Darlie Lynn Routier had everything a young woman could ever want in her life.  A handsome husband, Darin, and three beautiful young boys, Devon, 6, Damon, 5, and baby Drake, 8 months. Darlie Lynn was living the American dream. The family owned a successful computer business and a large Georgian style home in Rowlett, Texas. Darlie was a bubbly young blonde, full of life and kept an immaculate home where children from the neighbourhood would go to play computer games.

There were two nicknames for the big sprawling house on Eagle Drive. For Devon and Damon, the house meant excitement. Darlie Lynn recalls their excitement of seeing the staircase. Devon and Damon were fans of the movie Home Alone. While their little friends later called it the ‘nintendo house’, to Devon and Damon, it was their own version of the house in Home Alone and, as boys often do, they had plans to slide down those stairs just like Kevin did in the movie. 

Devon is entertaining as he does cartwheels on the lawn in a video. Later he is seen giggling and smiling at the camera as Darlie Lynn asks “what’s your name”.  With a devilish childlike grin he calls out “Devon Rush Routier”. The video cuts to Damon as Darlie Lynn asks him if he can do a cartwheel.  Damon smiles and a shy, bashful look comes over his face. He answers softly, an almost inaudible “no”. And so it is that Darlie Lynn described the personalities of her two boys. Devon was always laughing and smiling, with eyes full of the spark of life. Damon was shy, softly spoken, and very much his bigger brother’s little mate. Watching the videos made me think of a song ‘two Little Boys’ by Rolf Harris, because that is how I could see them growing up. Darlie Lynn never got to say whether Devon and Damon slid down those stairs like Kevin in Home Alone because she drifted off into a tearful memory of a happier time. A bittersweet memory of her ‘babies’. Of Devon and Damon being alive and full of the joys of childhood. A childhood that never led to them growing up, going to high school, college, having girlfriends, or getting married and having children of their own.

The video cuts to a scene of Darlie Lynn walking between two uniformed escorts. There is a crowd of reporters who are waiting for her, screaming at her to make a comment. I wish I was writing this to be able to say that Darlie Lynn was a famous actress, singer or supermodel wanted by the paparazzi but, sadly, that is not where this story begins. Nor, much too sadly, is it where it leads.

Instead of smiling and waving to the camera, like a movie star, Darlie looks up, turns to the camera and says “I did not murder my children”…

On the 6th of June 1996 at 02:31 hours, Rowlett Police Department's 911 dispatch received a phone call from a woman who was described as "hysterical" by the dispatcher. 

Whilst two of her sons lay in pools of blood on the living room floor, Darlie Lynn Routier was screaming into the phone...her throat slashed, a slash on her left shoulder, a stab wound to her right back forearm.

 "some man came in, stabbed me, stabbed my babies...".

Fast forward to hospital where her second youngest child Damon was pronounced dead on arrival, Devon was deceased upon arrival of officers at the house, and his body left behind for the Coroner, Darlie had also been transported to hospital and was rushed into emergency surgery to close her neck wound.

In the not distant future, Darlie Lynn Routier was arrested for the brutal slayings of her sons Devon and Damon. She was prosecuted and sentenced to death by lethal injection for the murder of Damon. Since her arrest Darlie Lynn Routier has strongly and adamantly maintained her innocence. ALWAYS.

Darlie Lynn Routier is innocent.

I ask for signatures in support of her innocence and as advocates against the death penalty.