Pod Insights Crime Weekly S3 Ep314: Darlie Routier: The Verdict Is In (Part 5) About this episode In the early morning hours of June 6, 1996, a frantic 911 call came in from a quiet neighborhood in Rowlett, Texas. On the line was 26-year-old Darlie Routier, who said she and her sons had been stabbed by an intruder while they slept in the downstairs family room. When first responders arrived, they found a horrific scene—six-year-old Devon and five-year-old Damon lying on the floor with multiple stab wounds, while Darlie was walking around, bleeding from several knife injuries of her own. As officers cleared the house and paramedics worked to save the victims, Darlie repeated the same story: a man in dark clothing had come into the family room, stabbed her and her children, then fled through the garage—leaving the knife behind. But as investigators began to process the scene and piece together what had unfolded in the Routier home, a new set of questions emerged—about Darlie’s version of events, the physical evidence, and what she did—and didn’t do—after the attack. We're coming to CrimeCon Denver! Use our code CRIMEWEEKLY for 10% off your tickets!https://www.crimecon.com/CC25Try our coffee!! - www. CriminalCoffeeCo.comBecome a Patreon member -- > ｿ https://www.patreon.com/CrimeWeeklyShop for your Crime Weekly gear here --> ｿ https://crimeweeklypodcast.com/shopYoutube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcastWebsite: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.comInstagram: @CrimeWeeklyPodTwitter: @CrimeWeeklyPodFacebook: @CrimeWeeklyPodADS:1. https://www. PDSDebt.com/CrimeWeekly - Get your FREE debt assessment today!2. https://www. TaskRabbit.com - Use code CRIMEWEEKLY for 15% off your first Task!3. https://www. EatIQBAR.com - Text WEEKLY to 64000 for 20% off ALL IQBAR products and FREE shipping!4. https://www. SimpliSafe.com/CrimeWeekly - Save 50% on any SimpliSafe system with a Professional Monitoring Plan!
Transcript 22,997 words · 2 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:11 Stephanie Harlowe? Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Crime Weekly. I'm Stephanie Harlow.
0:15 Derrick Levasseur? And I'm Derek Levasseur.
0:17 Stephanie Harlowe? So we are now-
0:18 Derrick Levasseur? And that's Levasseur.
0:19 Stephanie Harlowe? Levasseur.
0:21 Derrick Levasseur? It's Levasseur, but we're gonna say Levasseur.
0:24 Stephanie Harlowe? We will, but we could say Levasseur.
0:26 Derrick Levasseur? We could say, we could, there's different options out there.
0:28 Stephanie Harlowe? You sound like an explorer then.
0:30 Derrick Levasseur? Some would say that my, I say my own name wrong.
0:32 Stephanie Harlowe? Like Derek Levasseur, the famous, you know, colonial explorer, has a lake named after him, Levasseur Lake.
0:40 Derrick Levasseur? Does sound pretty good.
0:41 Stephanie Harlowe? Okay, so we are here to talk about Darlie Routier. We are going into part five of this case, and we're about to talk about the trial, which is gonna be quite interesting. So, um, should we dive right in?
0:52 Derrick Levasseur? We can't, because we have a big announcement.
0:54 Stephanie Harlowe? Oh, yes, we do. You're right. Thank, thank God for you.
0:58 Derrick Levasseur? Do you want to do the honors, or do you want me?
1:00 Stephanie Harlowe? So I will do the initial announcement, and then you can give the details.
1:06 Derrick Levasseur? Okay.
1:06 Stephanie Harlowe? Okay?
1:07 Derrick Levasseur? Sounds great.
1:07 Stephanie Harlowe? So, we've been teasing on social media for a while now.
1:10 Derrick Levasseur? Yes.
1:11 Stephanie Harlowe? A few months ago, I was in Rhode Island with Derek, and we did some smelling and tasting tests of potential new coffees for the criminal coffee lineup. We wanted flavored coffees. You guys have been asking for flavored coffees.
1:22 Derrick Levasseur? For years.
1:23 Stephanie Harlowe? I personally have been asking for flavored coffees, too. And, um, we did, we, we tried, I think, six or seven different coffees. We smelled them. We even did blind smell tests, which we posted on Instagram. You guys got a kick out of that. And we picked two. And the two that we picked are, which were my favorite, both smell and taste, the hazelnut and the vanilla. So we know that they're pretty basic, but they are delicious, okay? Especially, these are such true-to-life flavors of vanilla and hazelnut. That's why I was so impressed.
1:57 Derrick Levasseur? You're seeing them up on the screen right now. So there's the French vanilla, and there is our hazelnut. I actually chose the same, too. We did a blind test. Everyone agreed we loved the French vanilla and the hazelnut. And we dipped our toes in the water with the peppermint bark, which was a huge success. We sold out.
2:13 Stephanie Harlowe? I still drink that coffee. I know it's summer, but-
2:15 Derrick Levasseur? It's a, it's a, it's really, really good. It's really, I gotta actually order more bags for this year's Christmas time, cause it's coming fast. But yes, right now, as you're listening to this, if you go to CriminalCoffeeCo.com, they are available. Both French vanilla and hazelnut are available online right now. You can get it in whole bean or ground. Again, CriminalCoffeeCo.com. This is coming out on YouTube on Sunday. You guys will see it as well. This is why it's good to be subscribed to the audio, because you hear about these announcements sooner. So if you're listening on YouTube right now in the background, or you're watching it, go subscribe to our audio. There's also gonna be some stuff coming out with audio that you guys definitely don't wanna miss. But yes, CriminalCoffeeCo.com.
3:00 Derrick Levasseur? You can go pick up French vanilla, hazelnut right now. We're biased. They're phenomenal. The, the process of making flavored coffee is really interesting. It's a little bit more expensive and a little bit more involved. They actually have to clean the vats out after every usage, because you don't wanna basically cross pollinate flavors. So it's a whole different process, and we're using a roastery that's been around for over 100 years. They're one of the oldest roasteries in the country. They, so they know what they're doing. They know what they're doing, and I've had the opportunity to see the bag, try the flavors. It's all, it's all there. It's all phenomenal. It's exactly what we wanted. We went through multiple variations of the cover art on the, on the bags.
3:40 Derrick Levasseur? Shout out to Ashley, who works for me as my assistant, but she's a very talented graphic designer, and she came up with the artwork for both bags. So if you wanna check it out, again, head on over to CriminalCoffeeCo.com. Get your bags today, and if you do, make sure you tag us online and let us know what you think about the flavors. We wanna know, what is your favorite? And if you're on YouTube, in the comments below, let us know. Hazelnut or French vanilla? Which flavor are you, Stephanie? What would you have to say if you had to choose was your favorite out of the two? I know it's like choosing a kid.
4:10 Stephanie Harlowe? Hazel, no, it's hazel, it's hazelnut.
4:12 Derrick Levasseur? See, I would say French vanilla.
4:14 Stephanie Harlowe? See, I, I've always loved hazelnut. I love hazelnut coffee. I like the nutty flavor. And yeah, hazelnut, I think it's just one of the best coffees I've ever had.
4:24 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah, I, I like the French vanilla. I do love the hazelnut as well. So check it out. Try them. Let us know what you think. CriminalCoffeeCo.com. We look forward to hearing your feedback. Now. We can get into the episode.
4:36 Stephanie Harlowe? All right, now we can start. So in January of 1997, Darlie Routier went on trial 300 miles from Rowlett in the quiet town of Kerrville. Now, obviously, the case had been moved due to overwhelming pretrial publicity, and Darlie was only being tried for the murder of her five-year-old son, Damon. Prosecutors chose to focus on his case first because he was the younger of the two boys and because his death made Darlie eligible for the death penalty. So the prosecution told the jury that this wasn't a case of random violence. This was premeditated capital murder. They laid out their case, piece by piece, beginning with the 911 call, which they said
5:20 Stephanie Harlowe? captured Darlie's fake distress. They brought in first responders who testified that Darlie didn't ask about her son's condition or attempt to help them. Medical experts took the stand and said her wounds were superficial, completely different from the ones that killed Damon and Devon. They pointed out that the deep bruise found on her arm on June 10th had not been documented by anyone at the hospital.
5:43 Derrick Levasseur? I would definitely love to get a legal opinion on why they would have chosen to to charge her with only one of the two murders and why they were focusing on Damon and not and not Devon. But maybe it's because they wanted to separate the two. Maybe they figured they had a stronger case for Damon, and if they got the guilty verdict there, they would come back and go with Devon's case as well. But at that point, if she's found guilty, she's not getting out. So what would be the point of going through that whole process again? Again, this might be a simple answer that one of the lawyers who who watch or listen to the show are going to say, yeah, this is the reason why you would do that, to keep it clean and to just keep it straightforward and only focus on one victim. But that is a question even as a cop that I'm sitting here wondering, hey, why? Why implement that strategy?
6:28 Derrick Levasseur? I've seen cases where they've charged someone with a crime for multiple victims in one trial, and yet they chose not to do it here.
6:34 Stephanie Harlowe? So it almost feels like if they got a guilty verdict for the death of Damon Routier, they would not have to go back to trial and because she's going to get, you know, especially if she's sentenced to life in prison or the death penalty. But maybe if they they did it with Damon and then there was, you know, not the verdict they were hoping for, then they could try again.
6:56 Derrick Levasseur? Oh, interesting. Because it wouldn't be double jeopardy because it's a different victim. That's an interesting take, too.
7:01 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah. So if they went on trial for both,
7:04 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah.
7:05 Stephanie Harlowe? for both the murders at once, then maybe that that would be their only shot at getting, you know, at least with another trial for her other son, they'd get a different jury. They might have more time to retool their tactics in court. They'd, you know, have a different opportunity to get her because obviously I think it's pretty clear, the police, the prosecutors in this case, they they had no doubt in their minds that Darlie did this and did it intentionally.
7:32 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah, it was almost like a practice round, if that's what they were were doing. There might be a more technical reason for it. If you know the answer, let us know in the comments below because that is an interesting take. I've seen, I haven't seen it done that way. But yeah, it might be exactly what you're saying where you get two bites of the apple.
7:48 Stephanie Harlowe? I was just in my head, I was thinking it's another bite of the apple. So you just mirrored what was in my brain. How did you do that from that far away?
7:54 Derrick Levasseur? Yep, that's what that's how I am, you know?
7:57 Stephanie Harlowe? Well, the prosecution said, you know, things that I think we've all sort of pondered about, which is that Darlie didn't really act like a grieving mother, at least not a grieving mother that we we kind of have in our in our heads. She showed little emotion in the hospital and then just days later, she was caught on videos, bringing silly string on her son's graves during what should have been Devon's seventh birthday. And just a quick correction from part four, at the end, I said that the prosecution played that video for the jury eight times. I've since learned that's not accurate. They played it only once. But when the jury deliberated, they chose to watch it seven more times. So overall, the jury did see it eight times.
8:40 Derrick Levasseur? I also have a correction. Last week, I had mentioned that Darlie's sister may be coming on. Her, the correct pronunciation of her name is Donnell, I believe, from what I'm hearing now. I haven't spoken to her on the phone. It was all through messages. So I was reading it as Danielle. Also, she wanted to correct me where. She is not operating under the assumption that Darren is involved with this, that he did it. And her exact words, because I want to make sure I quote her directly here, is that he was directly involved with this, that he knowingly participated in something. So the way I framed it last week, she was like, no, that's not what I meant. So, take what you will from that.
9:14 Stephanie Harlowe? So wait, she says, she says he, she believes that he knowingly participated in something, but she's not saying that he's responsible for what happened?
9:24 Derrick Levasseur? I'll just read it exactly what you wrote. This is communicating via email. And I've told her this entire time that we want to make sure we record everything because I want to make sure that we get everything right. So, she wrote, "I have never once said I thought Darren was involved. My family does not support that line of thought. It sure is why," and again, she's just some typos here, "it sure why is, was presented that way." I think she meant, "I'm not sure why it was presented that way, but I do not think he is knowingly and willingly involved." So, take that what you will. I, I still think that there's something to be inferred there, personally, but um, she does not believe that he was directly or knowingly involved. So, that's where she's at on this. As far as that's concerned, I will tell you guys, I've seen some of the comments. Listen, I
10:08 Derrick Levasseur? am playing devil's advocate. You guys know how I kind of feel about this one so far. She knows how I feel about it. To me, as we're coming to the end of this series, I do believe that she's responsible for this. I do.
10:19 Stephanie Harlowe? Darlie, yes.
10:20 Derrick Levasseur? I've been trying to play devil's advocate because ultimately for me, there's no skin in the game. I'm not going to get a TV deal or something by, by proving that she's innocent. Ultimately, my job is to try and get it right. And Stephanie's relaying the facts to me, and I'm just trying to go through it as I would in any investigation by processing both sides. It's important that, and we were talking off record about this with Karen Reed, as far as her trial, as detectives, and a lot of detectives out there get this wrong even now. Yes, our job is to collect evidence and build a case. We're supposed to let the evidence lead us and let it tell the story and then present that story at trial. However, there's
10:59 Derrick Levasseur? another side to this that's a lot of investigators miss. It's also our job to try to identify any potential exculpatory evidence. Why? Because that will also be part of the trial. They will, the defense will present alternate theories, and if you had taken the time as an investigator to investigate those theories as well, you can say, yes, I looked into that. And basically, as I was going down that road, this, this, and this came up, which made it not possible. But when you don't do that, you open up that room for thought and question. And in some cases, that rises to the level of reasonable doubt. So it may be annoying for you. I can promise you, it's more annoying for the investigator because you may know deep down what happened,
11:43 Derrick Levasseur? but you could be wrong. So you have an obligation to not only the victim, but also the accused, to investigate all theories and approach them in a way where they're plausible. If I'm approaching them as like, oh yeah, there's no way this happened. I already got tunnel vision. I'm already biased. So what you guys are seeing here is a behind the scenes of what happens or what should happen in every case. So as you hear me question Stephanie or pose alternate theories, it's not to be an asshole. It's not to be a pain in the ass. It's because it's what we should be doing. Now, if I come to the same conclusion as everybody else or the majority of people, that's okay. We've dotted our i's. We've crossed our t's. So I am not sitting here presenting an alternate theory because I'm communicating with Darlie's family. It's only been through email.
