The Investigators CTV on Darlie 23 Nov.

[lisafremont]

ALERT!!
Hour long show on Darlie Routier! 8 pm eastern

 

[Jeana (DP)]

Thanks!! Thats in about 10 minutes!!

 

[Dani_T]

Thanks!! Thats in about 10 minutes!!

Was it a new show or just a rerun? Anything interesting in it (we won't get it screened over here)

 

[Jeana (DP)]

Was it a new show or just a rerun? Anything interesting in it (we won't get it screened over here)

Same old stuff. I took notes in case any newbies had questions about what was actually true on the show and what was b.s.

 

[lisafremont]

I thought it was very slanted in favor of Darlie.

Jeana, I would appreciate your list of what was true and what wasn't.

 

[dasgal]

I missed it too. :-( Recap?

 

[Peake]

I don't get CTV, unfortunately, so if a recap can be given, I'd appreciate it also

Cheers,
Pea

 

[lisafremont]

Excerpts of interviews with
Darlie Routier
DA
journalist
Darin Routier
home movies
appellate attorney
she's one of 8 women on Tex. death row
sentenced in 1997 for murder of Damon
accused by not tried for murder of Devon
supporters seen with signs: Honk for the innocent!
Recap of murders:
Darin asleep upstairs with baby Drake
"Since his birth Darlie had trouble sleeping when he cried at night."
[lisa sez: Don't most mothers wake up when their babies cry?]
"So when the boys decided to sleep downstairs, she stayed with them.
Then at 2:30 am all hell broke loose."
photos of crime scene
excerpts from 911 call
Darin: "First thing I hear is some real light glass break. Next thing I hear is Darlie screaming...I ran downstairs...Darlie is just freaking. She was "Devon Devon Devon Devon Devon Devon Devon Devon" She just went off and saying it a million times in a row."
911 call--- Darlie: OMG...OMG...he's dead
Darin tells how he went straight to Devon and how he tried to give him CPR.
911 Darlie: I was fighting...he ran out through the garage, threw the knife down...my babies are dying... they're dead
home movies of the boys
"Darin Routier was so intent on trying to save first, Devon and then Damon that he didn't even realize that his own wife's throat had been slashed and she was bleeding profusely."
photo of wounds after treatment
Darin: "There was blood everywhere. The carpet is blood red form one end of the house to the other and mostly all Darlie's. Darlie almost bled to death."
"we believe he [Damon] was stabbed laying down. And he was stabbed in the back....He obviously gets up and puts his hand on his mommy. That's how Darlie says she wakes up."
"In her written statement to police she said she was asleep on the couch when she heard Damon cry. She also said there was a man standing down at my feet walking away from me."
Mother Darlie Kee interviewed, remembers the scene of lots of police.
Darin: "Contaminating everything..."
Police found no intruder in area. Did find cut screen in garage, a sock with blood drops on it in the alley, inside on the kitchen counter a bloody knife
Darlie said she picked up the knife after finding it in the utility room.
But nothing was stolen. Event he jewelry Darlie had left on the kitchen counter (photo of lots of rings and a watch)
former publ. Rowlette lakeshore Times, Greg Lynch spoke of fears in town
Inexperienced Rowlett police brought in retired Dallas investigator James Cron? : "I noticed the blood or lack of blood in some cases. There was a lack of evidence connecting a suspect to this. All we had was a scene and victims. And therefore one of the victims became the suspect. We didn't start looking at the mother until 20-30 minutes in. I said something's wrong with this scene."
Just who is Darlie Routier?

