Another theory

Jeana (DP)

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We've got a member who, because of the company he works for, cannot post on a day-to-day basis. He's sent me several e-mails that contain his theory about this crime and I've agreed to post them. Please feel free to respond with comments and/or questions.

This thread will be what he callls the "General Overview" Section - Part One.

For those of you curious, he's highly educated, not a nut and has many of the same thoughts/ideas as I have had about this case.
 
SECTION ONE – General Overview:

In any event, I will start with the first topic, a general overview, but we should keep in my mind that we have to look at the other topics in order to nail everything down. My understanding is that Darlie had a very difficult childhood. She grew up in Pennsylvania and her parents divorced about the time she was seven years old. I have seen reference to one father being cold and distant, and another, a stepfather, being cold, distant, and abusive. I believe there was a reference to her acting out in high school, which to me indicates low self-esteem, although it doesn't concern me greatly since other people do that and they grow out of it. She meets Darren at age 15 and finds that he has a future. She sees that he can take her away from the miserable childhood. One year after they meet, Darren is not paying enough attention to her at a party and she wants to leave. She manipulates him by falsely telling him that someone tried to sexually assault her. She gets Darren attention. This shows us that she knows how to create "the phantom" to get what she wants. It also indicates to me that this is probably about the time she developed into a sociopath in that she sees that to get what she wants, she manipulates other people. She marries Darren at age 18, almost as soon as she is legally old enough to get married, because she wants to get away from that miserable childhood. She does not go to college, which is when a lot of people start learning to stand on their own two feet and develop the "ability to cope" skills because she has found someone who can take care of her for the rest of her life. Darren comes with the added benefit of not only having a future, but having a lot of money. She finds that spending money makes her feel good (it eases the emotional pain of her childhood) and she starts spending it like nobody is going to be printing it anymore. Darren and Darlie have occasional fights over the money during the next eight years, and most times that Darren won't come across with it, Darlie threatens to separate from him. I believe she actually did it once, but most of the time she merely threatens to do so, and Darren learns to come across with the money. This is simply more manipulation because she's pretty good at manipulating people. She and Darren outfit the house so it is soon referred to as "Nintendo House" because all of the neighborhood kids like to come there and play.

In any event, in 1996, Darren apparently started losing customers and he isn't bringing in as much money. Darlie starts to get depressed, even to the point of suicidal thoughts in early May, because they are having money problems and she can't spend it anymore like she used to do. Around the end of May, she starts pestering Darren for money because they need to buy tickets for the wedding that they will soon be attending and her trip a few weeks later with her friend Meredith. However, Darren has run completely out of money--he can't earn it, he fails on June 1st and June 3rd in trying to get a bank loan, and he can't borrow it from any other source. Their credit cards are maxed out. Life is spinning out of control for Darlie, which is the most dangerous time for any sociopath since sociopaths are control freaks, because they can't solve their money problems, which just seem to keep getting worse and worse. I infer from the circumstances that late on June 5th, she is still pressing him for the money because Darren all these years has essentially been an ATM machine on legs. However, Darren realizes that his back is to the wall. Darlie tries one last bit of manipulation because manipulation is the only thing she is good at: she knows that in the past, she has used the threat of separation to get what she wants, so she tells him in response to him telling her that he hasn't got the money that she wants a separation and will be going to stay with her friend Julie. Darren realizes this for what it is, her pressing him to try and get money. He tells her, "you know what Darlie, I'm leaving you, I have had enough of you." (I don't know what else Darren could have told her because his back is completely to the wall financially.)

At this point, Darlie is very angry because she has tried her very best manipulative trick and it hasn't worked although it always used to work; indeed, it blew up in her face. I believe that she went downstairs quite angry. She also must have realized that she only had two choices, neither of them very good: stand on her own two feet (which she has never done before and lets realize she never developed any "ability-to-cope" skills; she chose to put all her eggs in one basket by foregoing college to run off and marry Darren, and her parents never instilled any "ability-to-cope" skills in her, and certainly not enough to handle the bombshell that Darren was dropping out of her life) or go back to that miserable childhood of hers (and lets remember that her hooking up with Darren in the first place was to get away from that miserable childhood). Her only real choice is to go back to that miserable childhood. I believe that she looked at the two kids sleeping downstairs, and started thinking about how lucky they were to be at "Nintendo House" while she had to go back to her miserable childhood. She has a red-hot hatred of it. I believe that is when she picked up a knife from the kitchen and started stabbing them in a jealous rage. In other words, the rage trigger was Darren walking out of her life and the jealousy part was the misery she was going back to while the two kids got to stay at "Nintendo House." Although most people would say, "well I wouldn't do that," we have to remember that she is an emotionally-disturbed sociopath for whom life is spinning entirely out of control. I say this is a jealous rage case because the two children were stabbed very few times, relative to other cases, which indicates to me that she snapped out of the rage fairly quickly and probably said "what I am doing?" once she realized that Darren walking out of her life, and not the kids, were what made her so angry. I am sure that when she screamed and Darren came flying down the stairs, she probably told him, "look what you made me do!" At that point, Darren was probably wondering what he had done to make Darlie do what she did, but, in any event, they needed to come up with a quick plan to explain what had happened and that's where I believe they came up with the idea, and as I will point out in subsequent e-mails they aren't the first people to do so, that the "phantom" or as he is sometimes known, the "intruder" came in and did this. That is simply a way of blaming someone without blaming a specific person at all.
 
