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The Mother Who Smiled: Confessions Behind the Hospital Door · True Nightmare Stories

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: On the evening of May 19th, 1983, a red car
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: with Arizona plates pulled into the emergency bay of Mackenzie
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Willamette Hospital in Springfield, Oregon, moving at about 10 miles
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: per hour. Witnesses had noticed it crawling through the dark,
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: holding up traffic. When the driver stepped out, she was calm,
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: sometimes laughing. Her name was Diane Downs, 27. In the
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: back seat were her three children, Cheryl, 7, Christy, 8,
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: and Danny, 3 each shot. Cheryl was dead. Diane's story
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: that night. A stranger on a lonely road. A curly-haired
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: man who wanted her car. She fought. Pretended to throw
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: her keys. He shot her in the arm. She drove away.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: The children were caught in the middle. It was a
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: story built for sympathy. One problem. She had already bandaged herself.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: First responders found Diane's left arm gunshot wound, wrapped in
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: a pre-made bandaged mount from the hospital. State trooper and
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: forensic examiner Jim Pex processed the vehicle that night and
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: the next morning. Inside the car was a bloodstain on
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: the interior edge of the passenger door running from outside inward,
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: micro-droplets on the lower passenger panel, one to two millimeters across,
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: a pattern consistent with a firearm, discharged at close range
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: from within the vehicle. The shooter had been inside the car.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: Pex also noted no blood spatter on the driver's side.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: When hospital staff told Diane that Danny had not been
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: struck in the heart, She reacted with surprise, not relief. Later,
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: she told doctors that if Christy showed signs of brain damage,
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: they should let her die. When Diane walked into Christy's
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: room for the first time, the eight-year-old's cardiac monitor spiked.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: Nurses saw Christy press herself back against the bed. The
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: body understands before words can name things. Diane had grown
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: up in Phoenix. By 17, she was in Bible College
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: in Orange, California, expelled by the end of the second
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: semester for what records called promiscuous behavior. At 18, she
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: married Stephen Downes. Christy was born October 1974, Cheryl a
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: year later. After the second child, Stephen had a vasectomy.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: Diane had an affair. Danny was born from that relationship.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: By 1980, the marriage was over. Diane, 24, a single
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: mother of three, sought a new chapter. In 1981, she
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: took a job with the U.S. Postal Service and began
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: an affair with a married coworker. The fixed point around
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: the next two years of her life, she moved 1
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: to 100 miles north to Springfield, Oregon, convinced he would follow.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: He did not. For nearly two years, Diane wrote, visited,
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: pleaded he repeatedly told her he did not want a
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: serious relationship and did not want to raise her children.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: He did not want her children. That phrase, repeated in
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: letters and confrontations, is the thread through what followed, a
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: motive stated plainly by the man at the center before
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: anyone was shot. On May 19th, Diane drove her three
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: children to Marcola, 12 miles from Springfield, to visit a
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: co-worker she hadn't called ahead. The children pet horses and
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: were happy. On the drive back, along Old Mohawk Road,
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: Diane stopped, went to the trunk, retrieved a. 22 Ruger semi-automatic,
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: returned to the driver's side. Events took seconds. Cheryl was
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: shot first from about six inches away. When Cheryl tried
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: to push open the passenger door, Diane shot her again
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: from outside. Danny in the rear on the driver's side
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: was shot in the back. Christy was shot twice in
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: the chest. A bullet passed through her left thumb as
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: she raised her hand. Diane then shot herself carefully in
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: the fleshy outer part of her left arm and wrapped
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: the wound with the bandage she had already placed in
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: the trunk. She drove six miles to the hospital at
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: 10 miles per hour. At the Springfield house, investigators found
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: three photographs of Diane on the TV. a decorative unicorn
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: with the children's names dated before the attack, later relevant
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: to trial, a diary describing Diane's obsession with the man
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: who had told her he did not want to raise
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: her children, and a. 22 rifle. Jim Pex tested the rifle.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: Its extractor marks did not match the shell casings recovered
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: from the car, but the unfired bullets still in the
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: rifle's magazine shared extractor marks with those casings. That meant
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: at some point the same weapon that fired the shots
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: in the car had also cycled those bullets through its chamber.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: The Ruger semi-automatic from the car was never recovered. Diane
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: was arrested on February 28th, 1984, nine months after Old
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: Mohawk Road. By her May 8th, 1984 trial, she was
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: eight months pregnant. Her attorney announced the pregnancy at arraignment.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: Rumors named a local reporter as the father. Nothing in
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: the official record confirms this. The trial lasted six weeks.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: The pivotal moment was the testimony of eight-year-old Christy, who
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: had suffered a stroke from blood loss that night. Christy
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: took the stand and said four words. My mom did it.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: She described the sequence of shots, the order, the positions,
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: and the gun. She was eight, with permanent neurological damage,
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: and she told a jury exactly what she had seen.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: On June 17th, 1984, the jury found Diane Downs guilty
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: of Cheryl's murder and the attempted murder of Christy and Danny. Sentence,
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: life in prison plus 50 years. Ten days later, Diane
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: gave birth to a daughter who was placed for adoption immediately.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: Fred Hoogie, the prosecutor who built the case, adopted Christy
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: and Danny. On July 11th, 1987, Diane Downs scaled the
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: prison fence and escaped. She was free for more than
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: a week, living ten blocks from the facility, not hiding far.
