Darlie Routier Case | Mental Health & Personality | Guilty or Innocent?

welcome to my scientifically informed insider look at mental health topics if you find this video to be interesting or helpful please like it and subscribe to my channel hello this is dr. grande today's question asks I can analyze the mental health and personality characteristics at work in the Darlie routier case another question here is what do I think in terms of her guilt or innocence so the people in this case of course are real people so just a reminder I'm not diagnosing anybody only speculating about what could be happening in a situation like this so first I'll take a look at the timeline then the evidence in the investigation I'll look at the trial as well the mental health and personality characteristics and answer that question about guilt and innocence so we start the timeline with Thursday June 6th 1996 in Rowlett Texas this is a town that's 25 miles north of Dallas Texas we see it's 231 a.m. 26 year-old Darlie routier calls 911 and reports that an intruder broke into her house and attacked her and her two sons her husband Aaron 28 and a third son Drake who was 7 months old were asleep upstairs in the house the police arrived just minutes later as they were securing the house they noticed that the windows screen in the garage had been cut and they failed to find any intruder so they permitted the paramedics to enter Darlie son Devon aged 6 was found dead and her son Damon aged 5 would die before reaching the hospital Darlie told the police that she decided to sleep downstairs so she could watch TV she had been sleeping downstairs on and off over the last several weeks because the baby's crib was in the master bedroom and the baby will grow up when he moved she was asleep in the family room with Devon and Damon when she felt a nudge on her shoulder and heard Damon faintly talking she opened her eyes and saw a stranger wearing dark clothing and a baseball cap standing over her and of course this is her report about what happened Darlie said she walked after the assailant and heard glass breaking as he fled she got halfway through the kitchen and then she went back to turn on a light as she ran back toward the utility room you saw a white-handled knife on the floor this is when she realized that she was covered in blood Darlie reached down and picked up the knife as the intruder made his exit through a door in the garage Darlie dropped the knife and yelled upstairs to wake up Darin her husband this is when she dialed 9-1-1 this call to 911 lasted five minutes and 44 seconds four minutes and five seconds into the call Darlie indicated that there was a knife the operator said there's a knife don't touch anything Darlie responded I already touched it and picked it up five minutes and four seconds into the call Darlie says the knife was lying over there and I already picked it up the operator says it's all right Darlie responds by saying I bet we could have gotten the prints may be referring to prints on the knife the statement would be used against her later on at trial at 3:40 a.m. Darlie went into surgery so by some accounts her wounds were severe specifically the wound on her neck was only two millimeters away from her carotid artery the surgeons also had to remove part of a necklace that had been pushed into the wound on her neck other cuts were on her arms as well other accounts though say that all the wounds were superficial so we see disagreement about how severely she was wounded now moving to the investigation and the trial at 6:00 11:00 a.m. detectives from the Rolla Police Department interviewed Darlie she could not offer a description of the assailants face around the same time we see that a so-called crime scene consultant named James cron arrived at darlie's house he stated that within 20 to 30 minutes after he arrived he had determined that there had been no intruder and this shaped the investigation going forward it really ruled out the possibility of finding a suspect other than Darlie or Darin this reminds me of a short story by Edgar Allen Poe named the murders in the room work there's this particular sentence from this story that I think connects over what happened here so I'll read the sense this idea however simple it may now seem escaped the police for the same reason that the breadth of the shutters had escaped them because by the affair of the nails their perceptions had been hermetically sealed against the possibility of the windows have ever been opened at all of course we see there that poses windows have ever instead of windows having ever but that was written a long time ago but either way in that story we see that what poets really saying is the possibility was ruled out by the police again their minds hermetically sealed so nothing was getting interrupt and again we see that here in this case the investigation really got off to a bad start it was extremely limited from the beginning now moving to June 18 we see that Darlie was arrested evidently the police were high-fiving and celebrating as she was arrested so kind of disappointing to see that reaction we see she was indicted by a grand jury on June 28th now there was a change in venue in this trial because of the media coverage the trial opened on January 6 1997 so really the trial started pretty quickly considering when the arrest was especially considering this was a capital murder case the prosecutor presented his theory that Darlie was suicidal and suffered from depression she must have killed her boys in an effort to maintain her extravagant lifestyle now we hear these stories about the prosecution trying to make it seem like the motive was insurance money but actually the prosecution did not contend that Darlie killed for that money we see in the closing arguments the prosecution talked about motive not being required that's actually true motive was not required the jury could find Darlie guilty without knowing a motive or without one being demonstrated so what I find interesting about the opening with the prosecution here is how they're kind of weaponizing mental health symptoms so as far as the prosecution is concerned depression just can't be something that's common and causes suffering rather it must explain why people commit murder so a real leap there that is quite illogical it shows a real lack of understanding of how depression works now in terms of specifically the thoughts of suicide