early monday morning on october 19, 1992, 23-year-old laura houghteling was seen darryn and darly routier were a couple in their mid 20s with three children. darryn routier was a successful

entrepreneur. darly stayed at home to care for the children. >> this was a young couple who had made good. darryn owned his own business. in 1995 he had made close to $300,000 in his business. he repaired main frame computers. had some extensive contracts with government agencies. >> on the night of the attack darryn routier was asleep up stairs with 8-month-old drake. downstairs in the family room the two older boys fell asleep watching television. their mother, darly, was asleep on the sofa. around 2:30 in the morning an intruder stabbed the children then woke darly who felt a knife at her throat. after a brief struggle the intruder fled and darly called police. >> 911, what is your emergency.

>> some men came in, stabbed my babies, stabbed me. i woke up. my babies are dying. they're dead. >> when paramedics arrived 6-year-old devon was dead. 5-year-old damon was barely alive, but he died en route to the hospital. darly was taken into surgery to repair her neck wound which missed her carotid artery by only two centimeters. she also suffered a stab wound to her arm. pair met diks noticed that darly's panties were missing. >> when i asked her if she thought she was raped, but a rape test was negative.

darly described the assailant as a white male about 6 feet tall wearing a dark shirt, jeans and a baseball cap. a screen in the routier's garage had been cut. police said the intruder dropped the murder weapon onto the floor as he fled. in the ally two houses away police discovered a bloody sock. the motive did not appear to be robbery. >> between the kitchen and the room where the murders occurred there was 13 rings and a gold lady's watch. it indicated to us if it was a burglary or robbery that had gone bad, there was nothing, there was valuables out there to be taken and nothing was disturbed. >> now we don't know why. we know this is a sick individual that took absolutely nothing from our house but took the two most important things that were important to us away from us. >> the most prominent evidence of the crime scene was blood. forensic scientists hoped the

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when police examined the murder zone, it appeared the intruder entered the routier home through a screen in the garage. darly said she was asleep when the intruder murdered her two boys. darly awoke when she felt a knife to her throat. there was a struggle and the assail ant thread through the garage. darly said he dropped the murder weapon on his way out. darin routier said he was asleep upstairs with the 8-year-old and he awoke when he heard glass breaking. >> when he walked into the family room where detectives were walking to him. have you seen darly? isn't she beautiful? doesn't she have gorgeous breasts? >> i can see why someone came

in, good looking blond, 38 dds. i thought that was strange because he had lost both of his sons and i don't believe he knew at that time if darly was going to live or not. >> in the kitchen police noticed a set of white handled knives, one space was empty. it appeared the murder weapon, a 10 inch white handled knife came from the routier's own kitchen. the blood drops on the floor were photographed and taken for testing. the blood drops were analyzed to see if they were consistent with darly's version of events. her night shirt was another piece of blood evidence. forensic scientists hoped that it, too, would provide information about the murders. dna testing of the bloody sock found in the alley revealed the blood was that of the two boys, devon and damon.

however, police blood hounds were not able to track the intruder's scent beyond the location of the sock. >> why would an intruder leave a murder weapon behind in a house and yet take a sock down the ally? why would the intruder leave the sock in open view for police to find instead of disposing of it in a garbage can or down a storm sewer drain? >> police found some other inconsistencies. darly said she chased the intruder through the kitchen. underneath the overturned vacuum cleaner was more blood spatter and a wheel impression in the blood. it appeared that darly ran through the kitchen before the glass broke. on the handle of the vacuum cleaner was a bloodstain.

dna test revealed it was darly's. the blood dripped on the handle at an 80 degree angle. the pattern was not consistent with darly's running past the vacuum as she told police. either darly routier was mistaken about what happened in the kitchen or she knew more about the murders than she was telling police.

