Junkie - INFAMOUS: Darlie Routier (Part 2)

Episode Date: September 16, 2019

After Darlie was sentenced to death for the murder of her two boys her defense team immediately started the appeals process. There was a lot of information they felt the public didn't get to hear and evidence that could prove an innocent woman is sitting on death row for a crime she did not commit.  For current Fan Club membership options and policies, please visit https://crimejunkieapp.com/library/. Sources for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/infamous-darlie-routier-part-two/    

Hi Crime Junkies, I'm Ashley Flowers, and I'm Britt, and we are back to tell you the second part to our story about Darlie Routier and her two murdered sons, Devon and Damon. So if you're just listening to this now and you haven't heard part one, you're going to be totally lost. Go back, listen to it, and come back to this episode. We left off last episode with Darlie being convicted of the murders and sentenced to death row. Police were sure Darlie was responsible from early on in their investigation. They said the physical evidence proved she was lying. She wrote an incriminating note in her diary, basically confessing to it,

and it was the videotape of her spraying silly string on her son's graves that the jury watched 11 times before deciding no mother would act that way and convicting her. But there's always two sides to a story, and Darlie's version of all these supposedly incriminating things are much different than the prosecution presented, and they lead many to wonder if an innocent woman is currently sitting on death row. When Darlie was sentenced to death in February of 1997, she couldn't believe what was happening. Her family couldn't believe it either. It felt like one tragedy right after another, right after another.

They lost Devon and Damon, and now they stood to lose Darlie too. And everyone in her life was convinced of one thing. She was innocent and had been wrongly accused. They said to anyone who would listen that the prosecution painted a one-sided picture, and there was so much more to the story that the public didn't know. They went on every news outlet, every daytime talk show that they could, and fought with the hosts, with some of the jurors that even convicted Darlie. They tried to point out that this was a witch hunt,

and they said anyone who looked critically at the state's case would see that it was clear someone else was responsible, and Darlie was sitting in prison for a crime she did not commit. The biggest argument the family had against Darlie's accusers were her injuries. The slash on her neck and a stab wound on her arm, right? Right. But didn't the police say that it was pretty superficial, like that was kind of the base of the argument? Right. They said that she inflicted those wounds on herself, standing over the kitchen sink.

Now, full disclosure here, I can't explain the blood over the kitchen sink. I think at one point Darlie applied a towel to her neck. Maybe she was near the sink when it happened. I don't know, and I don't want to get too hung up on that part, because what I want to talk about were the extent of the injuries that the prosecution called, you know, quote, self-inflicted, and the number of injuries that they seemed to never even address. So first, the cut to her arm was to the bone. That does not seem superficial to me, but to be fair, it wasn't life-threatening.

So let's say calling it superficial was just someone's interpretation. Let's talk about her neck. The cut on her neck came two millimeters from cutting her carotid artery, which would have killed her. Two millimeters. Yeah, that's not a lot. I think the big question last episode that the police raised was like, well, why stab the boys straight through and just cut her neck?

The wound very well should have killed her. And it should be noted that the knife was stopped, not because someone stopped cutting, but by a necklace that she was wearing. And they had to actually surgically remove the necklace from her neck. Like, to me, there is no way, if it was self-inflicted, that she would have known to stop two millimeters away, right? Yeah, that seems incredibly unlikely. It does.

And just to put this in perspective for people, like two millimeters sounds really small, but I really had no concept for how small. And it was just by happenstance that I was watching this totally unrelated video on YouTube while I was like researching this case this week. I like watching sometimes medical videos on YouTube. And so I was watching this one on microneedling with plasma. And it's basically like, it's called a vampire facial. It's this thing that people do to make them look younger,

get rid of scarring or whatever, whatever. But what happens in this is a bunch of teeny tiny super needles like puncture your face all over and the technician just moves this wand all over the face. Nose, cheeks, forehead, up and down, up and down, up and down, while these little needles just jab, jab, jab away. And the doctor on this video mentioned that these needles go up to two millimeters deep into the facial tissue. So two millimeters is so small that people are poking needles into their face for cosmetic purposes. And that's how close the knife was to killing Darley.

Okay, I'm with you on this one. I don't think she could have been able to cut herself that deep and known when and where to stop. But I kind of have another theory, like just to keep playing devil's advocate. Okay. What if she was trying to kill herself? Like I keep going back to that note in her diary where she said she was so sorry for what she was about to do. What if her plan was to kill the boys and then kill herself too? So we definitely need to talk more about that diary entry because like all of this, I think there's another side to it.