 

[lisafremont]

home movies, photos
Darlie in hospital
Routiers cooperated fully
Stunned people outside the house
photos of Darlie and Darin
1988 wedding--- Darlie 18, Darin 20
Darlie describes her idyllic life
exp. home and boat, Darlie fashionably dressed
birth of 3 boys
Darin describes what an awesome mother she is.
Darin describes Damon and Devon
"Darlie and Darin had made future plans. They wanted to renew their wedding vows, go on vacation. But their first priority was a 7th birthday party for Devon. Invitations had already been sent."
"Silly String" video is shown of gum-chewing, smiling Darlie at the boys' graves, singing happy birthday.
Greg Davis, DA, was "repulsed" by this scene.
Darin says they would do it again
It was done out of honor for them.
Darlie: That birthday party was done out of complete love. Unselfish love. Nothing but pure love done for hm because he wanted to be 7.
"Even so, the silly string tape would prove to be a big mistake."
appellate attorney Stephen Cooper: I don't believe bad taste equates to criminal responsibility.
Excerpt from police surveillance video
Shows prayer being said at graveside
Cooper: Prior to that birthday celebration there was a two hour memorial service with all the appropriate sermons, crying, hugs and sobs among the family and friends that were there."
[lisa says: TWO HOURS?]
"The Routiers believed that while they were grieving the police were out looking for the intruder. A strange black car had been seen several times in the neighorhood."
Darin: They had 100s of leads and people calling in....Neighbors saw the black car but w/o a license plate # what have you got?
"What the police had was this: a blood trail that ended in the utility room that connected to the garage. there was also a cut window screen and a sock with blood drops on it left by a sewer drain in the alley by the house. For a crime so bloody and vicious, police believed there should have been much more evid. of a disturbance. And then there were Darlie's statements about the intruder. They were just not adding up."
DA: The orig. story on the 911 tape was that she woke up and she began fighting with the man at the couch.
911 Darlie: Some man came in...stabbed my babies...stabbed me...I woke up...I was fighting...he ran out through the garage...
DA: When the officers come to the scene she says that she woke up, she chased this man and fought with him in the kitchen...and then we have a progression to her saying she woke up and saw a man walking away from her with no struggle.
Darlie Kee: Darin and Darlie had said: "Innocent people don't need attorneys."
"What the police were doing is gathering evidence. Enough to pin the murders on Darlie."

[lisa says: I object to this wording of "pin" the murders on Darlie. As if they were fabricating it. This is very slanted.]

Darlie's mug shot.
coming up...the trial...

 

[Peake]

Thanks for the recap, lisafremont! Greatly appreciated

Cheers,
Pea

 

[dasgal]

When is the "trial" one coming on? Did it say?


PS THANKS:blowkiss:

 

[lisafremont]

It's already been on! I am transcribing it in segments. I typed up the last bunch and the PC froze up and lost all that typing! Dang! Sorry. You will just have to be patient.

 

[dasgal]

hurryhurryhurryhurry. Opps I mean dang, I missed it!

Dang girl, I didn't know you were TRANSCRIBING IT! Can I kiss you? What a person!:clap:

 

[lisafremont]

more home movies. very sad
Jeff Crilley, Fox 4 tv reporter: It's like our own Susan Smith. "We couldn't do enough Darlie stories."
Off camera voice asks: What do you think happened that night?
Darin: I think we have the prettiest house on the block. And I think I have the prettiest wife on the block and I believe that someone decided to followe her home from the grocery store, follow her home from the tanning salon, I don't know.
CPS took Drake into custody but Darin's parents won temp. custody.
DA began building its strategy.
DA Greg Davis: There were very calculated efforts made throughout this crime to try to divert attn, to try to mislead the police.
"To this day, the sequence of events is unclear. But the state argued that Darlie had not only murdered her children, but before slashing her own throat, put the murder weapon in the utility room, cut the garge screen window and put the sock in the alley. Presoceutors claimed that Darlie planned it all, hoping to make it look like an intruder had been in the house."
Davis: Why would someone take a sock out of the home? You maean to tell me that they would leave a murder weapon behind with fingerprints perhaps on it and they are going to take a sock down an alleyway?
Defense atty Doug Mulder: I don't think the Routiers, either one of them, would have been sophisticated enough to plant something down the alley, near a trash recepticle. I think that's more consistent with someone discarding something as he flees.
Venue of trial changes to conservative Kerrville over Mulder's objection.
DA seeks death penalty because Damon is under 6 years.
Crilley: She came into the courtroom. She had this kinda smug look on her face. The police described her as a woman living in the fast lane. She and her husband had accumulated some debt. She was despised. People hated her.
No tv coverage.
Bank statements revealed the Routiers had less than $2500 in their acct. the day of the murders and were behind on mortgage payments.
Darlie Kee: She killed her children b/c she was tired of her lifestyle?? GMA B, she lived for those children!
Davis: Three was financial pressue there b/c of her level of spending. Their income was leveling off. That's one thing. We know too she was depressed following the birth of her 3rd son. In fact a month earlier she had attempted suicide in her home according to her own journals.
"Indeed, Routier's journal does say she cannot go on and hopes that Devon, Damon and Drake will forgive her. But Darin Routier insists his wife was not suicidal...He denies having financial problems."
The wounds she suffered were dramatically different from the children's. Theirs were deep, penetrating stab wounds to the chest, back and torso. Hers are slashes and cuts to the extremities and the neck area.
"The defense argued that Darlie was right-handed and in order to slash her own neck and stab her right arm she would have had to change hands."
Crime scene investigator james Cron emphatically stated that no intruder ever entered the house.