blood spatter expert, tom bevel, was asked to analyze the blood drops found in the routier home. as co-author of a well-known textbook on blood pattern analysis, it was bevel's job to interpret the story told by the blood trail. bevel noticed the blood drops on the kitchen floor were circular in shape, meaning they were deposited by someone standing still or walking very slowly. darlie said she was stabbed on the sofa, and while bleeding, ran through the kitchen after her assailant. but running would have produced blood drops more elliptical in shape, usually with a tail, indicating the direction and path of the person running. darlie also told police that the intruder dropped the knife onto the kitchen floor, but tom bevel

could find no evidence of that. >> numerous people, to include myself, examined that floor to try and find evidence of a knife drop, either pointed straight down or falling on its handle or falling on its side or whatever. and we were unable to find anything that would be consistent with that. if it had as much blood on it as it was found, which it would have to, then it should have produced an outline of the knife or evidence of the knife dropping onto the floor. we simply didn't find that. >> barry dickey is a forensic audio expert assigned to analyze darlie's telephone call to police. in order to conduct his analysis, dickey isolated darlie's voice by eliminating all of the background noise. >> somebody came in while i was sleeping, me and my little boys were sleeping downstairs. they came in and stabbed my babies. stabbed me. i woke up --

>> in my opinion, darlie had moved from at least three different rooms in the house. these rooms were moved in a very rapid fashion and she did not stay in any one of the ambiences very long. >> but if darlie walked briskly in between rooms, this contradicted her story to police. when police interviewed darlie after the murder, she was holding a wet towel to her neck wound. police wondered if the towel had been used to clean up blood before they arrived. to find out, investigators used luminol, a chemical that glows when sprayed on an area where blood has been removed. >> once we darkened the kitchen down and applied the lumenol, we were able to see footprints there in front of the sink which kind of made the hair on the back of our necks stand up. >> the footprints in front of the kitchen sink were darlie's. on the cabinet beneath the sink,

there was visible blood. and lumenol revealed that more had been cleaned up before police arrived. >> the blood evidence in front of the sink indicated to us that someone had bled -- had stood there in front of the sink for a significant amount of time bleeding and not moving around. there was blood drops on top of blood drops on the floor in front of the sink. >> dna testing revealed the blood belonged to darlie. prosecutors suspected that it was here where darlie cut her neck and arm. >> if there was an intruder and he came in, he came in without leaving any evidence of walking through there. >> also, on the carpet was an unusual blood impression, the distinct outline of the murder weapon, the heavy line of blood near the tip of the blade told forensic experts something important about the killer. >> the only way that i am aware that you could get something

coming off of the knife in that manner, as we found it, would be to have the knife in the hand of a person that is bleeding, in other words, they are contributing blood continuously. so if you had a wound on this arm with the knife in this hand, with the blood flowing down the arm, ultimately across the hand and then down the blade of the knife, that will produce that very heavy bleeding that we got in the front of the knife in the impression. >> coincidentally, darlie had a knife wound on her right arm. dna tests revealed that the blood was that of both damon and darlie and not that of an unknown assailant. darlie said she picked up the knife from the kitchen floor and put it on the counter. she said nothing about taking it into the family room. >> no bloody trail, no fingerprints, no trace of the suspect. peter pan came down the chimney maybe and committed the murder, tinkerbell or somebody.

but we have no evidence of anyone coming through the window, committing the murders and leaving. >> police were now convinced that there was no intruder in the routier home on the night of the murders. ring ring! progresso! i can't believe i'm eating bacon and rich creamy cheese before my sister's wedding well it's only 100 calories, so you'll be ready for that dress uh-huh... you don't love the dress? i love my sister... 40 flavors. 100 calories or less.

murders the routiers celebrated what would have been devin's seventh birthday at the cemetery. family members invited a local television news crew to attend. ♪ happy birthday dear devon >> if you knew devin and damon, you would know that they're up in heaven and they're up there having the biggest birthday party we could ever imagine and they wouldn't want us to be down here being sad. i know devin and damon would want us to be happy. >> district attorney greg davis watched the celebration on television. >> i was just sickened by what i saw. because it had only been a week since these boys' deaths and yet we have a full-blown birthday party out there at the grave site. and it really struck me as more than curious.

