Mom Tells Judge She Will Beat Daughter Again
The Diane Downs Story: 1983 Murder Case Focuses on Mom
In 1983, Diane Downs said stranger shot her three kids. Cops decided she was lying.
May 12, 2010 — -- Late one May night in 1983, Diane Downs sped into an emergency room dropoff in Springfield, Ore., with a horrifying story to tell.
Her three small children, Christie, eight; Cheryl, 7; and Danny, 3, were inside her blood-soaked car, shot at close range.
In the frantic scene, hospital employees quickly determined that Cheryl was already dead and that Christie and Danny were clinging to life.
Downs had as well been shot, in the left forearm, though her wound was not life threatening.
When police force arrived at the scene, Downs, 27 at the time, told them a bizarre story of beingness flagged downward by a bushy-haired stranger on a dark and deserted country road.
Det. Doug Welch remembers getting the call for what would turn out to be his commencement homicide investigation. He responded to McKenzie-Willamette Hospital and immediately interviewed Downs, a postal worker.
"Her initial statement was that she had taken the kids out to a friend's house," said Welch. "And it grew nighttime and upon their render home she decided to -- to do some sightseeing. And she took a deserted country road with three sleeping kids in her car.
"And forth this road, off to the side, out stepped a man who flagged her down. She stopped the auto and asked him what he wanted. And his response was, 'I want your automobile.' She replied, 'You've got to be kidding,' at which time he pushed her aside and reached in and shot the sleeping kids."
Downs said she so faked throwing her keys to divert the gunman'southward attention, pushed him out of the way, jumped back in her car and raced to the hospital with her badly wounded children. She says information technology was during the struggle with the stranger that she was shot in the arm.
Police Tell Public to Be on Lookout
Fearing there could be a gun-wielding killer on the loose, police released information to the public to be on the spotter.
But suspicions of Downs herself speedily began to surface.
"At that place were a number of things which didn't brand sense, even that offset night," Welch said. "Sightseeing when it's pitch black out? And why are the kids fatally or near-fatally wounded, and she, being right-handed, is shot in the left arm? I mean, think virtually it. She's the biggest threat to him, not iii sleeping children."
Diane Downs Gives Bizarre Interviews
Within a month of the shootings, with her ii surviving children yet in the hospital, Downs began giving a series of bizarre interviews to the media.
"She couldn't keep her mouth shut," Welch said. "She talked all the fourth dimension. In a sense, Diane was her own worst enemy."
While police increasingly suspected Downs, she adamantly denied whatever involvement when speaking to the media.
"Why would I take taken my kids to the hospital?" she said in an interview. "Wouldn't I have made sure they were dead and then cried crocodile tears? That'due south insane to think that I would exercise such a thing then bring the witnesses in against myself -- that'due south crazy."
Anne Jaeger was a local reporter for KEZI in Eugene, Ore., at the time. She remembers Downs' demeanor in her interviews every bit peculiar.
"People would run across piffling sound bites of her talking on television set, and I think they started getting the feeling that there's something actually wrong with this person," Jaeger said.
Although police had found spent .22 caliber bullet casings at the crime scene, an exhaustive search of the surface area did not turn up the murder weapon. And Christie Downs, the only witness to the crime (her younger brother Danny was believed to take been comatose at the fourth dimension), had suffered a stroke that dumb her speech and prevented her from telling police force what she had seen.
Although Downs denied having ever endemic a .22 caliber gun, two of her former lovers told police they recalled seeing her with one.
Meanwhile, Christie Downs was slowly get-go to tell what she remembered of the shootings. She said she had not seen a male stranger that night. A judge had already placed Downs' 2 surviving children in protective custody.
A break in the case finally came when investigators discovered Downs' hole-and-corner diaries. They told of her obsession with a husband who didn't want her kids around.
"She saw the kids as a brunt, they were in the fashion and he wasn't going to join her every bit long equally she had the kids," Welch said. "And and then the quickest, simplest way was to eliminate the children."
Police Arrest Diane Downs
Constabulary arrested Downs February. 28, 1984, nine months after the shootings. In May of that twelvemonth, the trial against Downs began with nevertheless another inconceivable twist.
The woman who was on trial for shooting her ain children was significant again -- and it was no accident.
In another one of her strange media appearances Downs spoke nearly the pregnancy.
"I got pregnant because I miss Christie and I miss Danny and I miss Cheryl so much," she said. "I'm never going to see Cheryl on World again and I just, you tin can't replace children, simply you lot can replace the effect they give you. And they give me love, they give me satisfaction, they give me stability, they requite me a reason to live and a reason to be happy, and that's gone, they took information technology from me, merely children are then easy to conceive."
Downs had picked someone on her postal route to seduce prior to the start of her trial. Reporter Ann Jaeger remembers worrying that Downs' pregnancy could affect the mode jurors viewed her.
"She calculated that this would win her sympathy in her trial. I mean, obviously, if she's pregnant, she loves children, right?" Jaeger said.
Star Witness at Downs Trial: Her Daughter
Prosecutors laid out the evidence against Downs, all leading up to their star witness. Subsequently months of physical and mental therapy, Christie Downs was finally able to take the stand and tell what happened to her that horrible night.
Commune Attorney Fred Hugi asked Christie if she remembered who shot her.
She replied simply: "My mom."
Downs was institute guilty in June, and sentenced to life in prison plus 50 years.
Between the verdict and sentencing, the courtroom recessed so that Downs could requite birth to a girl she named Amy Elizabeth. The infant was taken past the country and delivered to adoptive parents. The daughter was later renamed Becky Babcock.
In 1987, just three years into her sentence, Downs escaped from the correctional facility in Oregon where she was existence held.
Within two weeks constabulary had tracked her down to the home of another inmate's husband just blocks from the prison. After beingness recaptured, she was transferred to a more than secure facility.
Diane Downs remains in prison in California. She was denied parole in 2008 and continues to proclaim her innocence.
Source: https://abcnews.go.com/2020/diane-downs-mother-shoots-children/story?id=10615736
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