Drake Routier – Forensic Files Now

Darlie Routier’s Son Lives the Crucible
(“Invisible Intruder,” Forensic Files, and “Darlie Routier,” The Last Defense)

After last week’s post about the persecution of Darlie Routier, many readers searched for information about her youngest son, who was 7 months old when a knife attack left his brothers dead on June 6, 1996, in Rowlett, Texas.

Despite the upheaval of the murders of brothers Damon and Devon Routier and the imprisonment of his mother for homicide, Drake Routier grew into “the most adaptable kid I’ve ever seen,” his father, Darin, told reporter Liz Stevens, who wrote about the Routiers in a Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

The article, published when Drake was 2 years old, described him as normal, lively, and resembling his mother with “startled blue eyes” and a “delicate mouth.”

Now in his early 20s, Drake has beaten the odds in a number of ways. In an on-camera CNN interview, he doesn’t act like a young man who’s consumed with bitterness or anger. And he apparently has stayed out of trouble with the law. (No small accomplishment in an age when the children of politicians and celebrities tend to pop up on mugshots.com.)

Drake has said he believes in his mother’s innocence, and he has visited Darlie, 48, regularly in the Mountain View Unit, where she’s one of six women on death row in a state with the most active execution chamber in the U.S.

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Here are 5 realities, drawn from internet research, about his life:

Reality #1. Drake’s father, Darin Routier, didn’t take custody of him right away after the murders, because he wanted to get his finances in order, Liz Stevens reported. After putting Darlie in jail with bail set at $1 million, the state of Texas placed baby Drake in a foster home in 1996. A court later gave custody to his father’s parents, Sarilda and Leonard Routier. Meanwhile, Darin, once a successful computer hardware entrepreneur, lost the family’s huge Georgian-style house, cabin cruiser, and 1986 Jaguar. He started over in Lubbock and eventually had Drake move in with him.

Reality #2. Drake found out in 2013 he had acute lymphocytic leukemia, which is “the most common type of cancer in children, and treatments result in a good chance for a cure,” according to the Mayo Clinic. He allowed CNN to show photos of him during the time he was undergoing chemotherapy. On October 13, 2016, Drake finished his last cancer treatment at the Children’s Medical Hospital in Dallas, according to a message his maternal grandmother posted online. An AP story dated June 18, 2018, reported that Drake was in remission, according to Richard A. Smith, a defense lawyer for his mother.

Reality #3. Drake told CNN he’s had to accept his identity as the kid whose mother is on death row. Darlie and other family members have been denigrated in the media ever since her arrest 11 days after the murders. During the trial, “prosecuting attorneys labeled Routier’s relatives ‘trailer trash’ and portrayed the Rowlett couple as tacky nouveau riche with twisted priorities,” according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. The public chimed in, too. A pawn shop clerk “noted that Darlie often came to her store braless and used foul language,” the newspaper reported.

Reality #4. Drake’s visits to his mother, who’s been on death row for 21 years, take place with a sheet of glass between them. In addition to denying friends and family members physical contact with death row inmates, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice limits visits to two hours in duration and encourages “conservative dressing.” For example, visitors past the age of adolescence cannot wear shorts or skirts shorter than three inches above the knee.

Family lost: The Routiers with Devon and Damon

Reality #5. Although deprived of his mother’s embrace, Drake has grown up with many other people who love him. For instance, Jerry Dale Jackson, the father of Darin Routier’s girlfriend, Cindy, considered Drake to be his own. Jackson’s obituary in the Weatherford Democrat in 2017 listed Drake as one of his grandchildren.

That’s all for this post. Until next week, cheers. — RR

Read Part 3: Greg Davis: Darlie Routier’s No. 1 Antagonist

Watch the Forensic Files episode about Darlie Routier on YouTube or Amazon Prime

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Enough with the Silicone-Shaming
(“Invisible Intruder,” Forensic Files, and “Darlie Routier,” The Last Defense)

An ABC series called The Last Defense is reviving interest in the 1996 murders of Devon and Damon Routier and the character assassination prosecutors used to put their mother on death row.

Viewers of The Last Defense, co-produced by actress Viola Davis, may not realize that Forensic Files was on the case nearly two decades earlier.

Whereas The Last Defense disposes itself to throwing Darlie Routier’s guilt into doubt, the 1999 Forensic Files episode about the homicides of the boys, ages 5 and 6, portrays her as deserving of the capital punishment sentence doled out by a Texas jury.