12:28 Derrick Levasseur? It's been through email and Instagram DMs. I have no skin in the game. If she comes on next week and we're allowed to, she's already presented some of her argument. We're researching that now. If it turns out that I don't believe what she's saying, I will tell her that. We'll see if she decides to come on. If she does, I want to give her a fair shake. We have nothing to lose by hearing her out. And that's where I'm at on this. But yes, that was the one small correction and also my response to some of the people saying that I'm trying too hard to show that Darlie's innocent. I don't care if she's innocent or guilty. I care about Damon and Devon.
13:02 Stephanie Harlowe? You're just showing the other side of it and the potential reasonable doubt that the jury might hear and see.
13:07 Derrick Levasseur? Correct. And that's what we're doing here. And that's, that's what we're supposed to be doing. So that's where I'm at on that. But yes, that small correction there. That's where her exact words, verbatim, grammatical errors and all. So you guys can take from that what you will. My interpretation is that they believe that, that basically something Darren was involved in may have led to this. He might not have known this was going to happen, or even to this day know who did it. But maybe some of the dealings that he was involved in resulted in this. That's why they attacked that house, which by the way.
13:39 Stephanie Harlowe? It's some of the alleged dealings, by the way. We don't know if he was actually involved with any dealings.
13:44 Derrick Levasseur? I, I read exactly what she wrote there. And so I, I don't think as we're going too far on a limb here where you have all these houses. The, these offenders, if it's not Darlie, chose this specific house. Why? Why?
13:57 Stephanie Harlowe? That was, that was targeted. Yeah.
13:59 Derrick Levasseur? Why? And why was it targeted?
14:01 Stephanie Harlowe? That's the question. If there's an outside attacker.
14:04 Derrick Levasseur? If there's an outside attacker, why did they choose this house on this day at this time?
14:09 Stephanie Harlowe? Yes.
14:09 Derrick Levasseur? Those are the questions you also have to answer.
14:11 Stephanie Harlowe? For the record, I don't believe there was an outside attacker. So.
14:14 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah. You don't believe there was, as many people don't. And candidly, I, I don't either at this point. And so I'm going to hear her out. I, I believe Darlie's responsible for this, but I, I just, we're, we're exploring all, all angles here and there's nothing wrong with that. In fact, I think it makes for a much more interesting conversation.
14:33 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, for sure. And I mean, there are a lot of people, surprisingly, a lot of people who are like, well, yeah, I think she's guilty, but I just can't get past this, or I just can't get past this.
14:41 Derrick Levasseur? The sock or something. Yeah.
14:43 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, there's people a lot more than I expected who are kind of on the fence here. So.
14:47 Derrick Levasseur? Yep. That's our job. We, it's, it's painstaking. It takes weeks, if not years, where you're exploring a theory that you don't believe in, but you have to give it a valid effort and you have to really go for it. And. That's, that's what I'm trying to do here with just doing it on a podcast.
15:02 Stephanie Harlowe? I agree. I agree. Thank you for your service because I could not play the devil's advocate in this case the way you have, and that takes a lot of self-control.
15:10 Derrick Levasseur? I, I said it to you last week though, like I'm running out of options here.
15:13 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, I know. You're like, alright, it's getting, it's getting real hard to try to see this perspective. Yeah.
15:18 Derrick Levasseur? But it makes you a lot more sure about your opinion. Cause you've explored those other things. So maybe she throws something at us that we haven't talked about, or maybe it's just more of the same. But either way, we're not going to run from it because we're not sitting here trying to convince you guys of anything. We're telling you the story, we're giving you the facts, we're going through multiple theories, and we're coming to our own conclusions. And maybe, for some of you, hearing from Danelle, maybe that will change your opinion, maybe it won't. I think it's still going to make for an interesting conversation.
15:46 Stephanie Harlowe? Well, the estate did argue that after killing her sons, Darlie created a series of ever-changing stories to cover her tracks. They argued that, and there is absolute evidence of that. Uh, we know that she changed her story many times, as did Darren. And these stories didn't make sense and didn't match the physical evidence. They walked the jury through the forensics, including how the murder weapon was a butcher knife taken from the routine's own kitchen. Darlie's fingerprints were on it, something she tried to get ahead of by telling the police and the 911 dispatcher and people at the hospital and everyone that she talked to, that she picked it up. And so she was worried like, oh, you know, maybe I messed with evidence, you know, when I touched it. She was saying this within moments of calling 911, by the way, so.
16:27 Stephanie Harlowe? And as you know, there was so much more evidence against her, which we outlined in parts one through four. The prosecution told the jury that Darlie was self-centered and overwhelmed. She resented the constant demands of caring for a new baby and two high-energy little boys. She hadn't been able to lose the weight from her pregnancy, and it upset her deeply as she was very focused on her physical appearance and what people externally thought of her. She was struggling with postpartum depression, feeling pressure from all sides, so she decided to kill her sons. The prosecution theorized it could have been for life insurance or to ease financial stress, or both. Either way-
17:06 Derrick Levasseur? Or just to ease stress in general.
17:08 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah.
17:08 Derrick Levasseur? We keep saying financial stress, but maybe just quote-unquote "the burden" of having to take care of three children, and her eyes was too much.
17:16 Stephanie Harlowe? There could have been multiple, like a multi-pronged motive here. She was probably thinking, hey, if these two, this is, wait, well, she may have been thinking, if these two little boys weren't here- This is how my life would change and be easier.
17:30 Derrick Levasseur? Correct. Now, she's not maybe coming from a straight.
17:34 Stephanie Harlowe? A mentally.
17:34 Derrick Levasseur? Train, you know, train of thought.
17:36 Stephanie Harlowe? Yes, she may not be coming from a mentally stable place.
17:38 Derrick Levasseur? Correct.
17:39 Stephanie Harlowe? I would hope not, honestly. So either way, prosecution said, hey, we don't know exactly why she did it, but we believe she planned it all. And the great thing is, in a trial like this, the prosecution, the state, they don't have to tell the jury what the motive was. They don't have to even know that. It's not, it's not the most important thing. They just need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that she did it.
18:03 Derrick Levasseur? Correct. Yeah, I mean, why, what is the, the why is important maybe for storytelling purposes, but it's not an element of the crime.
18:10 Stephanie Harlowe? It's important for us, re- retelling it.
18:12 Derrick Levasseur? It's important for us, but think about Chris Watts. What, what explanation could he possibly give that's gonna make anything make sense to you and I?
18:22 Stephanie Harlowe? I mean, I think Chris Watts's motive was pretty clear.
18:24 Derrick Levasseur? Well, I mean, just like, but even if he gave, even with this clear cut motive in his mind, we're still looking at it like you're, you're bat crazy.
18:31 Stephanie Harlowe? And selfish, and yeah.
18:33 Derrick Levasseur? But like if the prosecutor's sitting there saying, well, this is why we think she did it. What does it matter? If they can prove, if she's on video doing it, what do you care about the reason why she did it? You know, and that's, and that's what you really have to focus on.
18:45 Stephanie Harlowe? In fact, I think personally, it hurts the case when a prosecution focuses too heavily on a motive because they don't need it. Like I said, they do not need it. They don't even need to talk about it really if they don't want to. But now if they've put forth what they believe their motive is, and they're kind of like fixated on that, now the defense can be like, oh, well, this is what you say your motive was. Well, why would that be the motive when our client did this or said this? And so the defense can start mounting a defense against the motive, which the jury is going to absorb that one way or the other. And they're gonna be like, yeah, that doesn't make sense why they would do that if, if this was the motive, even though the prosecution doesn't need to prove a motive. So I think it hurts a case sometimes that the prosecution focuses to like, look at Karen Reed, right?
19:28 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah, it's another boat you just put in the water that the defense can poke holes in.
19:32 Stephanie Harlowe? Yep, exactly.
19:33 Derrick Levasseur? And you're right, it could be a distraction and not help you, and it could actually hurt your case.
19:37 Stephanie Harlowe? I agree. I've seen it happen. I think with Karen Reeves, a perfect example where the prosecution is so dead set on the fact that she was angry at John O'Keefe and she purposely plowed him down where a lot of us are like, would she, why would she have done that if she went to his house and called him and left such angry messages? Why would she have done that if she just killed him? So now we as the public who make up the jury could be poking holes in the prosecution's theory of the motive.
20:04 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah. And by the way, just so we're being transparent, right now we're recording this on a Tuesday and the jury is asking questions about the Karen retrial, different things they're trying to clarify. So there could be a verdict within moments. And if there is, we're going to try to do that this week. So you'll probably see this after the verdict came out or hear this after the verdict came out. But just so you know, we're following it. And literally, if you, if you happen to catch me on camera looking down and off to the left, it's because I'm following my phone to see if there's an update because if there is, we're going to get right on it.
20:34 Stephanie Harlowe? All right. So let's take a quick break so Derek can check his phone and please.
20:37 Derrick Levasseur? I gotta check it.
20:39 Stephanie Harlowe? We'll be right back.
20:44 Stephanie Harlowe? We're back and we're, you know, right in the middle here of Darlie Routier's trial. And the prosecution told the jury that they believed sometime before the attack, Darlie used a bread knife to cut the window screen in the garage. So she did this before the attack. Then she stabbed her sons, Damon and Devin, with a butcher knife from her kitchen. She then ran down the alley, dropped a bloody sock to suggest someone had fled and raced back to the house. She slashed her own throat over the sink and cleaned that up, then broke the wine glass, knocked over the vacuum, screamed to wake Darren and called 911. And after that, she just kept lying, hoping the police would believe the story she'd created.
21:25 Stephanie Harlowe? And I think this is very viable, actually. She cut the screen before, then killed the boys, then took the bloody sock down and ran it really quick. We already did the math on that. She could do that and be back within a minute. And this was before a time when everybody had doorbell cameras and surveillance cameras on their house. So nothing would have captured that. And then she came back, did her own wounds to show, you know, there was an attack. I'm wounded. And that is when she starts kind of, you know, making the scene look the way she wants it to, making the scene look as if there was an intruder that she pursued by breaking the wine glass, knocking over the vacuum, and then she screamed to wake her husband. I think that's absolutely viable. I think she would have had plenty of time to do that.
22:08 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah. And, and when we think about the potential of a murder-suicide that maybe she backed out of, I will say with some of the forensic evidence, it wouldn't support that. And because, well, first off, you have-
22:20 Stephanie Harlowe? Not if she was staging the scene.
22:21 Derrick Levasseur? Staging the scene, right? Staging the scene before she cut herself, which would be the case here, because if she had cut herself and then decided after it, like, oh, I couldn't go through with it. I have to stage the scene now, which I had suggested that as well. It wouldn't work, because if she did stage the scene and she planted that sock, there would be at least, at minimum, low-velocity blood spatter along the sidewalk, leading to the sock out of the house. So, so if it was her, she was not injured while planting that sock. She would have had to have planted the sock first and then attempted to kill herself, which wouldn't make a lot of sense. Why would you, why would you plant evidence if you were going to take yourself out anyways? One more thing I want to-
22:58 Stephanie Harlowe? So I do want to answer that really quickly.
23:01 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah, okay.
23:02 Stephanie Harlowe? So there is a world where Darlie, who is so focused on how she's perceived, says to herself, I'm going to kill my kids, I'm going to kill myself, but I don't want to be remembered that way. I want there to be a potential where people come in and, and think, hey, maybe someone attacked them. Poor Darlie. She was a victim too. And that's how she's remembered, not as the mother who killed her children and took her own life.
23:26 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah.
23:27 Stephanie Harlowe? That, that is possible. She could still stage it.
23:29 Derrick Levasseur? Especially the way you're describing her. You just, you just had me think of something else that I was having a conversation with one of our listeners. Again, I, I do try to conversate with as many as I can. Please don't everybody DM me with your, your theories, but I happened to catch this one. We talked a lot about the screen last week, and we talked a lot about Darren going to their previous home and checking for the screens being cut. And-
23:53 Stephanie Harlowe? Super weird.
23:53 Derrick Levasseur? Super weird, but I will tell you, I was approaching it from the perspective of, he was going there to see if he had cut screens at that house. But what our listener had said, which was an interesting perspective to look at, and I think it's viable, is that what if Darren, who is not involved, right? Let's just assume for this conversation, he's not involved, wanted to see if the offender had tried their previous address, thinking they may have lived there. So he went to that address, looking to see if the screens had been cut, which would suggest that this person or people were at multiple locations that they resided at. So when she presented that to me, I said, oh, that's also interesting, because that could work as well, where if he is innocent, and he's just trying to figure out what happened,
24:36 Derrick Levasseur? and who's responsible, he may have gone to that house to say, hey, maybe they got the wrong address first, maybe they cut this screen. And so, I'm not saying I believe it, I'm just saying, I thought it was a viable scenario. So I wanted to present it here, because you guys come up with some good, uh, some good ideas.
24:52 Stephanie Harlowe? I suppose, but like, knowing someone else owns that house, why would you go there at night? Like, why wouldn't you just go there during the day, knock on the door and say, hey, this happened, you know, we used to live here. I just wanted to know if you had any, you know, if there was any suspicious people hanging around, watching your house, are any of your screens cut? Did you have an intruder that night, or any night this week? I feel like that's what you would do if you were being upfront.
25:14 Derrick Levasseur? Probably not be talking about book deals and stuff.
25:16 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, and you wouldn't be going in the middle of the night, creeping around, yeah.
25:19 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah, we had a little bit of a, not a debate, but we were going back and forth, and I acknowledged that there's definitely some, there could be some truth to that, where even though maybe the approach wasn't great, the time of day wasn't good, but the intention behind it may have been pure. He may have been going there just trying to play investigator, trying to help out the case, trying to prove that his wife was innocent. So, that is another angle, for anybody who was considering that, that we didn't address, that you also have to consider when we talk about, not only Darlie from a premeditation standpoint, but also the conversation we had last week about the potential that they are both involved.
