Forensic Files - Season 4, Episode 1 - Invisible Intruder - Full Episode | Forensic Files

[Music] on june 6 1996 in a suburb of dallas texas there was a crime of unprecedented
horror an intruder entered this home and attacked two young children along with their mother
police hoped that science would lead them to the assailant [Music] [Music] [Music]
darren and darley routier were a young couple in their mid-twenties with three children
six-year-old devin five-year-old damon and eight-month-old drake darren routier was a successful
entrepreneur darley stayed at home to care for the children this was a young couple who had
made good darren owned his own business in 1995 he had made close to 300 thousand dollars
in his business he repaired mainframe computers had some extensive contracts with government agencies
on the night of the attack darren routier was asleep upstairs with eight-month-old drake
downstairs in the family room the two older boys fell asleep watching television
their mother dolly was asleep on the sofa around 2 30 in the morning an intruder
stabbed the children then woke darling who felt a knife at her throat after a brief struggle the
intruder fled and darley called police when paramedics arrived six-year-old devon was dead
[Music] five-year-old damon was barely alive but he died on route to the hospital
darlie was taken into surgery to repair her neck wound which missed her carotid artery by only two centimeters she also
suffered a stab wound to her arm paramedics noticed that darley's panties were missing when i asked her if she
thought she'd been raped her answer to me was well when i woke up i felt some pressure down there
that was her answer but a rape test was negative darley described the assailant as a
white male about six feet tall wearing a black shirt jeans and a baseball cap a screen in the routier's garage had
been cut darley said the intruder dropped the murder weapon onto the floor as he fled
in the alley two houses away police discovered a bloody sock the motive did not appear to be robbery
between the kitchen and the room where the murders occurred there was 13 rings and a gold lady's watch laying out there
so that indicated to us if it was in fact a burglary or a robbery that had gone bad
there was nothing there was valuables out there to be taken and nothing was disturbed
now we don't know why now we know that this is a sick individual that took absolutely nothing from our house but
took the most of two most important things that were important to us away from us
the most prominent evidence of the crime scene was blood forensic scientists hoped the blood
spatter pattern would tell them more about these horrific murders when police examined the murder scene it
appeared the assailant entered the routier home through a screened window in the garage
darley rootier said she was asleep when the intruder murdered her two boys darlee woke when she felt a knife to her
throat there was a struggle and the assailant fled through the garage darley said he dropped the murder weapon
onto the floor on his way out darren root tier said he was asleep upstairs with eight-month-old drake and
woke when he heard glass breaking [Music] when he walked into the family room where the detectives were waiting for
him the first thing out of his mouth was not how is damon how is darley it is have
you seen darley isn't she beautiful and doesn't she have gorgeous breasts darren
said you know i can see why somebody came in good looking good looking blonde you know 38 double
d's frost that was a little strange too considering he had just lost both of his
sons and i don't believe at that time he knew for for a fact if darley was going
to live or not in the kitchen police noticed a set of white-handled knives one space was empty it appeared
the murder weapon a 10-inch white-handled knife came from the routier's own kitchen
the blood drops on the floor were photographed and collected for dna testing the size and shape of the blood
droplets would be analyzed to see if they were consistent with darley's version of events darley's night shirt
was another important piece of blood evidence forensic scientists hoped that it too
would provide information about the murders dna testing of the bloody sock found in
the alley revealed the blood was that of the two boys devin and damon however police bloodhounds were not able
to track the intruder's scent beyond the location of the sock why would an intruder leave a murder
weapon behind in a house and yet take a sock down the alley why would an intruder leave this sock in
open view for the police to find instead of disposing it in a garbage can or down
a storm sewer drain police found some other inconsistencies darley said she chased the intruder
through the kitchen and he knocked a wine glass on the floor but pieces of glass were on top of the
blood drops on the floor and there were no cuts on darli's feet underneath the overturned vacuum cleaner
was more blood spatter and a wheel impression in the blood it appeared that darley ran through the
kitchen before the glass broke and the vacuum cleaner overturned on the handle of the vacuum cleaner was
a blood stain dna test revealed it was darleys the blood dripped onto the handle at an 80
degree angle as if darley were leaning over the vacuum cleaner the pattern was not consistent with darli's running past
the vacuum as she told police either darlie routier was mistaken about what happened in the kitchen or she knew
more about the murders than she was telling police blood spatter expert tom bevel was asked