But “Invisible Intruder,” the Forensic Files retelling of the suburban Dallas Greek tragedy, unwittingly lays the groundwork for skepticism over the prosecution’s presumption that it’s only logical for a sex kitten living in a mansion to stab her own children to death to free up more cash for Neiman Marcus.

On Forensic Files, a prosecutor named Greg Davis makes a number of narrow-minded judgments about Darlie that should have triggered the witch-hunt alarm.

Davis continues the defamation of the former housewife from Rowlett, Texas, on The Last Defense as do a number of others connected with the case. Unrelated observers also enjoy casting stones at the mother of three with the audacity to enjoy looking alluring.

Drawn from both Forensic Files and The Last Defense, the following seven assumptions and contentions are so unfair that I want to help Darlie Routier escape from her prison cell in the Mountain View Unit in Gatesville, Texas — whether she’s guilty or not.

Attack #1: Greg Davis and fellow prosecutor Toby Shook said they were “sickened” and “disgusted,” respectively, by a tribute involving Silly String and laughter the Routiers had at a grave-side birthday celebration for one of their slain sons. “It struck me as more than curious,” Davis said.
Refutation: People mourn in varied ways and processes, and some try to celebrate their loved ones’ lives in between the fits of unbearable sorrow.

The Routiers’ former home in Rowlett, Texas

Attack #2: Investigators contend a single fiberglass fragment on a knife from the Routiers’ kitchen indicates Darlie used the knife to stage the scene by cutting a hole in a screen.
Rebuttal: One tiny fragment? Murder scenes aren’t hermetically sealed chambers — how could they be when EMTs and police have to walk onto them in the first hours after the crimes? That fiber could have easily been accidentally transferred to, or planted on, that knife.

Attack #3: Greg Davis points out with disgust that Darlie liked to wear 10 rings at a time.
Dissenting view: So what? Madonna used to put on 20 bracelets at once and she still occasionally drapes herself in rhinestone-laden low-cut outfits. All five of her kids are alive and intact.

Attack #4: Again, Greg Davis is horrified (he sure thrives on repulsion), this time because the Routiers played Coolio hit “Gangsta’s Paradise” at their sons’ funeral. “I can’t imagine that you do that,” he said.
Wrong, wrong, wrong: Darlie’s husband, Darin, says it was the kids’ favorite song. The Last Defense shows video of the older boy dancing to it. People often enjoy songs because the melody and harmony speak to them — the lyrics are insignificant. My law-abiding mother taught me “La Cucaracha” when I was 5 years old. It’s about a cockroach who walks funny because he needs marijuana.

Attack #5: Davis notes one of Darlie’s diary entries asks God to “forgive her” for what she is “about to do.” He believes that means she intended to kill herself or her sons or both.
Oh, shut up, Greg: So now people have to censor themselves in their own journals because some modern-day Cotton Mather might read them one day? The woman had three kids by the time she was 26. Of course, she’s going to have down days. It doesn’t mean she was truly suicidal or remotely homicidal. Stay out of women’s diaries, Greg.

Attack #6: Juror Kerri Parris, who appeared on camera on The Last Defense, nonchalantly admits she used the fact that Darlie had breast implants as a strike against her. “That’s not something I would do,” Parris said.
Stop leaping: Who cares? Eating venison is something I wouldn’t do. That doesn’t mean I think deer hunters are inclined to turn their rifles on their own kids.

Attack #7: More from Kerri Parris: “I just knew that she killed her boys. I was angry about it, but also went in open-minded about it.”
Supreme Court, did you hear that? The presence of a juror who admits she was biased from the beginning sounds like a slam-dunk argument for a new trial. Actually, here’s a better idea: Spring Darlie Routier from her cell, and everybody else mind your own business.

By the way, Darin Routier, an IT entrepreneur who divorced Darlie in 2011, appears on The Last Defense and maintains that his former wife is entirely innocent. Does anyone really think that this Texas dad would defend a woman if there’s any chance she took away two of his man-children?

The Routiers’ surviving son, Drake, has leukemia. He lives near his father in Lubbock and has said he loves Darlie and always will.

Come on, Texas, let this nice young man and his mother console each other outside of razor wire. — RR

Read Part 2: Drake Routier: 5 Things to Know

Watch Forensic Files episode “Invisible Intruder” on YouTube or Amazon Prime

Tag: Drake Routier

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