25:55 Stephanie Harlowe? Yes, I agree, I completely agree. So to close out their case, the prosecution called FBI agent Alan Brantley. And his testimony, like everything else the state presented, was meant to shut down any lingering doubt that Darlie wasn't the killer. He explained how the crime scene had been staged and the motive, whatever it was, appeared to be personal and the evidence showed that the boys were the targets. So after the state rested, it was time for the defense to share Darlie's side of the story. They told the judge that Darlie was a devoted mother whose life revolved around her children. They brought in friends, neighbors and relatives who had known Darlie for years and these people testified that she was a good mom. They also described how she grieved deeply in the days following the murders.
26:37 Stephanie Harlowe? The defense said that once consultant James Cron had reviewed the crime scene, police decided that Darlie was guilty and from that point forward, they never looked in any other direction. They didn't follow up on a black car that had been reported near the Routier home and they didn't pursue leads related to prints and DNA found at the scene, including a latent fingerprint and a palm print on the garage window seal that were never matched to anyone. There was also an unidentified pubic hair and facial hair. So the defense said that the state's evidence didn't show what really happened that night and they didn't think anyone would ever truly know, which was a quote unquote shame. But what the state's evidence did show, according to the defense, was that Darlie was innocent. The defense told the jury that there were no witnesses, no confessions and no way that
27:22 Stephanie Harlowe? Darlie could have staged the scene. She wouldn't have had enough time. And I think this is a little ridiculous because first of all, if the latent fingerprint and palm print never matched to anyone, then clearly the police followed up on those things. They just couldn't find a match. And then at that point, what do you do? What do you do? You can't just go around town, everyone in Ralette, like set up, you know, like roadblocks and start making everybody give their palm and fingerprints. Like what would you do if they weren't on file?
27:48 Derrick Levasseur? Right, you have to exhaust all options. The prints may have not even been viable enough to make a match. I talked about the number of points you would need to identify the person that it belongs to, to make a match, to compare it to someone. That it may have been smudged, it may have been smeared, there may have been multiple reasons why they couldn't make that. Same thing with the pubic hair. You have to acknowledge those. Things you have to talk about them. You have to bring them up. You have to show that you did at least attempt to try to match them. But like you just said, in some instances, you're not going to be able to do so. And it's up to the jury to decide whether or not that's enough to rise to the level or the threshold of reasonable doubt. You present it, you put it out there, you say, hey, listen, it could be a red herring. But based on what we have, the evidence supporting
28:31 Derrick Levasseur? the idea that she did this herself is much more overwhelming than an unidentified pubic hair, which could have come from anyone. It could have come from a friend, a neighbor, a cleaning service, a maintenance man, anybody who'd come in that house, people who lived there before them. There's a million ways it could have gotten into that house. Yes, in a perfect utopian world, in a Petri dish, we would love to identify any unidentified evidence. But in some instances, that will not be possible. You put it forward, and you let the jury decide how much weight to put on it.
29:01 Stephanie Harlowe? I think people would be surprised to know in their own homes, how much unidentified DNA from people that they don't know and have never met are in their house, right? Like, it's just, it's touch DNA. It can be transferred, like, very, very easily on the bottom of your shoes.
29:17 Derrick Levasseur? We're all shedding.
29:18 Stephanie Harlowe? You know, yeah.
29:19 Derrick Levasseur? We're shedding constantly.
29:20 Stephanie Harlowe? You could sit next to someone on the bus, and their hair falls on you, and then you walk in, and it falls on your carpet. You know, it's like, it's gross. We don't want to know. We don't want to think about it. But this is a reality. So.
29:29 Derrick Levasseur? Now, and what's my number one phrase? Well, I have a lot of phrases that you guys always call me out for. But I would say my number one would be totality of evidence. And it's, if you were able to identify the hair, or you had a person of interest who had a motive to go after Darren, or Darlie, or the kids, and then coupled with that, this person had never been in the house, and yet their hair or fingerprints were found inside. Now you're starting to build the case. But if you've identified that hair, and it came back to Joe Smith, who was an electrician. Are we automatically going to assume that he went back there to kill them? No, that just
30:03 Stephanie Harlowe? No, but it's a possibility.
30:04 Derrick Levasseur? It's a possibility, but you'd have to, you have to build totality. Would it make sense?
30:08 Stephanie Harlowe? If Joe Smith was the one who left those, that palm print and he left a hair. No, you're, you're, you know, getting somewhere.
30:15 Derrick Levasseur? And he had an altercation or there was an unpaid bill or something like that. You can start to, you can start to paint a picture, but
30:21 Stephanie Harlowe? But yeah, you can't just use a hair that could have gotten. But I think that the, the defense really, especially during this time, the nineties, is relying on the jury not understanding forensic science and not understanding how DNA is transferred and how easily a random hair can get into your house from somebody that you don't know. They're hoping that that causes enough reasonable doubt where the jury, who doesn't really understand the complexity of this, will be like, well, how did that hair get there? And they're, they're really being, you know, it's, it's not a good faith argument.
30:48 Derrick Levasseur? They're doing their job. Listen, the burden is on the prosecution. Proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Okay. The job of the defense is to, as you said earlier, where something is presented by the prosecution, it's the defense's job to poke holes in whatever that is. And so throwing the hair out there, throwing the fingerprints out there. I have zero issues with it. That's their job. They're there to raise the level of reasonable doubt by saying, hey, there are questions that have not or cannot be answered, therefore opening the door that someone else committed this crime. That's their job. That's what they're getting paid to do. So I have no issue with it. That's our, that's what it's supposed, that's what they're supposed to do.
31:28 Stephanie Harlowe? And the fact that, you know, they say, oh, she could not have had enough time.
31:34 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah, that's a stretch.
31:35 Stephanie Harlowe? When did the 911 call come in?
31:37 Derrick Levasseur? 2:30 AM. I have a thing.
31:39 Stephanie Harlowe? 2:31. When did Darren say he went to bed?
31:41 Derrick Levasseur? He said he went to bed around 1:30, wasn't it?
31:44 Stephanie Harlowe? I thought it was around 1:00 or 1:30.
31:45 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah, 1:00 or 1:30 and 2:30. But even if she only had 20 minutes, that's all it would take.
31:51 Stephanie Harlowe? He certainly, an hour would be enough.
31:54 Derrick Levasseur? More than enough.
31:54 Stephanie Harlowe? Time to do that, yes.
31:55 Derrick Levasseur? We talked about how far the sock was away. It's a couple of minutes. I'm not going to go too deep into this. I don't think we need to, but the amount of violence that was inflicted on both Damon and Devon, minutes, wouldn't take long at all. And then to cut yourself, another couple of minutes. This could have all been done in under 20 minutes, even less. That's, that's, that's a stretch.
32:16 Stephanie Harlowe? And I almost feel like Darren, in one of his stories, said that he went up just after midnight.
32:22 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah, I thought you said last episode, we could be wrong on this. It was around 1:130.
32:26 Stephanie Harlowe? But that was his like third story or something. Yeah.
32:29 Derrick Levasseur? But even in that case, the call came in. I have here 2:30 and you're saying 2:31. So more ample enough time to do it.
32:37 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, either way, whether she, whether he went up around midnight, or whether he went up around 1 or 1:30, the 911 call comes in at 2:30. That's either one hour or two hours.
32:48 Derrick Levasseur? Right.
32:48 Stephanie Harlowe? More than enough time.
32:49 Derrick Levasseur? And I would, I would argue that this could have been all done. Cutting of the screen, the sock, the killing of Damon and Devon, the slicing of herself.
32:57 Stephanie Harlowe? Mm-hmm.
32:57 Derrick Levasseur? Under 20 minutes, 15, 20 minutes.
32:59 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I, I think that's stretching it. I would give it a half an hour, but still.
33:04 Derrick Levasseur? I mean, the geography of it, it's super close. I mean, she would have to, if I'm saying from the time she decided to do it, to actually doing it, like getting off the couch. Think about it. You get off the couch, you run outside, you drop the sock. That's five minutes. You come back in, you stab Damon and Devon, right? They're out of the, they're out of, they're out of the way now. They're not going to interrupt anything. You go over to the counter, you, at that point, you're already cutting the screen because you cut the screen before you went and dropped the sock. And then you come back in and you cut yourself and you scream for, for Darren. Pretty quick. It's a small house. It's not, it's not, then it's not, she's running from one side of the building to the other. It's all right there. And as soon as she cuts herself, immediately she yells for Darren. Darren! Everything's already done.
33:44 Stephanie Harlowe? I think for me, I feel like there would have to be like, you're, she's not a, whatever she is, she's not a cold-blooded killer. She's never done this before. So there would have to be, I, I would hope and think.
33:56 Derrick Levasseur? A buildup?
33:57 Stephanie Harlowe? A buildup, psyching herself up to do it. And then after, maybe a sort of a meltdown, like disassociation, like what did I do? And then, okay, I gotta get into it. But I cannot see her moving through these steps so fluidly to get it done in 20 minutes. But if she did, then yeah, I mean, it's still possible.
34:15 Derrick Levasseur? I mean, especially if she's of not sound mind. You know, she's, if she's operating in, in a different world that most people are not, it could have been pretty just straightforward and cutthroat.
34:25 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, which is horrible to think about. I mean, I think that she did this, and even I have a hard time.
34:30 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah, well.
34:31 Stephanie Harlowe? Putting that on her, you know?
34:32 Derrick Levasseur? Rationalize the irrational. Good luck with that one.
34:35 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, it's, it's real hard. So, um, yeah, ugh. Anyways, the defense said there was absolutely no motive, right? No reason for Darley to kill her children. The motive certainly wasn't financial. The defense pointed out that Damon and Devon each had $5,000 life insurance policies, but Drake didn't have one because he hadn't been added yet. Damon and Devon's policies totaled just $10,000, while their funerals had cost more than $14,000. The defense said that if Darley had wanted to kill someone for profit, it would have made more sense to kill her husband, Darren, who had an $800,000 policy. The defense worked to poke holes in other parts of the state's case. To counter the state's claims that Darley had self-inflicted her wounds, including the knife wounds and the large bruise on her
35:19 Stephanie Harlowe? arm, the defense called Dr. Vincent DiMaio, the chief medical examiner in San Antonio and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Forensic Medicine Pathology. So honestly, it sounds like a pretty legit expert witness, yeah. So he testified that Darley's injuries weren't consistent with self-inflicted wounds. He specifically pointed to the cut across her throat, which prosecutors had described as superficial. DiMaio said it was anything but. She had come close to having sliced her carotid artery.
35:47 Derrick Levasseur? We talked about that.
35:48 Stephanie Harlowe? Mm-hmm. The defense further told the jury that the prosecution had enhanced Darley's 911 call for trial, which changed the audio. To illustrate their concerns, the defense played the 911 call three times, twice using a transcript with disputed sections marked. So the disputed sections are like, we don't really know what she's saying here, but she could be saying this, or she could be saying that. And then they played it once using a version they believed reflected the correct wording. The actual transcript of those discrepancies wasn't part of the trial record, so it's unclear what the exact differences were. However, we do know that Darley's family has claimed that the prosecution's 911 call was played in pieces and out of context. They also said there should have been a part where an officer
36:32 Stephanie Harlowe? arrived and told Darley she'd been stabbed in the neck, and that Darley had a reaction when she saw herself in the mirror. That still doesn't make any sense because in Darlie's stories, the many she told, she said she didn't realize she was stabbed until she woke up. And then she realized and that's why she got a towel for her neck. And the first responder, the officer who arrived first, when he got there, she had a towel to her neck. So it doesn't make sense that there's, you know, an officer arriving and saying like, oh, did you know? Your neck has been sliced and she's like looking at herself in the mirror and she's like, what? I had no idea. Like, that doesn't make any sense to me. So anyways, the defense continued trying to break down the prosecution's case. To refute claims that Darlie's story kept changing because she was lying,
37:17 Stephanie Harlowe? they called Dr. Clayton a psychiatrist who had interviewed Darlie for 14 hours after her arrest. Dr. Clayton told the jury that Darlie was telling the truth about the attacks and that her changes in story were actually memory gaps that were the result of traumatic amnesia, something that can occur after emotionally overwhelming events. Dr. Clayton testified that Darlie's reactions were consistent with trauma and grief, even if they didn't look that way to others, even if they didn't look the way that others expected. Dr. Clayton also said that Darlie did not fit any of the five recognized categories for filicide or the act of a parent murdering a child. And these categories, we've talked about them before. I talk about them on my channel all the time.
37:58 Stephanie Harlowe? The five categories are altruistic, which means I think that my kids are gonna be, you know, suffering in this world, or I want to take my own life and I feel they would suffer without me. So altruistically, out of their own best, you know, out of the best concern for my children, I'm going to take their lives because this, and you see this a lot, but usually with people who are going through psychosis or who are paranoid, having mental health issues. The second category is fatal maltreatment. This is the most common one. This usually happens after many instances of abuse neglect. It's not a single act. It's an extended period of time where a child's being abused, neglected,
38:41 Stephanie Harlowe? not fed properly, things like that, and then the child will, will pass away sadly. The third is the unwanted child. So I think that this was kind of Chris Watts. He realized that he was in love, or whatever he was with Nicole Kessinger. He wanted to sort of erase his previous family, just completely get them out of the way. So he killed his pregnant wife and his two daughters because he realized and felt, oh, these, these people are a burden to me now. And then we have the acutely psychotic, which speaks for itself. They're going through a psychotic break. They're having mental health issues. And then spousal revenge, which we often see.
39:21 Stephanie Harlowe? I believe that the recent case of the Three Decker Girls was an act of spousal revenge personally. So this is when a spouse will kill their children because they know that it hurts the, the other parent who is usually, they're usually going through a divorce or a custody.
39:37 Derrick Levasseur? If you can't have them, you're not gonna either.
39:39 Stephanie Harlowe? Josh Powell's a great example of this as well with Susan Powell case. So yes. So this doctor, Dr. Clayton, is saying that Jarley does not fit into any of these categories. But I mean, based on what the prosecution believed the motive could have been, which was, hey, they are causing me stress. I can't afford the lifestyle I want. I can't be the person I want to be who can lose weight and, and not be so stressed and burdened down. That's the unwanted child. So that she does technically fit into that category if that was the motive. And the fact that, you know, Dr. Clayton is saying she doesn't fit into any of these categories when you don't actually know her internal motives or her internal thoughts. I don't know how he could possibly say that with his chest.
