It was Larson who first brought investigators to Anastasia King’s body, after he claimed that Indle King had made a confession to him. However, further questioning led them to conclude that Larson himself had strangled her while her 270-pound husband pinned her down. Furthermore, investigators said, one of the reasons for the murder was that Anastasia had discovered that Larson and her husband were lovers.
At King’s trial, Anastasia’s father shook his finger at the killer and berated him in Russian for his cruelty. “You dragged her to the grave you dug… You stripped her corpse, mocking her. You saw the ring on her finger and you cut off her finger. What cruelty! You placed her body face down into the dirt—your beloved wife. An ordinary person cannot even imagine it.”
Because Larson was already in jail for soliciting sex with a 16-year-old Ukrainian girl, prosecutors had worried that he was an unreliable witness. Anastasia King’s funeral took place in Seattle on Saturday, February 3, 2003, at St. Nicolas’s Cathedral on Capitol Hill. Her grave is under a young evergreen tree in a local cemetery.
Whatever the specifics of why, how or even who committed the crime, people agree that the woman from Kyrgyzstan was ultimately a victim of the leap of faith her family took to help her find a new life in the United States.
Ironically, in the process of trying to come to terms with their grief in this faraway country, Anastasia’s father, 63, and mother, 55, had also fallen under America’s spell. At the end of two weeks which had included grueling interviews with the prosecution, at a tearful Orthodox memorial service for their daughter the grieving couple held what was to be their final press conference. “I hope,” Anatoly Solovyov told the assembled reporters wearily, “that authorities will find a possibility to allow us to remain here for the rest of our lives.”
On March 23, 2002, Larson was sentenced to 20 years in prison and King to 29 years.
The case of Anastasia Solovyova was not the first internet-related homicide to visit Seattle.
Susanna Blackwell met her husband through an internet marriage agency and in 1994 left her native Philippines to move to Washington State to marry him. During their short marriage, Timothy Blackwell regularly abused his wife physically, and within a few months she had left him and begun divorce proceedings. The couple had been separated for more than a year when Timothy Blackwell learned that Susanna was eight months pregnant with another man’s child. On the last day of the divorce proceedings, he shot and killed Susanna, her unborn child and two friends who were waiting outside the Seattle courtroom.
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Darlie Lynn Routier: The Dog That Didn’t Bark
“Here’s a mother who has supposedly been the victim of a violent crime. She has just lost two children, and yet she’s out literally dancing on their graves.”
—DALLAS COUNTY ASSISTANT DISTRICT ATTORNEY GREG DAVIS, LEAD PROSECUTOR IN THE DARLIE ROUTIER CASE
Often the internet’s link with a murder is not that it was trawled to find the victim; instead, it is exploited to rally international support for the convicted killer. Yet, when I see a glossy, constantly updated website dedicated to promoting a death row inmate’s innocence, I smell a rat. What is the need for this global exposure, and what use are the pleas for support? More often than not, of course, donations are welcomed.
These sites are always maintained by the well-intentioned anti-death penalty lobby, whose campaigning would be better served if they concentrated their efforts on genuine cases. In short, such websites seem redundant to me.
The thousands of people who visit them are mostly not professionals in criminology-related professions, so what of value do they offer in assisting a convicted prisoner to gain his or her freedom? Surely the inmate’s own attorneys are capable of presenting a well-balanced legal argument before the appellate courts without all the hysteria these sites bring.
As to the internet debate rooms that attach themselves to these cyberspace ventures like clams to a rock, more often than not they simply post the ramblings of the ill-informed.
All such websites, and Darlie Routier’s pages are not exempt, publish selective material favoring the prisoners concerned. Rarely, if ever, do they expose the full facts, so they are patently misleading—a smoke-blowing exercise designed to deceive otherwise honest, often gullible people into supporting a cause that has already been lost.
A glance at the self-serving site dedicated to Darlie Routier’s case alludes to “evidence” that can prove this woman’s innocence of the stabbing to death of her two young sons. Documents and affidavits sworn by expert witnesses are listed. Case photographs of the badly injured Routier are also posted to gain public sympathy for the loss she has suffered: her freedom and the lives of her two children.
However, on closer scrutiny, the documents and “evidence” contained within documents are revealed to be all but worthless, and nowhere do we see the horrific truth.
We have studied this website, and we can state that nothing there will influence a court of appeal, and it is this—not the general public—that will be the final arbiter. We will also note, in the wider public interest, that, while the pro-Routier camp pours scorn on the police and trial court’s actions, the public prosecutor has remained admirably quiet.
But perhaps the website is of some value in that it brings to light many red herrings. For its content and raison d’etre confirm the manipulating, scheming persona of Darlie Routier. The woman is the mistress of homicidal trompe l’oeil, for, despite her apparent wide-eyed innocent charm, she is one of the most evil and cold-blooded child-killers of modern times.
