Darlie Routier: Vicious Mother or Tragic Victim?

by Diane Fanning

Every time a television program involving Tommy Lynn Sells or one of his crimes is broadcast, I receive emails asking if he could have been in Rowlett, Texas, on June 6, 1996--the day seven-year-old Devon Routier and his five-year-old brother Damon died. These questions began within days of the release of my book about Sells in April 2003 and have continued unabated since then.

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The boys were murdered in the middle of the night, Sells' favored time for homicide. Someone had plunged a knife into their chests, puncturing their lungs. A weapon Sells was known to use often.

The boys' mother, Darlie, who had fallen asleep with them on the floor in front of the television, also had wounds. Although hers were not life-threatening, they were definitely beyond superficial. One cut damaged the sheath surrounding her carotid artery but did not sever that vital link to life. With a little emergency care, she was soon able to stand on the front porch in her bloody nightgown and tell her story of the events in her home.

Darlie said that she awakened when the man made physical contact with her. It was

at that moment, she realized her children had been harmed. She fought him off, he dropped his knife, he raced toward the garage. She described him as medium height, dressed in black and wearing a ball cap. After giving her statement, she was taken to the hospital. (above left)

This scenario bore a lot of similarity to the murder of 10-year-old Joel Kirkpatrick and the wounds inflicted on his mother Julie Rea Harper. As a result when an episode about Julie and Joel's case aired on Unusual Suspects, an Investigation Discovery show, a couple of weeks ago, I was deluged with dozens of emails asking once again about Sells' whereabouts.

The similarities went beyond the time of night, the viciousness of the attack, dead sons and injured mothers. In Darlie's case, two unidentified bloody fingerprints were found--one in the house, one in the garage--but prosecution witnesses testified that all the prints found belonged to Darlie or her boys. In Julie's case, investigators found a bloody footprint on a piece of cardboard in the bedroom. It was far too large to be Joel's footprint and even too large to belong to his mother. The prosecutor in Illinois concealed this evidence from the defense.

In both cases, there were items available for DNA testing. In both cases, the prosecutor fought this testing. This is a stance I cannot understand and cannot accept. I've heard all the arguments justifying this behavior, but I am not moved. If it is your mission is to uncover truth and seek justice, should you ever fight learning a fact? No. I expect more from prosecutors--much more.

Both Julie and Darlie were found guilty of murder in the death of their sons--a conviction that if wrongfully rendered was the cruelest fate that could ever befall any mother who loses a child to violence. Julie was sentenced to sixty-five years behind bars. Darlie was given the death penalty.

When Sells confessed to me that he murdered young Joel Kirkpatrick, a door was opened for Julie Rea Harper. I put it in my book and between the work of the Downstate Illinois Innocence Project at the University of Illinois at Springfield and the Center for Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University, Julie got a new trial. Julie was acquitted and released from jail.

I know, without the shadow of doubt and beyond any concerns, that Julie Rea Harper did not murder her son. I am strongly inclined to believe that Tommy Lynn Sells did commit this crime, just as he said.

As for Darlie, I'm not convinced of her guilt or innocence. I am certain that there are many questions that need to be answered before we can possibly put her to death with a clear conscious.

There is only one thing I know absolutely about the deaths of Devon and Damon--those murders cannot be laid at Tommy Lynn Sells' feet. He was in a penitentiary in West Virginia serving a sentence for assaulting Fabienne Witherspoon, a woman who fought back and survived his brutal knife attack.

If not Sells, then who? The obvious answer is that it could be Darlie. But that is not the only answer. As Texas Ranger Coy Smith once told me: "If you knew how many people like Sells were roaming across the country at any given time, it would blow the skirt right up over your head."

Maybe Darlie did kill her sons. Maybe it was one of those drifters Smith mentioned. Maybe.

Shouldn't that question be answered with certainty before we allow the state to take Darlie's life?

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Out of the Darkness

By Diane Fanning

Ten years ago this month, Krystal Surles encountered a living nightmare -- serial killer Tommy Lynn Sells. In "Live to Tell," the news-magazine 48 Hours revived that night of terror in interviews with the survivor, now 20; her family; and lead investigator John Allen, a Texas Ranger.

As I watched the show, the crime-scene photographs I'd pored over eight years ago throbbed and burned behind my eyes: The foot-long boning knife found in a field (below left) by Sells' home; the dead body of Krystal's friend, Katie Harris, bloodied and slumped on the floor. The trail of 10-year-old Krystal's blood leading out of the bedroom. The small, bloody hand prints marking her path down the hall. The dried river of red that ran out the doorway, down the steps and into the ground of the front yard. The long gravel road that led to the house, far away, where Krystal found refuge and salvation. Out of that darkness emerged an amazing young girl and a survivor in every sense of the word.

I felt thrust back in time to the cluttered room where I sat alone at a makeshift desk, flipping through one photo after another. I felt again the same horror, shock and building nausea that accompanied that two-dimensional glimpse into Krystal's nightmare.

I asked myself again: How did I manage to write that book? How did I navigate through one deadly crime scene after another? How could I look at those portraits of evil and sit for hours interviewing the man responsible -- a man Texas Ranger John Allen described as an animal in a human body?

The simple answer to both of those questions is Krystal Surles.

An urge to write this story washed over me after I watched her in the courtroom video just nine months after the crime. She walked in, head held high, past Sells and into the witness box. She looked sweet, pretty and innocent in a pink and white striped shirt. But the angry, diagonal scar the knife left across her neck made it clear that her innocence had been stolen long before she raised her finger and pointed at the monster who murdered her friend and left her for dead.

