Latest / The Evolution of Evil - True Crime Stories / Diane Downs - The Mother Who Shot Her Children - True Crime Documentary

Transcript

Diane Downs - The Mother Who Shot Her Children - True Crime Documentary · The Evolution of Evil - True Crime Stories

0:06
Speaker 1: Lane County Courthouse, Eugene, Oregon. May 8, 1984.
0:11
Speaker 2: A U.S.
0:13
Speaker 1: Mail carrier and a mother of three stood accused of
0:16
Speaker 1: the murder of her daughter, seven-year-old Cheryl, and the attempted
0:20
Speaker 1: murder of her two other children, eight-year-old Christy and three-year-old Danny.
0:26
Speaker 1: Her name, Diane Downs.
0:30
Speaker 3: Diane Downs was pure evil, wrapped up in someone who
0:34
Speaker 3: had a smile... To this day, she has never admitted
0:38
Speaker 3: that she did the deed.
0:41
Speaker 1: But when her daughter, Christy, testified, the terrible truth was
0:46
Speaker 1: all too clear.
0:47
Speaker 4: When the person asks her the question, who shot you
0:50
Speaker 4: and your siblings, she says, my mom did it.
0:53
Speaker 1: It was a court case that shook America, and all
0:56
Speaker 1: the while, Downs insisted she'd never harmed her family.
1:02
Speaker 2: She violated that sacred duty and attempted to... in cold
1:05
Speaker 2: blood to kill all three of her children.
1:08
Speaker 1: The callous murder of her daughter and attempted murder of
1:12
Speaker 1: her two other children makes Diane Downs one of the
1:16
Speaker 1: world's most evil killers. Springfield, Oregon, May 1983. The small
1:45
Speaker 1: industrial town that lies next door to the city of
1:48
Speaker 1: Eugene was home to one of America's most reviled murderers,
1:53
Speaker 1: Diane Downs. The 27-year-old mother had driven her three children
1:59
Speaker 1: to a remote location just outside of town. Diane Downs
2:05
Speaker 1: then pulled over to the side of the road and
2:08
Speaker 1: shot each of her three children. Seven-year-old Cheryl died. Her siblings,
2:17
Speaker 1: Christy and Danny, survived the ordeal but were left scarred.
2:23
Speaker 1: This seemingly senseless attack stunned the nation.
2:30
Speaker 4: What makes this case exceptional is that Diane Downs doesn't
2:34
Speaker 4: look like any other mother who kills their children. Most
2:38
Speaker 4: mothers who kill their children Their children are babies. They're
2:41
Speaker 4: under the age of 12 months. These mothers are from
2:44
Speaker 4: pretty desperate circumstances. But Diane Downs was something altogether different.
2:49
Speaker 3: We're talking about what the president did in deciding not
2:52
Speaker 3: to go.
2:52
Speaker 1: Talk show host Lars Larson was a young investigative reporter
2:57
Speaker 1: assigned to the sensational story in 1983.
3:02
Speaker 3: This case involving Diane Downs really had everything. It had
3:06
Speaker 3: a mother. It had children. Murdered. and sex and mystery.
3:11
Speaker 3: And you had an American murder suspect who had tried
3:14
Speaker 3: to murder her three children and succeeded with one of
3:18
Speaker 3: them and horribly wounded the other two.
3:27
Speaker 1: Downs was having a relationship with a married man, a
3:31
Speaker 1: fellow colleague at the U.S. Post Office where she worked.
3:38
Speaker 3: Diane Downs said she was in love with this man.
3:41
Speaker 3: This was the man she wanted to be with. She
3:43
Speaker 3: thought that by eliminating the children, that that would be
3:46
Speaker 3: the last hurdle she would have to jump over to
3:49
Speaker 3: be able to be with this man forever.
3:52
Speaker 1: Downs had decided that he was the most important person
3:56
Speaker 1: in her life, bar none.
3:59
Speaker 4: Here we've got a mother who relentlessly pursued her own
4:02
Speaker 4: wants and desires and really didn't care about her children.
4:06
Speaker 2: I suspect she's a classic example of a narcissistic killer.
4:10
Speaker 2: The only thing she thinks about is herself. Her children
4:14
Speaker 2: exist in the world for her. She doesn't exist in
4:17
Speaker 2: the world for her children. And her life history suggests
4:20
Speaker 2: that is true. This was a way to change her life.
4:23
Speaker 2: This was a way to get a new boyfriend, the
4:26
Speaker 2: boyfriend she wanted. And that meant so much to her
4:29
Speaker 2: that it was more important to her than the life
4:31
Speaker 2: of her children.
4:35
Speaker 1: This killer's story begins over 60 years ago. Diane Downs
4:40
Speaker 1: was born on August the 7th, 1955, in Phoenix, Arizona.
4:47
Speaker 2: You know, there's little to indicate that there was anything
4:52
Speaker 2: especially abnormal about her family life.
4:56
Speaker 4: Her father was a postal worker and her mum was
4:58
Speaker 4: a stay-at-home mother. Her father was quite the disciplinarian. He
5:02
Speaker 4: had some quite strict rules. He would often give lectures
5:05
Speaker 4: to his children about how to behave. But it was
5:08
Speaker 4: very much a stereotypical American nuclear family.
5:12
Speaker 1: As a teenager, Diane met Stephen Downes while in high
5:18
Speaker 1: school and they became a couple. When she was 17,
5:21
Speaker 1: Diane enrolled in Bible College in Orange, California. But soon
5:28
Speaker 1: problems began to brew.
5:30
Speaker 4: Diane had gone to Bible College, but that hadn't lasted
5:33
Speaker 4: very long. She was only there for two semesters and
5:36
Speaker 4: she was kicked out of college because of, quote, her
5:39
Speaker 4: promiscuous behaviour. And that's a theme that we see throughout
5:43
Speaker 4: her life.
5:46
Speaker 1: After her expulsion, Diane returned to her parents' home in
5:50
Speaker 1: Arizona and married Stephen Downes.
