Online Killers by Christopher Barry-Dee;Steven Morris Page B

set. Everything had been designed, like one of Escher’s drawings, to fool the eye into seeing something that did not exist.
    Of great significance is that Darlie must have injured herself, arranged the crime scene and set the red herrings after the murders had been committed and before the 911 call was made. The actions of a very cold and calculated killer indeed!
    After his thorough and all-day examination of the crime scene, James Cron summarized his findings for Lieutenant Jack and Sergeant Walling: “We all know the crime scene tells the story. Problem is, that story’s not the same one the mother’s telling. Somebody inside this house did this thing. Gentlemen, there was no intruder.”
    Cron was positive that the crime scene had been staged. An article in the FBI′s Law Enforcement Bulletin refers to “staging”:
    Offenders who stage crime scenes usually make mistakes because they arrange the scene to resemble what they believe it should look like. In so doing, offenders experience a great deal of stress and do not have the time to fit all the pieces together logically. As a result, inconsistencies in forensic findings and in the overall “big picture” of the crime scene will begin to appear. These inconsistencies can serve as the “red flags” of staging, which serve to prevent investigations from becoming misguided.

    But nobody asked, “Why hadn’t the Routiers’ dog barked in the night?”
    As Sherlock Holmes would be quick to deduce, the dog knew the killer(s), and that could have only been Darlie Routier, Darin Routier or both.
     
    With the physical evidential facts already established, all of which prove beyond any doubt that no intruder had entered the Routiers’ home on the night of the murders and that the crime scene had been “carefully staged” by someone living in the house, we can now focus more closely on the crimes in an effort to prove that only Darlie Routier, acting alone, could have committed the murders.
    Darlie Routier most certainly had the opportunity for committing the crime, and she had the opportunity to prepare for the crime, clean the place up and scatter red herrings around to divert suspicion away from herself.
    The scientific forensic testimony had proven, beyond any doubt, that an intruder did not leave the blood trail. The fiber found on the bread knife taken from the drawer and replaced in the drawer matched in every respect fibers from the mesh window screen, and this evidence convinced the jury that a guilty verdict was safe.
    The police were convinced that the killer had tampered with and fabricated evidence at the crime scene in an effort to lead them in the wrong direction—to point an accusatory finger elsewhere. This being so, it was an act by the killer indicative of guilty consciousness or intent. And Darlie Routier certainly gave a number of unsatisfactory explanations as to the events that night.

    At first, she told one officer she had struggled with her assailant on the couch. She added that her only view of the man came as he was walking away from the couch. She said she just couldn’t remember any distinct details about the attack or the killer, except that he was wearing dark clothes and a baseball cap.
    To support this claim, she also told a friend who visited her in the hospital that she remembered lying on the couch as the man was running the knife over her face. When she returned home from the hospital, an annoyed Darlie told a shocked friend that the place was a mess and would take some cleaning up.
    However, when questioned about the blood in the sink and over the work surfaces, she told another officer a different story: that the struggle took place at the sink.
    The investigators’ suspicions grew even more when the doctors and nurses who treated Darlie told them that her wounds could have been self-inflicted. Then, a few days after leaving the hospital, she showed the police bruises that covered her arms from wrist to elbow. These, she