to analyze the blood drops found in the routier home as co-author of a well-known textbook on
blood pattern analysis it was bevel's job to interpret the story told by the blood trail
bevel noticed the blood drops on the kitchen floor were circular in shape meaning they were deposited by someone
standing still or walking very slowly darley said she was stabbed on the sofa and while bleeding ran through the
kitchen after her assailant but running would have produced blood drops more elliptical in shape usually
with a tail indicating the path and direction of the person running darley also told police that the
intruder dropped the knife under the kitchen floor but tom bevel could find no evidence of
that numerous people to include myself examined that floor to try and find evidence of a knife drop
either even pointed straight down or falling on its handle or falling on its side or whatever and we were unable to
to find anything that would be consistent with that if it had as much blood on it as it was found which it
would have to then it should have produced an outline of a knife or evidence of the knife dropping onto the
floor and we simply didn't find that barry dickey is a forensic audio expert assigned to analyze dolly's telephone
call to police [Music] in order to conduct his analysis dickey isolated darley's voice by eliminating
all of the background noises [Music] [Applause] in my opinion darley had moved from at
least three different rooms in the house these rooms were moved in a very rapid fashion
and she did not stay in any one of the ambiences very long but if darley walked briskly in between
rooms this contradicted her story to police when police interviewed darley after the
murder she was holding a wet towel to her neck wound police wondered if the towel had been
used to clean up blood before they arrived to find out investigators used luminol a
chemical that glows when sprayed on an area where blood has been removed once we darken the kitchen down and
applied the luminol we were able to see footprints there in front of the sink which kind of made the hair on the back
of our neck stand up the footprints in front of the kitchen sink were darlies on the cabinet beneath the sink
there was visible blood and luminol revealed that more had been cleaned up before police arrived the
blood evidence in front of the sink indicated to us that someone had bled had stand there in front of the sink for
a significant amount of time bleeding and not moving around there was blood drops on top of blood drops
in the floor in front of the sink dna testing revealed the blood belonged to darley
prosecutors suspected that it was here where darley cut her neck and arm if there was an intruder and he came in
he came in without leaving any evidence of walking through there also on the carpet was an unusual blood
impression the distinct outline of the murder weapon the heavy line of blood near the tip of the blade told forensic
experts something important about the killer the only way that i am aware that you could get
something coming off of the knife in in that manner as we found it would be to have the knife in the hand
of a person that is bleeding in other words they are contributing blood continuously
so if you had a wound on this arm with the knife in this hand with the blood flowing down the arm ultimately across
the hand and then down the blade of the knife that will produce that very heavy bleeding that we've got in the front of
the knife in the impression coincidentally darley had a knife wound on her right arm
dna test revealed that the blood was that of both damon and darley and not that of an unknown assailant
darley said she picked up the knife from the kitchen floor and put it on the counter
she said nothing about taking it into the family room no bloody trail no fingerprints no uh
trace of the suspect i mean peter pan came down the chimney maybe and committed the murder but or you know
tinker bell or somebody but we have no evidence of anyone coming through the window committing the murders
police were now convinced that there was no intruder in the routier home on the night of the murders
[Music] just eight days after the murders the routiers celebrated what would have been
devin's seventh birthday at the cemetery family members invited a local television news crew to attend
[Music] if you knew devon and damon you would know that they're up in heaven and they're up there having the biggest
birthday party that we could ever imagine and they wouldn't want us to be down here being sad even though our hearts
are breaking i know that devin and damon would want us to be happy district attorney greg davis watched the
celebration on television i was just sickened by what i saw because it had only been a week since
these boys deaths and yet we've got a full-blown birthday party out there at the graveside and it really struck me as
more than curious at the dallas county institute of forensic sciences charles lynch
discovered the most damaging piece of evidence contradicting darley's intruder story on one of the bread knives from
the rootier's kitchen lynch found a single fiberglass rod and some rubber dust the cut window screen in the routier
garage was made of polyvinyl chloride bundles the interior core of that bundle was
composed of fiberglass rods the fiberglass rod found on the kitchen knife was identical to the fiberglass
rods from the rooters screen lynch could not find any other source of fiberglass inside the routier home that
was similar so i was able to eliminate all of the sources of fiberglass that i could find