40:23 Derrick Levasseur? I think he's coming from a place of honesty. I think these guys are credible, as we alluded to about the, the last expert. We talk about it in every case, right? There's going to be experts who take a series of information and interpret it a certain way. And that's truly how they feel. That's their expert opinion. But just like in any case, it's an opinion. It's an interpretation. And there's always going to be experts on the other side who interpret that same information in the opposite way. So it's for you, the jury member, or the listener, or the viewer, to take what they're saying, listen to it with an open mind, and then come to your own conclusion. Because, just because these experts say this, one way or the other, it doesn't mean they're right. And I'll even put this towards you. In all these trials...
41:08 Derrick Levasseur? Every case we've talked about, cases even we haven't talked about, in most instances, there are experts on both sides of the aisle. Well, at the end of it, there's a conclusion, and only one set of experts are right. So in every case out there, I would pose to all of you that there's a, there's half of the experts in that particular case are wrong, even though they've been determined to be experts. So let that sink in. Experts in every case are wrong.
41:33 Stephanie Harlowe? I also do want to say Dr. Vincent DeMaio, he is a high-profile figure. He was, he testified and was highly sought after to testify in many cases, including the assassination of JFK, when Lee Harvey Oswald was exhumed, Phil Spector, Ruby Ridge, which if anybody remembers Ruby Ridge, it was a huge thing, George Zimmerman, the West Memphis Three. This is why the name Dr. Vincent DeMaio sounds so familiar, because he has testified in so many cases. And I'm not saying that he's not credible. I'm not saying that what he's saying isn't legitimate, but when you are kind of known for being the guy to bring
42:15 Stephanie Harlowe? in and testify in these cases, and you're getting paid for it, there's always going to be a way to make the, the evidence and make what's there, especially when it's so kind of up for debate and up for interpretation. There's always going to be a way to make it look like the way that the side who's paying you wants it to look.
42:34 Derrick Levasseur? That goes on both sides. Yeah, listen, there, there's a real thing of expert shopping, where the prosecution and defense will go to two or three experts, they'll ask them to examine the evidence, those experts will come back with a brief synopsis, not a whole detailed thing, and the prosecution and defense will look at it and say, oh, this one believes what we believe. Hey, guess what? Joe Smith, we're hiring you. And then now give us a full synopsis. And they'll tell the other two, hey, we're not going to go with you right now. We're going to keep you on standby. We're going to keep you on standby in case we need you down the road. So, I mean, listen, I worked with Dr. Sarah Weckel, he's no longer with us, but-
43:08 Stephanie Harlowe? Sarah Weck, yes, yes, he did that too. It was exactly the person I was thinking of.
43:12 Derrick Levasseur? And, and listen, I had a lot of off-camera conversations with him. I, I really respected him, but, and I'm- Not saying this to disrespect him or his career, but there were cases where he got it wrong. And that has come to light. Does it discredit all the cases he's he's done? No. In many instances, it's his true interpretation of what happened. And just like anybody else out there, sometimes we just get it wrong, even though we're trying to get it right. And so that's just another example of someone being really good at what they do. Definitely knowing their stuff, but in a particular case, getting it wrong. And we're not saying that they're wrong here, but based on all the other evidence we have. There's a big leap with what they're interpreting here. I I know that there are other doctors who have already said that these injuries could be self inflicted.
43:56 Stephanie Harlowe? The doctors who treated her.
43:58 Derrick Levasseur? Said they could be self inflicted. Exactly.
43:59 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, said that they didn't look like wounds that were that were given to her by somebody. You even said that you said the way that it sloped.
44:07 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah, it doesn't make sense.
44:08 Stephanie Harlowe? It doesn't make sense.
44:09 Derrick Levasseur? It also doesn't align with the injuries of Damon and Devon. That's to me also something that has to be considered that's not being mentioned here. But again, this is their opinion. We have to respect it. Doesn't mean we have to believe it.
44:21 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, and I mean, I feel like with this kind of stuff with the defense is doing, trying to poke holes. It's like the 911 call was played out of order and it was, you know, enhanced. It's it feels like they're grasping for straws because they realize the evidence against their client is pretty substantial. So they're trying to do anything to find anything where they can be like, well, look, you know, the state did this and it's kind of nefarious. And I don't, I'm not buying it, but let's take a quick break. We'll be right back.
44:53 Stephanie Harlowe? Okay, we're back from break. So we were sort of talking about Dr. Clayton and how he said that Darley doesn't fit into any of the five filicide categories. Dr. Clayton told the jury there was no evidence that Darley met any of the recognized categories of filicide, including the mental health related ones. While she acknowledged that Darley had shown signs of postpartum depression, which can, in rare cases, progress to psychosis. She said that Darley didn't fit the clinical profile for any of the postpartum depression classifications. She also said she didn't think Darley was suicidal. Teams other two main witnesses were Mr. And Mrs. Routier themselves. So Darlie and Darren Darren testified first.
45:36 Stephanie Harlowe? He recalled Darlie's depression in May 1996 and how she had called him at work after contemplating suicide. He said that after he came home and they talked through everything. He wasn't concerned about her completing her, you know, intentions or her feelings that she wanted to take her own life. A few days later Darlie got her first period in over a year and from then on everything was fine. Darren also testified about it sounds like such a male thing to say. I'm sorry. It sounds like
46:05 Derrick Levasseur? Yikes shots fired.
46:06 Stephanie Harlowe? Right. It sounds like he's like, yeah, you know, she was like going through woman problems after having a baby, but then she got a period and everything's fine now.
46:15 Derrick Levasseur? That's how it works?
46:16 Stephanie Harlowe? No, I don't think so.
46:17 Derrick Levasseur? All right. Let me write that down.
46:19 Stephanie Harlowe? He's like, she got her first period in over a year and suddenly she was okay again. She's just back to normal. This is Darren is is not a the sharpest tool. So Darren also testified about the couple's financial problems, though he did play them down. He said he had made $111,000 in the first five months of 1996, which meant he was on track to earn almost as much as he had in 1995. And just for context, that would be more than double in today's dollars. So I don't know what these people did with their money to be so broke. Honestly. If he's making that.
46:56 Derrick Levasseur? Overspending. Living above their means, putting fountains in the front lawn.
47:01 Stephanie Harlowe? But I feel like you'd have to like go out of your way deliberately to to overspend in that way. I don't like, especially coming from having no money as a kid, which we know Darlie did. I feel like people like that are usually very like always feel like they're kind of, you know, anything could happen at any time and always kind of in survival mode. It's like, yeah, I have money, but I can't spend it. I can't spend it. And these people were just throwing it out for no reason. So at the time of the boys murders, Darren said they had about $64 in their personal bank account, but that was only because he hadn't paid himself yet. He planned to do that on June 7th. He said he had around $8,000 in the business account and $20,000 in accounts
47:44 Stephanie Harlowe? receivable. So there was money available. Accounts receivable means people owe you money, but it actually doesn't mean that it's available until they, until they pay it. So later during cross, the prosecution challenged those numbers with financial records showing the couple was nearly $3,000 in the negative by June. Darren wasn't even making a profit, let alone making anything close to $111,000. So obviously he lied about that, which kind of makes me feel like if he was involved or did know or did suspect that Darlie could have done this, the fact that he's downplaying the financial motive in his testimony while he's, you know, you're, you're, you're under, what is it called?
48:24 Derrick Levasseur? Under oath.
48:25 Stephanie Harlowe? You're under oath. You're not supposed to be lying. So the fact that he would lie about something that's so easy to prove and that he would be downplaying the financial aspect kind of makes me feel like maybe there was a financial aspect. And that's why he's trying to be like, don't look over here. We were fine with money. Like, yeah, things were kind of tight, but we were going to be okay, which was not the case at all.
48:46 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah, there's a few ways to look at this and without having the answers in front of us, it's hard to, to identify exactly what it is to pinpoint down. Okay, this is the reason why. But just off the, just off the rip, after you're reading that, I could take it as he truly believes that his wife is innocent and he can see what the prosecution's doing. He's trying to, he's trying to minimize the financial element of this for his wife, where he doesn't want them saying they were in a lot of debt and therefore his wife felt like she had to do this to help them out. I also think there's a world where he, he's saying this because if it isn't outside intruder, if he truly believes that it is, maybe there's part of him that thinks, hey, listen, if these guys were coming after us, it was because
49:30 Derrick Levasseur? of me. It was something that I got going on money wise where I pissed the wrong people off and I don't want them looking at. At me as like the reason why this happened to my sons. So that that's that's part of it. And then it's also what you said. The third angle would be he is somehow involved. He he knows that there's some truth to what the prosecution's laying out. So he's minimizing this element of it because he doesn't want them to follow this lead too much.
49:57 Stephanie Harlowe? So here's my interpretation. Obviously, I don't know Darlie and Darren. I didn't know them personally. But based on what we have heard, what we know, these people were all about money. And not only that, but they talked about it with everyone, right? We got Darlie telling her cleaning lady like, I need $10,000 bad. We got Darlie and Darren being interviewed days after their sons are found dead in such a horrible way, days after their funeral and talking about money at their graveside with the reporters, like, you know, I make good money. I make good. Yeah, I do well.
50:31 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah, it's a problem.
50:32 Stephanie Harlowe? They were so about money that I can't imagine that anything they did did not have that running through it. Okay, secondly, maybe Darren's over here, you know, if we're gonna say that this did not happen by Darlie's hand. This is not happened by Darren's hand. It wasn't outside intruder. Maybe Darren's over here like, man, I do be running my mouth about money all the time. Did I say something to the wrong person?
50:54 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah, he's trying to downplay it.
50:55 Stephanie Harlowe? Flash it to the wrong person. Yeah.
50:58 Derrick Levasseur? And listen, when you have this much money coming in and out, where you're going from $100,000 in five months to $64 in your bank account. There are times where people like this who have a lot of money coming in, but are waiting for it. Will borrow money from people, hard lending. And sometimes you borrow from the wrong person and you're a little late. And with that wrong person, they don't, they're not a bank. They're not a bank. So the way they get their money, the way they recuperate their losses is different than the way the bank would do it. The bank's gonna go through the legal system. These guys, these hard lenders, they'll break your legs at minimum. So was he in some financial struggles where he was borrowing money to cover the bills and then paying these guys back? And maybe there was something going on where he didn't?
51:42 Derrick Levasseur? I don't know. At this point, we probably will never know.
51:44 Stephanie Harlowe? But why wouldn't he say something about that then, even to just? The police to save his wife. He knows she's innocent. She didn't do this. He's gonna let her sit in prison for the rest of her life.
51:52 Derrick Levasseur? Great question.
51:53 Stephanie Harlowe? Rather than come forth and be like, yeah, I'm kind of an idiot. I made a bad deal. Be this. Yeah, you'd think.
51:59 Derrick Levasseur? But his rationale may be, oh, if I do this, I'm also acknowledging that it's my fault.
52:04 Stephanie Harlowe? It doesn't matter. Your wife's in prison. No, there's no, it's because it didn't happen. It's the not just a noble thing to do, but.
52:13 Derrick Levasseur? It's the right thing to do.
52:14 Stephanie Harlowe? The smart thing, right? Because now, yeah, maybe you look a little stupid, but.
52:19 Derrick Levasseur? But you just said Darren's not the sharpest tool in the shed.
52:21 Stephanie Harlowe? He's not, but after all this time and he keeps talking about how she does, he doesn't think she did it. He doesn't. Wouldn't you wouldn't even say that to the police like early on in the investigation, you would wait. You let it get all the way to trial and her going to prison forever? Like, come on.
52:36 Derrick Levasseur? And by the way, I have no direct knowledge of that, but again, I'm trying to read between the lines with not only what we're hearing here, but also what I just read earlier about from Danelle where to me, and I could be wrong. She's going to be listening or watching this. I could be wrong, but the way I read that, I don't know how you interpreted it, but it's like, hey, Darren may have been involved and not even known it.
52:57 Stephanie Harlowe? It's it's plausible for sure.
52:59 Derrick Levasseur? So if that's what they're saying and that's what we're seeing here, is it possible if there was an outside intruder? That was the motive for the outside intruder? Money? Possible.
53:09 Stephanie Harlowe? I just don't see why he wouldn't tell the police or the person responsible for murdering his two sons so brutally would come to justice. I don't see why. There's no actual reason besides like to save face. Like, what is that?
53:21 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah. Couple that with the fact that the forensic evidence doesn't align with it. That's where you start to go back to our original train of thought.
53:28 Stephanie Harlowe? That's what happened.
53:29 Derrick Levasseur? Exactly.
53:30 Stephanie Harlowe? All right. So Darren then told the jury what happened on June 5th. And just like he had so many times in the past, he once again, even during the trial, added new details. Darren said he worked all day and he came home around 5:30 with Darlie's sister Dana. Now, as far as I can tell, Dana didn't testify at trial, so we don't have her account of that night. Darren said Damon and Devon were playing outside when they arrived. The family ate dinner. The boys went back. While Darren fixed the latch on the backyard gate, which hadn't been closing properly. You had to pull really hard to open it and push hard to close it. And after fixing the latch, he went back inside and played with Drake in the family room while talking with Darlie and Dana. Later, they went into the garage, which Darren described as cram packed full to prepare
54:15 Stephanie Harlowe? for a garage sale. They moved items around, putting keep things on one side and sell items on the other. Because it was so hot, they kept the overhead garage door open while they worked and the window near the breeding cage was also open about six to eight inches. Darren said they didn't close the window when they went back inside the house. At around 9:30, Darren took Dana home. When he got back around 10:15, Darlie was watching TV in the family room. Devon was asleep in front of the television and Damon was on a blanket on the floor drifting in and out of sleep. Drake was asleep on Darlie's chest, but he soon became fussy. Darren grabbed a bottle, took Drake upstairs, fed him and put him to bed. He went back downstairs and he and Darlie talked for a bit about their upcoming trips. And then around 1 a.m. he went to bed.
55:00 Derrick Levasseur? So we're talking an hour and a half.
55:02 Stephanie Harlowe? An hour and a half, 1 a.m. to 2:30 when the 911 call was made. She had an hour and a half to do all that.
55:06 Derrick Levasseur? More than enough time.