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: She was recaptured and returned to prison, where she remains,
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: still insisting she is innocent. Christy Downs grew up carrying
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: the stroke and its effects and the memory of that car,
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: that road, and that night into every year that followed,
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: the night of May 19th, 1983. did not begin as
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: anything unusual. Diane Downs loaded her three children into her
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: red Nissan and drove them 12 miles outside Springfield to
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: visit a co-worker in Marcola. The children petted horses in
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: a field as the evening light dropped behind the tree line.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: Christy was eight. Cheryl was seven. Danny was three. No
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: one invited them. Diane had shown up unannounced. The drive
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: back should have taken 20 minutes. Diane turned onto Old
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: Mohawk Road instead of heading home. It was a narrow,
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: isolated stretch without street lights, without houses close enough to matter.
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: She stopped the car. She got out. She walked to
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: the trunk. What happened next took less than two minutes.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: She returned to the driver's side door with a Ruger
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: semi-automatic pistol, caliber. 22. Cheryl was shot first, from approximately
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: six inches away. When Cheryl tried to push through the
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: passenger door and get out of the car, Diane walked
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: around the vehicle and shot her again from outside. Danny
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: was shot in the back from behind his seat. Christy
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: was shot twice in the chest. One bullet passed through
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: Christy's left thumb as she raised her hand in front
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: of her body. Diane then shot herself in the fleshy
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: part of her left arm at an angle that would
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: cause pain but leave her functional. A bandage was already
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: prepared in the trunk. She drove six miles to McKenzie
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: Willamette Hospital at roughly 10 miles per hour, backing up
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: traffic behind her on the road. a family traveling the
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: same route with a child between eight and nine years
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: old in their car, noticed the red vehicle with Arizona
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: plates moving that slowly. They remembered it later. She arrived
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: at the hospital approximately 30 minutes after the shots were fired.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: Cheryl was dead on arrival. The attending physician noted that
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: Diane was calm and self-assured, laughing at moments during the
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: intake process. She was the only one of the four
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: with a bandage already in place. When a doctor told
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: her that Danny had not been struck in the heart,
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: her face showed surprise, not relief. Surprise as though the
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: outcome had diverged from an expectation. She told the doctors
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: to let Christy die if there was brain damage. When
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: Diane entered Christy's room, the cardiac monitor spiked. The eight-year-old
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: showed visible terror at the sight of her mother. Hospital
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: staff witnessed it. The story Diane gave investigators that night
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: was this. A stranger with curly hair had stepped into
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: the road. and flagged her down on the isolated stretch.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: When she stopped, he shot her in the arm through
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: the open window, then fired into the car at the children.
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: She pretended to throw her keys into the dark. The
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: man ran. She drove to the hospital. Investigators had questions
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: from the first hour. The blood evidence inside the car
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: did not match the story. Jim Pex, a state trooper
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: and forensic specialist, processed the vehicle that night and returned
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: the following morning. He found a blood stain on the
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: passenger door jam, with a directionality that pointed from outside
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: the vehicle inward, consistent with a wounded person pushing against
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: the door from inside while blood traveled outward. He found
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: micro-droplets of blood on the lower passenger panel, measuring between
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: one and two millimeters. Droplets that small form when a
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: weapon is discharged at close range, not when a shooter
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: stands outside a car and fires in through a window.