5:54
Speaker 4: They got married when she was 18. Now, she was
5:57
Speaker 4: very quick to want to start a family, and they
6:00
Speaker 4: soon had their child.
6:03
Speaker 1: Their first daughter, Christy, was born in October 1974. Just
6:09
Speaker 1: over a year later, Diane had her second child, a
6:13
Speaker 1: girl she named Cheryl.
6:17
Speaker 4: Diane and her husband had two children together, and after this,
6:21
Speaker 4: her husband decides that's it, enough, our family's complete, and
6:25
Speaker 4: he goes and has a vasectomy. But Diane is absolutely
6:28
Speaker 4: adamant she wants another child, so she goes and has
6:31
Speaker 4: a short-term affair with another man and becomes pregnant with
6:36
Speaker 4: her son, Danny.
6:43
Speaker 2: I suspect that she engaged in what I call instrumental sex.
6:47
Speaker 2: And what I mean by this is for some women,
6:51
Speaker 2: sex is a tool. It's a weapon. They want to
6:54
Speaker 2: get pregnant because they believe that that will create a relationship.
7:01
Speaker 4: Diane seemed to really enjoy the pregnancy stage of motherhood,
7:05
Speaker 4: but when the baby actually arrived, she didn't quite like
7:09
Speaker 4: that so much. There were lots of reports that she
7:11
Speaker 4: left the children alone, she left them unattended. When they
7:15
Speaker 4: got home from school, they were waiting on the porch
7:17
Speaker 4: for hours at a time.
7:20
Speaker 1: In 1980, Diane and her husband Stephen divorced. Soon after,
7:26
Speaker 1: Downs was pregnant again. That's because she'd volunteered to be
7:31
Speaker 1: a surrogate mother.
7:33
Speaker 3: At the time in the United States, there were approximately
7:36
Speaker 3: 100 surrogate mothers in the entire country. Those are the
7:40
Speaker 3: estimates at the time. So being a surrogate mom put
7:43
Speaker 3: you in a very rarefied piece of air. You were unique.
7:48
Speaker 4: And she was actually interviewed for a national newspaper in
7:51
Speaker 4: the early 1980s, and she very much seemed to enjoy
7:54
Speaker 4: that experience. So she's got a taste of that limelight,
7:58
Speaker 4: and she will use her role as a woman, her
8:01
Speaker 4: role as a mother, as a way to get people
8:03
Speaker 4: to look at her.
8:05
Speaker 1: In 1981, she was paid $ 10, 000 by a couple desperate
8:07
Speaker 1: to have a child. Nine months later, Downs gave birth
8:15
Speaker 1: to a baby girl that she handed to the sponsoring couple.
8:19
Speaker 1: That same year, she got a job with the U.S.
8:22
Speaker 1: Postal Service. There, she had an affair that would be
8:26
Speaker 1: the catalyst of catastrophe.
8:29
Speaker 2: He was a married man who she encountered. They were
8:32
Speaker 2: sexually involved. Surprise, surprise, this is what she does. And
8:36
Speaker 2: he was fine with just having an affair. But once
8:40
Speaker 2: Diane Downs wanted a real relationship with him, he was done.
8:46
Speaker 4: Now, she's had quite a lot of short-term relationships with
8:49
Speaker 4: people in this workplace, in the post office. And he
8:54
Speaker 4: believes that actually this is just going to be a
8:56
Speaker 4: bit of a fling because he knows what her reputation is.
8:59
Speaker 4: But she becomes quite fixated on him. She wants them
9:03
Speaker 4: to have a longer-term relationship.
9:06
Speaker 1: But instead, he ended things.
9:10
Speaker 2: He made it very clear to her he didn't want
9:12
Speaker 2: to raise her children and he didn't want to have
9:13
Speaker 2: children by her. And I believe at the point at
9:16
Speaker 2: which he says that to her is when she decided
9:19
Speaker 2: that if he won't have me with my children, maybe
9:22
Speaker 2: he'll have me without them.
9:26
Speaker 4: The key thing is that he doesn't want to be
9:29
Speaker 4: the stepfather to her children. So her children at this
9:32
Speaker 4: point in time, they become a barrier to her getting
9:35
Speaker 4: what she wants.
9:37
Speaker 1: By the end of 1981, Diane Downs had moved over 1,200
9:42
Speaker 1: miles north to Springfield, Oregon.
9:45
Speaker 4: Now, after she moves to Oregon, she expects that he's
9:49
Speaker 4: just going to follow her. And actually, that doesn't happen.
9:52
Speaker 4: He's not interested.
9:54
Speaker 1: Diane Downs pursued the man she loved for nearly two years,
9:58
Speaker 1: writing and illustrating. visiting him to plead for his affections,
10:03
Speaker 1: to no avail. The cold-hearted mother of three then came
10:08
Speaker 1: to an incredible conclusion. In order to be with the
10:11
Speaker 1: man she loved, she had to kill her children. Late
10:18
Speaker 1: in the afternoon of May the 19th, Diane Downs took
10:22
Speaker 1: her three children, eight-year-old Christy, seven-year-old Cheryl, and three-year-old Danny,
10:29
Speaker 1: on a fateful journey. They were headed to a farm
10:32
Speaker 1: in the small rural town of Marcola, just 12 miles
10:36
Speaker 1: away from their home in Springfield.
10:41
Speaker 4: She's going kind of out of the way from where
10:45
Speaker 4: she lived. She's on the opposite side of town. So
10:47
Speaker 4: she appears to be doing things that aren't particularly rational.
10:52
Speaker 1: The children had no idea that their mother had made
10:56
Speaker 1: a dreadful decision. In order to run away with a
11:00
Speaker 1: man she was obsessed with, Diane Downs had planned to
11:04
Speaker 1: kill her children that evening.
11:08
Speaker 3: When we see a killer who says, well, I was
11:11
Speaker 3: going to kill my children, and then I could be
11:13
Speaker 3: with this man forever, We say, well, that's irrational, that's crazy.
