Copy_cat_29 retweeted
At 2:31 in the morning on June 6, 1996, a 911 dispatcher in Rowlett, Texas, a suburb of Dallas, picked up a call from a frantic young mother.
Her name was Darlie Routier. She was 26.
She said someone had broken into her house and stabbed her two little boys.
Devon was 6. Damon was 5. They'd fallen asleep downstairs in the family room watching TV with their mom. Her husband Darin and their baby son Drake were asleep upstairs.
When police arrived, both boys had been stabbed multiple times. Devon was already dead. Damon died minutes later.
Darlie had a slash across her throat and cuts on her arm.
Her story never changed. She said she woke up on the couch to find a man in the house. She chased him through the kitchen and into the garage, where he escaped. A window screen in the garage had been cut.
Investigators didn't believe her.
They said the screen had been cut with a knife from the Routiers' own kitchen. They said there was no blood trail leading out of the garage. Jewelry and valuables were sitting in plain sight, untouched. Her own wounds, they said, were serious but not life threatening, the kind a person could inflict on herself.
On the 911 call, Darlie mentioned picking up a knife and wondered out loud if they could still get prints. To police, that sounded like someone thinking about evidence instead of her dying children.
Then came the video.
Eight days after the murders, on what would have been Devon's seventh birthday, the family held a graveside party. A local TV crew filmed Darlie smiling, laughing, and spraying Silly String over her sons' graves.
That clip played over and over on the news. Four days later, she was arrested.
In February 1997, a jury convicted her of capital murder for Damon's death and sentenced her to death. She was never tried for Devon's.
Her supporters have spent nearly 30 years saying the jury got it wrong.
They point to a bloody fingerprint on a coffee table that investigators couldn't match to anyone in the family. A bloody sock found down the alley behind the house, about 75 yards away, with the boys' blood on it. They argue there was no way she could have killed both boys, staged the scene, planted the sock, and cut herself in the short time before that 911 call. Her ex-husband still believes she's innocent.
Prosecutors fire back. They say a later fingerprint expert couldn't rule out Darlie's own finger as the source of that print. And they say they tested about 100 DNA samples from the scene, and every single one came back to Darlie or her boys.
Her conviction was upheld on appeal in 2003. Since then, judges have ordered round after round of new DNA testing as technology improves. As of 2026, the results of some of that testing are still pending.
She has no execution date. She's been on death row for almost 30 years.
Darlie Routier still says a stranger killed her sons.
A jury looked at that house and saw a staged crime scene.
Was it?
Copy_cat_29 retweeted
On July 6, 1988, 12 year old Sarah Cherry was babysitting at a home on a rural road in Bowdoin, Maine.
She was a straight A student. Responsible enough that a family trusted her with their child for the day.
When the homeowner came back that afternoon, Sarah was gone.
In the driveway, the homeowner found two things. A small notebook. And an auto body repair estimate for a pickup truck.
Both had the same name on them. Dennis Dechaine.
Dechaine was a 30 year old farmer from the next town over. Police started looking for him.
That evening, Dechaine walked out of the woods a few miles away and asked a couple at a nearby house for help. He said he'd lost track of his truck.
Police picked him up. He denied the notebook and the repair bill were his. He first said he'd been fishing. He later said he'd been in the woods doing drugs and lied because he didn't want anyone to find out.
Two days later, searchers found Sarah's body in those same woods. About 450 feet from where Dechaine's truck had been parked.
She had been sexually assaulted, tortured, and strangled. The scarf used to strangle her and a rope found at the scene both came from Dechaine's truck.
In 1989, a jury convicted him of kidnapping, sexual assault, and murder. He was sentenced to life.
And from day one, he has said he didn't do it.
His story is that while he was high in the woods, someone took things from his unlocked truck and planted them to frame him. He's built a devoted group of supporters who have fought for him for decades. They point out that no fingerprints, hairs, or fibers from Dechaine were found on Sarah or at the house, and none of hers were found in his truck. They also cite pathologists who argued she died the next day, when Dechaine was already in police custody.
Then came DNA.