 

[lisafremont]

Richard Mosty, Routier defense atty: I think Mr. Cron missed his calling. He should have been a psychic reader. He was out there 20 mins and had the case solved. Doesn't have a fingerprint, hadn't talked to anybody, hadn't seen any of the evidence.
"Lab tests revealed another kitchen knife contained fibers from the window screen that had been cut. And that the bloody fingerprints throughout the house belonged only to Darlie, Devon and Damon and not anyone else."
[lisa sez: What about Darin???]
"Defense accused the police of contaminating the evidence and not preserving the crime scene."
FBI profiler Alan Brantley who examined crime scene photos & other reports, testified for the state.
Brantley: The major contradiction starting out was you have an absolute mximum of human devastation and loss of life with these 2 young children and you have an absolute minimum of property damage. It's almost like the offender was very careful not to disturb or damage the personal property...in the home."
Mosty: Most people would be scared to have the FBI testify that one is "statistically guilty."
"Brantley believed that for this type of crime there would have been much more chaos inside the home than just an overturned vacuum and a broken wine glass....An d the outside was too orderly. The gate was shut. The window sill and the mulch on the ground were undisturbed."
Lloyd Harrell, defense investigator: "Well, beneath the window was concrete."
"He says that no way was that crime scene staged."
Harrell: "She never said 'I had a violent confrontation, the vacumm was overthrown, the glass was broken. So why would somebody invent a story, set a stage and then not use it?"
"Darlie's behavior was on trial as well. They questioned whether she really cared about her children at all."
Julie Clarke, Darlie's good friend testified in her defense....Clarke says she was a very supportive mother.
"The pros. said Darlie had things on her mind aside from her dying children."
911 Darlie: "His knife was lying over there and I already picked it up... God, I bet if we could have gotten the prints maybe"
Crilley: They say that's not something someone would say if they just lost their kids. You wouldn't be thinking along those lines.
The first offcr on the scene said that even after he told Darlie to help Damon she never went to him instead she stayed on the phone with 911.
But Darlie's written statement contradicts that. And there's another contradiction. Notes taken at Baylor Hospital described Darlie as tearful, frightened and soffing uncontrollably. But when nurses testified they changed their story, saying Darlie never grieved or cried. the defense says the nurses were coached.

 

[lisafremont]

"Outside the courtroom both sides played to the media and sometimes it got nasty."
vidoe clip of Cron speaking to the camera saying "It shows there was no intruder." Off camera a female voice says: "That's a lie and you know it."
Cron: Do I have to interview in front of this trailer trash over here?'
Camera swings around. It's Darlie Kee talking.

Darin says that the silly string tape was the key to the prosecutors' case. It should never have been admitted. It had nothing to do with the crime.
"The jury did see the silly string tape but not the surveillance tape. That's b/c amazingly the defense never asked for it to be admitted. It was more important to stress that the police by videotaping surreptitiously had violated a Fed. law against wiretapping. When questioned on the stand about the taping, detectives took the Fifth."