11:18
Speaker 3: But to her, I think it made perfect sense.
11:21
Speaker 4: She's completely smashed any of our expectations about mothers. They
11:25
Speaker 4: should put their children first, and that is something that
11:28
Speaker 4: she's never done.
11:33
Speaker 1: Diane Downs drove her three children to a co-worker's house
11:38
Speaker 1: in Markola.
11:40
Speaker 3: And her children get to see the horses and pet
11:42
Speaker 3: the horses, and she talks to this co-worker, and they
11:45
Speaker 3: visit for a while.
11:47
Speaker 1: The problem was the woman she was visiting had no
11:51
Speaker 1: idea Downs was coming.
11:52
Speaker 4: This friend doesn't seem to be able to make sense
11:55
Speaker 4: of why Diane has suddenly turned up there.
12:00
Speaker 1: The unusual trip was part of Diane Downs' carefully designed
12:04
Speaker 1: murder plan. The visit to see the horses was would
12:08
Speaker 1: serve as an alibi.
12:11
Speaker 3: She thought, if I could just get rid of these
12:13
Speaker 3: three children, then I could go with the love of
12:17
Speaker 3: my life. But she had to do it. So she
12:19
Speaker 3: conspired for a long time. She arranged this phony visit
12:23
Speaker 3: to a friend's house that she never visited before. She
12:27
Speaker 3: conspired to be driving home late on a lonely road
12:30
Speaker 3: a long way from any houses or any activity. I
12:33
Speaker 3: believe that she was planning this for at least days
12:37
Speaker 3: could have been even weeks.
12:40
Speaker 2: One thing that we need to understand about these crimes
12:43
Speaker 2: is that because she's driving down the street with a
12:48
Speaker 2: loaded gun, which means before she stepped into that car,
12:54
Speaker 2: she knew she was going to kill her children.
12:58
Speaker 1: In keeping with her pernicious plan, after leaving the farm,
13:03
Speaker 1: Diane Downs packed the children in the car and drove
13:07
Speaker 1: to a carefully chosen site on Old Mohawk Road. She
13:12
Speaker 1: pulled over and got out of the car.
13:16
Speaker 2: We are talking about a premeditated homicide. This is something
13:19
Speaker 2: that the average person thinks of as inconceivable and impossible.
13:24
Speaker 1: With the children not suspecting a thing, she went to
13:27
Speaker 1: the trunk of the car. She pulled out a Ruger.
13:31
Speaker 1: 22 caliber semi-automatic pistol, walked back to the driver's side
13:35
Speaker 1: with the gun in hand.
13:38
Speaker 2: When the children first see the gun, they have to
13:42
Speaker 2: be in total disbelief. It has to be inconsistent with
13:46
Speaker 2: all of their experiences.
13:48
Speaker 1: Then she knelt on the seat, leaned forward towards her daughter,
13:52
Speaker 1: seven-year-old Cheryl, and from about six inches away, fired. On
14:04
Speaker 1: the case on the night of the attack was forensic
14:07
Speaker 1: expert Jim Pex.
14:09
Speaker 5: One shot was in the back that exited about at
14:12
Speaker 5: the sternum, and that was... probably the bullet that was
14:16
Speaker 5: found in the passenger side, inside the vehicle.
14:20
Speaker 1: As Cheryl tried to exit the car, her mother leant
14:24
Speaker 1: out of the passenger side door and fired again.
14:30
Speaker 5: There was another shot in the lower torso here that
14:34
Speaker 5: stayed in her.
14:39
Speaker 2: After the first bullet is fired, the second and third
14:42
Speaker 2: bullets are fired within seconds. When a gun is fired
14:47
Speaker 2: in a closed space like a car, it is very loud.
14:51
Speaker 2: I mean, it is booming, shocking, on its own is stunning,
14:55
Speaker 2: and for children more so.
14:58
Speaker 1: Next down shot her three-year-old son in the back.
15:03
Speaker 5: The boy was on the driver's side back seat, had
15:07
Speaker 5: a single wound, a gunshot wound to the spine.
15:11
Speaker 1: She then shot her daughter Christy in the chest twice.
15:15
Speaker 1: As the girl raised her hand to defend herself, a
15:19
Speaker 1: bullet ripped through the thumb of her left hand.
15:24
Speaker 5: There was a bullet-penetrating wound that went through her hand,
15:29
Speaker 5: exited near the thumb, and then into her chest.
15:33
Speaker 1: In the back of the car, Christy and Danny were
15:36
Speaker 1: clinging to life. Lying in the footwell in the front,
15:40
Speaker 1: Cheryl was mortally wounded.
15:43
Speaker 6: I suspect that Diane Downs chose to shoot her children
15:47
Speaker 6: because of placing distance mentally and physically between her and them.
15:53
Speaker 6: It's a cold, calculated decision. You don't have to be
15:57
Speaker 6: staring into somebody's eyes to do it.
16:03
Speaker 1: It was a clinical and cruel attack, but Downs' evil
16:07
Speaker 1: plan was far from over. While her children lay dying,
16:12
Speaker 1: Diane Downs continued with her coldly conceived plan and covered
16:17
Speaker 1: her tracks.
16:18
Speaker 2: Not only did she know she was going to kill
16:20
Speaker 2: her children, she knew that she was going to have to,
16:22
Speaker 2: in order to make it look like somebody else did it,
16:24
Speaker 2: she was going to have to shoot herself.
16:28
Speaker 3: So she shot herself in the arm. She knew she
16:31
Speaker 3: could probably get away with shooting through the fleshy part
16:34
Speaker 3: of her arm, not do any permanent damage, not break
16:37
Speaker 3: a bone, not incapacitate herself. And then she arranged to
16:41
Speaker 3: take a bandage that she'd already folded up and put
16:44
Speaker 3: in the trunk of her car, it was a large
16:45
Speaker 3: piece of cloth, to wind it around her arm because
16:48
Speaker 3: she had shot herself in her own left arm.