Please post your questions and/or comments here. I've got four parts in total and will post Part II in a few days.
 
Excellent theory! I agree! I believe Darin knows in his heart that Darlie killed those boys as a way to "get back" at him; comparable to the way an abuser will say "see what you made me do!?" after knocking the tar out of a spouse.

...my opnion only.....
 
sharkeyes said:
Excellent theory! I agree! I believe Darin knows in his heart that Darlie killed those boys as a way to "get back" at him; comparable to the way an abuser will say "see what you made me do!?" after knocking the tar out of a spouse.

...my opnion only.....


Thanks for your feedback and Welcome to Websleuths!!
 
Yeah, I never thought a real divorce was ever in Darlie's mind. It was always a threat. She had no where to go but to her mother.

I think Darin did as much manipulating as Darlie did. I think they even kind of admit it.

I have trouble seeing at what point either one would know the other one was serious though. With your theory somehow Darlie would have to know Darin was serious and know it enough to throw her into the rage. Any ideas on why this particular time Darlie knew Darin was serious. And I would think it would take a few days for her to realize he was serious. So the rage thing wouldn't fit if it took a few days. Just my opinion though.

Maybe it was more than divorce. Maybe he was threatening to call child services or something more tangible or something like that that made Darlie realize he was serious.
 
here is my second installment on the Darlie Routier case. As you will recall, the first installment was a general overview of my idea about how the crime occurred. The second installment will address the topic of "Phantom Killers" or, as they are sometimes known, "the intruder." Let me just preface my remarks by saying that I think the Websleuths members have done a great job in concluding that there was no intruder or phantom in the Darlie Routier case. I should also add that for the people who have signed the petition on Darlie's behalf at the justicefordarlie website, I have a great deal of sympathy because I, like a lot of them, would believe that an intruder struck if this was the only case of the intruder I had ever seen or remembered. Unfortunately, the "intruder" has quite a history of showing up when he needs to, which is always in time to bail out the chief suspect.

I'm sure one has to wonder how I got to looking at the history of the "phantom" or the "intruder." To make a long story short, I majored in journalism in college and got in the habit of reading the paper every day. Then, I obtained a law degree. I had just started as an associate at a law firm in east central Illinois in 1989 when I read the story of Charles Stuart. Although people don't tend to remember the story today, he called police on his cell phone and told them that a black gunman had stopped Stuart and his wife as they left a hospital birthing class in Boston, and that the gunman had shot his wife in the head and Stuart in the abdomen. I was pretty disgusted; indeed, I wanted to go up to Boston and look for the gunman myself. Only later did I find out that Stuart had staged the whole crime, and had shot his wife in the head and himself in the abdomen in order to make the crime look like a robbery. Instead, Stuart had shot his wife in the head because he wanted the insurance money from a policy that was on her life. That crime occurred on October 23, 1989 and investigators got a tip that Stuart had staged the crime from somebody who assisted him. As police closed in, Stuart committed suicide in early January 2000 by jumping off a bridge. However, in the time between the crime and his suicide, Stuart fooled almost everybody.

The next crime involving the "phantom" or the "intruder" that I read about was Susan Smith. You may recall that on October 25, 1994, a little over five years after the Stuart killing, Susan Smith strapped her two children into her car and rolled them into a lake in South Carolina. She then reported that she had been carjacked by a black man wearing a knit cap. Once again, I would have liked to have been on the scene, looking for the car, because I thought Susan Smith was telling the truth. I did recall the Stuart case, but I thought that was just some sort of oddity. However, I soon learned that Susan Smith made up the whole story about the "phantom" because she wanted to be with another man, a wealthy man, who did not want the kids.