Testing found blood under Sarah's fingernail containing DNA from an unknown man. Not Dechaine. In recent years, new testing also excluded him from several other items from the scene.
But that same testing found his DNA on the scarf, and he could not be excluded from another item. Prosecutors argue the fingernail DNA could have come from innocent contact before the crime or from contamination during the autopsy.
He has lost appeal after appeal. Maine's highest court has ruled against him again and again, and a federal appeals court too.
In January 2025, a judge denied his latest bid for a new trial. He called the new DNA evidence weak and vague, pointed to the mountain of circumstantial evidence and Dechaine's own incriminating statements, and wrote that the case is exhausted.
Dennis Dechaine has now spent 38 years in prison. He still says he's innocent.
Sarah Cherry would be 50 years old.
The courts say this case is closed.
So whose blood was under her fingernail?
Copy_cat_29 retweeted
On Saturday morning, August 23, 1980, a high school volleyball team from Bellville, Texas made the 60 mile trip to Conroe High School for a scrimmage.
One of the girls was 16 year old Cheryl Dee Fergeson, a junior. School would start back in nine days.
During the tournament, Cheryl left the gym to use the restroom. She walked down an empty hallway between the auditorium and the cafeteria and went up a set of stairs.
She never came back.
That afternoon, two of the school's janitors found her body in a loft above the auditorium. She had been raped and strangled.
Conroe High had five janitors working that day. Four were white. One was Black. His name was Clarence Brandley. He was one of the two men who found her body.
Within a week, he was the only suspect.
Brandley later said that before investigators had even interviewed witnesses, a Texas Ranger lined him up with another janitor and told him one of them was going to hang for this, and since he was the Black one, he'd been chosen. The Ranger later admitted Brandley was his only suspect from the start.
There was no physical evidence tying Brandley to the crime. Hairs found on Cheryl's body came from a white person. They were never matched to anyone. Semen recovered from her body was destroyed before it could be tested.
His case went to trial in December 1980 before an all white jury. It deadlocked, 11 to 1.
The state tried him again. Another all white jury. This time, guilty. He was sentenced to death.
For almost a decade, Clarence Brandley sat on death row. At one point, he came within six days of execution.
Then outside investigators started digging. Witnesses came forward. One man gave a videotaped statement pointing to someone else. A former janitor who'd been fired before the murder had been seen at the school that morning, and had once told a young woman he'd killed Cheryl. He later claimed he only said it to scare her.
A judge reviewing the case found Brandley's trials were deeply unfair. In 1989, his conviction was overturned. On October 1, 1990, prosecutors dropped all charges.
He walked out free. He never received a dime in compensation. He died in 2018.
No one else has ever been charged with Cheryl's murder.
46 years later, the case is still unsolved. The book "White Lies" and the movie "Whitewash" told the story of the man who almost died for it.
A 16 year old girl walked to a bathroom during a volleyball game and was murdered inside a school full of people.
Who really killed Cheryl Dee Fergeson?
Copy_cat_29 retweeted
On the night of January 20, 1998, 12 year old Stephanie Crowe went to bed in her family's home in Escondido, California.
Her parents were home. Her grandmother was home. Her 14 year old brother, Michael, and her 10 year old sister were home.
The next morning, her family found Stephanie dead on her bedroom floor. She had been stabbed nine times.
Nobody in the house had heard a thing.
But the night before, neighbors had heard plenty. Several of them called police about a strange man wandering the neighborhood, knocking on doors and acting erratically.
His name was Richard Tuite. He was a drifter with a long history of mental illness.
Police picked him up the morning after the murder. They questioned him briefly, took his clothes, and let him go.
Then they decided it was an inside job. And they turned to Stephanie's brother.
Detectives brought 14 year old Michael Crowe in for questioning. Over hours of interrogation, with no parent and no lawyer in the room, they told him things that weren't true. They said they'd found Stephanie's blood in his bedroom. They said the evidence proved he did it.
Michael broke. He said that if they said he did it, he must have, but he had no memory of it.
Police then pulled in two of his friends, also 15. One of them gave a detailed confession.
All three boys were charged with murder and jailed. The detectives believed they had their killers.