She awoke every night throughout the trial, screaming from nightmares brought on by memories of the bloody horror and her own harrowingly narrow escape. Yet she was able to do what she must to get justice for her friend Katie.

One small child, with the courage of a dozen grown women, stopped the two-decade killing spree of an evil, crafty criminal. She said she survived because Katie's soul came to her that night, giving her the will to fight for her life. No matter where her courage came from, the existence of so much of it in such a little girl took my breath away.

Now, Krystal (right) is a young woman speaking of her past but looking to her future. She possesses an abundance of poise and confidence. But the faint scar that traces a line across her neck speaks of the poignant pain and eternal grief she bears from witnessing the death of her friend.

Krystal Surles was my hero then. She is my hero now. God bless you, Krystal -- no matter where you go or what you do, may your everlasting courage serve you well all the days of your life.



Diane Fanning is author of Through the Window, the book that chronicles Tommy Lynn Sells' two-decade killing orgy ended by Krystal Surles' bravery. The book helped win a new trial and acquittal for a woman wrongfully convicted of one of Sells' murders.

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Conspiracy between Killers Fails

by Diane Fanning

Last week, the West Virginia Supreme Court denied the appeal of Dana December Smith. He'd been convicted in 1992 of two counts of felony murder. The jury did not recommend mercy which in the state of West Virginia was the equivalent of life without parole.

He was accused of a brutal homicide. In September 1991, Pamela Castaneda, 36, was sexually assaulted and stabbed seventeen times in her blue cinder block home in Leewood, West Virginia. Her disabled mother, 63-year-old Margaret McClain was stabbed fourteen times. Both women were found naked from the waist down.

When Smith learned he was a suspect, he hid out in the woods for four days until law enforcement tracked him down and took him into custody. It was the twenty-fourth arrest for the 25-year-old Smith.

He was not a model prisoner. He hit guards, jerked off their ties, tore their shirts, pelted them with apples and spit at them. Prosecutor Bill Forbes said, "This is the most cold-blooded killer I have seen."

Smith did not disappoint when allowed to read a statement before sentencing. He said he had no remorse and told the state's attorney, "You better pray I never get out of prison. You can take that as a threat."

The evidence at trial included the discovery of Smith's DNA at the crime scene and t-shirt found in Smith's possession that was splattered with Pamela's blood.

Unfortunately, that evidence was analyzed by Fred Zain(right), a man who worked as a Forensic Serology expert in West Virginia and Texas.

DNA analysis cleared a West Virginia prisoner in another case where Zain had testified that his "blood was identical" to that recovered from a rape victim. A forensic review of an additional fourteen randomly selected cases found something wrong in each and every one. Zain had testified about blood at a crime scene when no blood had been found there. He claimed to have conducted tests that were beyond the capability of his lab.

In 1993, the West Virginia Supreme Court discredited Zain's work saying "any testimonial or documentary evidence offered by Zain at any time in any criminal prosecution should be deemed invalid, unreliable and inadmissible."

Texas looked into his work, too. In August of 1994, Zain surrendered in Hondo, Texas on charges of aggravated perjury, evidence tampering and fabrication. Zain testified falsely in hundreds of cases--at least six individuals were wrongfully incarcerated because of his testimony. Although indicted, Zain died before he could be prosecuted.

It was just the opening Smith's attorneys needed. They wanted to retest the DNA evidence. But since the entire sample had been expended in the original analysis, attorneys appealed but that went nowhere. There was too much other evidence of his guilt, including his own admission, that he had stolen the victims' car.

Then, along came Tommy Lynn Sells(left). In the middle of the confessions after his arrest on capital murder charges in January 2000, Sells got irritated with his interrogators and decided to "jerk their chain." He told them about a dream he had about the Castaneda-McLain homicides. In reality, he was only regurgitating what he remembered hearing from Smith when they were on the same cell block in a West Virginia penitentiary.

That case wound on a list of previous crimes the prosecuting attorney submitted to court when Sells went to trial in September, 2000--even though the Texas Rangers had already concluded that the confession was not valid.

I had my first interview with Sells in 2001. From the start, he claimed that it wasn't his crime. He said he was repulsed by the sexual molestation of an older, disabled woman. "The right person is in jail for that one. Smith is a useless piece of crap."

After considering what Sells had to say and professional opinion of the Texas Rangers, I believed Sells was not responsible for that double homicide and did not include it in the original edition of THROUGH THE WINDOW.

When I was contacted by Wendy Campbell in the Public Defender's office, I agreed to ask him about the case again but he'd always told me that it was not his crime. To my surprise, this time Sells said he did do it and he was eager to speak with the female attorney. Neither Campbell nor I knew about the letter from Indiana written on behalf of Dana December Smith. The writer urged Sells to claim responsibility for the murders--since he was already sitting on death row, it wouldn't make any difference to him. Was Sells promised anything in exchange for his false confession? Probably. But Sells is not talking.

That confession landed me in West Virginia court on a cold, snowy day in January 2006. I testified at a hearing before the judge considering Smith's appeal. I did it for the victims' family members. They were terrified that Smith would get out of prison. I couldn't remain silent and allow the lie of Sells' confession make that happen.

The next month, Sells recanted. For the court, his denial was not necessary. There were several serious errors in his account of the crime. For example, he mentioned a brown couch with a black afghan in the MacLain/Castaneda home. In the evidence submitted at trial, the photograph was there, just as Sells described it--but the snapshot was taken in someone else's home and not present at the crime scene. Someone had fed him the information he needed to make a plausible confession but not enough details to ensure credibility.

Smith's state appeals are now exhausted. Of course, there is always recourse to the federal judiciary. For the sake of the victims' family, I hope that avenue is not pursued.

Dana December Smith belongs behind bars. I hope he stays there.

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