that's a little different if somebody's at a high risk to commit suicide they could be at a higher risk to harm other people right that's not usual it happens but that could happen we see a lot of different testimony in this trial a physician testified that darlie's wounds could have been self-inflicted police officers testified that Darlie seemed overly concerned with her own wounds and did not render aid to her sons which makes me kind of wonder what level of concern would be permitted if somebody is wounded if she had ignored her own wounds they might have labeled her a psychopath also we see that she had bruises on her arms but those appeared later so that kind of worked against her now we see about that cut window that the police determined that the dust around the window was undisturbed therefore they determined that it would be impossible for anybody to have entered or exited through that window later we see a demonstration that illustrated one could easily move in and out of that window without disturbing anything we see a man's white tube sock was located near a storm drain about 75 yards from the house the sock had blood on it from both Devon and Damon the prosecution determined that Darlie must have planted it now this is interesting considering the testimony we see in this trial from the defense we see testimony that established Damon could not have lived more than nine minutes after his wounds were inflicted now taking into account the amount of time that Darlie spent on the phone with the 911 operator again about five minutes and 44 seconds this only leaves Darlie just over three minutes to plant the sock get back to the house commit the crimes staged the crime scene and inflict those wounds on herself the prosecution attempted to refute this by saying that she could have planted the sock beforehand and that the medical testimony around that amount of time that Damon would have lived was not precise now in that 9-1-1 call of course Darlie express was concerned about finding prints on the knife the prosecutor says here that she did this to set up her defense another possible conclusion of course is that she wanted the person who did it to be caught then we have the birthday party and this is arguably the most controversial circumstance that was brought up at the trial the funeral for Devon and Damon was on Sunday June 9th Darlie was released from the hospital the day before we see on the Friday after as June 14 the Devyn would have turned seven so Darlie other family members and a number of friends had a birthday party at the gravesite now this occurred after a private memorial service at this party there were balloons and toys and during this party we see Darlie smiled laughed and sprayed silly string now we see in the closing arguments that one of the prosecutors kind of makes a big deal about the silly string tape he says that this tape gives you a lot of insight into this woman during their deliberations the jury replayed this clip of the birthday party eight or nine times so clearly they were considering the content of that video now the lead prosecutor in this case was named Greg Davis and when he saw this recording this was long before the trial he said how disgusted he was that anybody could act in that way now this is an interesting choice of words for him to reveal that he was feeling disgusted disgust is really an emotion of eradication disposal and destruction right so if somebody's disgusted by something they want to get rid of it it's not the same thing as fear now it's interesting because Greg Davis would later be indicted on a felony unrelated to this case tampering with a government record although he was never convicted now other testimony he spoke to perhaps a financial motive Charlie's housekeeper indicated that Darlie told her that she needed $10,000 so maybe there was some money problems going on with that couple and in fact I think it was pretty well established that they weren't in good shape financially during that time now the same housekeeper though also testified that she saw a mysterious black car outside of the house a few days before the murders on one occasion the car was in the alley behind the house and the driver was staring into the garage other testimony focused more on physical evidence at the crime scene we see there was testimony about the t-shirt that Darlie was wearing it was stitched back together and not all the holes in the t-shirt lined up with her wounds specifically there are four holes in the shirt that didn't have a corresponding wound making it look like she took the shirt off caused the wounds and then put the shirt back on now if she was trying to get away with these crimes it's not clear why she would have done this it would have made more sense to the shirt on but either way that was a theory that we saw presented one of the other knives in that butcher block in the kitchen specifically a bread knife had some glass debris and rubber dust on it that matched the material in the garage window screen that was cut making it look like Darlie cut the screen with her own knife and put it back now there were theories that those fibers were actually from a fingerprinting brush that's a possibility it wasn't really clearly established either way now there was a broken wine glass on the floor darlie's blood was found under the glass now clearly the glass could have been moved by all the first responders going in and out of the house so I don't think that was particularly powerful evidence we see efforts were made to clean the kitchen sink and the countertop in front of the sink and traces of blood were found on the countertop so that doesn't look so good for Darlie then we see testimony about blood splatter we see an expert testified Darlie could have been the murder based on how the splatter hit the front of her shirt and the back of her shirt the defense pointed out that her blood was mixed with her son's blood on that shirt now we see testimony about how the alleged assailant acted in a way that no other assailant would act the prosecution said that he would not have cut the screen he would not have killed an anger he would not have left a witness so really they're saying the way this criminal operated made no sense well often criminals don't make a lot of sense right the crimes are irrational regardless of who committed them I think this is kind of a weak prosecutorial strategy so they're looking at this event