Then, right before the boys were set to go to trial, the crime lab finally tested Richard Tuite's red sweatshirt. The one police had taken from him the morning after.
It had three drops of Stephanie's blood on it.
The charges against the boys were dropped. But police and prosecutors let the case sit for years before charging anyone else.
In 2004, Tuite was finally tried. A jury convicted him of voluntary manslaughter. He got 13 years.
In 2011, a federal court overturned his conviction. In 2013, he was retried. His lawyers argued the blood got on his sweatshirt by contamination in the lab, and they pointed the finger right back at Michael and his friends.
The jury acquitted him.
By then, a judge had already reviewed all the evidence and declared Michael and his friends factually innocent, beyond a reasonable doubt. The Crowe family won a settlement of more than $7 million from the city and others.
Stephanie's parents have always believed Tuite killed their daughter. He has never been convicted of it.
28 years later, no one stands convicted of killing Stephanie Crowe.
Police had the man the neighbors warned them about, and the sweatshirt with her blood on it, the very next morning.
Why did they go after her brother?
Poor girl, I hope someday justice be served for this.
On Saturday morning, August 23, 1980, a high school volleyball team from Bellville, Texas made the 60 mile trip to Conroe High School for a scrimmage.
One of the girls was 16 year old Cheryl Dee Fergeson, a junior. School would start back in nine days.
During the tournament, Cheryl left the gym to use the restroom. She walked down an empty hallway between the auditorium and the cafeteria and went up a set of stairs.
She never came back.
That afternoon, two of the school's janitors found her body in a loft above the auditorium. She had been raped and strangled.
Conroe High had five janitors working that day. Four were white. One was Black. His name was Clarence Brandley. He was one of the two men who found her body.
Within a week, he was the only suspect.
Brandley later said that before investigators had even interviewed witnesses, a Texas Ranger lined him up with another janitor and told him one of them was going to hang for this, and since he was the Black one, he'd been chosen. The Ranger later admitted Brandley was his only suspect from the start.
There was no physical evidence tying Brandley to the crime. Hairs found on Cheryl's body came from a white person. They were never matched to anyone. Semen recovered from her body was destroyed before it could be tested.
His case went to trial in December 1980 before an all white jury. It deadlocked, 11 to 1.
The state tried him again. Another all white jury. This time, guilty. He was sentenced to death.
For almost a decade, Clarence Brandley sat on death row. At one point, he came within six days of execution.
Then outside investigators started digging. Witnesses came forward. One man gave a videotaped statement pointing to someone else. A former janitor who'd been fired before the murder had been seen at the school that morning, and had once told a young woman he'd killed Cheryl. He later claimed he only said it to scare her.
A judge reviewing the case found Brandley's trials were deeply unfair. In 1989, his conviction was overturned. On October 1, 1990, prosecutors dropped all charges.
He walked out free. He never received a dime in compensation. He died in 2018.
No one else has ever been charged with Cheryl's murder.
46 years later, the case is still unsolved. The book "White Lies" and the movie "Whitewash" told the story of the man who almost died for it.
A 16 year old girl walked to a bathroom during a volleyball game and was murdered inside a school full of people.
Who really killed Cheryl Dee Fergeson?
Copy_cat_29 retweeted
🇻🇪 secuestro de joven chileno fue organizado por venezolanos desde la cárcel!! Hoy su cuerpo fue encontrado entre escombros en una disco de colina sus captores también caribeños apesar de ya asesinarlo querían cobrar dinero mintiendo a la familia.@martinarrau @Carabdechile
Copy_cat_29 retweeted
Se ofendio la vieja culera 🤣🤣🤣
@gabyspanic
Y todo por qué se mueve más un ojo de vidrio 🤪🤪🤪🤪
Copy_cat_29 retweeted
Gracias, Donald Trump, por tanto.
Por recordarnos que todavía se puede ganar.
Que todavía se puede cambiar el rumbo.