16:52
Speaker 1: Downs then drove the six miles to the McKenzie Willamette
16:56
Speaker 1: Hospital in Springfield.
16:59
Speaker 6: Gunshot wounds, particularly multiple gunshot wounds, the damage that can
17:03
Speaker 6: be done is tremendous. If it's not destroyed something vital
17:07
Speaker 6: like the heart, then you've got serious problems with ongoing bleeding,
17:12
Speaker 6: and that can be rapidly fatal. A number of minutes
17:17
Speaker 6: could do it.
17:19
Speaker 1: If Downs had driven at top speed, she might have
17:22
Speaker 1: got help for her children in about ten minutes. But
17:26
Speaker 1: that is not what she did.
17:30
Speaker 3: Realizing the children were still alive, she drove very, very slowly.
17:37
Speaker 2: So slowly that she actually held up traffic. And what's
17:41
Speaker 2: amazing to me, and what makes this a special moment,
17:44
Speaker 2: is here are her children. They've been shot. They're on
17:47
Speaker 2: the literal precipice of death. And she's traveling 10 miles
17:52
Speaker 2: an hour to make sure, from her perspective, that they
17:55
Speaker 2: don't get to the hospital on time.
17:58
Speaker 3: And we know this because of witnesses who pulled up
18:01
Speaker 3: behind her on the road, couldn't figure out, why is
18:03
Speaker 3: she going so slowly? And because it was such a winding,
18:06
Speaker 3: lonely road, these people had to follow for a long
18:10
Speaker 3: period of time.
18:11
Speaker 2: That represents a sordid departure from her obligations as a
18:16
Speaker 2: mother like I have never seen. That was her last
18:19
Speaker 2: chance to save those children. That was the last chance
18:24
Speaker 2: for her superego, for her moral self to step in
18:27
Speaker 2: and say, I've got to stop. And it didn't happen.
18:32
Speaker 2: And that made it a truly horrible moment, maybe more
18:36
Speaker 2: horrible than the shooting itself, because at that point, she
18:40
Speaker 2: proved herself beyond redemption.
18:46
Speaker 1: Downs' peculiar driving continued to attract attention from other cars
18:52
Speaker 1: and their curious passengers.
18:55
Speaker 3: A family that happened to be on the same road
18:59
Speaker 3: had a child in the car. I think he was
19:00
Speaker 3: eight or nine years old. And earlier in the day,
19:03
Speaker 3: they had seen a red automobile with Arizona plates, which
19:08
Speaker 3: happened to be red. He says to his mother, are
19:12
Speaker 3: all the cars from Arizona red? That's the kind of
19:16
Speaker 3: comment a child would make, but it would cement your mind.
19:19
Speaker 3: So they knew that they were following a car they
19:22
Speaker 3: would later identify as Diane Downs' car, who had a
19:24
Speaker 3: red automobile. nissan car with red arizona license plates on it.
19:30
Speaker 1: Diane downs pulled into the springfield hospital about 30 minutes
19:36
Speaker 1: after she'd shot her children.
19:38
Speaker 3: She finally gets to the hospital she spills out of
19:41
Speaker 3: the car says to the emergency room personnel please save
19:45
Speaker 3: my children well one of them has already died the
19:48
Speaker 3: other two uh were just barely saved.
19:54
Speaker 6: Cheryl, the middle daughter, she was dead on arrival at hospital.
20:00
Speaker 6: She had been shot and she had choked on her
20:03
Speaker 6: own blood. She died in pain.
20:06
Speaker 4: Her daughter Christy has also been shot twice, but she's alive. Danny,
20:10
Speaker 4: the son, had been shot once, and he was clinging
20:13
Speaker 4: on to life as well.
20:15
Speaker 6: On arrival at hospital, Christy is not even able to speak.
20:19
Speaker 6: So we may have a mixture of direct trauma there,
20:23
Speaker 6: injury to the brain from a stroke, and the shock,
20:27
Speaker 6: the horror of what's happened to her. And she ultimately
20:30
Speaker 6: suffers a stroke, most likely as a result of blood loss.
20:34
Speaker 6: So in her case, it wasn't lethal, but it was
20:37
Speaker 6: totally life-changing. Danny has been shot, and he is paralyzed
20:43
Speaker 6: because of the damage to his spinal cord.
20:47
Speaker 1: Only one member of the family had a bandage on
20:50
Speaker 1: their wounds.
20:52
Speaker 4: She's got these three, one fatally injured child in the car,
20:57
Speaker 4: and she goes into the hospital. And she is the
21:01
Speaker 4: only one that appears to have a dressing. She's the
21:04
Speaker 4: only one who appears to have an injury that's been treated.
21:07
Speaker 4: So that suggests to me... that actually she's put herself
21:10
Speaker 4: first again. She's made sure that she's okay. She's nursed
21:14
Speaker 4: her own injury whilst her children were in the car dying.
21:18
Speaker 1: Every action Downs took in the wake of the attempted
21:22
Speaker 1: murder of her three children was part of a perverse plot,
21:26
Speaker 1: one that painted herself and her family as the victims
21:30
Speaker 1: of a random attack.
21:33
Speaker 2: I think the fact in the case that is the
21:36
Speaker 2: most extraordinary is that after she mustered up whatever courage
21:39
Speaker 2: it took to shoot three of her children, she had
21:43
Speaker 2: to create the impression that somehow she was a victim.
21:48
Speaker 3: She wasn't a victim in this case. She was a
21:50
Speaker 3: coldly calculating mother who had decided to eliminate her children
21:54
Speaker 3: as the roadblock between her and her life with this man.
21:59
Speaker 1: Downes had concocted an incredible story about a bushy-haired stranger,
22:04
Speaker 1: a mysterious carjacker who shot her children. Downes claimed she
22:08
Speaker 1: managed to trick the murderous man and drove hell for
22:12
Speaker 1: leather all the way to the hospital in order to
22:15
Speaker 1: save her fatally wounded children. But as the investigation would
22:19
Speaker 1: soon prove, Downes' story was part of a desperate and
22:23
Speaker 1: devious scheme she'd formulated to get away with murder. The
22:30
Speaker 1: McKenzie Willamette Medical Center, May the 19th, 1983, Springfield, Oregon.