Darlie takes the stand.
"he testimony was devastating to the defense."
Harrell: She was not sympathetic and she was a terrible witness.
Davis: She wasn't sure at trial whether she was awake or asleep when she got stabbed. She wasn't sure whether she was awaker or asleep when she was supposedly beaten by this intruder. She couldn't explain how she could sleep through the attack of these children when one of them was one foot away from her. All of that occrred on direct examination.
Mulder: Darlie did not come across--- did not make as good a witness as I had hoped
The defense was caught offguard when she was presented with letters she had written friends from jail. In them she wrote she knew who murdered her boys. That was quite a different story b/c she had always claimed she didn't know the intruder. Cronfronted with the letters, she dissolved into tears.
In cross, Darlie explained she was only repeating what she had heard from others. But it was too late.
Toby Shook, prosecutor: The only time she was caught in genuine tears was when she was caught in smoe lies and that's when we saw the true fear. It was fear for herself. She realized what a fix she is in.

"Despite her testimony, Darlie and her defense team remained optimistic. After 4 wks, the jury deliberated for just 7 hours. The returned with a ugilty verdict."

Stephen Cooper, appellate atty: They admitted watching that [silly string] tape 7, 8, 9 times and that was just purely inflmmatory evidence. It is based on--- The whole theory of its relevance is based on the idea that one can look at a video of someone ten days [lisa says: wrong! 8] after this horrific event and tell whether they are a killer or not.

Routier juror: She was a so-called light sleeper. She woke up when her baby son moved around in the crib but she didn't wake up when her two sons were being stabbed within feet of her? No. She would have heard that.. There was very little remorse. She hardly ever cried.

"But it was far from over. next came the punishment phase."

Sarilda Routier, Darin's mother: And I begged them. I told them you have made the wrong decision but you don't have to compound it by giving her death....Please give us tme to find out what really happened.

The jury returned with the death sentence.

Darin: I knew they would give her the DP. That's what they were there for....

 

[dani]

Dang it, LisaFremont! I was going to try to break my WS addiction just as soon as the Peterson case was over. NOW look what YOU'VE done! (Yep. It's all YOUR fault for doing such a bang up job of recapping the case.) Your GOOD, Girl. :blowkiss:

Here I go again! :doh:

 

[lisafremont]

"In Texas there is no such thing as life in prison w/o parole so the DP is the only guarantee that she won't get out."
same Routier juror: "Nobody wants a person who killed 2 boys out on the street...after 20, 30 years..."
"But the case continues to intrigue the public, today you can log onto Darlie's website...At least 4 books have been written about the murders. One of them, Precious Angels by crime writer Barbara David is a scathing indictment of Darlie Routier. Anyone who reads it will be convinced of her guilt."
Barbara Davis: "I was that convinced when I left the trial."
"But soon after it was published Davis received new info that made her take a second look...."
Davis: "The main thing was the pictures that I didn't get to see at the trial. I began to get sick to my stomach over it because they were such important photographs."
"The photos are of Darlie with horrendous bruises all over her arms and hands. The defense says they couldn't have been selfinflicted but could only have occurred during a violent struggle with an intruder. Charlie Samford who sat on the jury says he never saw these photos either."
Samford: "If I had seen these she would be home with her family right now."
"But another juror remembers seeing them."
same Routier juror as earlier: I don't know if it was while she was on the stand or her husband but we saw those pictures and the bruises were on the inside of her arms.
"Author Barbara Davis is now so convinced of Darlie's innocence that she has befriended the family and gives all money made from the book to Darlie's defense fund. The press has also been taking a second look at the case.
In 1999, Dallas reporter Jeff Crilley aired a 4-part series on the case."
Crilley: When we first did this series we were alone in questioning whether she did it and now we are finding more and more media outlets here in Dallas questioning it too.
Footage of Drake walking out of school to his father's arms
"In the meantime, Darin and the family have been trying to make life as normal as possible for Drake. Darlie does see Drake but a glass separates them. No human contact is allowed."
Tearful Darlie: "I've missed singing him to sleep, giving him a bath...They've taken that from me."
"Next: Darlie's fight to save her life."