Se ofendio la vieja culera 🤣🤣🤣
@gabyspanic
Y todo por qué se mueve más un ojo de vidrio 🤪🤪🤪🤪
Copy_cat_29 retweeted
🇺🇸🇻🇪‼️ | Robaron perfumes, volvieron por más y los atraparon en la puerta. Dos venezolanos en situación irregular, Alex Morcino-Ozoro, de 25 años, y Genesis Nunez Rodriguez, de 30, fueron arrestados en el condado de Polk, Florida, acusados de llevarse 2.817 dólares en perfumes de una tienda. El sheriff Grady Judd dice que son sospechosos en al menos otros seis robos y que ICE ya pidió retenerlos para su posible deportación.
Copy_cat_29 retweeted
Tina Hines woke after a cardiac arrest unable to speak. She asked for a pen and scrawled two words: “It’s real.”
When her family asked whether she meant heaven, she nodded.
On February 12, 2018, the Arizona mother collapsed while preparing to go hiking.
Her husband and a neighbour performed CPR before paramedics arrived and repeatedly shocked her heart.
Her husband later recalled doctors describing roughly 27–28 minutes with limited or no oxygen.
After regaining consciousness, Tina said she had seen Jesus standing with his arms open, a brilliant yellow glow behind him.
She survived and left hospital four days after collapsing.
Her niece later had the handwritten words tattooed on her arm.
Copy_cat_29 retweeted
Ministerio Público desmiente que Orlando Figuera haya sido víctima de «crimen de odio»
Prensa @_Provea | 6 de junio de 2017
En su actualización de su informe «Balance de víctimas fallecidas y lesionadas durante manifestaciones en Abril-Junio de 2017», difundido el pasado 05 de junio, el Ministerio Público desmiente la versión gubernamental acerca que Orlando Figuera, la persona fallecida tras sufrir quemaduras en el contexto de una manifestación, haya sido víctima de un «crimen de odio».
Desde hace años hemos venido condenando los actos de linchamiento, en una supuesta justicia popular que decide quien es culpable o inocente en cuestión de minutos y con odio. Los linchamientos son consecuencia, entre otros aspectos, de la deficiencias de la justicia formal y expresión de violencia social. Son actos inhumanos que siempre debemos repudiar y exigir sanción.
En el documento citado de Fiscalía, enlistado como el párrafo 65, el Ministerio Público informó sobre el caso de Orlando Figuera en los siguientes términos:
«Orlando José Figuera Esparragoza: tenía 22 años de edad y se dedicaba al oficio de cuidar y aparcar vehículos en un supermercado en Las Mercedes. El 20 de mayo de 2017, Figuera se dirigía a la casa de su tío en Petare luego de haber culminado su jornada laboral. Ya en camino, específicamente en el sector Altamira, se encontró con un sujeto con el que había tenido un altercado anteriormente y que le había herido con arma blanca por una plaza de trabajo en Parque Miranda. Al verlo, el hombre inmediatamente lo agrede con un arma blanca ocasionándole una herida y comenzó a gritar a los manifestantes que estaban cerca “este estaba robando” para que la multitud lo agrediera física y verbalmente. En ese momento recibió varias heridas con armas blancas y una persona le roció gasolina y lo prendió en fuego. Minutos más tarde, personal de Salud Chacao lo asistió y trasladó al Hospital Domingo Luciani de El Llanito donde se encontraba en la unidad de cuidados intensivos hasta el pasado domingo 04 de junio de 2017, cuando falleció en horas de la madrugada. Desde que ocurrió el hecho, fue comisionada la Fiscalía 48 del AMC para investigar el caso».
En una información anterior, el Ministerio Público había divulgado que había logrado recopilar el testimonio de la víctima como parte de las investigaciones realizadas para el esclarecimiento del caso:
«Conviene recordar que el pasado 22 de mayo, el fiscal del caso se trasladó al mencionado centro de salud para coordinar y supervisar la práctica de una prueba anticipada de la declaración de la víctima en terapia intensiva, además de realizar un informe psicosocial del joven y su familia.
Además, el Ministerio Público coordinó dos inspecciones técnicas en el sitio del suceso con fijaciones fotográficas, así como la colección de evidencia física y presencia de sustancias acelerantes, y de registros fílmicos de cuatro cámaras de seguridad en el sitio del suceso.