? the dallas county institute of forensic sciences, charles lynch discovered the most damaging piece of evidence contradicting darlie's intruder story. on one of the bread knives from the routier's kitchen, linch found a single fiberglass rod and some rubber dust. the cut window screen in the routier garage was made from polycarbide bundles. the interior bundle was found of fiberglass rods. the fiberglass rod found on the kitchen knife was identical to the fiberglass rod from the routier screen. linch could not find any other source of fiberglass inside the routier home that was similar. >> i was able to eliminate all the sources of fiberglass i could find as being a source.

so the conclusion is the fiberglass rod found on the bread knife may have come from the window screen. but not to the exclusion of all over sources. >> fbi profiler alan brantley was convinced there was no intruder. >> we have never seen a case where an offender comes from outside the residence, breaks into the home, takes a knife and go back outside the home and cuts the screen to come back in. those steps, that kind of behavior is just unnecessary to the commission of any kind of an offense unless you are attempting to make the scene look like something you should look like or you want other people to believe occurred. and again that is an element of staging. >> and on darlie's night shirt, scientists found cast-off blood spatter on the right shoulder area. dna testing revealed that the blood belonged to the two boys. >> some of those two stains are coming in a direction consistent

with the movement of the item that was bloodstained. in my opinion in this case, the knife. as you're drawing the knife backwards the blood is coming off the end of the knife as it is drawn backwards and if it is close enough it will point in an upward direction with the bloodstains. >> the blood spatter was pointed upwards. the forensic evidence all told a story. a story quite different from the one darlie told police. prosecutors believe that the murders were premeditated and that darlie encouraged the boys to sleep with her that night in the family room. some time after 2:00 a.m., darlie took a bread knife from the kitchen and cut the screen in the garage.

she returned the knife to the holder without rinsing the fiberglass residue found later by forensic scientists. darlie used the largest knife she had to murder her two children. blood spatter on the back right shoulder of her night shirt placed the murder weapon in darlie's hand. speculation is that darlie may have removed her panties to suggest the possibility of a sexual assault. standing at the kitchen sink, darlie turned the knife on herself, slicing both her neck and right arm. then something unexpected happened, five-year-old damon was still alive crawling through the family room. he was stabbed two more times. the knife impression on the carpet was caused by blood from her arm wound as it dripped over

the tip of the knife. the audio analysis of the 911 call reveals that darlie was moving in between rooms quickly as she staged the crime scene and removed some of the blood evidence. >> stabbed my babies. i -- they're dead. oh, my god! >> but darlie's attempt to mislead investigators failed. >> it's hard to explain it. but these kids were in her way. they were in the way of her lifestyle and her ambitions. and what she wanted to do. and she simply made a decision that those children would no longer be in her way. >> darlie routier was arrested

and charged with the murder of her two sons. darin routier denied he was involved and no charges were filed against him. patricia springer described the possible motive in her book "flesh and blood". >> there is no one reason why darlie ro ur tier did this, it had nothing to do with the money. it had to do with the multiple births, with the total responsibility. we have learned that darren didn't help a lot with the children. >> darlie routier was found guilty of first degree murder and was sentenced to death. she currently sits on death row awaiting execution. >> i think that darlie got exactly what she deserved in this case. we probably gave her more justice than she deserved in this case.

if you look at the barbaric acts that brought her to that courtroom we did all that the system allowed us to do to her. but she richly deserves to be on death row and she richly death row and she richly deserves to be executed one day. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com search and recovery efforts again for the missing airasia flight. also wildfires raging in australia, chasing thousands out of their homes. when will they get help for these dry conditions. and a u.s. man is about to take off on an excellent adventure to china, looking to crack a record. tell you about that coming up here in this next hour. welcome to our viewers in the u.s. and around the world. i'm natalie le