as being a source so the conclusion is that a fiberglass rod found on the bread knife
may have come from the window screen but not to the exclusion of all other sources
fbi profiler alan brantley was convinced there was no intruder we have never seen a case where an
offender comes from outside the residence breaks into the home takes a knife and then goes back outside
the home and cuts the screen to come back in those steps that kind of behavior is just
unnecessary to the commission of any kind of an offense unless you're attempting to make the scene
look like something you think it should look like or that you want other people to believe
occur and again that's an element of stage and on darley's night shirt scientists found
cast off blood spatter on the back right shoulder area dna testing revealed that the blood
belonged to the two boys some of those blood stains are coming in a direction consistent with
the movement of the item that was bloodstained in my opinion in this case the the knife
as you're drawing the knife backward the blood is coming off of the end of the knife as it's being drawn backward
and of course if it's close enough and it's still in an upward flight it will point in an upward direction with the
blood stains the blood spatter was pointed upwards consistent with the movement of a bloody
knife in darley's right hand the forensic evidence all told a story a story quite different from the one
darley told police [Music] prosecutors believe that the murders were premeditated and the darley
encouraged the boys to sleep with her that night in the family room sometime after 2 a.m
darlie took a bread knife from the kitchen and cut the screen in the garage she returned the knife to the holder
without rinsing the fiberglass residue found later by forensic scientists darlie used the largest knife she had
to murder her two children blood spatter on the back right shoulder of her night shirt placed the murder
weapon in darley's hand [Music] speculation is the darley may have removed her panties to suggest the
possibility of a sexual assault standing at the kitchen sink darlie turned the knife on herself
slicing both her neck and right arm then something unexpected happened five-year-old damon was still alive
crawling through the family room he was stabbed two more times the knife impression on the carpet was
caused by blood from her arm wound as it dripped over the tip of the knife [Music]
the audio analysis of the moving in 911 rooms quickly as she staged the crime scene and removed some
of the blood evidence [Music] but darley's attempt to mislead investigators failed
it's hard to explain it but these kids were in her way they were in the way of her lifestyle
and her ambitions and what she wanted to do and she simply made a decision that those
children would no longer be in her way darli routier was arrested and charged with the murder of her two sons
darren routier denied he was involved and no charges were filed against him patricia springer described the possible
motive in her book flesh and blood there is no one reason why darlee routier did this it is a combination of
things it had nothing to do with money it had to do with the multiple births with the total responsibility we've
learned since then that darren really didn't help a lot with the children they painted this picture of the perfect
family and how great they were and everything they did was as a family but the family knife was an illusion
that they um perpetrated on anyone that would listen to it darley routier was found guilty of first degree murder and
was sentenced to death she currently sits on death row awaiting execution texas is a pretty conservative state and
i want everybody to know that you can't go out and kill our children and expect to live
i think that darley got exactly what she deserved in this case we probably gave her
more justice than she deserved in this case if you look at the barbaric acts that brought her to that courtroom
we did all the that the system allowed us to do to her but she richly deserves to be on death row and she richly
deserves to be executed one day [Music] [Applause] so [Music] you

In 1996, police received a call from Darlie Routier telling them of her two sons' murders. The police found the killer by analyzing blood spatter, doing behavioral profiling and analyzing Darlie's 911 call.

Forensic Files is the longest-running true crime series in television history. Evidence and interviews with experts help solve real crimes, disease outbreaks and accidents around the world.

Brief Summary

Darlie Routier was convicted of murdering her two sons in a case marked by forensic evidence and inconsistencies in her story.

Key points

The Crime of Unprecedented Horror. On June 6, 1996, an intruder attacked the Routier family, leading to a tragic outcome.
The Tragic Loss of Two Sons. Six-year-old Devin and five-year-old Damon were brutally murdered, leaving their mother injured.
Darley's Inconsistent Story. Darley's account of the night raises questions as forensic evidence contradicts her claims.
The Birthday Celebration at the Cemetery. Just days after the murders, the Routiers held a birthday party for their deceased son.
Darley's Arrest and Conviction. Darley Routier was found guilty of murdering her two sons and sentenced to death.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

These kids were in her way.

Reflecting on Darley's motive for the murders.

19:13WatchNov 4, 2021

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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