22:38
Speaker 4: So in the hospital, she starts to put aside her
22:40
Speaker 4: version of events. She says that the car was flagged
22:43
Speaker 4: down by a bushy-haired stranger.
22:46
Speaker 3: She said had been attacked on a lonely road late
22:49
Speaker 3: at night, and she was on her way driving home,
22:52
Speaker 3: and she sees a man, her story, and decides to stop.
22:56
Speaker 3: He's signaling for help.
22:58
Speaker 1: According to Downs, when she got out of the car,
23:01
Speaker 1: the bushy-haired man shot her in the arm, and then
23:04
Speaker 1: he shot her three children.
23:08
Speaker 3: What didn't make sense is that he would shoot her
23:11
Speaker 3: in the arm, here, not in the head, not in
23:14
Speaker 3: the chest, but shoot her in the arm, and then
23:17
Speaker 3: shoot her three children inside the car, blood everywhere, and then,
23:21
Speaker 3: she claimed, that she had her keys for her car
23:26
Speaker 3: on a ring, kind of like the ring that I have,
23:28
Speaker 3: and she said she pretended to throw it, the way
23:31
Speaker 3: you can say pretend to throw a ball for your dog.
23:35
Speaker 3: While he's distracted, she jumps in the car, she says,
23:39
Speaker 3: pulls her door shut, and manages to drive off, she says,
23:43
Speaker 3: at high speed. I believe she said, I drove like
23:46
Speaker 3: a madwoman.
23:47
Speaker 1: The sensational story that Diane Downs told about the events
23:51
Speaker 1: baffled everyone.
23:56
Speaker 3: The story that didn't make sense at all was that
23:59
Speaker 3: Diane Downs would stop her car, open her door, and
24:04
Speaker 3: get out of the car for this man who she
24:07
Speaker 3: didn't know.
24:09
Speaker 1: But it was not just the odd tale that was troubling.
24:13
Speaker 1: Downs' extraordinary behavior at the hospital also alarmed observers.
24:19
Speaker 4: According to the doctor in charge at the hospital, she
24:22
Speaker 4: was calm. She was quite self-assured. She appeared to be
24:25
Speaker 4: in control of her behavior. She was occasionally laughing. She
24:29
Speaker 4: was occasionally giggling.
24:32
Speaker 1: Staff at the hospital described her reaction as surprising.
24:41
Speaker 4: Danny sustained a shot to the spine, and when his
24:44
Speaker 4: mother was told about this, she seemed to be quite surprised. Oh,
24:48
Speaker 4: so it didn't hit him in the heart, suggesting that
24:51
Speaker 4: perhaps that was her intention when she shot him.
24:55
Speaker 1: Again, when she was told of Christy's injuries, she showed
24:59
Speaker 1: little compassion for her injured child.
25:03
Speaker 2: Diane told the doctors that if her daughter was going
25:06
Speaker 2: to have, you know, any kind of brain damage, to
25:08
Speaker 2: let her die. This is very unusual information as an
25:11
Speaker 2: immediate response.
25:15
Speaker 1: But it was her daughter Christy's reaction to her own
25:19
Speaker 1: mother that set alarm bells ringing.
25:22
Speaker 4: Diane comes into the room where Christy is in the
25:25
Speaker 4: hospital and she leans over the bed and starts saying
25:29
Speaker 4: to Christy, I love you. And from the people in
25:32
Speaker 4: the room, they say that Christy looked absolutely terrified. They
25:35
Speaker 4: noticed that her heart rate had gone through the roof
25:38
Speaker 4: when Diane came into the room. So this is a
25:41
Speaker 4: little girl who is very frightened. She's afraid of her mother.
25:45
Speaker 4: And this is a really clear indication of that. She's
25:48
Speaker 4: scared that her mother is gonna try and harm her again.
25:51
Speaker 2: For one of the children to wake up with the
25:55
Speaker 2: memory that her mother shot her is, it's just indescribable.
26:02
Speaker 2: The universe becomes unstable and untrustworthy. The sky has fallen.
26:11
Speaker 5: Her attitude and demeanor in the hospital was very unusual
26:16
Speaker 5: for the kind of incident that occurred to her own children.
26:20
Speaker 5: And so that was probably one of the first indications
26:25
Speaker 5: by the deputy who was there that this doesn't look right.
26:29
Speaker 1: As they did not believe Downs' version of the events,
26:33
Speaker 1: investigators quickly identified her as the prime suspect.
26:38
Speaker 4: In the aftermath of this attack, the decision is made
26:42
Speaker 4: to remove the children from Diane's care, to put them
26:45
Speaker 4: into foster care. They became wards of the state. So Diane,
26:49
Speaker 4: at this point, has lost her children.
26:53
Speaker 1: The police did not immediately arrest Downs. Instead, they meticulously
26:58
Speaker 1: gathered evidence in the case. State trooper and forensic expert
27:04
Speaker 1: Jim Pex was called the night of the incident.
27:08
Speaker 5: I received a call from the sheriff's office that there
27:11
Speaker 5: had been a shooting that involved a woman and her
27:13
Speaker 5: children and that there was a need to process a vehicle.
27:18
Speaker 1: Jim Pex closely examined the entire car that night and
27:23
Speaker 1: in daylight the whole of the next day. When he
27:27
Speaker 1: looked at the passenger side door and the areas underneath
27:31
Speaker 1: the car, he made a series of discoveries that would
27:34
Speaker 1: break the case wide open.
27:36
Speaker 5: I spotted a blood stain in the door jamb of
27:39
Speaker 5: the passenger door, and the direction was wrong. It came
27:43
Speaker 5: from the outside.