Thereafter, a third story came to my attention, once again involving the "intruder." I have not been able to find this story on the web, but I believe that I saw it on ABC's 20/20. The story was about a couple in Lake-of-the-Ozarks, Missouri, a resort area, who came home from an evening out. They found that there home had been broken into and called 911. The husband, while on the phone with 911, informs the dispatcher that he has just seen the intruder and, at that moment, the wife is shot in the head. Later, the evidence indicated that he was a bank vice-president whose bank was having serious trouble and he saw himself losing his job and in need of money. I believe he got life in prison and is probably serving time in a Missouri state correctional facility. I also believe that the killing happened during the early 1990s. During the program, the show also asked viewers what they thought of a man who I believe was in the Northeast, who brought his wife into a hospital with a gunshot wounded to the head and a tale of a black male who came up and shot his wife while they were at a campsite. It was about this time that I started seeing a pattern to these cases; people with tales of an intruder or phantom who harmed one person for no reason at all while leaving another person alive who could identified the assailant. The assailant is often described as a young, black male wearing a knit cap (in other words, the assailant could be any one of thousands of people because the description is so generic). I started being very skeptical because the crimes did not seem random to me and I started to think that the "intruder" had been made up by the person who would naturally be the chief suspect were it not for the "intruder."

At this point, you are starting to think, great, but what does this have to do with Darlie Routier? My answer is that I started to go back in history to consider these cases and that is where I saw a pattern start to develop. I did not want to go too far back, so I am not really including the Lizzie Borden case in 1892, but that probably could be called a "phantom killer" case, too. I started with Dr. Sam Sheppard and the killing of his wife Marilyn in July of 1954. Dr. Sam Sheppard claimed that he struggled twice with an intruder (and he had some lesser injuries to show for it) known as the "Bushy-Haired Stranger" but said the intruder got away. The funny thing, aside from the intruder always getting away, is that Dr. Sam Sheppard was chasing his secretary around the desk and would have had a motive to do away with his wife, who had been stabbed 35 times in the face.

The Valerie Percy family in September of 1966 had similar bad luck in catching the intruder. Her father was campaigning for U.S. Senator from Illinois. Her stepmother heard a commotion around 5:00 am and went to look; allegedly her stepmother saw a burglar ("economic motive") in Valerie's room. The burglar rushed out past the stepmother and fled. The stepmother then turned on the light and found 21-year-old Valerie in her bed soaked in blood from having been hit in the head two to four times with a hammer and having been stabbed 10 to 12 times (some sources say 14 times) in the body (indicating a "personal motive"). The crime has never been solved.

Also, other people who could not catch the "intruder" were Jeffrey MacDonald in February of 1970 (wife and two children bludgeoned many times, MacDonald lightly injured), Cullen Davis in August of 1976 (he was not at the mansion when his estranged wife confronted an intruder wearing a black ski mask and black clothing at their mansion who shot to death two other people and shot and seriously wounded the wife, Priscilla Davis, conveniently around the time Cullen Davis was going through a divorce with her that would have given Priscilla half of his considerable estate). David Hendricks was lucky to be on the road in Wisconsin making a sales call for his company when his wife and three children were brutally murdered in the couple's Bloomington, Illinois home in November of 1983; the four people were killed with a knife and an ax, and David Hendricks was lucky because not only was he not killed, but he was free to start the new life he wanted to start since his back brace company had recently become very successful. Frances Newton, who was executed in September of 2005, was not so lucky because the State of Texas did not believe that the intruder shot and killed her estranged husband and two young children in 1987; rather, the State of Texas concluded that she shot them for the insurance money on policies that had just been recently obtained on them, and that Frances was most likely the shooter since a gun traced to her was the gun used to do the shootings.

I could go on in this vain for several hours, but only a couple other "intruder cases" really bear mentioning at the moment. One, of course, is Scott Peterson, who had the luck of having his wife go missing via the phantom just as he was wooing some other woman. Julie Harper was unlucky in October of 1997 because the intruder entered her home in downstate Illinois, where murder is fairly rare, and stabbed her 10-year old son approximately 13 times for no reason at all; people tend to wonder whether the killing, which is still being prosecuted, had something to do with the knock down, drag out custody battle that Julie had with her ex-husband over the child. Julie allegedly confronted the killer, who inflicted considerably lighter wounds on her, before the intruder got away (don't they always?) Finally, two non-murder phantoms are worth mentioning: the Audrey Seiler abduction from the campus of the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 2004, which was later revealed to be a hoax stemming from a relationship breakup and the Jennifer Wilbanks "runaway bride" from Georgia caper that was recently in the news, where the phantom abductors were described as a Hispanic male (the race card is used fairly commonly, but not always, in phantom cases) and a white woman.