55:07 Stephanie Harlowe? Perfectly, yeah, enough time. So Darren said he woke up after hearing a glass break. He then put his pants on and ran downstairs to find Darlie screaming and Devon on the ground with the coffee table on top of him. Darren testified, quote, "Darlie is screaming and I'm screaming and I mean, we're just freaking out," end quote. Darren said he tried to perform CPR, but it wasn't working due to the extent of the injuries. He told the jury at that time, quote, "Darlie was running back and forth from the kitchen with towels over to Damon and then she came over to Devon and she was going, oh my God, he is dead. She was trying to stop the bleeding with a towel. She kept trying to hold his chest together. I knew not to blow too hard and I kept blowing and I kept trying to hold his chest closed
55:50 Stephanie Harlowe? and then Darlie was holding one of them closed." So Darren said that Darlie wiped blood off Devon's chest with the towel while he tried to give rescue breaths. Nothing was working and Darren realized that Devon had passed. They moved over to Damon, who was lying on his stomach along the wall. Darren said. Darlie put a towel on Damon's back and talked to him, trying to comfort him. Darren picked up the towel and then lifted Damon's shirt to see his wounds. He tried to find a pulse but didn't feel one. Darren said they didn't roll Damon over for CPR because he thought Damon might have a back injury and based on his first aid training, he knew not to mess with that. Darren said at this point Darlie was on the phone with 911, running back and forth, screaming and hollering. Darren noticed that right before the police arrived, she was quote,
56:35 Stephanie Harlowe? "standing right beside the vacuum cleaner, which was right off the kitchen floor, and had it in her hand. She was hanging on to it like a cane." End quote. Darren then said, quote, "As soon as Officer Waddell walked into the room, he froze and he did not move. He didn't do anything. I kept screaming at him, telling him to help me and he wouldn't help me." End quote. Darren said Darlie kept trying to get Waddell to go to the garage, but Waddell just stopped halfway into the kitchen and then came back. He just stood there and didn't have his gun out. They were all three in shock. After that, quote, "People started piling into the house." End quote. Everyone was screaming and hollering and yelling.
57:10 Derrick Levasseur? Okay, let, can we stop there? I know there's more. I can see the script as you're reading it. Let's break down what we have so far, because there's a lot there. And we're not gonna, we're not gonna regurgitate everything that we've talked about over the last five episodes, because it's already been said. But, to me, the glass breaking, it could have been the start of it. Like, it could have been, again, you're half asleep, you could have heard glass breaking and simultaneously heard screaming as well. And that causes, you know, the glass kinda startles you and then you get up because you hear the screaming and you come downstairs, which would make sense, because if she cut herself, maybe right beforehand, that's when the glass breaks.
57:44 Stephanie Harlowe? It doesn't make sense with the intruder theory, no.
57:46 Derrick Levasseur? Because she had, but she didn't have blood on her feet, though.
57:50 Stephanie Harlowe? She didn't have blood on her feet and she said she could hear the sound of glass crunching under her as she pursued this intruder.
57:56 Derrick Levasseur? Well, that story would, that would be a lie, though, right?
57:58 Stephanie Harlowe? And if Darren came down when he heard the glass break, and it wasn't when she started screaming for him, allegedly, according to Darlie, she's chasing the intruder.
58:07 Derrick Levasseur? No, well, that's where her story doesn't make sense.
58:10 Stephanie Harlowe? She's chasing the intruder into the garage and then she comes back and picks up the knife and puts it on the counter and then she starts screaming for Darren. He would have done, already been down there by now.
58:18 Derrick Levasseur? Exactly. And that's why I'm saying if Darlie did this herself, if her intruder theory is a lie. That would make sense where she cuts herself and then smashes the glass to make it to startle Darren to get him up. And that's why she didn't cut her feet. That's why now that makes more sense from an evidentiary standpoint. That the glass was broken after everything was done.
58:38 Stephanie Harlowe? The vacuum cleaner is also on top of the glass.
58:40 Derrick Levasseur? Some of it, yeah, but she also, he said that she was holding on to it like a cane.
58:44 Stephanie Harlowe? Which has never been said by either of them before this moment.
58:47 Derrick Levasseur? But those could have, those things could have been moved where it was moved on top of the glass. So the process, I'm saying that it does make more sense that the glass was broken after the fact. And not before that when the attacker, quote unquote attacker came in there. And so moving on from that, then you have officer, well, no, let's go back a little bit. You have the treating of Devon and Damon. There, it kills me to even talk about this.
59:10 Stephanie Harlowe? It really pisses me off that they are continuing to like victimize their sons by pretending they helped, honestly.
59:16 Derrick Levasseur? I mean, we weren't there.
59:18 Stephanie Harlowe? The evidence is not there that they helped and the first responders all said that it was weird. That she wasn't like listening to them when they were like, hey, like Officer Waddell, and then the other police officer, when they were like, hey, put some rags, you know, she wasn't doing that.
59:31 Derrick Levasseur? Okay, so let me play devil's advocate here and let's go back a little bit and you can give me your point of view, which may align with people listening right now. So my argument would be that before Waddell arrived. Darren is stating that they started to administer rescue breaths, CPR, right?
59:48 Stephanie Harlowe? According to his first aid training that he allegedly has now, yeah.
59:52 Derrick Levasseur? There's multiple towels all over the ground and some of the crime scene photos that I've seen. So what would your, what would your counter be to that, that they were administering some type of CPR? Prior to law enforcement arriving, so they wouldn't have witnessed this law enforcement.
1:00:06 Stephanie Harlowe? I don't know, maybe Darren was, but.
1:00:08 Derrick Levasseur? Okay, but you're saying you're open to the idea.
1:00:10 Stephanie Harlowe? Darlie didn't even approach her sons at any point while the police were there.
1:00:15 Derrick Levasseur? I'm talking about beforehand.
1:00:16 Stephanie Harlowe? How do I know that she didn't?
1:00:18 Derrick Levasseur? Right, because the only other person there is saying that she did.
1:00:20 Stephanie Harlowe? I don't, but it was in her first three versions of her story. She didn't say that she did.
1:00:25 Derrick Levasseur? Okay, okay. So you're going off her statement and that's fine. And listen, there may be many people to agree with you. I'm just playing the other side. Where according to the other adult that was in that room at that point, she did help. Doesn't mean she's innocent. I'm just trying to be fair.
1:00:41 Stephanie Harlowe? But this is a story he's telling after consulting with lawyers after-
1:00:44 Derrick Levasseur? I, I don't disagree with you.
1:00:46 Stephanie Harlowe? After reading all of her past statements, and this is a version of events that he, Darley, and the lawyers all agreed, like, this actually sounds the best for all of you guys.
1:00:56 Derrick Levasseur? I'm not disputing that. I'm just going off of what he's saying. So let's move on from that, because that is, that's your, that they're lying. That's basically the, that's basically the defense to it. They're lying. They've coordinated a story, and that's what they're saying now, because optically, it looks the best. Now, Waddell arrives. Waddell, who's, in my opinion, an impartial witness, is saying they, they, she wasn't helping. She wasn't doing anything. But I do want to address this whole him coming in there and not going into the garage and kind of just standing there shocked, because this is where the cop hat is on, but I'm gonna come to Darren's defense here to a certain degree, because this is something from what I've heard was a big point of contention at court and just publicly, because you have the officer there who's supposed to protect you, and it sounds
1:01:41 Derrick Levasseur? like he froze. So let's break this down, because this is something where I'm sure many of you want to hear my opinion on this. There's two things that could have happened here. The first scenario is, he walks in, and Waddell sees what he's looking at. He sees two people have already been stabbed, a third person who's been stabbed. They're telling him that the person who did the stabbing is currently in the garage. The officer's alone at this point, and he's thinking, I have to protect the people here, because if I pursue him, and the offender makes his way around through another way, he could kill all of them before I get back. So I'm gonna stand by, wait for backup, and hold down the fort until backup arrives and we can pursue this person. That's option number one. But he didn't have his gun out, according to Darren, which would be odd, because if
1:02:24 Derrick Levasseur? you have a stabbing suspect in the house, you're gonna have your gun drawn. So that's a problem for me. The other scenario is that Officer Waddell, and I don't know him from a hole in the wall, he could have been a rookie, he could have been a 20-year veteran, to be honest with you, it really doesn't matter, because anecdotally, I will tell you guys this, and I'm not gonna say names, but as a patrolman and as a supervisor, I personally-
1:02:49 Derrick Levasseur? Personally witnessed officers when we're responding to a domestic dispute in the middle of the night where there's possibly a 1032 gun involved. I've personally witnessed with my own eyes, an officer who was right around the corner from that location saying, yep, I'm in route and they should have beaten me there because I was on the other side of the city. And I've, I've seen them stopped at the top of the road, waiting until they see the flashing lights behind them coming in their rear view before they approach the house because they want to make it look like they're showing up at the same time as me. And by the way, I witnessed that more than once and I definitely brought it to their attention and the people who are supervisors in my building. I say all this to say, not all officers are heroes.
1:03:32 Derrick Levasseur? Some of them are cowards and I'm not saying that, that Officer Waddell is that. I'm just acknowledging it's possible. These guys aren't robots and there is a world where as a human being, he walked into that crime scene and he froze because he was scared.
1:03:46 Stephanie Harlowe? I'm sure he did freeze for, you know, 30 seconds, a minute, of course, to process what's happening, but did he freeze and not move the entire time until another cop got there? No.
1:03:57 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I don't know that I'm only giving you the side that Darren's conveying and I'm sure Doc Officer Waddell's is completely different and he's going to be able to explain it. All I'm doing here in a generic sense is acknowledging to our audience that when you hear these stories and someone, a witness or a victim will say, the officer was scared shitless or they froze. It's possible a hundred percent. They are human beings and they do respond to traumatic situations, just like you and I. And unfortunately, some of them don't realize how they would respond in those circumstances until they're put in it. So what actually happened in there? Waddell's going to have his version. Darren's going to have his version. You choose what you want to believe. I'm acknowledging that both sides are plausible.
1:04:42 Stephanie Harlowe? I choose the impartial person who has no motive to lie as opposed to the person who has every motive to lie.
1:04:49 Derrick Levasseur? I would push back on that. I would say if Officer Waddell did freeze and was scared and didn't do what he was supposed to do, he's not going to come publicly say that that makes him look horrible if he froze and was genuinely just in self preservation mode he's not going to come out and say that it's not good for his peers it's not good for his organization it's not good for the public it's not good for his friends and family now I'm not sitting here saying that if that happens to someone they're a bad person but listen we can talk about the shootings in Florida
1:05:20 Stephanie Harlowe? oh Parkland
1:05:21 Derrick Levasseur? that guy was a coward I'll come right here and say it
1:05:24 Stephanie Harlowe? yeah but he didn't even go inside like
1:05:26 Derrick Levasseur? that school resource officer had a job to do and he was a coward and so he was the one responsible for protecting them and he didn't do his job and if we didn't have more evidence of it I don't think he would have come out and said it but we had evidence that he didn't go inside so he couldn't dispute it I'm just saying would it have changed the outcome of what happened here and in reality is Waddell acting immediately or not acting immediately as far as what actually occurred a big difference maker no it already happened I'm just putting it out there to be honest
1:05:54 Stephanie Harlowe? what I'm saying is it doesn't really matter whether Waddell froze or not and whether he didn't maybe want to admit that for like yeah a few minutes I was shocked I have kids like it sucked it was terrible that doesn't matter what matters is would he lie about asking Darley multiple times to give aid to her children and then
1:06:12 Derrick Levasseur? and her not doing
1:06:13 Stephanie Harlowe? and her not doing it would he lie about that because what motive that's not protecting himself now you're just throwing somebody else under the bus that you don't even know is guilty or and you know
1:06:20 Derrick Levasseur? now that I would agree with
1:06:21 Stephanie Harlowe? why would he do that
1:06:22 Derrick Levasseur? what you're saying is essentially what I'm saying because he said that about Darlie and Darren indirectly is defending her by calling out the integrity of Waddell do you see what I'm saying now
1:06:35 Stephanie Harlowe? of course I see yes
1:06:36 Derrick Levasseur? because he's trying to say listen here's your source for Darley not doing anything but let me tell you a little bit about him and that's what the objective here is that's the strategy from where I'm sitting is to discredit Waddell
1:06:50 Stephanie Harlowe? Yes, of course, because that's the first person on scene. And he had these, you know, perceptions of what was going on that do not look good for Darley, of course.
1:06:57 Derrick Levasseur? Right, exactly. And so, could be one scenario, could be another, we're acknowledging both.
1:07:03 Stephanie Harlowe? Darren said he then went to go get their neighbor Karen. And when he came back, Darley had been moved to the front porch because she had passed out inside. Darley then left in an ambulance and Darren went inside to clean himself up before riding to the hospital with Karen and baby Drake. Darren was asked about Darlie's behavior at the hospital. He said Darley wanted to hold Drake, but he kept going for her bandages, so she held his fingers instead. He said Darley had all the photos of the boys brought to the hospital from the house, and when she saw them, she just fell apart and would go into hysterics. Darren was also asked if Darley complained about any injuries to her mouth. He said, "Yes, family members were feeding her ice chips because her lips were all swollen. You could see the cuts on the inside of her mouth." And if this seems super random, that's because it was.
