Elizabeth Diane Downs is an American woman who murdered her daughter and attempted to murder her other two children near Springfield, Oregon, on May 19, 1983. She was convicted in 1984 and sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 25 years.
Diane Downs was born on august the 7th 1955 in Phoenix, Arizona. There’s little to indicate that there was anything abnormal about her family life. Her father was a postal worker and her mother was a stay-at-home mother. Her father was quite the disciplinarian and had some quite strict rules. He would often give lectures to his children about how to behave but it was very much a normal family. Diane resembles her father by the way she talks. As a teenager, Diane met Stephen Downs while in high school and they became a couple when she was 17. Diane enrolled in Bible college in Orange California. She was only there for two semesters and she was kicked out of college because of quote “her promiscuous behavior” and that’s a pattern throughout her life.
After her expulsion Diane returned to her parents’ home in Arizona and married Stephen Downs. They got married when she was 18. She was very quick to want to start a family and they soon had their child. Their first daughter Christy was born in October 1974. Just over a year later Diane had her second child, a girl she named Cheryl. Diane and her husband had two children together and after this her husband decided that he hadn’t want more children. He had a vasectomy. But Diane was absolutely adamant she wanted another child. So she had a short-term affair with another man and became pregnant with her son Danny.
For some women sex is a weapon and they want to get pregnant, because they believe that that will create a relationship. Diane seemed to really enjoy the pregnancy stage of motherhood, but once the baby actually arrived, she didn’t quite like that. There were lots of reports that she left the children alone, she left them unattended or when they got home from school, they were waiting on the porch for hours. In 1980 Diane and her husband Stephen divorced, soon after Downs was pregnant again. That’s because she’d volunteered to be a surrogate mother. She was paid ten thousand dollars. There were approximately 100 surrogate mothers in the entire country. Those were the estimates at the time for the United States. She was interviewed for a National newspaper in the early 1980s and she very much seemed to enjoy that experience.
In 1981 she got a job with the U.S. postal service. There she had an affair that would be the catalyst of catastrophe. He was a married man and they were sexually involved. Once Diane Downs wanted a real relationship with him, he was done. She had had quite a lot of short-term relationships with people in that workplace. She became quite fixated on him. He made it very clear to her he didn’t want to raise her children and he didn’t want to have children. Diane, allegedly, called her children ugly.
By the end of 1981 Diane downs had moved over 1200 miles north to Springfield, Oregon. Diane Downs pursued the man she wanted for nearly two years, writing and even visiting him to plead for his affections.
In the afternoon of May 19, Diane Downs took her three children, eight-year-old Christy, seven-year-old Cheryl and three-year-old Danny on a journey. They were headed to a farm in the small, rural town of Marcola, just 12 miles away from their home in Springfield. Diane Downs drove her three children to a co-worker’s house in Marcola and her children got to see the horses. The problem was the woman she was visiting had no idea Downs was coming. She had never been there before.
After leaving the farm, Diane Downs packed the children in the car and drove to a carefully chosen site on old Mohawk road. She went to the trunk of the car and she pulled out a 22-caliber semi-automatic pistol. She walked back to the driver’s side with a gun in hand. Then she knelt on the seat, leaned towards her daughter, seven-year-old Cheryl and from about six inches away fired. One shot was in the back. That was probably the bullet that was found in in the passenger side inside the vehicle. As Cheryl tried to exit the car, her mother led out of the passenger side door and fired again in the stomach. She then shot her three-year-old son in the back. The boy was on the driver’s side back seat. He had a single wound, gunshot to the spine. She then shot her daughter Christy in the chest twice. As the girl raised her hand to defend herself, a bullet ripped through the thumb of her left hand. In the back of the car Christy and Danny were clinging to life lying in the footwell. In the front Cheryl was mortally wounded.
She shot herself in in the arm. She knew she could probably get away with shooting through the fleshy part of her arm. Not do any permanent damage, not break a bone, not incapacitate herself. She took a bandage that she had already folded up and put in the trunk of her car.
She drove the six miles to the Mackenzie Willamette hospital in Springfield. The children were still alive so she drove very slowly. She actually held up traffic. She was traveling 10 miles an hour to make sure, from her perspective, that they don’t get to the hospital on time. Witnesses pulled up behind her on the road, couldn’t figure out why she was going so slowly. A family that happened to be on the same road had a child in the car. He said to his mother: “Are all the cars from Arizona red?” They knew that they were following a car they would later identify as Diane Down’s car. She had a red Nissan car with red Arizona license plates on it.
Diane downs pulled into the Springfield hospital about 30 minutes after she had shot her children. She finally got to the hospital. She said to the Emergency room personnel: “Please save my children.” One of them has already died, the other two were just barely saved. Cheryl, the middle daughter, was dead on arrival at hospital. She had choked on her own blood. On arrival at hospital Christy wasn’t able to speak. She ultimately suffers a stroke, most likely as a result of blood loss so in her case it wasn’t lethal, but it was totally life-changing. Danny had been shot and he was paralyzed because of the damage to his spinal cord. Diane was the only one who had a bandage on her wounds.