27:47
Speaker 1: According to Diane Downs, the bushy-haired man was standing outside
27:51
Speaker 1: the vehicle on the driver's side of the car. But
27:55
Speaker 1: Jim Pex had found that the murdered girl's blood had
27:58
Speaker 1: spattered back onto the doorjamb on the passenger side of
28:02
Speaker 1: the car, the opposite side to where the bushy-haired man
28:06
Speaker 1: had supposedly attacked.
28:09
Speaker 5: You can see that there is a small bloodstain here,
28:12
Speaker 5: so the door was open at the time that this
28:14
Speaker 5: bloodstain was created. outside the vehicle.
28:19
Speaker 1: The blood spatter meant the victim, in this case, 7-year-old Cheryl,
28:23
Speaker 1: was shot at least once when she was outside the
28:26
Speaker 1: car on the passenger side of the vehicle.
28:31
Speaker 5: Strings are used to show the position of the origin
28:34
Speaker 5: of these bloodstains from when they traveled through the air
28:37
Speaker 5: and struck the side of the vehicle.
28:40
Speaker 1: Crucially, Jim Pex also found some tiny droplets of blood
28:44
Speaker 1: under the car as well, on the rocker panel on
28:48
Speaker 1: the passenger side.
28:50
Speaker 5: This particular slide shows the rocker panel that's underneath. You
28:54
Speaker 5: can see on this lower portion here, there are a
28:56
Speaker 5: number of very small bloodstains. These are probably one to
29:00
Speaker 5: two millimeters in size.
29:02
Speaker 1: This discovery led Jim to an irrefutable conclusion.
29:10
Speaker 5: When I found the blood spatter outside the vehicle, that was,
29:14
Speaker 5: you know, something is amiss in this story because that's
29:19
Speaker 5: a long ways away to shoot someone who is very
29:22
Speaker 5: close to the rocker panel. I knew from the size
29:24
Speaker 5: of the droplets that it was created by someone who's
29:26
Speaker 5: coughing blood or a near-contact shot. The muzzle would have
29:30
Speaker 5: to be close to get droplets that were that small.
29:34
Speaker 5: Then you'd have to stop back and think when the individual,
29:37
Speaker 5: the bushy-haired stranger, allegedly is standing outside the driver's door,
29:41
Speaker 5: it must take some pretty long arms to get clear
29:44
Speaker 5: over there and outside the passenger door.
29:47
Speaker 1: What Jim Peggs did not find further confirmed their suspicions.
29:52
Speaker 1: there were no blood spatters on the driver's side of
29:55
Speaker 1: the car at all. If the bushy-haired man had attacked,
29:58
Speaker 1: as Downs had said, Jim would have expected to find
30:02
Speaker 1: blood spatters on the driver's side of the car, but
30:05
Speaker 1: there were none.
30:08
Speaker 5: So, again, it arouses our suspicions in law enforcement that
30:12
Speaker 5: something is amiss here, someone's not telling the truth.
30:16
Speaker 1: It was clear to Jim Pex and his fellow detectives
30:19
Speaker 1: that whoever shot seven-year-old Cheryl could not have been standing
30:24
Speaker 1: outside the car on the driver's side. The evidence also
30:29
Speaker 1: showed that the shooter fired the gun within inches of
30:32
Speaker 1: the victim's body.
30:34
Speaker 3: And that was significant in her case because one of
30:38
Speaker 3: the children had tried to open the car door to escape.
30:42
Speaker 3: either because Diane Downs was shooting the two kids in
30:45
Speaker 3: the back or because she had already been shot and
30:47
Speaker 3: fell out of the car and she was shot again.
30:54
Speaker 1: More evidence uncovered in the car showed how Christy and
30:59
Speaker 1: Danny had been shot and where those shots came from.
31:04
Speaker 5: In looking at the clothing that all of the children
31:07
Speaker 5: had on, I was able to do specific tests to
31:11
Speaker 5: determine how far away the end of the muzzle was
31:15
Speaker 5: from each of them at the time that the shot
31:17
Speaker 5: was fired.
31:19
Speaker 3: You can tell both from powder burns, because when the
31:22
Speaker 3: bullet is fired, there's a certain amount of powder that
31:26
Speaker 3: comes out, and it's still burning. If a gun is
31:28
Speaker 3: fired at very close range to either clothing or to skin,
31:32
Speaker 3: it will cause burning around that that you will not
31:35
Speaker 3: see if somebody is shot from a greater distance.
31:40
Speaker 1: Jim Pex concluded the two children in the backseat had
31:43
Speaker 1: been shot by someone who'd fired from inside the car
31:47
Speaker 1: and from point-blank range. Detectives now had proof that Diane
31:54
Speaker 1: Downs' story about a mysterious bushy-haired stranger was a lie.
31:59
Speaker 1: Whoever shot the children must have been inside the car
32:03
Speaker 1: when they fired the fatal shots.
32:07
Speaker 2: The physical evidence, the blood splatter evidence did not conform
32:11
Speaker 2: to the way she described the crime. So it became
32:14
Speaker 2: pretty apparent pretty quickly that she was the perpetrator.
32:19
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, Diane Downs was left free to talk to the
32:23
Speaker 1: press and protest her innocence.
32:27
Speaker 5: I decided to go ahead and continue to let her
32:30
Speaker 5: talk because we knew there was a relationship to her
32:34
Speaker 5: with this shooting. And so... She continued to harangue law
32:42
Speaker 5: enforcement and imply that we're looking at her and that
32:46
Speaker 5: we weren't looking for the bushy-haired stranger. Yeah, she was right,
32:49
Speaker 5: we weren't.
32:53
Speaker 1: Downs was now the only suspect in the murder of
32:56
Speaker 1: her daughter, Cheryl, and the attempted murder of her other
32:59
Speaker 1: two children, Christy and Danny. All three had been shot
33:05
Speaker 1: at night in the family car on a lonely country
33:09
Speaker 1: road after a day out. When forensic expert Jim Pex
33:14
Speaker 1: found spent bullet cases inside the car, he determined that
33:18
Speaker 1: all the victims had been shot with a. 22- caliber semi-automatic weapon.