But if this was a murder suicide attempt, then here's what I don't get. Why call police? Why wake up Darren? None of that makes sense. She didn't hit her carotid artery, but she very well could have died from blood loss. I'm not buying it. Nothing about her neck wound looks self-inflicted to me. And here's the thing. We're talking about the stab wound in her arm.

Neck wound. It's more than just those two. Again, in court, that's all they talked about. But no one talked about all of her other injuries. And Brett, I made a document with just some of the pictures taken of Darlie in the hospital and then after she was released. And I got them from the ForDarlieRoutier.org site, which has many of the evidence photos and court documents for this case. And I'm going to put pictures and links to everything on our website if people listening want to follow along. But let me send this to you and I want to go through some of the pictures of her injuries.

Okay. So let's look at this first picture on the document I sent you. Okay. She's laying in her hospital bed. You can see she's got nicks and cuts and scratches all over her arm. It's not just one stab wound. You can see the stab wound has been stitched up. It's at the very top of her forearm.

But underneath, there's all kinds of small marks as well. If you go down to the second picture, that's a picture of her hand after she was released from the hospital. And you'll see there's like lacerations on her fingers. And what I had seen some experts say in the ABC documentary The Last Defense that I watched is, those are consistent with defensive marks of somebody who's being attacked and trying to grab a knife. Okay. I mean, if you're looking at this like she's self-inflicting, I mean, this is very detailed to also slice your fingers in a way that makes it look like you were defending from a knife wound, right?

Yeah. Is there any consistency with it being like she was stabbing and her hand slipped off the grip and cut herself on the blade while stabbing the boys? You know, I don't know that. This is her left hand. So her non-dominant, maybe? Yes. She was right-handed. This is her non-dominant hand.

It doesn't make sense that it was slipping when she was stabbing the boys. The wound on her arm, the stab wound on her arm is on her right. So it, you know, maybe it slipped for her. So if you want to ignore this, we can. Okay. But scroll down even further. So the next picture is of her hands put out. And you can see the bruising on the top of her hands, which I cannot find an explanation for other than being in a struggle with someone, possibly.

And if you scroll down even further, the bruising on her arm. Oh my God. She has her arm held up. And from her wrist to her armpit is this deep purple, blue, black bruise that I don't even know how you would self-inflict. Yeah. I mean, that's got to be consistent with someone, you know, really forcing you down onto a hard surface or something. Like, I don't even think you could throw yourself hard enough to make that happen. No.

And here's the thing too. And I don't know how you throw yourself hard enough against something and not wake up anyone else in the house. Again, Darren didn't wake up until she started calling his name. The little boys are just laying in the living room asleep. To that point too, I guess you could, you could look at that two ways. You could say how it is no one waking up when she's struggling with somebody this severely. But if you keep scrolling, like she's got marks on both arms. She is bruising on both arms and the nicks and the cuts and the scratches are just all over and super consistent.

And experts have said that, like, if we go back to her wound, the stab wound, that hip bone, they said that that's super consistent with self-defense. Again, her right arm was her dominant arm. If someone was coming down at her. She would have lifted it up in front of her, yeah. Yeah. If someone was coming down at her with a knife, that's exactly what she would do. So I don't know personally how anyone can look at these images and see self-inflicted.

They seem like someone got in a struggle and if this was self-inflicted, it would seem like it would be super time consuming, super elaborate. It just doesn't make sense. Okay, so if there was an attacker, can we go back to Darlie's diary entry? You said it's not what we thought, right? Right. I guess, what else could it mean when she said, I'm so sorry for what I'm about to do? Well, again, like everything in this case or so many things is the prosecution, the police,

they pick out the incriminating thing and that's kind of what gets publicized over and over and over. But that was just one line from an entire entry. And the whole entry, if you were to read like the whole paragraph says, Devin, Damon and Drake, I hope that one day you'll forgive me for what I'm about to do. My life has been such a hard fight for a long time and I just cannot find the strength to keep fighting anymore. I love you three more than anything else in this world. Please do not hate me or think in any way that this is your fault. Now, this was not an apology for what she was planning to do to them.