and saying no one would do this yet somebody did do it they were accusing somebody of doing it or they're really trying to say like well a criminal that breaks into houses wouldn't do this but somehow the mother of sons would do this so again no matter how they want to frame it they're saying that it was an unusual crime so in a sense I think they're kind of building reasonable doubt toward the defendant as well as toward the alleged assailant that the defendant said was there now looking through the transcript of the trial the defense never brought up the idea that Darren could have committed the crime now I don't think he did but that strategy could have created reasonable doubt right especially because the kind of ruled out every suspect in the world except for Darlie and Darren even still I thought the defense did a good job I thought they presented what seemed like an effective closing pointing out that James cron sealed darlie's fate by declaring there was no intruder soon after arriving on the scene I thought that was a very good point and we see in general the defense really hammered the low-quality investigation that occurred either way though February 1997 Darlie was convicted of murdering Damon and was sentenced to death she has not been tried in the death of Devon so evidently the jury did feel that the prosecution met its burden now since being convicted Darlie has filed many appeals some are still pending we see that Darin divorced Darlie in 2011 it's now moving to the mental health and personality characteristics so we see here that Darlie reported she had postpartum depression as well as anxiety evidently she had been depressed at the time of the murders there are some entries from a journal that seemed to indicate depression most notably on May 3 1996 she wrote a suicide note to her children at trial she said it was not significant now if that was the motive right if she wanted to end her own life why did she plant the sock the sock was really evidenced that would have helped her defense and she wouldn't need a defense if she was dead we also see that Darlie was trusting she went and talked to the police without an attorney which of course is always a bad idea there's no good reason to talk to the police if you're a suspect in an investigation we see that she did not appear really to be a criminal mastermind right so when looking at this evidence like the sock being planted some distance away I don't know if she really would have thought of that there's nothing really clear from kind of watching the videos and reading through the transcripts that indicated she was thinking in that way like she had that capability also she had no history of violence no history of psychopathy I don't really see much in the way of psychopathy at all some of me the argument that maybe she was narcissistic like she was materialistic and arrogant well a lot of people are like that and even if she was like that not tied to murder we also see this argument that her grieving was inappropriate like the silly string tape this is one of the things that a great smiie the most about how these cases are investigated the idea there's a right way or an appropriate way to grief in a highly unusual situation this is the type of circumstance that few people will ever experience two children being murdered nobody knows how they would react to that even if one could make the argument that her way of grieving was markedly different than other people that still doesn't point to guilt now moving over to the police and the prosecution here we see a lot of interesting factors what really stands out to me is the lack of any type of critical thinking skills or a cognitive reasoning ability I think what happened here is they needed to believe something they came right in there and they needed a belief that Darlie was guilty there's also the sense that they're really kind of lazy in the investigation they did not follow up like they didn't investigate the story about that suspicious vehicle it's like if they were to do that they're reducing their chances of making sure that Darlie is found guilty right so their mission isn't to find Darlie guilty their mission is to find the truth and I think sometimes that gets lost when talking about these types of investigations we also see this theory that the investigators were narcissistic so again just making a cursory examination and declaring that everything has been figured out and celebrating when Darlie was arrested right it's not a happy occasion it's not a time for high fives and a bunch of laughter and fun now we see that the investigators were not proficient at conducting an investigation so in a situation like this I'd probably say more reading would be helpful more training and less just kind of acting impulsively and going with one's gut I think there was a lot of confirmation bias occurring here they locked on to a conclusion and then they found the evidence to support that conclusion instead of letting the evidence guide them to the conclusion we see a lot of flawed thinking in this investigation so like distorted thoughts like everything that deviates from normal is bad or worse yet everything that deviates from normal is criminal we see that there was this belief that no one would grab a knife from a victim's kitchen well Richard Ramirez The Night Stalker did this several times and he committed 13 murders before he was caught right so again I'm left with the impression that these investigators didn't spend a lot of time reading about other cases now another thing that strikes me here is perhaps these investigators were influenced by the Susan Smith case this occurred about a year-and-a-half before we see a young mother in Union South Carolina who murdered her two sons and of course Susan Smith would later confess so perhaps these investigators really wanted to kind of move things ahead they want to get ahead of the curve and just jump to the conclusion that Darlie must have been guilty so it's possible we saw a lot of illogical reasoning here so looking at this case what about the idea of Darlie being guilty or not guilty which one makes more sense well the standard in a criminal proceeding in Texas and the rest of the United States is the person has to be guilty beyond a reasonable doubt and I think clearly Darlie is not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt it's actually frightening to me that a jury could come up with