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: The pattern indicated the shots originated from inside the vehicle,
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: at extremely close range. There was no blood spatter on
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: the driver's side. If a stranger had leaned through the
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: driver's window and fired at three children, blood would have
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: reached the driver's side. Physics does not negotiate. The driver's
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: side was clean. The investigation moved to Diane's home in Springfield.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: Police found a diary with detailed entries about the married coworker,
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: the man who had told her explicitly that he did
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: not want to raise her children. They found a. 22
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: caliber rifle. They found three photographs of Diane placed on
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: top of the television, and investigators noted something else in
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: the home, a decorative unicorn figurine with the names of
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: her three children on it, and a date that preceded
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: the attack, Jim Peck. tested the rifle. The extractor marks
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: on the casings from the car did not match the rifle.
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: The rifle was not the weapon used that night, but
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: the unfired bullets still loaded in the rifle's magazine told
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: a different story. Those bullets carried extractor marks that matched
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: the casings from the crime scene. The same gun that
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: fired at the children had, at some earlier point, cycled
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: those bullets through its chamber during loading or testing. The
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: rifle and the Ruger had been in the same hands
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: at the same moment, working from the same ammunition supply.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: The Ruger was never recovered. The rational framework for a
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: stranger attack had collapsed entirely by the time investigators finished
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: processing the vehicle. The directionality of the blood, the micro-droplets,
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: the absence of spatter on the driver's side, the bandage
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: already prepared... The 10-mile-per-hour drive that backed up traffic. The
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: expression of surprise when a child did not die. Every
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: element pointed in one direction, and none of it could
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: be walked back. What remained was the motive question. And
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: that detail changes everything that came before. The married co-worker
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: had said it plainly. He did not want to raise
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: her children. Diane had moved 1,200 miles north from Arizona
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: to Springfield, Oregon, expecting him to follow. He did not follow.
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: For nearly two years, she wrote letters and drove back
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: to see him and asked him directly. He refused every
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: time in every form the refusal could take. The clearest
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: version of his position was a single declarative sentence he
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: had given her. He did not want her children in
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: his life. Investigators came to believe that Diane had internalized
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: that sentence as a problem with a solution. The children
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: were the obstacle. Remove the obstacle and the relationship became possible.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: The logic was not complicated. What made it unbearable was
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: how completely it had been concealed inside an ordinary evening.
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: A drive through the countryside, three children petting horses in
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: a field, the careful preparation in the trunk of a
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: car before it turned onto an isolated road. Christy Downs
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: took the stand during the trial that began May 8, 1984.
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: She was eight years old. She had survived a stroke
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: caused by blood loss that night on Old Mohawk Road.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: The stroke had left her with permanent neurological damage, She
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: walked to the witness stand carrying all of that, and
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: she said four words to the jury. My mom did it.
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: Then she described the sequence, the positions of her siblings,
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: the order of the shots. She had been in the car.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: She had watched it happen. She had raised her hand
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: and the bullet went through her thumb, and she had
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: survived long enough to say, in a courtroom, exactly what
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: she saw. She was eight years old, with permanent neurological damage,
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: and she was the most credible witness in the room.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: Diane was eight months pregnant during the trial. Her attorney
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: had announced the pregnancy at arraignment. Rumors circulated about the father.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: Nothing in the official record confirms any name. The jury
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: deliberated and returned on June 17th, 1984. Guilty of the
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: murder of Cheryl Downs, age seven. Guilty of the attempted
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: murder of Christie and Danny. Life in prison plus 50 years.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: 10 days after the verdict, Diane gave birth to a daughter.
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: The child was placed for adoption immediately. Fred Hoogie, the
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: prosecutor who had built the case against her, adopted Christy
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: and Danny. There is a question that sits at the
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: center of this case and does not release. Diane Downs
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: spent years after the conviction pursuing appeals and granting interviews
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: and writing letters and maintaining without variation that she was innocent.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: In 1987, three years into her sentence, she scaled the
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: prison fence and escaped. She was free for more than
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: a week. She did not flee the state. She did
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: not cross a border or find a car and drive
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: towards somewhere she could disappear. She lived ten blocks from
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: the facility. Ten blocks. The proximity is hard to interpret charitably.
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: It reads less like someone hiding than someone waiting for
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: something that did not arrive. She was recaptured and returned
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: to prison where she has remained. The case legally is closed.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: The verdict is not in dispute. What lingers is a
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: specific human question that the verdict does not answer. What
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: does it require of a person to prepare a bandage
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: in the trunk of a car before driving their children
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: to an isolated road, and then drive those same children
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: to that road, and then return to the car afterward,
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: and drive slowly to a hospital, and drive stand in
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: a hallway and laugh? The forensic evidence answered the who,
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: the motive evidence answered the why. What neither answers is
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: the interior experience of those 30 minutes between Old Mohawk
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: Road and the hospital doors, driving 10 miles per hour
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: with three shot children in the back seat, past a
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: family in another car, past the ordinary movements of an
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: ordinary night in a small Oregon town. Christy Downs grew up.
