The Darlie Routier case is a Texas capital murder conviction from 1997 in which a Rowlett mother was sentenced to death for stabbing her five-year-old son Damon; her six-year-old son Devon was killed the same night, and Routier has maintained since the 911 call that an intruder attacked all three of them. She remains on death row nearly three decades later while court-ordered DNA testing, first authorized in 2008, has yet to produce publicly released results.
What Happened on June 6, 1996
At 2:31 a.m., Routier called 911 from the family home at 5801 Eagle Drive in Rowlett, Texas. She told the dispatcher a man had broken in and stabbed her and her two sons while they slept in the downstairs living room. She also said she had picked up the knife the attacker dropped, a detail that later complicated the fingerprint analysis. Her husband Darin, who had been sleeping upstairs with the couple’s infant son Drake, came downstairs during the call.
Rowlett police arrived within three minutes. Devon was dead on the living room floor. Damon was still alive but died during the ambulance ride to the hospital. Routier had injuries to her throat and arms; doctors at Baylor University Medical Center found that the knife wound to her neck had come within two millimeters of her carotid artery. She was released two days later.
Why Police Doubted the Intruder Story
Investigators spent weeks processing the house and built a case that pointed inward rather than outward.
The Cut Screen and the Bread Knife
Routier said the intruder had entered through a slashed window screen in the garage. Police noted the screen had been cut rather than pulled off, and the fibers were pushed outward, suggesting the cut originated from inside. Dallas County trace-evidence analyst Charles Linch then found a nearly invisible fiberglass fiber on a bread knife from the Routiers’ own kitchen. Under a microscope, the fiber matched the composition of the garage screen. If the family’s knife had cut the screen, only someone already inside the house could have used it.
The Nightshirt
Blood spatter analyst Tom Bevel testified that stains on the right shoulder of Routier’s nightshirt contained her blood mixed with each son’s blood in separate locations. His interpretation: she was already bleeding when the boys were stabbed, which contradicted her account of waking up after the attack. The defense argued the nightshirt was placed in the evidence bag while blood was still wet, allowing stains to migrate across the fabric and create misleading mixtures.
The Sock in the Alley
A sock with blood from both boys was found in an alley about 75 yards from the house. Prosecutors said Routier had planted it to support the intruder story. The defense pointed out a problem no one resolved: her bare, bloody feet should have left a trail if she had walked there, and none was found.
The Unidentified Fingerprint
A bloody fingerprint on a coffee table in the room where the boys died did not match Routier, her husband, or anyone in the household. In 2019, a federal judge ordered the print run through the FBI’s Automated Fingerprint Identification System. It returned no match. The print remains unidentified.
The Silly String Video
Eight days after the murders, on what would have been Devon’s seventh birthday, surveillance footage captured Routier and family members spraying silly string over his headstone and singing at the grave. When local news aired the clip, public sentiment turned against her, and prosecutors used it at trial to argue her behavior was inconsistent with grief. The defense said the footage showed only the end of a longer visit that had included prayer and crying earlier that day. A defense-held tape of the earlier grieving was never played for the jury.
The Trial, Verdict, and Sentence
Heavy Dallas-area coverage led Judge Mark Tolle to move the trial to Kerrville in Kerr County. Routier was charged with capital murder under Texas Penal Code ยง 19.03(a)(8) for Damon’s death specifically, which at the time made it a capital offense to murder a child under six.1FindLaw. Routier v. State (2003) She was not separately tried for Devon’s murder.
Lead prosecutor Greg Davis argued Routier had staged the scene to disguise a domestic homicide. His case leaned on the outward-cut screen, the matching fiberglass on the bread knife, the blood on the nightshirt, and the absence of anything taken or anyone targeted upstairs. He also pointed to financial pressure: Darin’s business had faltered, the mortgage was behind, the family owed roughly $10,000 to the IRS, and carried about $12,000 in credit card debt.
Defense attorney Doug Mulder argued that no reasonable person would nearly sever her own carotid artery to fake an attack. He pointed to the unidentified fingerprint and to the absence of a real motive: life insurance on the boys totaled only about $10,000, less than their $14,000 in funeral costs. Photographs taken four days after the attack showed heavy bruising down the underside of Routier’s right arm, which the defense said reflected a struggle. Medical staff who treated her that night testified they had seen no such bruising, and the defense’s own expert, Dr. Vincent DiMaio, conceded on cross-examination that the bruising could have appeared as late as June 8.
The defense consulted forensic experts Bart Epstein and Terry Laber about the blood evidence but did not call any expert at trial to rebut Bevel’s spatter testimony. That choice remains one of the trial’s most-questioned decisions.
In February 1997, the jury convicted Routier of Damon’s murder.2FindLaw. Routier v. State (2008) Under Texas Code of Criminal Procedure Article 37.071, the jury then had to decide whether she posed a continuing threat to society.3Texas Legislature Online. Texas Code of Criminal Procedure Article 37.071 – Procedure in Capital Case They answered yes and sentenced her to death by lethal injection.
The Questions Around Darin Routier
Darin Routier was upstairs when the attacks occurred and was never charged. He took a polygraph and failed it, though he later said the test followed a 90-minute hostile interrogation. Post-conviction attorneys raised a separate concern: Doug Mulder had briefly represented Darin for a single day before taking on Darlie, a potential conflict that made it difficult to point the jury toward Darin as an alternative suspect. Routier’s own life insurance policy paid out between $200,000 and $250,000 with Darin as the beneficiary, a fact the defense could not press without implicating its former client.
DNA Testing and the Current Status
Death sentences in Texas are automatically appealed to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.4Justia. Texas Constitution Article 5 Section 5 – Jurisdiction of Court of Criminal Appeals Routier’s direct appeals, which focused on procedural errors and the handling of forensic exhibits, were denied.1FindLaw. Routier v. State (2003)
In 2008, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals vacated a lower court’s denial of DNA testing and ordered limited testing on evidence not fully analyzed at trial.5Justia. Darlie Lynn Routier v. The State of Texas The items included the bloody sock, the nightshirt, the children’s fingernail clippings, the murder weapon, and hair samples. The question was whether any of the material carried genetic traces of an unknown third party.
The process has taken nearly two decades. In September 2021, Dallas County Judge Audra Riley ordered evidence held by several state agencies sent to the Forensic Analytical Crime Laboratory in Hayward, California, along with DNA profiles from each Routier family member for comparison. As of mid-2025, results have not been publicly released. Once they are finalized, the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office plans to review the findings, after which Routier’s habeas corpus petition, first filed in 2005, will move forward.
Routier remains on death row at the Gatesville facility formerly called the Mountain View Unit and recently renamed the Patrick L. O’Daniel Unit,6Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Mountain View Unit Renamed to Honor Former TBCJ Chairman Patrick L. O’Daniel which houses all female death row inmates in Texas.7Texas Department of Criminal Justice. O’Daniel (MV) No execution date has been set while the DNA testing and related proceedings remain unresolved. She has been incarcerated for more than 29 years.