This is the story of the dog that didn’t bark in the night, and it is a fascinating and educational one at that, for it confirms the widespread and perfectly reasonable suspicion that pure evil lurks within the web.
In approaching this case, we should step back and look at the crime in its entirety. However, given that this crime appears to lack a motive, this particular picture of homicide has many components missing, pieces that are invisible to the human eye. Locating them may solve part of the puzzle. Interpreting them and fitting them into the empty spaces to complete the picture is altogether another problem.
But this is no mere ink daub we will study so intently. The one we are viewing is akin to one of the masterly works of the Dutch graphic artist Escher, who is renowned for his dreamlike spatial illusions and impossible buildings. Like the murderer in this chapter, he was a wizard at deceiving the eye.
The analogy between Escher’s mesmerizing work and the case of Darlie Routier is apt, because here we have an enterprise that millions of American citizens agreed was complete, only to change their minds after a short time so that they now argue instead that it is not. The U.S. criminal justice system says that the guilty verdict is the genuine article, while a growing body of commentators have had second thoughts and now claim that the prosecution case fooled the eye, with the result that the verdict is a fake.
And it is for this reason that the life of a condemned woman hangs in the balance.
Most of my readers, particularly those with an interest in criminology and the criminal justice and penal systems, will know that many prison inmates, especially those convicted on overwhelming evidence and facing long prison terms, often appeal against their sentences using trivial issues in their attempts to overturn the sentence or have it reduced. They set their warped and deluded minds the task of convincing themselves, as well as one another, that they are innocent. In the end, so convincing are they that they are able to manipulate hordes of people into believing them.
Commentators on the serial killer Kenneth Bianchi, who continues even today to manipulate society, have termed his behavior “fly-specking exercises.” Bianchi meticulously dots the i’s and crosses the t’s, looking for the smallest errors in his frantic yet pathetic efforts to gain his freedom.
We find exactly the same “fly-specking” behavior in the case of the cyber spider Darlie Routier.
Her conviction w
as seemingly watertight. Indeed, so strong was the “overwhelming evidence” presented by the prosecution that the jury had no reservations whatsoever about finding Routier guilty of first-degree murder, and the judge sentenced her to die by lethal injection.
This was a crime that sent shockwaves around the United States, so much so that, following the hysteria generated by the case, three books were written by well-established authors, each unreservedly portraying Darlie Routier as “the embodiment of evil.” Now, however, dozens of experts, including several who participated as witnesses, a juror and the author of one of the books that condemned Routier, argue she is innocent. Why? Because, by using the internet, she has convinced them, and the websites that support her cause testify to this fact.
Millions of American citizens believe that Darlie Routier is innocent and should be freed at once, after which, no doubt, she will ask for apologies and financial compensation for having been detained for so long.
Twelve days after the deaths of her two young sons, the police arrested Darlie Routier for their murders. The investigating team had no eyewitnesses, no confession, no apparent motive, and the boys’ mother had herself apparently been slashed and stabbed during the attack. One knife wound missed her carotid artery by two millimeters; any closer and she would have bled to death.
What investigators did have by way of physical evidence was a trail of drying blood. It started at the murder scene on the ground floor of the opulent family home and led through a utility room to a mesh window screen in the garage, where it mysteriously stopped.
Other than a knife-slashed window screen—the damage most certainly not sufficient to allow an intruder easy ingress and egress—there was no other possible entry point in the Routiers’ house. There were no signs of forcible entry at any of the other doors and windows, and “all of which were secured and locked,” according to Routier’s husband, Darin.
This fact naturally gave rise to two theories: either the killer had a key to the house or garage, or the murderer was a member of the family. If the second was the case, only the mother or father, or the two together, could have murdered the two children.
The other significant physical evidence was a bloodstained bread knife on which were Darlie Routier’s fingerprints. There were three mysterious fingerprints that couldn’t be traced to any individual whatsoever, and Luminol tests for the presence of blood showed that someone had tried to clean the washbasin in the utility room/kitchenette and a settee in the adjoining recreation room where the children had been slain.
Finally, it was clear that the attacker had used a serrated bread knife from a drawer, but more about this later.
Almost immediately, investigators were puzzled and started asking themselves a number of questions.
What was the motive for the murders?
If it was a robbery, why were Darlie’s jewelry and purse left untouched?
Why would an intruder kill two children before trying to kill an adult who posed a more serious threat?
The two boys were stabbed in the chest. Why did Darlie Routier suffer a neck wound and cuts on her forearm and shoulder?
Why would the killer, who obviously had no scruples about murdering a pair of small boys, back off when Darlie awoke, leaving a witness alive to identify him?
Why would he drop the murder weapon on the floor, giving Darlie, his pursuer, a weapon with which to fight back?
Why would he have used the Routiers’ bread knife in the first place? (Most assailants come to their intended victim’s premises already armed.)
Why were there no visible signs of an intruder having entered the house?