any other verdict but not guilty in this case this standard beyond a reasonable doubt can be quantified roughly as 85 to 90 percent sure so they were about 85 90 percent certain that she was guilty there's no way that they could have been that certain that really just amazes me now moving over to guilt and innocence this is a different concept right so guilty and not guilty or concepts on the law guilt or innocence is more like if we could see the perfect truth of something the absolute truth was darling guilty or innocent well with all my concerns about this case and there are many I have many concerns about what happened here I still think it's more likely than not that she's guilty I would say the probability is somewhere between 55 to 60% on the side that she's guilty well below the reasonable standard but still more likely than not so here I'll look at the factors pointing toward guilt and the factors pointing toward innocence so the factors pointing toward guilt we see Darlie handled the murder weapon right all things being equal this is a bad sign if the suspect handles the murder weapon that doesn't look good the murder weapon was not introduced from the outside it was from her kitchen certainly possible but again it points more toward guilt she had recently demonstrated a desire to end her own life so that shows a degree of despair that could be consistent with murder the alleged assailant left behind no evidence that could identify him the fibers from the screen on the bread knife that looks suspicious why would an assailant come in from the outside and kill her sons and failed to kill her why did she clean the countertop and the sink and her story changed several times and she also claimed not to remember things that she had previously remembered there are not many good reasons that her story should have changed if she were innocent so now let's look at factors pointing toward innocence well of course the frightening level of incompetence demonstrated by the investigators we never really got to see if there were any other good suspects right so again that's quite disturbing the crime as she described it is consistent with an assailant who was intent on assaulting her sexually this would explain why he would have murdered the children and left her alive so with that particular type of assailant her story does make sense we see really no good explanation for the sock that was found 75 yards away from her house also I find it hard to believe that she would leave that anybody would find that sock there's no evidence here that she had experience in forensic investigation I mean she could've left that sock there and wondered if anybody ever would have found it right but it became kind of a key part of her defense so the sock kind of points toward innocence in this case we see no apparent motive if her motive was to collect the five thousand dollars in life insurance why didn't she target Darin his policy was worth $800,000 if she did have some reason to kill her sons why didn't she kill all three right it's hard to think of what reason there would be just to kill two but not to kill all three Damon was alive when the police arrived right so Darlie was not a medical expert of any type there's no reason to believe that she knew how long Damon would live she didn't know for sure he would die before he reached the hospital why would she take that chance why would he have still been alive when the first responders arrived also in this case we see no confession Darlie has always maintained her innocence so bringing everything together this was a tragic case that was poorly investigated there's so much information that we should have but we do not have it's a testament to how easy it is to be convicted of a crime without sufficient evidence and how difficult it is to overturn a conviction that should have never happened this case also highlights a lot of flaws with the justice system we see this entry point for Darlie into the justice system and pretty much for anybody is the police yet the police use a different set of rules then we see in the courts there is no reasonable doubt standard with police as they investigate crimes so if the police officer kind of locks on or a detective kind of locks on to a suspect and starts again having that confirmation bias that leads the suspect getting the court where yes they have more rights there but being there puts them in jeopardy right so that's kind of the first domino the police once that domino falls all the other dominoes can fall when looking at the criminal justice system we see a lot of well-educated professionals like attorneys and judges poring over thousands of pages of documents reading references from the law to come up with these different theories and different opinions and it does seem to work pretty well but all that work is based on potentially police officers making a decision within a couple seconds again it's not based on any critical reasoning skills so seems like a lot of the thinking power is kind of expended in the courts and not enough is expended kind of out in the field in that early stage of the investigation and my last point for this conclusion we see that many people incorrectly assign value to how people react during times of severe stress I've seen this a number of cases I reviewed and it's really not something that's logical people are placing a lot of meaning and something that could have absolutely no meaning right so of course potentially it has meaning but it's not consistent her reaction could have indicated guilt it could have indicated innocence we have no way of distinguishing which one Italy points to I know whenever I talk about controversial cases there will be a variety of opinions please put any opinions and thoughts in the comment section they always generate an interesting dialogue as always I hope you found my analysis of this topic to be interesting thanks for watching

Channel: Dr. Todd Grande

Views: 557,731

Keywords: Darlie Routier, Darin Routier, Devon Routier, Damon Routier, Drake Routier, silly string, double murder, double homicide, depression, Rowlett Texas, antisocial personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, factor 1 psychopathy, factor 2 psychopathy, sociopathy, vulnerable narcissism, hypersensitivity to criticism, mental health, counseling

Id: Njdiu3DVdh0

Length: 25min 12sec (1512 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 21 2020