It was an apology for what she was thinking of doing to herself. Darlie was thinking about taking her own life. She had, I mentioned this briefly in our last episode, had been suffering from postpartum depression after having their third son Drake. And she wrote a lot about her feelings in her diary and the writing was just one month before the murder. She said she didn't go through with it. She wanted to be around her boys. She wanted to see them grow up and nothing in her diary made it seem like she was a threat to them.

She was depressed sometimes and I don't think people really talk about how common postpartum depression is. Even now, I've seen so many of my mom friends feel so alone until they start talking to one another and realize that it is so, so common. But if it's not talked about as much now in 2019, how were things in 1996? And let me tell you one of the times that I was most outraged in all of my research. So I was watching an interview on ABC and the prosecutor who was lead in Darlie's case was talking. And he was trying to make a point that Darlie was the exception to all the rules. That you can't look at her through a normal lens.

He said, listen, I get this whole case isn't normal. Parents don't normally talk about killing their kids. But mothers don't normally commit suicide either. His point being that she was talking about suicide. So because of that, she clearly is the one who killed her kids. And I was appalled. Mothers are not superheroes. They're not immune to human emotions.

And a mother who's suffering from something very natural and normal should not be put on trial for murdering her kids. I just couldn't believe he was saying that out loud and that he really meant it. It is absolutely outrageous. My jaw is on the ground right now and I am seething with anger. Again, I couldn't believe he wanted to be on tape saying something like that. I think that, I guess, sure, but you're being interviewed and broadcast the world. Great. Perfect time to be especially terrible at being a human. And the problem is, I think he really believed it.

And I think it's something that he could get everyone else to believe at the time because of another case that happened just a couple years before the Routier Boys were murdered. One of the main reasons the police, the prosecution, and the public found it so easy to believe Darlie would kill her own boys was because of a woman named Susan Smith. And this isn't just an assumption. According to ABC and CNN, in the early stages of the investigation, people were saying Darlie was their Susan Smith. So who's Susan Smith? Susan Smith was a South Carolina woman who, just two years before all of this, was in the national news.

She had made claims to the police that a black man had hijacked her car with both of her kids inside, and now the kids in the car were missing. And she did all sorts of press and played up being the grieving mother, begging for them to return the kids to her. And police never really bought her story. And after nine days of this charade in the public, she ended up confessing to killing both of her kids by rolling her car into the lake with the two of them trapped inside. The public was outraged.

And outrage is even an understatement for where she lived in South Carolina, especially, because the entire public felt like they'd been had, like thousands of people were searching, volunteering, and all along they were helping a woman who murdered her own babies. So just two years later, when Darlie has a crazy story about an intruder coming into her home for the sole intention of killing two innocent kids and maybe her, people start talking right away. She was Texas' Susan Smith right from the very beginning.

So her case was completely colored by this then? Absolutely. Everyone knew about Susan Smith. Everyone hated her. So maybe if Darlie's case would have happened in another time or if Susan Smith never committed her crimes at all, maybe people would have been more likely to believe that there really was an intruder. And on top of the fact that people hated Susan and that kind of translated over to Darlie, the prosecution made a huge deal about how Darlie bleached her hair and got breast implants, and they used that as proof.

Of what? I don't know, but it came up over and over and over in my research. And even in the last defense segment, they interviewed a juror who said, like, who goes out and spends $2,000 on breast implants? And I didn't like her because her clothes are droolily refreshing. It's never like the kind of stuff I would buy. So she's pretty. And I don't know how it has to do with killing your kids just because it's not how you act

and you don't have breast implants and your hair isn't bleached. What does that have to do with any of this? Like this case was a full on character assassination and the jury focused on the boobs and the hair and not the fact that all the parents in the neighborhood said that Darlie was a great mom and they would let their kids play at her house all the time. And she loved her kids. Like all of that was gone. So the jury is already thinking all of this stuff.

So when they see the silly string video, it's like every validation they need to hate her. But let me tell you what they didn't see. The police put surveillance on the grave site, which is not super legal. It's like a very weird gray area and no one's ever been convicted of doing anything wrong. Like the police all played the fifth. There was this big trial because there's, you know, maybe this like expectation of privacy by a grave site, whatever. But they had basically mic to the grave site and we're taking video.

And what they had that the news stations weren't there for was that before the silly string party, there was a two hour prayer vigil that was taped. The public never saw crying and praying, talking about missing the boys. And all of this feels super raw, super real and super normal. And none of that was ever played for the jury. All that they saw was the silly string. So I fully get that there's a ton of factors surrounding this case that played into people's perception of Darlie right or wrong, which by the way, most of them are wrong.