1:07:47 Stephanie Harlowe? As far as I can tell, these mouth injuries were not mentioned until Darren testified. Never in any of their statements to police before, no police reports, nobody ever said anything about mouth injuries. There doesn't appear to be any documentation of them from the hospital staff, and the prosecution didn't ask about those injuries when they were examining witnesses on the stand. So it's likely that the prosecution didn't know these injuries would be brought up because nobody ever said anything about them prior to that day. Even Dr. Vincent DiMaio, who testified for the defense about Darlie's wounds, never mentioned any sores or cuts in or on her mouth. So on cross, the prosecution focused on the fact that during his testimony, Darren seemed
1:08:29 Stephanie Harlowe? to have new explanations for nearly every piece of the state's evidence, explanations he had not offered before. They said, quote, "Mr. Routier, it's really more accurate to say that your memory got better every time we got a test result back in this case, didn't it?" End quote. Then they followed up with, quote, "Every time we found out something else, you remembered something else that would correspond with that finding, didn't you?" End quote. For example, Darren didn't mention Darley going to the sink until the bond hearing, which is after he learned that the police had taken the sink. As evidence. So now the sink appears in his new stories. So at the end of Darren's cross-examination, the prosecution laid into him. This next quote is going to be long, but I do think it's impactful. Quote, "Would it be fair to say that really back on June
1:09:14 Stephanie Harlowe? the 6th, by your version, we have got a really lucky intruder, don't we? I mean, after all, he picked a house where the window just happened to be open to the garage, right? Just happened to pick a house where on that night, the alarm system is not turned on or armed, correct? Lucky that in fact, once he gets past the alarm system off, he gets through the window open. When he gets to the utility room, he just happens to find a sock available to him for his use that night, right? And lucky enough that when he does that, he gets into the kitchen and lo and behold, there in the butcher block, he finds a weapon to attack your two children and your wife, right? Lucky enough that evening that once he got past all that, the murder weapon is actually provided inside the house, right? Lucky enough that while he is attacking both your children, your wife doesn't wake up, right? Lucky enough
1:09:59 Stephanie Harlowe? that after he attacks her, that in fact, she doesn't even get a good look at his face, right? Lucky enough that as he's leaving the house, he drops the knife on the floor there and your wife doesn't pick it up and doesn't use it against him, right? Lucky enough that when he gets into the garage, that he doesn't deposit any blood on the floor, no blood on the window, correct? And then lucky enough that when he leaves out that garage into your backyard, that he either scales that fence without leaving a mark, or he opens up the gate and then latches and closes it without anybody detecting that either, right? A real lucky guy, wasn't he? End quote. Darren responded, quote, "Yeah, and I want him dead." End quote. And the prosecutor added, quote, "So do I. No further questions."
1:10:40 Derrick Levasseur? Damn.
1:10:42 Stephanie Harlowe? End quote.
1:10:42 Derrick Levasseur? Damn.
1:10:43 Stephanie Harlowe? Wow.
1:10:44 Derrick Levasseur? I don't have anything to add on that. I mean, that right there is a synopsis of what would have to happen in order for an intruder to get away with this.
1:10:52 Stephanie Harlowe? That's a synopsis of how ridiculous Darren and Darlie's stories, even after they changed a million times, are. No story they could add based on any evidence that became available. Even if they changed their stories after new evidence became available, it still doesn't make sense.
1:11:07 Derrick Levasseur? So do I. No further questions.
1:11:09 Stephanie Harlowe? No further questions. Mike.
1:11:10 Derrick Levasseur? Like honestly, Darren thought he had him. He was like, "Yeah, and I want him dead."
1:11:15 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, I want him dead, man.
1:11:17 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah, and so do I. No further questions. Okay, so nothing to add to what that statement said there, but the question becomes, maybe you want to answer this, maybe you don't. With Darren putting forward all of these explanations after learning of different pieces of evidence, is this a man trying to protect his wife who he believes is innocent? Or is this a co-conspirator?
1:11:39 Stephanie Harlowe? I don't know, could be either.
1:11:40 Derrick Levasseur? Okay, alright, that's a good answer. I mean, that's what I think a lot of people are gonna deduce from that. It could be a guy who genuinely thinks his wife is just innocent and is doing anything he can to protect her because he believes law enforcement is not out looking for the right guy.
1:11:55 Stephanie Harlowe? I think, like I said, I don't think Darren is a super intelligent person.
1:11:59 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah, we've said that like 17 times. I'm sorry Darren, it just doesn't come off that way.
1:12:02 Stephanie Harlowe? He seems very impressionable. It kinda seemed like Darlie was running the show, like she kinda had, you know, kinda had him under her thumb and that he would believe anything that she said, you know? And, and I think that there's trauma bonds. We see this all the time, right? Even with abusive relationships where women won't press charges against their husband even though they're holding and showcasing the marks of abuse that have been left on them because they're trauma bonded, because they're enmeshed, because they just can't bring themselves to believe that this act has anything to do with who that person really is. So, it, it could be either one, but the fact that it's gone on so long and Darren still
1:12:45 Stephanie Harlowe? believes Darlie and still defends her, it gives me co-conspirator vibes, I'm not gonna be, you know, like lying to you. However, would he be a co-conspirator if Darlie was in prison for the rest of her life and she was not throwing him under the bus? I find that hard to believe. I don't know. I don't know, dude.
1:13:05 Derrick Levasseur? I'm leaning toward, as we're coming to the end of this episode, I'm leaning toward Darren believing in his wife and trying to do the right thing.
1:13:15 Stephanie Harlowe? And there could be a, a thing where it's like, the idea that my wife could have done this to my children is so unbelievable that I can't even put it in my head. I cannot marry those two things together.
1:13:25 Derrick Levasseur? And I'll tell you what, this isn't coming from a personal angle where, because I don't know Darren, just like I don't know Darlie, there's just no evidence to support him being involved with the actual killing. If there was, my opinion would completely change. This seems like a one-person job.
1:13:39 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, and it really only needed one person.
1:13:42 Derrick Levasseur? And it seems like I said, there were things done for law enforcement for in the evidence, right? There were also maybe some things done to get Darren's attention, and we brought one of them up. The breaking of the glass could have shown a side of struggle. It may have also been in her mind, an opportunity to wake Darren up due to the quote unquote struggle. So there were things done in the house that we don't know if it was Darlie, what it was, who it was intended for. The glass, for what, for all we know, could have been intended to wake Darren up. So there were things done where Darren was awake and involved. I think the whole thing could have been done a lot cleaner.
1:14:17 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah.
1:14:18 Derrick Levasseur? And I also think Darren would have had some in quote unquote injuries as well. Because if he was, he could, they could have said, we were both on the couch, we fought with them, there were two intruders, look at, they cut us all up. It would, instead of having this person who goes from being a victim to a witness, you could have made him a victim as well.
1:14:34 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, cuz now he's gonna, if they're planning this, right beforehand, and Darlie's like, hey, and I'll cut myself so that it looks, and then Darren's like, yeah, but what the hell? I'm gonna be there.
1:14:42 Derrick Levasseur? We talked about this.
1:14:43 Stephanie Harlowe? Unharmed. What are they gonna think about me? I need some injuries too.
1:14:46 Derrick Levasseur? And, and not to make light of the situation, but imagine you and I being co-conspirators and being like, okay, hey, listen, Stephanie, one of us has gotta be injured. You know what? I think it should be you. And you're looking at me like, wait dude, wait, why's it gotta be me? You're the man, you, you do it. And I'm like, nah.
1:15:02 Stephanie Harlowe? They'd be the one you'd go after first. You'd take it, yeah.
1:15:05 Derrick Levasseur? I'd be like, but listen, I gotta work, I gotta pay the bills, you're kinda, you know, you're home, you can, you can take some time off and recover, right? Like, hey, listen, I'll cut you, it won't be that deep, I got you. Like, I could, again, not trying to make light of this, but I, that would be the argument, like, who's gonna take this injury near the carotid artery and potentially kill themselves?
1:15:24 Stephanie Harlowe? Or even the argument of Darren saying like, I can't be the one not injured, because then they'll look at me. They'll potentially think I did it, so I need some injuries too.
1:15:31 Derrick Levasseur? I need optics, I need to look like a hero here. Yeah, and that's why I, I'm leaning towards him not being directly involved, not because of what he's saying or not saying, there's just nothing tying him to the crime scene itself.
1:15:42 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, and I feel like with Darren and his, um, brain and his bombastic attitude, like, the story would have been way More elaborate like I ran down the intruder was still there. I wrestled with him.
1:15:53 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah, as I was running down the road, he dropped the sock.
1:15:55 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, I wrestled with him to protect my wife and and he punched me in the face. And that's how I got this black eye. I tried, but he got away because, you know, I was so dazed from the punch like the story would have been way more elaborate and just ridiculous. Had Darren been involved and Darlie probably knew that she was like, I can't let this guy get involved, man. We'll never get away with this.
1:16:11 Derrick Levasseur? I'm with you. I'm with you.
1:16:12 Stephanie Harlowe? So let's take a quick break and we'll be right back.
1:16:19 Stephanie Harlowe? Following Darren's disastrous cross examination, the defense still had one more key witness to bring forward. Darlie herself, her attorneys had actually advised her not to testify, but she said she wanted to. So Darlie got on the stand. She talked about how in April and May of 1996, she'd been feeling moody. On May 3rd, she'd become so upset that she started writing a suicide letter, but as she was writing it, she felt silly. So she called Darren, asked him to come home and he did. She said she told him she didn't like the way she was feeling and that she'd written a suicide letter. They cried together and Darren asked how she had planned to take her life. She said over the counter sleeping pills, she had them in her drawer, but hadn't even removed them. Later she and Darren flushed them down the toilet.
1:17:03 Stephanie Harlowe? The next day she felt much better and it wasn't long before she had her first period in over a year. And after that she became her old self again. Darlie testified that at the time of the murders, she and Darren weren't out of money, but things were tight. They were one month behind on their mortgage, but she said that wasn't because they didn't have the money. It was because she forgot to pay the mortgage and other bills. So Darlie said she'd been used to handling the bills while working at the shop. And when she started staying home full time, there was an adjustment period. She said she needed to reorganize. Her testimony about June 5th mostly matched Darren's until it came to what happened after dinner. She said Darren did fix the gate latch, but that he was the only one who worked on that garage sale.
1:17:46 Stephanie Harlowe? He was the only one in the garage, putting things to one side that were going to get sold, putting things to the other side that they were going to keep. It was not her and Dana and Darren in the garage. She said that while Darren was in the garage, she and her sister Dana went upstairs to put Drake down for. A quote unquote power nap and then went back downstairs to talk about upcoming weddings. The boys returned from playing outside and Darren took Dana home. When he got back, Drake was lying on her chest while Damon and Devon were on the floor. Darlie made Drake a bottle and Darren took him upstairs. She stayed in the family room watching TV. Darren came back down, they talked about their upcoming trip to Pennsylvania. Then they talked a little bit about the business and then about their boat. It was important that Darlie mentioned this because during Darren's earlier testimony at her bond
1:18:29 Stephanie Harlowe? hearing, remember, he had said they did not talk about the boat. So this is just another example of how their stories don't match. Even with time, even with lawyers, even with being able to tailor your stories to emerging evidence, they still could not get their stories to match. So Darlie continued saying, quote, "We discussed getting rid of the boat because we weren't using it anymore. There wasn't an argument. That's all been taken out of context. There was not an argument about the boat. There was not an argument about the car." End quote. She also testified about what happened as Darren went to bed. Darlie said, quote, "I asked him if he had made sure that the front door was locked and he said that he did. And I asked him to turn off the kitchen light as he was going upstairs." End quote.
1:19:12 Stephanie Harlowe? According to Darlie, she fell asleep after speaking with Darren. She said, quote, "The next thing that I remember is Damon hitting my shoulder and he said mommy or he said mommy mommy, I'm not sure, but he said mommy. I looked up and you've got to remember that I'm in a, I'm not completely awake, you know? When you first wake up, you're not completely wide awake. And there was a man that was down, going away from the couch, just walking away from me. I started to get up and when I stood up, I heard a noise like glass breaking. I started to walk towards the kitchen. Damon was behind me and when I got to the kitchen, I put my hand back here for Damon to stay." End quote. And I guess, you know, it might sound hard to believe that Damon could have been standing after the attack, but according to the medical examiner who conducted his autopsy, it was
1:19:57 Stephanie Harlowe? possible. She did say, the ME did say that Damon did not die instantly. While she didn't specifically say whether he could stand, she testified that he could have remained mobile and moved on his own for about 10 to 15 feet over the span of five minutes. And during that time, he could have made sounds before collapsing and surviving for a few minutes longer before passing away. So it's possible, but how probable is it that she doesn't notice?
1:20:24 Stephanie Harlowe? How bad his condition is?
1:20:26 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah, no, it's absolutely horrible because there is some truth in that story. No matter which way you look at it, there's truth, there's probably some truth in that story. And I've seen multiple scenarios where I've had to work a homicide and we get video from the bar or the restaurant and you see somebody get stabbed and they're walking out of the bar like they're going to be fine and they drop after like 10, 15 seconds. So definitely possible, but there's so many bigger questions here for me because at this point, the man's already walking away from her, which means she's already been injured. She's already been beat up, she's got the cuts, the bruises on her arm, on her neck, on her chest, all of this is all transpired and yet none of that woke her up. What woke her up was her, her son calling out her name.
1:21:09 Stephanie Harlowe? Bumping into her shoulder.
1:21:10 Derrick Levasseur? Not the gash to the neck, not the slamming of the arm, what would have had to occur to cause that much bruising.
1:21:16 Stephanie Harlowe? Not her son's crying as they're being attacked.
1:21:18 Derrick Levasseur? Nothing. What woke her up was mommy, mommy. Think about it, literally that woke you up, but you being stabbed or sliced didn't. That doesn't make sense. And I do want to acknowledge, although I don't believe it, there are some pockets of people who state that those sores in her mouth could have been because she was drugged, like some type of chloroform or something put over her face because the intent of the intruder was to SA her and not to kill her. And then that got kind of, that kind of changed because the, the kids were involved or whatever. To me ludicrous, it doesn't make sense.
1:21:53 Stephanie Harlowe? What, she's not going to mention these sores at the hospital? They're not going to notice the sores? Come on.
1:21:58 Derrick Levasseur? I'm not even really entertaining it and I'm the guy who entertains everything.
1:22:01 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah.
1:22:01 Derrick Levasseur? I'm not entertaining it.
1:22:03 Stephanie Harlowe? It's a, a whole thing that was brought up during Darren's testimony out of nowhere, had never been mentioned before. And now what, yes, does the defense, does the defense possibly want to introduce a theory that she was, that she was drugged? I mean, her blood would have been taken at the hospital. Was there any, you know, chemicals or indications in her body? Like, I don't know.