También se coordinó la extracción de contenido de imágenes en diferentes páginas web luego de la pesquisa digital y el reconocimiento médico legal por parte de funcionarios forenses adscritos al Ministerio Público, quienes a su vez colectaron la historia médica de la víctima en el centro asistencial.
Adicionalmente, se coordinó la pesquisa para la identificación y aprehensión de los autores, el análisis de telefonía y las experticias de reconocimiento técnico y coherencia sobre el material audiovisual colectado».
Como ocurrió con el caso de Juan Pernalete, las investigaciones del Ministerio Público vuelven a desmentir la versión divulgada por el Ministro de Comunicación Ernesto Villegas, quien había insistido que se trataba de un «crímen de odio», pues la víctima había sido asesinada por el hecho de ser afecta al gobierno. El Sistema Estatal de Medios de Comunicación comenzó a insistir en esta versión, adelantándose a las investigaciones realizadas por la titular de la acción penal, el Ministerio Público. Además de la violación del debido proceso, la actuación de estos funcionarios vulnera lo establecido en los artículos 57 y 58 de la Constitución, referentes a la comunicación e información.
El crimen contra Figuera Esparragoza es inaceptable, y los responsables de la agresión y muerte deben ser investigados y sancionados. Sin embargo, como refleja la investigación del Ministerio Público, la causa que motivó la agresión es diferente a «ser chavista», como aseguraron Villegas y otros funcionarios.
Consulte el informe del Ministerio Público sobre las personas asesinadas en el contexto de manifestaciones en Venezuela, actualizado al 05 de junio de 2017
provea.org/actualidad/minist…
Copy_cat_29 retweeted
Un día antes dice que dejen el show con María Corina, que ella solo quiere llamar la atención porque no tiene apoyo popular, pero al día siguiente ella sale con esto.
El mismo estilo ridículo de Maduro.
Es que no saben hacer otra cosa diferente. 🤦
Copy_cat_29 retweeted
At just 8 years old, an young Harry Kane was 𝐑𝐄𝐋𝐄𝐀𝐒𝐄𝐃 by Arsenal after being labelled “a bit chubby” and “not very athletic.” 💔
They didn't believe he had what it took.
Before becoming a superstar at Tottenham, he was sent out on 𝗙𝗢𝗨𝗥 loan spells:
🇬🇧 Leyton Orient — League One
🇬🇧 Millwall — Championship
🇬🇧 Norwich City — Premier League
🇬🇧 Leicester City — Championship
Four loan spells. Countless setbacks. Years of being doubted.
He went on to become Tottenham's 𝗔𝗟𝗟-𝗧𝗜𝗠𝗘 leading goalscorer, England's 𝗔𝗟𝗟-𝗧𝗜𝗠𝗘 leading goalscorer and one of the deadliest strikers in world football. ⚽
But despite all those goals, records and individual awards, one thing kept eluding him...
𝗔 𝗧𝗥𝗢𝗣𝗛𝗬. 🏆
He had to wait until he was 𝟯𝟭 𝗬𝗘𝗔𝗥𝗦 𝗢𝗟𝗗 to finally lift the first major trophy of his career.
From being rejected as an 8-year-old to becoming a champion at 31.
𝟮𝟯 𝙔𝙀𝘼𝙍𝙎 𝘽𝙀𝙏𝙒𝙀𝙀𝙉 𝙍𝙀𝙅𝙀𝘾𝙏𝙄𝙊𝙉 𝘼𝙉𝘿 𝙍𝙀𝘿𝙀𝙈𝙋𝙏𝙄𝙊𝙉.
He never stopped working.
He never stopped believing.
He 𝗡𝗘𝗩𝗘𝗥 gave up.
𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐑𝐘 𝐊𝐀𝐍𝐄. 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐃𝐄𝐅𝐈𝐍𝐈𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 𝐎𝐅 𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐄𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐀𝐍𝐂𝐄. ❤️👏
Copy_cat_29 retweeted
Harry Kane's Ballon d'Or moment 🏆
#ballondor