The point of talking about all these "phantom" cases--and there are several more, I guarantee you--is that you can see a pattern in these cases and I think it will help us identify the reason that the "phantom" showed up in Darlie's case. The phantom only shows up under three circumstances that I can see and I have probably looked at 20 to 25 such cases. What that indicates to me is that such crimes are not random, as people tend to think, but the phantom is created to throw suspicion off of the chief suspect. The phantom shows up in the following circumstances: (1) the chief suspect is financially troubled (for example, Charles Stuart, mentioned above, who killed his wife for the insurance money; (2) the chief suspect is emotionally conflicted (in other words, the chief suspect kills to be with someone else, as in the case of Susan Smith); or the chief suspect is emotionally troubled, which is a broader category and would be someone like Julie Harper, who was apparently upset at seeing her ex-husband win a fierce custody battle over their only child.

Now, if Darlie fits into one of those three categories, I think you can stop looking for the phantom or intruder. The easiest category to reject is the emotionally-conflicted category since there is no argument in this case that she killed the two boys to be with someone else. Most people tend to pop her into the financially troubled category because they were having money problems, but to me, the killing is much more violent than the usual killings for money we have seen. That leaves the invention of the phantom being the result of the chief suspect being emotionally troubled, and I believe that Darlie pops quite easily into that category. As I have indicated, I think this killing is the result of the jealous rage that Darlie flew into when she found out that she would have to return to that miserable childhood and the two children were getting to stay at "Nintendo House" after Darin told her that he was walking out on her when she pressed him for money and found that he did not have any and could not get any more.
 
Yes, the bushy haired stranger certainly gets around and has been quite busy.

Another infamous one is Diana Downs, one child was shot and murdered, one in a wheelchair and the third had extensive injuries from gunshot wounds.
The intruder shot the kids and her in the arm ( superficial wound ) after she stopped on a dark lightly traveled road to render aid . :sick: Diana was having an affair with a man who had no interest in parenting.
 
i am a bit confused as to why the Percy case was included here. are you implying that her stepmother was the murderer and made up the intruder?
 
Mira said:
i am a bit confused as to why the Percy case was included here. are you implying that her stepmother was the murderer and made up the intruder?


That's the impression that I got.
 
I think after the millionth time of Darlie telling Darin that she is going to leave him, he probably said good, go ahead. This pisses her off, so she decides to get even with him. Knowing how much he loves "his boys" she sets out to hurt him as much as possible. :(
 
I also believe this was a "rage killing" (the rage being at Darin) and that the "intruder" exists only in Darlie's lies. To me it looks like an "I'll show you, you SOB!", as well as a desperate cry for attention, validation, the utmost extreme form of an adult psycho-tantrum "See! See what I'm capable of!!"

I have a family member (married into the family - no DNA shared!) who conveniently conjurs up "intruders" and "phantoms"; she's claimed to have been mugged (though no police report or witnesses); harassed by a "stalker" who sends her flowers when her husband is away; burglarized while sleeping where she allegedly woke and "struggled" with the [note the similarity] "black man in a knit cap"; and - the icing on the cake, are the pregnancies she fakes, and I'm talking full on pretending to be pregnant right down to her belly growing (padding) and then she "loses" these unborn infants while her husband is out of town at work (the first time she claimed she "fell down and hemorrhaged", the second time she claims she was told by "specialists" that the babies [she was "carrying twins"] had died in utero at 36 weeks and had to be extracted - OF COURSE all of this takes place with no witnesses, no family being called, her husband is always on the road...etc. and YOU BET I have requested medical records and none exist) - the stories she weaves are incredible complete with medical terminology - I could go on and on about this - the story is interesting when told in its entirety - and when she is confronted (which is what my sister and I did after her second "miscarriage") she goes into a RAGE - it was actually scary watching her turn into this 'creature'.

I have concluded that people who display this type of behavior are combination narcissitic/sociopathic (I'm no shrink, just my opinion), and that Darlie saw her world shattering with the threat of Darin leaving her, she DID NOT snap - she made a plan and carried it out figuring that this would "make him stay" - (Note - my family member's "tragedies" and "pregnancies" have always conveniently occurred at times when her marriage has been on the verge of collapsing).

