Darlie Lynn Peck Routier (born January 4, 1970) is an American woman from Rowlett, Texas, who was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of her five-year-old son Damon in 1996.

In February 1997, the jury found Routier guilty of the murder of Damon, and sentenced her to death by lethal injection.

[5][6] Routier told the operator that her home had been broken into and that an intruder had stabbed her children, six-year-old Devon and five-year-old Damon, and cut her throat.

[7] Routier told the police that she had fallen asleep on the couch while watching television with her two sons, waking up later and discovering an unknown man in her house.

Police found it highly suspicious that Routier claimed she had only awoken after the attack that severely wounded her and her sons.

[11] Fingerprint expert Pat Wertheim would later testify before an appeals court that he could not rule out Darlie Routier's right ring finger as the source of the print.

[14][15] Her youngest son, 7-month-old Drake, was asleep upstairs with her husband Darin at the time of the murders; both escaped harm.

[17] She was shown smiling and laughing as she sprayed Silly String on the graves in celebration, singing "Happy Birthday".

[14] Family members point out that the newscasts did not show an earlier video that depicted a solemn ceremony honoring the children.

[9] Tom Bevel testified that cast-off blood found on the back of Routier's nightshirt indicated that she had raised the knife over her head as she withdrew it from each boy to stab again.

Damon was alive when the paramedics arrived on the scene and the medical examiner testified that the boy could only have survived approximately eight minutes after receiving his injuries.

The defense argued that this did not leave enough time for Routier to cut herself, stage the crime scene, plant the sock outside the house, and then return before the paramedics arrived.

[10] The prosecution countered that Routier could have planted the sock before self-inflicting her own injuries, and the medical examiner's stated survival time for Damon after he was stabbed was only an estimation.

[26] Defense attorneys allege numerous errors were made during Routier's trial and in the official transcript of it, as well as the investigation of the murders, especially at the crime scene.

[27] On January 29, 2014, then-Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas Samuel Frederick Biery Jr. granted a request from prosecution and defense for her case for further DNA tests vital to the defense to be performed on a bloody fingerprint found in the house, a bloody sock and her nightshirt.

[29][30] The 1999 book Precious Angels: A True Story of Two Slain Children and a Mother Convicted of Murder by Barbara Davis accounted for Routier's guilt.

[33] An October 1999 episode of the TLC documentary series Forensic Files titled "Invisible Intruder" (S4; E1), reports on how detectives discovered who the killer was by analyzing the crime scene's blood spatter, Darlie's 911 call and the offender profiling of her behavior.

[38] An American Broadcasting Company (ABC) seven-episode documentary series, The Last Defense examines the death row cases of Darlie Routier and Julius Jones.