33:24
Speaker 1: So they issued a warrant and searched Diane Downs' house
33:29
Speaker 1: in Springfield.
33:31
Speaker 4: The police are quite surprised at what they find. This
33:33
Speaker 4: does not look like a family home. This looks like
33:36
Speaker 4: the home of a rather narcissistic single woman. So there
33:39
Speaker 4: are three pictures on top of the television stand of Diane. Also,
33:44
Speaker 4: one of the things that the police find is a unicorn,
33:48
Speaker 4: which appears to be a kind of memorial to the children.
33:52
Speaker 4: It has their names on it and a date on it.
33:54
Speaker 4: But surprisingly, this wasn't something that Diane came to acquire
33:59
Speaker 4: after the attack. It's something that was already there before.
34:03
Speaker 4: So she's memorializing her children even before they're dead.
34:12
Speaker 2: The question becomes, how can a mother maim two of
34:16
Speaker 2: her children and kill another child and live with herself?
34:20
Speaker 2: And the answer is, she can live with herself only
34:22
Speaker 2: if the only thing in her universe was her narcissism
34:27
Speaker 2: and herself. Her children don't exist. They, from her perspective,
34:31
Speaker 2: was an obstruction between her and her new love. Beyond that,
34:36
Speaker 2: they were nothing.
34:38
Speaker 1: When the detectives found Downs' diary, her motivation for attempting
34:43
Speaker 1: to murder her three children was eerily clear.
34:47
Speaker 4: In that diary, she talks an awful lot about the
34:50
Speaker 4: coworker that she's become incredibly fixated on, and it becomes
34:54
Speaker 4: quite clear to police that this relationship with him is
34:57
Speaker 4: the reason that she's tried to kill her children, was
34:59
Speaker 4: because they were the barrier, they were the obstacle that
35:02
Speaker 4: was standing in the way of her relationship with him.
35:05
Speaker 1: During the search, the police also found a. 22- caliber rifle,
35:10
Speaker 1: and their hopes were piqued.
35:13
Speaker 5: It was certainly suspicious.
35:14
Speaker 2: It's a.
35:15
Speaker 5: 22 rifle. So, you know, is this potentially the murder weapon?
35:18
Speaker 5: We took the rifle back to the crime laboratory. I
35:21
Speaker 5: test-fired the rifle and compared the tool marks created by
35:27
Speaker 5: the rifle to the cartridge casings that were found at
35:31
Speaker 5: the scene. They were different. So the rifle was not
35:35
Speaker 5: used in the commission of this crime.
35:38
Speaker 1: But the unspent bullets found in the magazine cartridge did
35:43
Speaker 1: provide a vital clue that would help solve the case.
35:47
Speaker 5: Even though the marks on the cartridges from the rifle
35:52
Speaker 5: didn't match test fires that I performed with the rifle,
35:55
Speaker 5: they had the same extractor marks on them as the
35:59
Speaker 5: casings that I retrieved from the vehicle.
36:06
Speaker 1: The extractor marks are made on the soft shell casing
36:09
Speaker 1: when a bullet is ejected from the barrel of a gun.
36:13
Speaker 3: The way the gun gets rid of that bullet is
36:15
Speaker 3: a thing called an ejector. As that gun cycles, pulls
36:19
Speaker 3: the shell back and then kicks it out of a
36:21
Speaker 3: port and it's gone and then chambers another round. Let's
36:26
Speaker 3: say you have a pistol that's already loaded and you decide,
36:29
Speaker 3: I want to unload the gun. You would then release
36:32
Speaker 3: the magazine, that's all the other bullets, and then, pointing
36:35
Speaker 3: it in a safe direction, you pull the slide and
36:39
Speaker 3: when you pull it back, it will take the unfired bullet,
36:42
Speaker 3: so bullet and shell, and kick it out of the gun.
36:47
Speaker 3: She had apparently done this, had cycled some rounds of
36:50
Speaker 3: ammunition through the gun, and they had ejector marks on them.
36:54
Speaker 3: Even within the same brand, make, model, and year of
36:58
Speaker 3: a gun, Those ejector marks are somewhat unique. Even if
37:02
Speaker 3: you had two identical Ruger pistols, the ejector marks will
37:05
Speaker 3: be slightly different. They're imperfections in manufacturing of the gun.
37:10
Speaker 3: There'll be small differences, but there will be differences.
37:14
Speaker 1: Jim Peck's placed two. 22 caliber bullets side by side
37:18
Speaker 1: under a comparison microscope, one ejected by Downs' rifle and
37:24
Speaker 1: the other one that was found inside the crime scene car.
37:29
Speaker 5: What you have is a split image down the middle,
37:32
Speaker 5: and what we're looking at are extractor marks. And as
37:35
Speaker 5: you can see by the fine striations here, these extractor
37:40
Speaker 5: marks were both made by the same extractor, which means
37:45
Speaker 5: there is a relationship between the cartridge casings from the
37:48
Speaker 5: crime scene and the cartridges from her apartment. Then we
37:55
Speaker 5: knew that this is a breakthrough moment where There is
37:59
Speaker 5: a relationship to the fired casings that hit the children
38:03
Speaker 5: to the cartridges that were inside the tubular magazine of
38:07
Speaker 5: the rifle.
38:09
Speaker 1: Checking sales records, police knew that Diane Downs had owned
38:14
Speaker 1: a Ruger. 22 caliber semi-automatic pistol. After test firing one exhaustively,
38:21
Speaker 1: Jim Pex found similar extractor marks on the bullet casings.
38:26
Speaker 1: He concluded that a Ruger. 22 caliber pistol was the
38:30
Speaker 1: murder weapon, but it was never found.
38:34
Speaker 3: While Diane Downs managed to dispose of the gun, but
38:37
Speaker 3: at home she had a rifle that also shot. 22
38:39
Speaker 3: caliber rounds. And when the police processed this evidence, they
38:43
Speaker 3: found that they were the same manufacturer as the bullets
38:47
Speaker 3: that were used to shoot her children. They had ejector
38:51
Speaker 3: marks on them, some of them, that were the same
38:54
Speaker 3: as the ejector marks from the pistol.