1:22:21 Derrick Levasseur? To me, and if she was drugged, but here's the problem with that. And this is why I'm not acknowledging it for anyone being like, why aren't you talking? Why wouldn't you acknowledge it? If she was drugged to the level where she was incoherent and unaware that she was being physically assaulted and stabbed. That same level of sedation would not cause her to wake up from someone calling her name mommy. You get what I'm saying? The two things can't be true. So if she was drugged to the point where she could not feel her throat being slashed, she would not have woken up from her, her son saying mommy mommy. That's my point. So it's one or the other. And if it's the other, then that means everything else that we have forensically is just a red herring.
1:23:05 Derrick Levasseur? It does not make sense. It does not line up, which is why I think this account of what happened where she wakes up to her son calling her name and the man walking away, not finishing her off, not killing her, makes no sense to me, especially when we have the wounds on Damon and Devon. This guy went there to kill everybody and stopped at the two boys and didn't kill one or two of the adults? Makes zero sense.
1:23:31 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, especially if she woke up and followed him, he'd be like, oh shit, like I'm not wearing a mask. She saw my face. I gotta kill her now.
1:23:37 Derrick Levasseur? You gotta go.
1:23:37 Stephanie Harlowe? And why would I really hesitate to do so? I just killed two little boys. What was, what is killing a grown woman gonna bother me?
1:23:43 Derrick Levasseur? You're not gonna leave that loose end.
1:23:45 Stephanie Harlowe? No.
1:23:45 Derrick Levasseur? You're not gonna leave that loose end. She can identify you like, like the prosecutor said, and he just happened to be walking away? How does he know that she didn't get a glimpse of his face? You've already injured her almost, you've done more to injure her, but not kill her? Then it would have been easier just to kill her. Do you follow what I'm saying?
1:24:01 Stephanie Harlowe? Yes, of course.
1:24:02 Derrick Levasseur? So it's like-
1:24:03 Stephanie Harlowe? You've got the weapon in your hand still.
1:24:04 Derrick Levasseur? You've got the weapon in your hand.
1:24:05 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah.
1:24:06 Derrick Levasseur? I'm not trying to make light of what's happening here by just describing it the way I am. But if you want to kill someone, it's pretty simple. Straight in. Game over. Go for the chest, straight in. You're more than likely going to accomplish a mission to, to slice in those areas, the arm. You stabbing someone in the arm? What are you hoping to accomplish? We already know based on her statement right there, there was not a struggle. There was not a fight over the knife. She woke up and pursued this person after the fact. So how do you get those quote unquote defensive wounds?
1:24:40 Stephanie Harlowe? And he ran away from her, somebody he had just slit her throat apparently.
1:24:44 Derrick Levasseur? It doesn't, it does not align. I can't get there.
1:24:47 Stephanie Harlowe? If Damon's gonna wake her up and say mommy mommy and then walk behind her as she goes to the kitchen, is he never at any point gonna be like mommy, I'm hurt? Mommy, I'm, I'm hurt. I'm bleeding.
1:24:56 Derrick Levasseur? He might have, he might have, if this actually happened. He could have died in that moment. He could have been, it could have been a few seconds. He bleeds out and that's it, but it didn't happen.
1:25:05 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah.
1:25:05 Derrick Levasseur? That's the point.
1:25:06 Stephanie Harlowe? I don't believe it, yeah.
1:25:06 Derrick Levasseur? It didn't happen.
1:25:07 Stephanie Harlowe? Well, Darley continued on with her testimony stating, quote, "And when I got to the kitchen, I could see the guy going into the utility room," end quote. "At this point, the lights were still off. The only illumination would have been coming from the TV in the family room." And Darley said, quote, "I started to take a couple of steps into the kitchen and I realized that the lights were off, so I turned back around and flipped the lights on real quick. I started to walk into the kitchen," end quote. "By that time, the man was no longer in sight," according to Darley. And then she said, quote, "I got into the kitchen and I got to where the island is, and it was at that moment that I realized that I had blood on me. And I kept going, walking a little bit, and I saw a knife laying in the utility room. The knife wasn't completely the whole way in the utility room. It was just like a little
1:25:51 Stephanie Harlowe? bit into the doorway of the utility room. It was an instinct. I picked up the knife. It was an instinct to pick up the knife. I didn't think about it. It was just an instinct. I picked up the knife. I brought the knife back to the kitchen counter and set it up on the kitchen counter," end quote. Darley continued, saying, quote, "At that time, I started to walk into the family room, and it was at that time that I saw Devin, and he was lying on the floor, and he wasn't moving, and his eyes were open, and he had cuts on him that were so big. I screamed, 'Devin!' I screamed out and couldn't believe what I was seeing. It was at that time that I turned back around and went to Damon, and Damon was standing up still. I couldn't see that he had been hurt. I just started checking all over him. When I turned him around, I could see big, huge wounds through his shirt,"
1:26:34 Stephanie Harlowe? end quote. So Damon is following her to the doorway of the kitchen. She's turning on the light. She's walking into the kitchen. She's seeing the knife. She's picking it up. She's putting it back on the counter. She's coming back, checking on Devin, then going to Damon, who is still standing up?
1:26:50 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah, according to her, yes, still standing.
1:26:53 Stephanie Harlowe? Still standing up? No, no. Darley continued on stating, quote, "I started screaming and I ran into the entranceway and I flipped on the lights real quick and I was screaming, Darren, Devon, Darren and Devon. And we ran back into the hallway. Darren went over to Devon and I went into the kitchen and flipped the lights back on and I grabbed the phone and I went to the drawer where there, there's towels in the drawer and I went over to the sink and got the towels wet."
1:27:17 Derrick Levasseur? Okay, what's the, what's the prob, what's the problem with that statement?
1:27:20 Stephanie Harlowe? I mean, first of all, the glass broke a good 20 minutes ago. So Darren would have already been down there, like I've said a million times.
1:27:26 Derrick Levasseur? Detective Harlow, there you go. According to Darren, and this is another reason why I don't think they're working together because they would have had this cleared up. Darren saying, he heard glass break and then he heard yelling for his name.
1:27:38 Stephanie Harlowe? Yep.
1:27:39 Derrick Levasseur? She's saying the opposite. She's saying glass broke, let's say it was maybe even like 20 seconds. Glass broke, then she turns around, does all those things and goes back and sees Damon and Devon, then yells out for the, for the boys. From what Darren's describing, it's not the same. So who are we to believe here? Unfortunately, I gotta lean towards Darren.
1:28:03 Stephanie Harlowe? I believe Darren, which once again makes sense for the timeline. She breaks the glass, she starts screaming, she's staging things, she knows he's gonna come down and be a supporter of her story because he's gonna, yes.
1:28:14 Derrick Levasseur? The glass is broke to get his attention.
1:28:17 Stephanie Harlowe? And so, yes, exactly. And then she starts screaming just in case the glass breaking didn't, you know, get his attention alone. She says she went, Darren went over to Devon, she went into the kitchen. I also think it's funny because she says that she's got Damon, he's standing up and then she's screaming, Darren, Devon, Darren, Devon. And then she says, "We ran back into the hallway. Darren went over to Devon." Is she saying when "we ran back in the hallway," is she talking about her and Damon or her and Darren?
1:28:45 Derrick Levasseur? The way I read that, I'm assuming she's talking about her and Darren because she kind of transitioned to what they were doing. And I don't think they ran back in the hallway, her and Devon. I think it's more so she's now transitioning to as Darren. Quickly got downstairs because I agree with her. I think is the minute she yelled his name, just like any adult, he probably flew down those stairs. He was probably down there within under three or four seconds.
1:29:08 Stephanie Harlowe? Oh yeah, he had to put his pants on allegedly, but yeah.
1:29:11 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah, like that is true. He did have to put his pants on.
1:29:13 Stephanie Harlowe? Thirty to sixty seconds, I think.
1:29:15 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah, so but he but then he was down there.
1:29:17 Stephanie Harlowe? And then she says Darren went over to Devon and then instead of her going over to Damon, she went into the kitchen, flipped the lights on, which didn't you already say you flipped the lights on?
1:29:26 Derrick Levasseur? You said that you did that before she turned back, yeah.
1:29:28 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, you flipped the lights on when you chased the intruder into the kitchen and then you realized it was dark and you flipped the lights on. So did you turn them off? And then you had to turn them on again? So you went into the kitchen now, after everything's done, even though you already turned the lights on, you turned them on again. Okay, okay, Darlie.
1:29:43 Derrick Levasseur? Well, I told you guys my story, I think it was last week or the week before about my light incident, so I won't comment here because that would be hypocritical.
1:29:51 Stephanie Harlowe? Well, I will, because I don't believe her.
1:29:53 Derrick Levasseur? But I was not sure about my own traumatic situation with the lights on or off, so I'll stay out of this one.
1:29:59 Stephanie Harlowe? I mean, it's not that she's not sure. She literally says, "I walked in the kitchen, realized it was still dark, turned the lights on, and by the time I did that, the intruder had left." And now she's going back into the kitchen to get towels, and she, "Hey, I flipped the light on again." So whatever.
1:30:14 Derrick Levasseur? I strongly recommend all of you to, if you're on audio, take a second and go check out the link that we provided and some of the photos we provided of the real estate photos of this property, I think it was after this all occurred. And you can see the layout of the land, because I'll tell you, for me, it just gives that three-dimensional perspective that you really need to understand the movement that night, in that moment, how far the distances are. I think it really made things a lot clearer for me.
1:30:40 Stephanie Harlowe? The Darlie, the fact that she went into the kitchen and turned the lights on and to get towels and get them wet, this is obviously going to be called into question. Like, why did you do that? Why didn't you just grab towels or grab blankets or a pillow or whatever was close by and put it on the wound on your son Damon's back, which you now knew was this huge gash that you said anything would have done, right? Now you're going in, you're getting the towels wet and like, come on, this is ludicrous. So she is going to respond to that, and we're going to talk about it after the break.
1:31:10 Stephanie Harlowe? Hey, we're back. So like I said, going into the kitchen, getting towels, getting them wet, taking all this time when you have already acknowledged that you knew your son had a, you know, huge wounds in his back and you could have used anything from the living room, blankets, pillows, your own shirt, anything to stop the bleeding. This was called into question and Darlie, she said she knew this was a weird choice. She said, quote, "I just wanted to help stop the bleeding. I didn't know what to do. I was just reacting. I went to Damon first. I put a towel on Damon's back. There's been a lot of controversy that I didn't do that, but I did do that. I put a towel on my baby's back. Darren was trying to save Devon. I put a towel on Damon, then I told him to hold on. I said, 'Hold on, baby,' and he said, 'Okay, mommy.'" That is the last thing
1:31:52 Stephanie Harlowe? that he said to me. "I went over to Darren and Darren was down and he was breathing into Devon's mouth and I didn't know how to do CPR. I didn't even know what I was doing. When Darren was blowing into Devon's mouth, you could see some blood coming out of his wounds on the side of his chest. I didn't know what to do. All I did was just put a towel on it. I didn't know what to do. I just put the towel on top of his chest wound. After that, I ran back and I think that is when I ran and I screamed for Karen across the street because I didn't know what to do and I knew that we had to get help. I got another towel and I went back to the sink and I got another towel and I put another towel besides Damon and I told him to hang on again. He was still alive. He was still trying to breathe." End quote. Okay, so none of this makes sense because first of all, apparently Darren's got first aid training. At any point when she's like standing over Devon and like just putting
1:32:36 Stephanie Harlowe? a towel on his wound and walking away, is Darren gonna be like, "Okay, lady, you're gonna have to put pressure on these wounds because just placing a towel on it is not gonna do it. So you gotta put pressure with his, you know, his first aid training." Secondly, she's like knowing that Damon is alive and she said, "Oh, I put a towel on him and then I went to go get another towel. I went back to the sink, got another towel and then I put one beside him and told him to hang on again. He was still alive. He was still trying to breathe." This is not what she initially has said at all, but it doesn't make sense. Once again, he's got wounds on his back. Why are you not standing next to him, putting pressure on the wounds to stop the bleeding? You don't need to have first aid training. You don't need to know what to do. I think everybody would know that any like adult or any even you know younger kid who's
1:33:20 Stephanie Harlowe? watched any movies or TV would know to do that but okay.
1:33:25 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah, and as I'm sitting here listening to this and hearing even Darren's perspective on what he observed to me if you're of the belief that Darlie did this which I am what it sounds like to me is that while this is occurring Darlie's taken a second to kind of take an overview of what she's looking at because she knows the cops are on their way and she's trying to double check to make sure everything looks the way it needs to look.
1:33:51 Stephanie Harlowe? Oh, but Derek, the cops are not on their way because according to her she knew they needed help so she screamed across the road for Karen.
1:33:58 Derrick Levasseur? Right.
1:33:58 Stephanie Harlowe? She has not made a call to the cops yet.
1:34:00 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah.
1:34:00 Stephanie Harlowe? You don't think the first thing you do when you see that your kids are bleeding out in front of you is call 911 you yelled across for Karen?
1:34:08 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah, but when we're talking about you keep bringing up her not administering aid to her kids why even if she did it why wouldn't you do that to at least optically look like you care or it look like you're trying to prevent it?
1:34:20 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, you could set it up to make it look like you could scatter rags all over the place. Yeah.
1:34:24 Derrick Levasseur? But to me her standing back if what Darren's saying is true we don't really have a reason not to believe him because he doesn't think his wife did this her sitting back for a minute holding on to that vacuum like it's a cane to me is just taking in an overview of the scene hey what do we got here is there anything out of place does everything look like it needs to look or did I leave something behind that I need to I need to clean up before everybody gets here because this is going to be a shitstorm that's my interpretation of her taking a second to kind of take in everything that's present to make sure everything makes sense.
1:34:54 Stephanie Harlowe? Yes, everything makes sense. I agree. It kind of looks like she just sort of was like I put a towel next to him. Yeah, because you want to make it look like you administered aid.
1:35:03 Derrick Levasseur? Darren's down there trying to save his boys and she's kind of. Forensically, and she said this herself, this isn't me putting her words in her mouth. She's thinking about the knife, she's thinking about all these things and how she's going to explain them.