 

[lisafremont]

Darlie: "I did not kill my children. I stand strong in that and I can look you in the eye...because I didn't do it. The evidence shows this. There's overwhelming evidence that proves my innocence. They continue to ignore it."
"Darlie Routier's life is confined within these walls at Mountain View Federal Prison in Gatesville, Texas. Isolated from the general prison population, Darlie spends her time writing letters, exercising in her cell, and working at the prison sewing quilts.
more bathos from Darlie--- what would Damon and Devon look like now?
sniffle sniffle
off camera voice asks Darin: You said to me life would be easier if she had done it. What did you mean by that?
Darin: If she had done it I could go on, I could remarry, look somewhere else, not be put on camera everytime someone asks me to to try to help. There wouldn't be any helping if she had done it. She would deserve to be where she's at. The point is she didn't do it. We can prove it and we will."
Stephen Cooper--- discovering new evidence, serious discrepancies from Routier's trial. Progress made in ID'ing bloody fingerprint on glass coffee table...
Cooper: There are sufficient points of ID to ID its owner if they had a sample of a suspect.
The boys' bodies were exhumed in order to take fingerprints.
Charles Lynch, crime scene analyst, who testified that there were fibers from the window screen on the knife...
Cooper: We have since learned that this expert has been wrong in one or more other cases...He was suffering from severe depression, alcoholism, apparently that was so bad, his own employers showed up and forcibly put him in a detox ward...
"But perhaps the most extraordinary turn in this case involves the court transcripts and they're the reason why the appeal has been delayed so long.
Cooper: "The original transcript had over 33,000 mistakes in it by a court reporter who took the 5th Amendment when we tried to question her about her preparation of this record.
"In court reporter Sandra Halsey's transcript 53 pages were missing, wrong words were used and non verbal responses omitted and some of the errors changed the essential facts of the case.
[Camera zooms in on page where the typed word "kissing" is crossed out and CUSSING is written above it.]
"This was only discovered when a new court reporter began reconstructing the transcripts from audio tapes that were made as a backup."
Cooper: "Diametrically different words, like the difference between yes and no and the difference between can and cannot and would and wouldn't---"
"And to make matters worse, some of the audio tapes were missing. Court TV requested an interview with Halsey but she declined. However in an interview with Jeff Crilley, she said---
Halsey: There are just typos. I looked at some of those things. They're like a missing period or a space between the end of a letter and a space and then a period. I mean there are so many things like that."
"Halsey has since lost her license. The case marks the first time a capital murder transcript has been so riddled with errors that it is deemed inadequate to be used for appeal....The errors in the transcript could be Darlie's entree back into the courtroom. But according to Columbia Univ. professor James Liebman, it is very difficult to get a new trial in Texas.
Liebman: What we have determined is that the Texas court system ...is known as one of the least likely court systems to find and correct error in capital cases.
"Perhaps the Routiers got a preview of just how hard it will be. On Sept. 8, 2000, just 18 hrs before a scheduled hearing on the transcript fiasco, the judge abruptly cancelled it."
Next: Will Darlie ever get a new day in court?

 

[lisafremont]

"For 2 yrs Judge Robert Francis had presided over hearings on the transcript issue..." The appellate atty was to present evidence of Halsey's saying that she thought Darlie did it and that would show bias. Francis cancelled the hearing. "Why-- no one really knows....It's now in the hands of the criminal court of appeals and no further testimony will be heard. The judge's ruling states that the transcripts now reflect what occurred at trial."
Cooper says this is out of character for Judge Francis.
"Many troubling questions remain."
Crilley: "Either she's an academy award-winning actress or she didn't murder those boys."
Cooper: "I am very confident that upon a new trial with some of the information we now have and a little bit different approach to the trial, she'd be found not guilty...in a very short period of time."
Davis: "Nothing whatsoever has changed. Any person capable of killing a helpless 5-yr-old child and a 6-yr-old child in the manner that Darlie Routier killed these two children deserves the death penalty. Those two children deserve a measure of justice, too."
Darlie: "I have to keep fighting because i have to fight for the truth. I have to fight for Devon and Damon. I have to fight for me."

End card:
In May 2003, despite forensics proving tha the disputed finger print is not from the Routiers or investigators, Texas upheld Darlie Routier's conviction. The defense is appealing to Federal courts.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
finis