But last episode, we talked a lot about the actual evidence as well. Like it's not like they're just convicting her on her looks, the partial videotape of actions or other people's bad actions. But there was the knife that she said she had moved, but there was no evidence of the glass over the bloody footprint. The knife inside the house that was used to cut the screen and the whole fact that the window and area around it, where this guy supposedly came in and out was completely undisturbed. Like there is some physical evidence that is not adding up to her story, no matter how much she was a victim of this undue media scrutiny. There was.

So let me give you what I've learned about that because Darlie has put through multiple appeals and new information has come to light about a lot of that stuff. So let's start with the knife and I'll be honest right off the top. I can't explain why there was no bloody imprint of the knife on the floor where she said she picked it up in the utility room. If we're going to look at this evidence, like with the assumption of innocence, my best explanation, which I do believe is plausible, is that the human memory can almost be worthless, especially in times of trauma. It very well could be that that part of her story, she really does believe to be true,

but she's maybe just misremembering. Like her brain is filling in a gap. Exactly. But what I know for sure, though, is that her talking about the knife on the 911 call to the operator isn't as sinister as the prosecution made it out to be, or even the statement analysis blog made it out to be that we talked about last episode. They presented it like she's offering up this unsolicited information to the operator and trying to like scheme to cover her tracks.

Let me play the entire part about the knife for you right now. Okay, listen, ma'am. Make a list of officers in the front door, okay? What? Ma'am, make a list of officers in the front door. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. We got the press, baby.

It's fine. It's fine. So you'll notice on the call that she doesn't just come out and make up excuses. No, you're right. Like, she's just responding to a prompt from the operator. Right. And it's not even like she does it right away. It's a full minute on the phone before she realizes the ramifications of what she had done instinctually. To me, that didn't sound like a woman setting the stage. It sounded like a scared mom who has no idea who did this or why,

and she's afraid the only piece of evidence that she might have is gone. Okay, so I'm willing to throw out the 911 call and even like the whole unexplainability of the knife. But what about the glass over the bloody footprints? Well, Darlie's defense team points out that the scene was contaminated by first responders. When they were originally called, they were there to perform life-saving measures. So there was no caution for scene preservation. People were in and out, and they say it's very possible that one of the people on the scene maybe like moved glass around with their feet or things got shuffled around.

Okay, I guess. I know it's not the CSI moment everyone is hoping for, but like real cases in real life are so messy. But I might have some hard science to throw at you to convince you someone could very well have come in and out of that window. So first, let's talk about the prosecution's claim that there wasn't any evidence someone had been in or out of that window because there was dust that was undisturbed and no footprints in the mulch. That was their big claim. Well, first, when I saw a picture of the windowsill in the documentary I watched,

it's not what I pictured at all. Like I could barely see this quote layer of dust that they said was undisturbed, and the mulch under the window isn't under the freaking window at all. Like you could come out right onto concrete first and the mulch is like a couple of feet away. So Darlie's husband Darren even demonstrated for a news outlet how someone could easily step in and out of the window. And it's hard to explain because again, when I'm first hearing about this and reading about this, I imagine something kind of high up that you'd have to like grab onto, then like straddle your legs through. Yeah, me too.

No, but that's not the case at all. It's like close to the ground and very big. So when Darren did his demonstration, he literally put one leg through the screen, crouched down, like ducked under, swung his body through, then brought the other leg through. And you can slide in and out without disturbing anything. So to me, the dust and the mulch not being disturbed is meaningless. So let's go to the fibers on the knife because for me, this was what was the game changer. Like originally I thought, listen, forget everything else.

If the knife that cut the screen came from inside the house, why are we even talking about this case? This is open and shut. But here's the real scoop. And I've heard two different possibilities from both ABC and CNN. So the first possibility is cross-contamination. When we talk about fibers being found on the knife, we're talking about itty bitty microscopic little things that weigh almost nothing and therefore transfer very easily.

So this guy, this expert named Charles Lynch told ABC that when he got the butcher block to test the fibers, they had already been dusted for prints, which means if the window had been tested, then the butcher block, they could have been transferred there. The other theory came from CNN's death row documentary and Darlie's new attorney said that he got seven random fingerprint brushes tested and four of them had the same chemical consistency and appearance as the fibers on the bread knife. So it might just be something in the brushes and totally not related to screens or any of this at all. Oh my God. And to top it all off, like those fibers weren't tested against anything else initially.