1:35:14 Stephanie Harlowe? Mm-hmm, exactly. And, and she, she's kinda gonna talk about the vacuum cleaner too. She said, quote, "Officer Waddell came in. I was standing over at the kitchen bar and I was leaning over the vacuum cleaner that was there earlier because I was a little dizzy and I couldn't breathe very good." End quote. She said that at this point, she didn't know how badly she had been hurt, but she had seen her neck in the mirror behind the wine rack in the kitchen. She said, quote, "Waddell was in the family room and he told me to sit down or lay down, I don't remember which, and I did that. I had just been leaning over the vacuum for support just to keep myself up. When I sat down, I kind of took the vacuum cleaner with me." End quote. Okay, so this is her explanation for why the vacuum cleaner is over the broken glass.
1:35:56 Stephanie Harlowe? And not, you know, not that, because if the, the guy's person, like, running, and in her first scenario, she kinda made it seem that way, he was running, the vacuum cleaner fell, the glass broke, the, the vacuum cleaner wouldn't necessarily be on top of the, the glass, the broken glass, because the vacuum cleaner would have been in the entryway between the living room and the kitchen, whereas the wine rack with the wine glasses is in the kitchen. So you wouldn't have seen, you would see the vacuum cleaner down and then glass sort of scattered around, but not underneath the vacuum cleaner. So this is her explanation now for why the vacuum cleaner was over the broken glass.
1:36:28 Derrick Levasseur? I could tell you're excited because you're talking so fast. I'm, I'm like-
1:36:31 Stephanie Harlowe? I'm just like, I'm so sick of this, this woman. I'm like, so-
1:36:34 Derrick Levasseur? Well, it's, it's starting to make more sense, not in the way that she would like, but, uh, yeah, I agree with everything you said. It's not aligning with her, her narrative of what occurred.
1:36:45 Stephanie Harlowe? No, especially the first three stories she told.
1:36:47 Derrick Levasseur? Right. The evidence is not supporting, eh, eh, listen, if you're telling the truth, the evidence is gonna support that, and it, it's not here.
1:36:54 Stephanie Harlowe? At least to some extent, even if you can't remember exactly, and you have traumatic amnesia, which is just so convenient, by the way. Um, you have traumatic amnesia and you've remembered things as, even if you're remembering things later, the things you're remembering are still going to match the evidence, but that isn't what happened. The things that Darren and Darlie remembered, quote unquote, were a way to sort of try to explain the evidence, but because that's not what happened, even their made up stories and their, um, you know, fabricated stories trying to support the evidence that was there still didn't support it. And that's how I know that there's no way, no way. So Darlie said Sergeant Walling arrived shortly after this and that he and Waddell checked the garage, which they cleared. Paramedics came in and began working on the boys.
1:37:39 Stephanie Harlowe? Darlie asked how they were doing and then the paramedics took her to the ambulance. At one point, she was asked to describe the man who attacked her, but she said she wasn't sure. She hadn't seen him clearly because it was dark. The only thing she knew for certain was that Darren wasn't the killer. Darlie claimed she had no memory of being beaten or attacked. She just assumed it happened based on her injuries. And then, get this, while she was in the hospital, she noticed that her mouth was very sore. It felt kind of raw inside, she said. Now, this led her to believe that, quote, "The man had his hand over my mouth while he was attacking me," end quote. So this was the first time she'd ever mentioned having sores in her mouth. Once again, when asked about the large bruise on her right arm that had not been noted by medical staff, Darlie said, quote, "I thought that the bruise on my right arm was because
1:38:24 Stephanie Harlowe? of the wound. I had no idea that it was from blunt trauma until I heard the doctors testify about it," end quote. Darlie also testified about the silly string incident. She said there had been a prayer service followed by a birthday party. She said everything was her sister's idea, including the silly string. She didn't believe there was anything wrong with what they did. They were celebrating Devon. Okay, so on cross-examination, the prosecution asked Darlie a series of specific and pointed questions. And as they tore into her testimony, it became clear why her attorneys had advised her against being on the stand. Darlie didn't really have any good answers for the questions that she was asked. The prosecution started with finances. Darlie maintained that she and Darren were not short on money at the time of the murders. In response, the prosecution introduced a letter dated May 8th from their mortgage
1:39:09 Stephanie Harlowe? company stating they were two months behind on their payments and faced foreclosure if they didn't pay by May 23rd. Darlie again claimed they weren't actually behind. She had just forgotten to make the payments. The prosecution then moved to the timeline of the night of the murders. When asked how she could have slept through someone attacking her children so close by, Damon was within a foot of her and Devon was four to five feet away, Darlie said she didn't know. She said she couldn't explain why she didn't wake up. Whenever the prosecution asked her things like, you know, if you saw the man attacking your kids, you would jump- up and defend your children, wouldn't you? Or you wouldn't sleep through someone cutting your neck, would you? She answered, I would think so, but again, I cannot remember. The prosecution questioned Darlie about claims that she helped provide first aid to her children.
1:39:54 Stephanie Harlowe? They got Darlie to admit on the stand that she didn't actually apply pressure to Damon's wounds. She continued to claim that she laid a wet towel on his back, though no towel was found near him, and no witnesses recalled seeing one. She also said she placed a wet towel on her own neck and that she brought a towel over and laid it near Daven, next to where Darren was. When asked why she wet the towels, Darlie said she didn't know what she was doing. She said she had never taken a first aid class and didn't have any common sense at that moment. It was too chaotic. It was worth noting that none of the towels collected from the scene showed diluted blood, which means what, Derek?
1:40:29 Derrick Levasseur? I'm assuming you're gonna say like, you're saying because the towels, if they were wet, then that would mean that the water diluted the blood. Is that what you're getting at?
1:40:36 Stephanie Harlowe? Yes.
1:40:36 Derrick Levasseur? So let me push back a little bit on that. Depending on how wet they were, would that indicate less dilution?
1:40:43 Stephanie Harlowe? So it doesn't matter. They weren't diluted.
1:40:45 Derrick Levasseur? At all with no blood. There was no water found in the blood samples whatsoever.
1:40:49 Stephanie Harlowe? No water, and you would see that, right? The hemoglobin, the protein in red blood cells that gives blood its color, would spread out with the water, making the stain appear lighter, pinker, more diffuse. The more water present, yes, the more diluted it would appear. But if there's any water on the rag, you're going to see that the blood on the rags is mixed with is water. It's diluted.
1:41:06 Derrick Levasseur? Zero dilution, no water found in it, sure.
1:41:09 Stephanie Harlowe? Bright red blood.
1:41:10 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah, I don't know how much dilution you would have there, but I see the argument they're making. It's just, again, kind of like the defense would do, poking a hole in the narrative that she's trying to convey. Hey, I wet the towels, I did all this. If you're lying about something as simple as that, because the wetting of the towels really doesn't change the case, but it's just so a lack of credibility. So I get, I get the argument as to why they're bringing it up. They're trying to prove that she's a liar.
1:41:34 Stephanie Harlowe? I mean, she's, she's lying. If she lied about going into the kitchen specifically so she could get towels and wet them, and then she's asked like, well, why did you use wet towels? And she's like, I don't know, because I don't know what I'm doing. And then they come out and they're like, hey, by the way, you didn't use wet towels. All those towels were dry. They were never wet, because there's no dilution of the blood. So you didn't wet the towels. Why would you lie about that? It's such a big part of your story.
1:41:56 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah, I, and that's the angle that I can see here, because the towels being wet, not being wet, doesn't really change much of it, other than. Other than discredit her, which is important here because you know, she's going to try to get a jury to believe her. She's deciding against not testifying. So they're gonna, they're gonna make her pay for it.
1:42:14 Stephanie Harlowe? Well, I mean, in general, it would make no sense to wet the towels, right? Because you're just trying to stop the blood.
1:42:18 Derrick Levasseur? Well, you would want dry cloth because it would absorb more blood. It would stop, it would cause it to clot. So yeah, the blood, water, wetting it wouldn't make sense. Now, she was on fire, or he was on, they were on fire. Yeah, sure. That makes sense.
1:42:29 Stephanie Harlowe? Or you're just trying to clean something. Water would make more sense. But, so they're asking her, why would you do that when that's not going to help? And she's like, well, I didn't know what to do, which is fine. You didn't know what to do?
1:42:37 Derrick Levasseur? That's fair. That'd be fair.
1:42:38 Stephanie Harlowe? But the fact that these towels were never wet, and you're saying they were because you want to have a reason for why it took so long for you to administer aid to those kids because you were in the kitchen, right? Like, and she didn't even wet the towel that was on her neck. None of the towels were found with diluted blood. So none of them.
1:42:54 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah, we could throw the photos up of the towels again. They do look wet, but that, to me, is blood. It's soaked in blood. That's why they look wet.
1:43:00 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah. So the prosecution emphasized how often Darlie said she couldn't remember, whether it was a question about what she had told the 911 operator, the police, hospital staff, or her family and friends. And her answer was almost always that she didn't know or couldn't recall. And to the prosecution, that was all just a little too convenient. By the time the prosecution finished cross-examining Darlie, things were not looking good for her. And it was about to get worse, as her defense team failed to do a few key things before resting their case. They didn't play the footage of the prayer service that happened before the birthday party/silly string incident. And later, the defense admitted they, quote, "didn't really have any idea at that time that the silly string incident would play such a major part with the jurors," end quote. By not showing the prayer service first,
1:43:43 Stephanie Harlowe? they left jurors with just one image: Darlie celebrating at her son's gravesite. They also didn't call a rebuttal witness to challenge FBI Agent Brantley's findings, which was a critical oversight and his testimony had been incredibly damaging. So, once the jury was handed the case, they deliberated for hours. During that time, they reportedly, like I said, watched the silly string video seven additional times and asked to review transcripts of key testimony from the trial. On February 1st, after 10 hours of deliberation, the jury found Darley guilty of capital murder. The case then moved into the sentencing phase where the jury had to decide whether Darley should receive the death penalty. And after only four hours of deliberation, they recommended that she be sentenced to death.
1:44:27 Stephanie Harlowe? The judge agreed and formally sentenced Darley to death. Now, I think this is interesting because it does 10 hours of deliberation. It looks like the jury did put some time and effort into going through this case and kind of discussing. And by the time they had done that, when they had to deliberate on whether she got life in prison or the death penalty, the fact that they came back with the death penalty lets me know that they genuinely really did not have any doubts.
1:44:50 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah, that's a tough decision for any human being to make.
1:44:53 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah.
1:44:53 Derrick Levasseur? And to come back that quickly, it does say a lot.
1:44:55 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, so it does say something to me because it is hard to sentence someone to death when you're not really, really confident that they did it. And the jury appeared to be after a trial and 10 hours of deliberation and reviewing everything, they knew, they appeared very confident. Yeah. So that's not the end of Darley's story, though. Nearly 30 years after her conviction, Darley still maintains her innocence and she's gained a significant number of supporters along the way. And to be fair, in our next and final episode, we are going to break down Darley's claims of innocence and the arguments from those who believe the state got it wrong. We're going to go over her side of things, the people who support her, and there's articles and blogs out there, this is why Darley is innocent.
1:45:38 Stephanie Harlowe? That's what we're going to go over now, and then we're going to kind of discuss what we think about that and share our final opinions on this case.
1:45:44 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah, so coming into next week, we'll go over those things. We want to give Darley a fair shake. I know where I'm leaning on this one, and to me, it appears that Darley committed these murders. And I don't know if it was, I don't believe it was financial in nature. I believe there may have been an instance of postpartum psychosis. I actually, I see a lot of similarities with the Lindsey Clancy case. Are you familiar with that one?
1:46:08 Stephanie Harlowe? We covered it.
1:46:10 Derrick Levasseur? We covered it?
1:46:10 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah.
1:46:11 Derrick Levasseur? When did we cover? I know I covered it on, um.
1:46:13 Stephanie Harlowe? It happened in like, uh, New England, right?
1:46:15 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah.
1:46:16 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah.
1:46:16 Derrick Levasseur? Duxbury, Massachusetts. We covered it on the Crime Weekly News.
1:46:19 Stephanie Harlowe? She threw herself out the window.
1:46:20 Derrick Levasseur? No, we actually did a whole series on it. You're right.
1:46:22 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah.
1:46:22 Derrick Levasseur? I got them confused. We did the series here and I did it on Crime Feed. So, we covered it and there are some similarities there where there was a window where Lindsay could have carried this out and same thing for, for Darlie. And I think that that's might be what we're looking at here. And I come to that conclusion, not because of the silly string video or any of that. To me, it's all, that's just noise. It's part of the story, but it's noise. To me, it comes down to her account of what happened and the forensic evidence not lining up. For me, something that I, that was been mentioned multiple times, but I, we can't emphasize it enough. An intruder goes in there with the intent on killing people, kills the two sons in a certain way, and then completely deviates from that methodology for Darlie.
1:47:08 Derrick Levasseur? In a matter of seconds decides, you know what? The way I just killed these two kids, I'm going to change it up completely and carry it out a completely different way. The only explanation for that would be two intruders. And by Darlie's own account, there was only one man. So, I'm interested to hear the rebuttals as far as this evidence. I will tell you, I've been inundated with, um, DMs and emails and I haven't answered all of you because a lot of you are saying the same thing. To me, hearing from Danelle, uh, Darlie's sister would be key next week. And I'm saying what I'm saying right now so that she knows where I stand. We're not in this to prove one thing or the other. We know what the jury feels and we know how that turned out.
1:47:49 Derrick Levasseur? We know where we're leaning, but are we still open to at least hearing Danelle's side of things and hearing what they have to say about this case? Of course. And then after hearing from her, like you said, we'll give our final thoughts and we'll wrap this one up.
1:48:03 Stephanie Harlowe? Yes, absolutely.
1:48:04 Derrick Levasseur? One more reminder before we go. Criminal Coffee now has flavored coffee in stock as you're listening to this. Definitely if you're watching it, although last time we sold out in like 24 hours. We had over a thousand bags. We sold out in 24 hours. This one, we have a little bit more, but it's probably about the same per each flavor. So if you're interested in it, head on over to CriminalCoffeeCo.com. Buy yourself a bag. Let us know what you think. We'll be back next week. Until then, everyone stay safe out there. Have a good night.
1:48:34 Stephanie Harlowe? Bye.
Previous S3 Ep313: Karen Read: NOT GUILTY Next S3 Ep315: Sherri Papini on Media Tour to Promote Her Book Page updated November 3, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated