The Routier home buzzed with stark-faced policemen taking stark notes, shooting stark crime photos, dusting for fingerprints that would tell a stark tale. In the kitchenette, something very telling had occurred. Sgt. Nabors thought it was strange that the sink was spotless and white while the floors and edges of the countertop around and above it were blood-smudged. And if someone had taken the effort to clean the sink of blood why? His job being to process blood traces at a crime scene, Nabors went to work.
"(He) conducted a test to detect the presence of human blood that cannot be seen with the naked eye," explains the book, Precious Angels. "The chemical compound Luminol is the tool that investigators use for this test. If the white crystalline compound in the Luminol detects the copper component found in human blood, the area sprayed becomes luminescent, casting a brilliant bluish light. The sergeant sprayed the sink and the surrounding counter. When the lights were switched off, the entire sink basin and the surrounding counter glowed in the dark."
Repeating this process on the leatherette sofa, the detective found a small child's handprint glowing iridescent blue near the edge where Damon had been stabbed. Like the blood in the kitchen, someone had wiped it away. Again why?
Simultaneously to Nabors' findings, crime scene consultant James Cron found other variables of the case out of sync. Like Sgt. Nabors, he realized what appeared to be wasn't. The moment he arrived at 5801 Eagle Drive, his years of experience told him, as he began taking mental notes, that Darlie Routier's testimony of what happened didn't.
Mrs. Routier had stated she believed the killer had gotten in and escaped through the garage. Indeed, Cron found, as the woman said, a slit screen on the side of the house, in the garage but he knew at first glance it was a no-go. The screen showed no signs of having been forcibly pushed in or out to allow a body through its netting, but even more telling was the fact that the screen's frame was easily removable. Any criminal with an idiot's IQ would have simply taken it off its setting. Additionally, the ground below the window, comprised of a dewy, wet mulch, was undisturbed. Perhaps, he figured, the woman in her panicked condition may have been wrong perhaps the intruder had found other ingress and egress so he rounded the entire home for other visible indications of breaking and entry. He found none.
Crime Scene Tells Story
Returning inside, he followed the bloody footprints. They indeed led from the room where the children were slain through to a utility room then onto the concrete floor of the garage, trailing off below its window. But, again, the screen seemed an unlikely escape port. Doubling that suspicion, the dust on the sill was undisturbed, there were no hand prints, bloody or otherwise, around the window; odd, since the killer in forcing his way through the window would have had to hang onto the walls for balance!
The investigator double-tracked to the yard, this time looking for drops of blood left behind by the slayer in flight. Surely, his savagery had produced vast amounts of blood and his clothing would have been dripping with it yet there were no apparent traces beyond the interior of the house. Not on the mulch below the window, not on the yard's manicured lawn, not along nor atop the six-foot high fence that surrounded the yard, not in the alley. The blood was contained within the house. Nowhere else.
In the entertainment room where Darlie described a struggle, Cron found little evidence of a melee having taken place. The lampshade was askew, and an expensive flower arrangement lay beside the coffee table. Nothing more out of place. He found, in fact, the fragile stems of the flowers unbroken as if the arrangement hadn't fallen, but been placed there.
In the kitchenette, only Darlie's bloodied footprints were visible. Pieces of a shattered wineglass, too, lay among the prints, and a vacuum cleaner had been deposited on its side. Blood underneath these items indicated, to him, that they were dropped after not before, nor during the violence.
Atop the kitchen counter sat Darlie's purse, which appeared in order and undisturbed, and several pieces of jewelry rings, a bracelet and a watch aligned in order, untouched.
Reports author Barbara Davis in Precious Angels: "Everything the professional saw at the crime scene disturbed him. The lack of a blood trail away from the home coupled with virtually no signs of a struggle bothered him most."
Late afternoon, after his thorough and all-day examination, he summarized his findings for Lt. Jack and Sgt. Walling. "We all know the crime scene tells the story. Problem is," he nodded, "that story's not the same one the mother's telling. Somebody inside this house did this thing. Gentlemen, there was no intruder."
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