It's like they tested them to see if they could be consistent with the screen. And when they got the answer that they wanted, they were like, okay, boys, we're done. Let's lock this lady up. So while we can't exclude all of the evidence, I think if we look at it critically, which I hope anyone would do in a death penalty case, I at the very least have reasonable doubt. And that's before I tell you about the piece of evidence that I didn't even bring up in the first episode. Because if you're on the fence now, just wait.

So in the home, amongst all the blood and the chaos and cut screen and the knives, there was also a couple of prints that couldn't be identified. They didn't match Darlie. They didn't match Darren. They looked like an adult. So they're thinking it's not the kids, but here's the crazy part. They never compared them to the kids prints because at the time of the murders and the first trial, the medical examiner never even took print samples from the two boys.

You're kidding. Isn't that some sort of protocol? It was, but they just never did it. And years later, when Darlie tried to appeal her conviction, they got in order to exhume both boys so that they could conclusively say those prints did not belong to them either. But when the boys were buried, they were actually buried together holding hands. And so many years later, water had leaked into the casket. And by the time they got them out, there was like nothing usable that could be obtained.

So now Darlie's team is forced to try and identify the print using DNA. And this print is infamously known as 85J. Like that's the evidence number. So you'll see it like pop up everywhere if you're like researching this case because people have been talking about it for years. And DNA has been requested over and over and over. And it was finally granted to test this 85J fingerprint, but we're still waiting on the results. So is that all we have in the house to test against a possible intruder, like just this one single fingerprint? Yeah, the evidence in the house is sparse.

And that's what makes so many people believe that someone within the house had to have perpetrated the crime. But there was a big piece of evidence found outside of the house. And not like right outside, we're talking 75 yards away that totally kind of shakes this case up. So in an alley next to a trash can and like right above a drainage opening was a single sock with blood on it. It was collected when police initially canvassed the neighborhood. And when they had it tested, it had both boys blood on it. Okay, but what does it mean? Well, to me, it means that everything Darlie has been saying is real that someone else was in the house and that someone else ran out of the house.

But how do we know for sure that it belonged to someone else? Like it could have been planted, right? Are you saying like planted by Darlie? Yeah, I mean, again, looking at this from the prosecution's perspective, if she did it and we have this piece of evidence 75 yards away, something I know is connected to the scene because both victims blood is on it. Is it possible she put it there to help support her intruder theory? So that's actually what a lot of the non Darlie supporters say that she was the one who put it there. But the why and the how don't really make sense to me.

Like if she's planting something, why there? It's far enough away that it could have easily been missed. Somebody could have picked it up and threw it in the trash. It could have like gone down that sewer. Like if it got knocked off into the street, it could have like gone down the drainage ditch. Like if this is your only chance to get police to believe that someone else was in your house, like wouldn't you put it a little closer to the house, maybe in the middle of the street, not next to a trash can. I don't know, to me is a little like inconspicuous.

And if this was a plant, I think she would have had to have put it closer to the house just for the timing purposes. So when the paramedics arrived, remember Damon was still alive. And according to experts, his injuries would have only given him about eight to nine minutes to live. And we know that Darlie was on the phone with 911 for almost a full six minutes. That's how long the call is. Like it's like five minutes and 44 seconds or something like that. So if she planted this, then she would have had to have stabbed both boys. Then in just three minutes, she would have had to have like taken the sock, put it in each of their bloods,

ran 75 yards away, dropped the sock, run 75 yards back and flipped her own wounds, there isn't just two cuts, we have bruises, we have nicks, then she gets on the phone with 911. Like I don't understand how that would be physically possible. Yeah, the physical elements of it are explained it away immediately. To me, there's a second person. I don't know who that second person is. I don't know how the second person fits in. I mean, you can go down a rabbit hole and say it's a second person that's in that house.

You can say it's a complete stranger, an intruder. But I think if you're looking at the defense side of this, they're saying that someone else was in there. And what they wonder is, again, because this was right by this drainage ditch, they're wondering if maybe they were trying to throw some stuff away to get rid of evidence. And maybe there's other stuff that's totally lost forever and this thing just didn't make it down there. So we know very little about this sock, but it's one of the items that Darlie's appeal attorney is having retested. And when I was first researching this case and hearing about this sock over and over, I imagined that if it was from an intruder, like it was an actual sock that maybe they would have worn.

