Another Susan Smith?

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ROWLETT, Texas: For more than a week, Darlie Routier's tale paralyzed her peaceful, upscale community. On June 6, the story went, she and her two young sons were sleeping in the family's first-floor living room when a man came through the window, murdered the boys and then stabbed her before fleeing. But late Tuesday night, Dallas police announced that Routier's story was no truer than Susan Smith's. Like the South Carolina woman who falsely claimed that a carjacker had abducted her children, Routier had pleaded for help in finding the killer. But as the investigation took shape, TIME's Carlton Stowers reports, inconsistencies in her story led them to doubt her. (Blood evidence, for example, showed that she was stabbed in the kitchen, not the living room, as she told police.) Routier, who is being held on $500,000 bail, is sticking to her story. -->