And, as the questions mounted, it appeared that a bread knife owned by the Routiers might have been used to cut the garage’s screen. Had the intruder used this bread knife to slash his way in? If so, how did he get the knife in the first place?
However, there was one question police did not ask themselves at the time, and apparently not one of the tens of thousands of Routier′s supporters has asked this question since. The Routiers owned a white Pomeranian, a yappy little dog, easily excitable, that barked at any visitors to the premises. Deserving of a damn good kick, it even snapped and tore at a police officer′s trousers as he walked through the house. The dog was also heard barking by the emergency dispatcher who took Darlie’s 911 call, so we know that the animal was around when the frenzied murders took place.
In considering this fact, my mind turns to Arthur Conan Doyle’s novel The Adventure of Silver Blaze:
Inspector Gregory: “Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”
Sherlock Holmes: “To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”
Inspector Gregory: “The dog did nothing in the nighttime.”
Sherlock Holmes: “That was the curious incident.”
And here we sniff our first red herring, for it is entirely reasonable to ask: why did the Routiers’ dog not bark in the night?
Following two contradictory statements by Darlie Routier, who claimed she was attacked by a black man who left via the garage, the police soon concluded that there had been no intruder that night because everything pointed to the crime scene having been staged.
Doctors who treated Mrs. Routier’s injuries formed the opinion that they were self-inflicted, and the investigators’ suspicions were reinforced by a peculiar scene that was caught on videotape a few days after the double murder.
On June 14, just nine days after the killings and on what would have been Devon Routier’s seventh birthday, Darlie drove to the cemetery with family and friends, wished her boy a happy birthday and then, in a joyous mood, sprayed Silly String all over the fresh mound of earth.
“Here’s a mother who has supposedly been the victim of a violent crime,” said Dallas County Assistant District Attorney Greg Davis, the lead prosecutor in the case. “She has just lost two children, and yet she’s out literally dancing on their graves.”
Within eight months of the crime, Darlie was convicted and sentenced to death by a jury in the Kerr County town of Kerrville, where the trial had been moved because of a welter of media hype and publicity. She seemed destined to be remembered as yet another stressed-out mother who had suddenly spiraled out of control. But over the years numerous news stories and an ongoing investigation by Darlie’s appellate attorneys have raised questions about what really happened that night.
Could it be that the police and the prosecutors manipulated the evidence to implicate someone they decided must have done it? A growing chorus of internet observers believes so. A juror from the trial now says that he and his fellow jurors made the wrong decision. The author of one of the true-crime books has also changed her mind, claiming that the jury heard perjured testimony and were never shown photos that would have proved Darlie was a victim of a savage attack. Adding fuel to the fire, her defenders claim to have found over 30,000 inconsistencies and errors in the court stenographer′s trial transcript.
Even the most experienced legal eagles have found themselves sucked in by the Routier saga. In March 2004, in oral arguments before the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals into whether procedural flaws were made during the original trial, the nine judges began peppering lawyers with questions on other aspects of the case.
Was there, they asked, an insurance policy on the children, which might have given Darlie a reason to kill them?
When Darlie talked to homicide detectives, did she make any kind of confession?
But the most baffling question about the murders has yet to be answered: why would someone show up in a nice new suburban neighborhood, target a house on a well-lit cul-de-sac, enter through a garage screen window a few feet from a dog’s basket, navigate his way through a darkened utility room, grab a bread knife from the kitchenette and then head into the living room to stab two boys and slash their mother′s throat? Robbery was almost immediately ruled out as a motive; nor, police determined, did anyone have a grudge against the family.
> The Texas Department of Corrections website makes the facts of the case simple and concise:Darlie Lynn Routier, inmate number 999220, currently sits on death row, Texas, convicted of the brutal stabbing deaths of her five-year-old son, Damon, and his six-year-old brother, Devon. On Thursday, June 6, 1996, they were murdered as they slept in a downstairs room with their mother at their family home in Rowlett.
Routier′s husband, Darin, and infant son, Drake, slept through the attack in upstairs bedrooms and they were not harmed. Darlie Routier, who claimed that she was also asleep at the time also suffered stab wounds during the attack but police say that they were self-inflicted. In her defense, she claimed to have awakened to see a black man fleeing the residence.
Prosecutors argued that she killed her sons because they interfered with the lifestyle she wanted to live. She was arrested after making two inconsistent statements to the police.
In the early hours of Thursday, June 6, 1996, a 911 emergency telephone call was put through to the Rowlett Police Department at 4401 Rowlett Road, Dallas County, Texas. The midnight dispatcher, Doris Trammell, took the call and identified the caller′s address as 5801 Eagle Drive.
The first police officer to arrive at the scene was David Waddell, who was soon joined by Sergeant Matthew Walling. Paramedics Jack Kolbye and Brian Koschak rushed through the front door to find Devon dead; he had been stabbed twice in the chest with such force that the knife had passed almost all the way through his body.
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