But I've heard some rumblings online that some people want the sock tested for chloroform. What? Yeah, so this brings me to the strange part of this case that hasn't been reported by a ton of really big outlets, but I see stated as fact in forums and YouTube videos, including the victims extended family has talked about this. So there's this theory that sexual assault was part of the motive of this crime, that maybe Darlie was knocked unconscious with something like chloroform. So that's where this sock thing comes in. Maybe this person had chloroform on a sock, and that's why the sock was out.

That's why it had blood on it, whatever. But basically she was knocked out before her boys were attacked, and that's why she didn't even wake up, even though she was a light sleeper. And I'm seeing in these same places that her underwear was missing and she thought the man took it. Okay, I feel like this is kind of coming from left field. That's exactly how I felt when I was researching this case, because if this is legit, I'm like, why are we not all talking about this? Like, why was she tested for drugs?

Was anything else tested for drugs? Did you even test for chloroform around someone's face? Did they try? Was her underwear really missing? Do we have proof of that? So many questions, but I don't know. Maybe this at least makes a little more sense than just a stranger coming in to just murder. Maybe someone just saw her sleeping on the couch.

If I remember correctly from the crime scene, they did these stagings. It wasn't the actual photos, but I think the boys were sleeping on the floor. So maybe the person who came in didn't see them. The plan was just to attack her. Then they saw the boys, and that's when they decided to use the knife from inside the house. I'm not saying this makes perfect sense, but this is the weird thing that if it's true, I just don't get where is the underwear, and does this explain why she slept through her sons being stabbed and her own throat being cut?

How do you not wake up from that? Yeah, and if her underwear are missing, he could still have them, or maybe they're down the drain where the sock was. It opens up a lot more questions. It totally does, and if you're buying that someone other than Darlie could put that sock there, who knows what evidence was disposed of? I mean, I guess at this point, I'm definitely buying into the fact that someone else was there. It doesn't make sense for Darlie to have put the sock there.

The sock being there doesn't even make sense, but it still doesn't make sense to me for just a stranger to come in off the street to do this. So I disagree a little bit. I feel like we've covered a number of cases now where someone completely unrelated to a victim perpetrates violence for no reason other than to perpetrate violence, and oftentimes there's no connection, no motive. Like, obviously there's Israel Keys, but I also, when I think about this case, I think about the Tommy Lynn Cells episode that we did in the fan club.

Oh my God, yeah, that's so close to this case. Yeah, so he, for everyone who's not in the fan club, he snuck into a house, killed a kid he never knew, and this kid's mom was put in jail for it. So this stuff does happen. It is terrifying to think about it, but it does happen. And that's why, you know, we're so weird about personal safety and being prepared on our show. Now, it does happen, but I'm not sure there weren't more contributing factors in this case because there is still one more bombshell I haven't told you

that may hold the key to answering all of our questions. Years after Darlie was convicted of murder and sentenced to death, an affidavit came out at the behest of Darlie's appeal attorney. It was an affidavit signed by Darlie's husband, Darren, and it said a couple of interesting new things. The first was that apparently Darlie had brought up separation to him the night of June 5th. Now, previously, both Darlie and Darren told investigators that they like, kiss goodnight, oh, please dream about me, everything's hunky-dory.

So this is new, but this is not what everyone's focused on in the statement. Like, I got a little hung up on it, but no one really dived super deep into that. The real revelation is that Darren admitted to committing insurance scams. So previously, he had had someone steal a car so that he could collect insurance money, and apparently, he had been talking to a couple of people about setting up an insurance scam on his home. He wanted someone to break in, steal a bunch of stuff, then he would collect the insurance money, pick up the stuff later, and basically share the profits with whoever committed this crime.

I'm sorry, what? Yes. How has this not come up before? Well, apparently, when Darlie was first arrested, the lawyers that she was assigned were talking about bringing Darren up as an alternate suspect. Like, Darlie had a $250,000 life insurance policy on her. He was looking kind of shady because of all this insurance stuff, but Darren had found another lawyer who told him,

listen, if you hire me, I won't bring you into any of this, and wouldn't you know it, that guy got hired right after that. That kind of seems like a conflict of interest. Yeah, legitimately, Darlie's lawyer also repped Darren before, so I think it absolutely was a conflict of interest. And Darlie didn't find out about Darren's insurance scam plan until many years after she'd already been on death row. So it's not even something she knew she could protect herself from?