Darlie is a very sick woman, and there are definitely parallels to the Shepard and McDonald cases - as well as the case where the husband shot the wife in the campground; I know I saw a tv-movie about that case.

Have you ever considered writing a book about your theory?
 
Jeana (DP) said:
Hey, remember, I'm just posting for the guy who wrote those. I've got two more parts to add in the coming days. He'll see the comments here and hopefully email me his responses for me to post. :)
Good. I am enjoying the read.
:)
 
deandaniellws said:
Good post JDP. But Dr. Sheppard shouldn't be listed as one. New evidence shows he wasn't guilty.

http://www.cnn.com/US/9803/05/sheppard.case/

Danielle, the jury found Sam Sheppard guilty again six years ago, after only three hours of deliberation.

The blood evidence pointing to Eberling was completely discredited. Remember Bart Epstein, the blood expert who initially worked on Darlie's defense? Well, he testified in the 2000 Sheppard trial & ended up with egg on his face. He didn't even know Eberling's blood type, and had to admit that he couldn't have left the blood on the closet door. Sheesh!

This case has been a favorite of mine since I was a teenager. For a short time, I thought he might be innocent, but I know now there was no bushy-haired stranger. There was just Dr. Sam, whose wife had threatened to divorce him, ruin him financially, and "to drag his name through the mud". Sam was no longer in control, and Marilyn paid the price.
 
sharkeyes said:
Darlie saw her world shattering with the threat of Darin leaving her, she DID NOT snap - she made a plan and carried it out figuring that this would "make him stay"

I agree completely, sharkeyes. It's less "painful" to believe that Darlie just snapped & went temporarily nutso, but the evidence shows that she planned it, however briefly.

1. Rage killings usually result in a lot more wounds than what the boys sustained.

2. Devon and Damon were asleep when she attacked them, making it unlikely that they did anything to provoke her into a sudden rage.

3. In all probability, she cut the screen before stabbing the boys (no blood in the garage, around the window, on the screen, etc.). Again, it suggests premeditation, not a sudden rage.

4. Darlie's old "rape" incident from years ago shows that she knew how to get attention through whatever means she could dream up.
 
Mary456 said:
Danielle, the jury found Sam Sheppard guilty again six years ago, after only three hours of deliberation.

The blood evidence pointing to Eberling was completely discredited. Remember Bart Epstein, the blood expert who initially worked on Darlie's defense? Well, he testified in the 2000 Sheppard trial & ended up with egg on his face. He didn't even know Eberling's blood type, and had to admit that he couldn't have left the blood on the closet door. Sheesh!

This case has been a favorite of mine since I was a teenager. For a short time, I thought he might be innocent, but I know now there was no bushy-haired stranger. There was just Dr. Sam, whose wife had threatened to divorce him, ruin him financially, and "to drag his name through the mud". Sam was no longer in control, and Marilyn paid the price.
Thanks for the info Mary. I thought it had been settled the other way.
:eek:
 
Mary456 said:
Danielle, the jury found Sam Sheppard guilty again six years ago, after only three hours of deliberation.

The blood evidence pointing to Eberling was completely discredited. Remember Bart Epstein, the blood expert who initially worked on Darlie's defense? Well, he testified in the 2000 Sheppard trial & ended up with egg on his face. He didn't even know Eberling's blood type, and had to admit that he couldn't have left the blood on the closet door. Sheesh!

This case has been a favorite of mine since I was a teenager. For a short time, I thought he might be innocent, but I know now there was no bushy-haired stranger. There was just Dr. Sam, whose wife had threatened to divorce him, ruin him financially, and "to drag his name through the mud". Sam was no longer in control, and Marilyn paid the price.
I thought the jury was unable to find him "innocent" (which is harder to do than "not guilty").

I grew up a few miles from the Sheppard home. My parents always thought he did it, and I did at first, but changed my mind. As sleezy as Eberling was, it wouldn't surprise me at all if it was him. Town gossip always seemed to point towards a prominent political leader. There was also some ex-serviceman that had gone on a killing spree too and might have been passing through.

If the jury had found him "innocent", it would have really set the stage for a wrongful imprisonment suit against the state and bolstered it's chances.

He was convicted long before the trial ever happened. The Cleveland Press, the coroner, the police, all behaved very inappropriately.

If it wasn't Sheppard's blood and not Marilyn's blood, then whose blood was it?

I wish the whole case had been handled correctly from the get-go, so the truth would be more evident.
 

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