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: She carried the stroke, the damage, the memory of that car,
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: and that road in the four words she said in
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: a courtroom at age eight into every year that came after.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: Fred Hoogie raised her alongside Danny. The prosecutor became the father.
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: The case file became a family. Cheryl Downs was seven
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: years old. She died choking on her own blood in
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: the back of her mother's car in a road no
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: one should have been on that night. She never made
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: it to eight. The verdict came on June 17th, 1984.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: Guilty of murder. Guilty of two counts of attempted murder.
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: Guilty of two counts of attempted murder. The jury had deliberated.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: and they had believed an eight-year-old girl with permanent neurological
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: damage over her mother's account of a stranger with curly
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: hair on a dark road. Diane received a sentence of
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: life in prison, plus 50 years. Ten days later, she
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: gave birth. The baby a girl was placed for adoption immediately.
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: There was no ceremony around it, no reported hesitation. The
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: child went to strangers, and Diane went back to a cell,
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: and that was the full extent of what motherhood looked
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: like at the end of this case. Fred Hoogie The
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: prosecutor who had spent nearly a year building the case
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: against Diane adopted Christy and Danny. The man who had
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: worked hardest to put their mother in prison became their father.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: That is not a detail that softens with time. A
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: prosecutor does not typically adopt the surviving victims of the
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: case he tried. Hoagie did, whatever drove that decision Christy.
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: And Danny went home with the person who had, in
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: a courtroom, told the truth about what happened to them
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: on Old Mohawk Road. Christy carried the stroke with her,
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: The blood loss that night had been severe enough to
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: damage her brain before she ever reached the operating table,
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: and that damage did not reverse. She grew up with
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: those consequences inside her body, permanent evidence of what her
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: mother had done. Danny's paralysis was also permanent. The bullet
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: that entered his back had found his spinal cord, and
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: no surgery, no recovery, no passage of years changed that fact.
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: Cheryl never grew up at all. She was seven years old,
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: and she choked on her own blood in a car.
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: while her mother drove at 10 miles per hour down
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: a highway, and that is where her story ends. Three
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: years after the verdict, on July 11th, 1987, Diane Downs
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: scaled the fence of the prison and disappeared. She was
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: free for more than a week. Investigators later determined she
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: had been living approximately 10 blocks from the facility, close
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: enough to walk back, close enough to watch the building
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: she had just left. She was recaptured and returned to
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: her cell. She has never explained publicly what she intended
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: to do with that week, or why she stayed so close.
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: She has continued, through every parole hearing, to maintain her innocence.
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: The curly-haired stranger on Old Mohawk Road remains her official account.
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: No such person has ever been found. No evidence of
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: a second person was ever found at the scene. The
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: Ruger that fired the shots was never recovered. Ta-ta-ta. But
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: the unfired bullets from the rifle in her Springfield home
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: carried the same extractor marks as the casings left in
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: the car, which meant the same gun had cycled through both.
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: The gun was gone. The trace it left behind was not.
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: There is one thing that stays after everything else has
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: been processed and filed and sentenced. On the evening of
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: May 19th, 1983, Diane Downs drove her three children to
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: see horses in Marcola. They had not been invited. She
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: arrived unannounced at a colleague's property. and the children got
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: out of the car, and they touched the horses, and
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: for whatever that hour was worth, it was the last
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: ordinary thing they did together. Then she drove them back
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: down Old Mohawk Road. Christy was eight years old when
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: she sat in a courtroom, looked at her mother and said,
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: My mom did it. She described the sequence. She described
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: what she saw. A child with a damaged brain and
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: a body that would never be entirely hers again told
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: a jury what had happened in that car, and the
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: jury believed her, and her mother was convicted on the
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: strength of that testimony, among other things. But that testimony
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: most of all, Diane Dam still says it wasn't her.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: Christy said it was. One of them was in that
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: car when the shooting started, trying to shield herself with
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: her hand, taking a bullet through her left thumb. The
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: other one walked into the hospital calm, laughing, with a
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: bandage already prepared. The horses and Marcola were still there
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: the next morning. The children were not. This show is
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: made by Elbow Media.