No, everything she has told people, and even Darren says no, Darlie had no idea about this, she said that she had no idea he was plotting this scam to, like, have somebody break into their home. So what did she say when she found out? She said that she felt betrayed. I don't know if it made her think that he could be involved or responsible, like, the two stayed married for a long time

all the way until 2011. And when they finally did divorce, Darren kind of gave a statement, he said, you know, we didn't divorce because I changed my mind about her innocence or I don't love her, I'll always love her, she's the mother of my children, but I just need to move on with my life. Okay, I'm sorry, I, like, cannot shake what you just told me.

Has anyone looked into this anymore? Like, was there someone he tried to hire? Who else even knew about this? Well, and the number of people knew about it, even Darlie's like stepdad, I think, but when he was asked about it, he was like, huh, I don't know why I never, like, thought to mention this before. The two and two together and said,

I don't know how you don't think this is relevant, but what if this was a staged robbery gone bad? What if this was more than a robbery for hire? Like, Darren swears up and down that he never even got to the point of hiring someone specific, and he's like, if I had, I would have shared the names with police, like, I would want to give them somewhere to start, but I don't know, maybe he's defending Darlie so fiercely

out of guilt for something he did, or maybe he did nothing and he's just being a good husband. Again, like in Darlie's case, you can look at Darren's actions through whatever lens you want to. All we can do is wait for something scientifically solid to come back to hopefully give us answers in this case. Darlie has appealed her case a couple of times. The first time it was on the basis of the transcripts,

like her original court reporter made something like 1,800 significant errors in the transcript, and we're not talking spelling mistakes or grammar, but she would record people's answers wrong, she would change statements, like, very crazy stuff, and this would normally be something that would get a person a new trial, but the reports were fixed and Darlie's appeal was denied.

She did not get a new trial based on this. So, since 2008, her team has been focused on this, like, new physical evidence and trying to get this stuff tested. They want the fingerprint, they want the sock. There might be some other evidence I don't know about. The last report I could find was from 2018, and it just says we're still waiting for results

while Darlie sits on death row. Now, there are whole websites devoted to her innocence. Other groups devoted to making sure she stays in prison. This is one of those cases that gets more and more convoluted the deeper you dig, and all we can do is hope for justice for Devin and Damon, whatever that means. In 2007, Darlie wrote a letter to those who support her. It can be found on the four Darlie Retear websites,

and I'll read it to you now. It's from December 9th, 2007. It doesn't seem possible that it's been 11 and a half years since the nightmare began. I close my eyes, and it seems just like yesterday, the boys were racing outside to play with their friends, so innocent, so alive, so very precious. My mind plays back like an old home movie, first steps and birthday parties.

I have so many memories, each more precious than the first. At times, they are my salvation, and other times my undoing. Yet, even when the pain is greatest, I force myself to feel it. It reminds me of what this is all about. My pain is intimate and deep. A pain I'm not sure I could even comprehend had it not been forced upon me. There have been times I've simply wanted to say, no more, to just give up.

It has been during these times that I have felt each of you holding me up. I realize more and more each day that I'm not fighting this battle alone. With each tiny step you are all holding me up. Through all the times of despair and frustration, one of you has always been there to catch me when I fall. The injustice of this system has pierced my soul, yet each of you help me heal. Your belief and support helps breathe life back into me

when I feel like there's nothing left. There's a song by Celine Dion entitled, I'm Everything I Am Because You Loved Me. I have sang this song for my precious baby boys. Now I want each of you to listen to the words of the song. This is what your love and support has done for me. To simply say thank you is not enough, and there really are no words to express the depth of my gratitude.

I feel for each of you. I know that my boys are looking down from heaven with the same love and attitude for each of you. Through this fight, they will never be forgotten. I hope you believe in angels like I do and realize each of you have two of the most precious angels watching over you as well. With love and prayers,

there's Darlie Routier. If you want to dive deep into this rabbit hole, go check out our sources for this episode on the website crimejunkiepodcast.com and let us know what you think when you come out the other end because honestly, I've had a couple of weeks into this case now and I still don't know which way is up. And be sure to follow us on Instagram at crimejunkiepodcast.

We'll be back next week with a brand new episode. Crimejunkie is an audio chuck production, so what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?