38:57
Speaker 1: The bullet casings and their telltale extractor marks were enough
39:01
Speaker 1: to convict Diane Downs for the murder and attempted murder
39:05
Speaker 1: of her three children. On February the 28th, 1984, nine
39:10
Speaker 1: months after the crime, she was brought into custody.
39:15
Speaker 3: When the arrest finally went down, I think the whole
39:17
Speaker 3: town breathed a sigh of relief.
39:20
Speaker 1: She appeared at the Lane County Courthouse for her arraignment.
39:24
Speaker 1: After the charges were read, Diane Downs sprung a major surprise.
39:30
Speaker 3: Her attorney stands up, and after he's finished all the
39:33
Speaker 3: legal arguments, says, and besides, Your Honor, my client is pregnant,
39:38
Speaker 3: and it would be bad for her health to go
39:41
Speaker 3: to jail. I was sitting in that courtroom seat. You
39:46
Speaker 3: could hear the entire room take... a big deep breath.
39:51
Speaker 3: It was stunning, just absolutely stunning.
39:55
Speaker 1: According to rumors, the father was a local reporter.
40:00
Speaker 3: There was one reporter that had sex with her, and
40:03
Speaker 3: I can tell you this, it wasn't me. And she
40:06
Speaker 3: became pregnant from that. But she loved the attention that
40:10
Speaker 3: she got.
40:11
Speaker 1: By the time the trial began on May the 8th, 1984,
40:16
Speaker 1: Downs was eight months pregnant.
40:19
Speaker 4: Obviously, she was pregnant at the time of the trial,
40:21
Speaker 4: and this was something that I think she thought would
40:23
Speaker 4: help her garner quite a bit of sympathy.
40:27
Speaker 1: Her antics, however, were not enough to fool the jury.
40:31
Speaker 1: A mountain of evidence went a long way to convincing
40:34
Speaker 1: them of Diane Downs' culpability in the crime. Then her
40:39
Speaker 1: surviving daughter, Christy, took to the stand.
40:44
Speaker 3: This little girl had to have been under arrest So
40:48
Speaker 3: much strain and stress. Her mother's tried to kill her.
40:51
Speaker 3: She's living with a new family. Her sister is dead.
40:55
Speaker 3: Her brother's in a wheelchair for the rest of his life.
40:59
Speaker 3: And now she has to sit in front of a
41:01
Speaker 3: room full of strangers and talk about the most difficult
41:05
Speaker 3: night of her life.
41:08
Speaker 4: She gets up on the stand and when the person
41:11
Speaker 4: asks her the question, who shot you and your siblings?
41:14
Speaker 4: She says, my mum did it.
41:18
Speaker 3: This was one of those moments in court where everything
41:22
Speaker 3: is dead still, nobody dares breathe.
41:26
Speaker 1: Christie laid out how her mother first shot Cheryl, then
41:30
Speaker 1: turned and shot Danny in the back, then shot her
41:34
Speaker 1: twice in the chest.
41:36
Speaker 3: The testimony just tore your heart apart. This wasn't the
41:41
Speaker 3: critical piece of information. There was lots of physical evidence
41:45
Speaker 3: of what Diane Downs had done. but I think this
41:48
Speaker 3: was essential in making sure that Diane Downs was convicted
41:51
Speaker 3: of the crime she committed.
41:54
Speaker 1: On June the 17th, 1984, the jury found Diane Downs
41:59
Speaker 1: guilty of the murder of her seven-year-old daughter, Cheryl, and
42:03
Speaker 1: the attempted murder of her daughter, Christy, and son, Danny.
42:07
Speaker 1: She was sentenced to life in prison plus 50 years.
42:14
Speaker 1: Ten days after she was found guilty, Diane gave birth
42:18
Speaker 1: to a baby girl. The child was immediately given up
42:22
Speaker 1: for adoption. At the same time, the prosecutor in the case,
42:26
Speaker 1: Fred Hugie, adopted the two children who survived their mother's attack.
42:33
Speaker 5: After the trial was over, Fred adopted the two children.
42:38
Speaker 5: And he did a wonderful job of raising those two kids.
42:41
Speaker 5: So I admire him for that.
42:44
Speaker 3: That was a lifetime commitment to be the father and
42:48
Speaker 3: his wife, the mother to these children that they really
42:51
Speaker 3: deserved and that Diane Downs denied to them.
43:01
Speaker 1: In prison, Diane Downs managed another surprise. On July the 11th, 1987,
43:08
Speaker 1: three years after her incarceration, she escaped.
43:14
Speaker 3: She got out of the prison easy as pie, climbed
43:18
Speaker 3: the fence. She was loose for more than a week,
43:21
Speaker 3: and she was only about 10 blocks away. She was
43:25
Speaker 3: staying with some men. Later, one of the men said
43:30
Speaker 3: he thought she was trying to get pregnant.
43:32
Speaker 1: Diane Downs, the mother who tried to kill her three children,
43:36
Speaker 1: was returned to prison, where, to this day, she protests
43:40
Speaker 1: her innocence.
43:43
Speaker 3: I can tell you that for all the stories I've covered,
43:45
Speaker 3: Diane Downs stands out because this woman was pure evil.
43:50
Speaker 2: She did something that's unheard of. She violated that sacred
43:54
Speaker 2: duty and attempted in cold blood to kill all three
44:00
Speaker 2: of her children for no other reason than to increase
44:05
Speaker 2: her chances at having a particular boyfriend.
44:08
Speaker 4: I don't think there is anything worse than this kind
44:11
Speaker 4: of betrayal by your own mother. Your mother is the
44:15
Speaker 4: one that should nurture you, should protect you.
44:17
Speaker 1: The cold-hearted murder of her daughter Cheryl and the attempted
44:22
Speaker 1: murder of her two other young children, Christy and Danny,
44:27
Speaker 1: makes Diane Downs one of the world's most evil killers.