The Darlie Routier Case
On June 6, 1996, Darlie Routier was asleep in the living room with her two sons. Darlie was sleeping on the couch, while her two sons were asleep on the floor. Her husband and baby were apparently asleep upstairs. In Darlie's account of what happened, she woke up in the middle of the night to find a white man dressed in dark clothing standing over her and stabbing her. She told police that she tried to fight the man off as he was attacking her. She then got up and saw that he had stabbed both of her sons, and that they were dying. She frantically called the police, telling them her account of what happened. Her husband, Darin, and their baby rushed downstairs to find Darlie screaming. Darin went over to where the boys were, and began doing CPR. As soon as he started compressions on his son's chest, blood spurted out, which meant that he had been stabbed through the lungs. Darlie was rushed to the hospital, where doctors found that she had been stabbed through one of her arteries, and she was therefore losing a plethora of blood. She had been stabbed not only in the neck, but also in one of her arms. The blade had cut in so far that the bone could be seen. She was rushed into emergency surgery, and after was put into the ICU at Baylor hospital in Texas. The curious thing about this case is that when the police investigated the crime scene, they found no evidence that there had ever been an intruder in the house on the night of the murders. Rather, it appeared that no one had entered the house through the screen or the window. After an intense, meticulous investigation, the prosecutors said that they thought, based on the evidence, Darlie's wounds were self-inflicted, and that she had therefore killed her two sons.
This town was small and close knit. But do you think there should be a heavier police presence anyway? It mentioned that the cops were not experienced in the case because nothing like this has happened in the town anyway. In big cities there might be a pressure to not take anything too far but if small towns are constantly monitored such as this one, do you think that this incident would have happened in the first place?
ReplyDeleteI think that with the evidence presented in the trial it is believable that Darlie did indeed commit the murders and that there was no intruder. However, when they later explained the evidence that suggested that there could have been a failed robbery because of the strange car that had been around the small neighborhood. I think that we can't be 100% sure of what really happened since the police did not follow up with this information and actually check it out.
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