On May the 19th 1983, Springfield, Oregon in the hospital The Mackenzie Willamette medical center, Downs had concocted an incredible story about a ‘bushy-haired stranger’ a mysterious carjacker who shot her children. She had seen a man and decided to stop. He had been signaling for help. Down’s claimed she managed to trick the murderous man and drove all the way to the hospital in order to save her fatally wounded children. She claimed that she had her keys for her car on a ring and pretended to throw it, distracted his attention, pushed him, jumped in the car and drove off. The car’s door closed in driving.
Downs’s extraordinary behavior at the hospital also alarmed observers. According to the doctor in charge, she was quite self-assured, she appeared to be in control of her behavior. She was occasionally laughing. She was occasionally giggling. Staff at the hospital described her reaction as surprising.
But it was her daughter, Christy’s reaction to her own mother, that set alarm bells ringing. Diane came into the room where Christy was in the hospital and she leaned over the bed and started saying to Christy: “I love you.” Christy looked absolutely terrified. They noticed that her heart rate had gone through the roof.
Investigators quickly identified her as the prime suspect in the aftermath of this attack. The decision was made to remove the children from Diane’s care and to put them into foster care. They became wards of the state.
The police did not immediately arrest Downs instead they meticulously gathered evidence in the case. Forensic scientists closely examined the entire car. They looked at the passenger side door and the areas underneath the car. They made a series of discoveries that broke the case wide open. They spotted a blood stain in the door jamb of the passenger door. It came from the outside and according to Diane Downs, the bushy-haired man was standing outside the vehicle on the driver’s side of the car. In this case seven-year-old Cheryl was shot at least once when she was outside the car on the passenger side of the vehicle. They also found some tiny droplets of blood under the car as well on the rocker panel on the passenger side. This discovery led them to an irrefutable conclusion. They knew from the size of the droplets and it was created by someone who’s coughing blood or a near contact shot. The end of the muzzle had to be close, to get droplets that were that small.
That means that the bushy-haired stranger allegedly standing outside the driver’s door, had pretty long arms. There were no blood spatters on the driver’s side of the car at all if the bushy-haired man had attacked Downs, they had to find blood spatters on the driver’s side of the car. The evidence also showed that the shooter fired the gun within inches of the victim’s body and that was significant in her case, because one of the children had tried to open the car door to escape, either because Diane Downs was shooting the two kids in the back or because she had already been shot and fell out of the car and she was shot again.
Forensic scientists were able to do specific tests to determine how far away the end of the muzzle was from each of them at the time that the shot was fired. From powder burns concluded the two children in the back seat had been shot by someone who had fired from inside the car and from point-blank range. If a gun was fired at very close range to either clothing or to skin, it will cause burning around the wound, that you will not see if somebody is shot from a greater distance.
Meanwhile Diane Downs was there free to talk to the press and protest her innocence. She continued to call her ex-lover, who recorded every call and gave all tapes to police. Nowadays, they are on You Tube.
Forensic expert found spent bullet cases inside the car. He determined that all the victims had been shot with a 22 caliber semi-automatic weapon. They issued a warrant and searched Diane Downs’s house in Springfield.
The police were quite surprised at what they found. That didn’t look like a family home. That looked like the home of a rather narcissistic single woman. There were three pictures on top of the television stood of Diane. One of the things that the police found was a unicorn which appeared to be a kind of memorial to the children. It had their names and a date on it. But that had been already there before the attack.
When the detectives found her diary, her motivation for attempting to murder her three children was eerily clear. Relationship with him was the reason that she intended to kill her children. Her children became the obstacle, standing in the way of her relationship, in her mind.
Checking sales records, police knew that Diane downs had owned a ruger 22-caliber semi-automatic pistol. After test firing forensic scientist found similar extractor marks on the bullet casings. He concluded that a ruger 22 caliber pistol was the murder weapon. It was never found. While Diane Downs managed to dispose of the gun, but at home she had a rifle that also shot 22 caliber rounds and when the police processed this evidence, they found that they were the same manufacturer as the bullets that were used to shoot her children. They had ejector marks on them some of them that were the same as the ejector marks from the pistol the bullet casings and their telltale extractor marks were enough to convict Diane Downs for the murder and attempted murder of her three children.
On February the 28th 1984, nine months after the crime, she was brought into custody. She appeared at the Lane County courthouse for her arraignment. After the charges were read, her attorney stood up and said: “…and besides, your honor, my client is pregnant and it would be bad for her health to go to jail.” According to rumors the father was a local reporter.
By the time the trial began on May the 8th 1984, Downs was eight months pregnant.
Her surviving daughter Christy took to the stand. She had been under so much stress. She was living with a new family. Her sister was dead. Her brother was in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. Christy said it: “Mom did it.” Christy laid out how her mother first shot Cheryl then turned and shot Danny in the back then shot her twice in the chest.
Diane Downs was convicted of the crimes she committed on June the 17th 1984.
Ten days after she was found guilty Diane gave birth to a baby girl. The child was immediately given up for adoption.
At the same time the prosecutor in the case Fred Hughey adopted the two children who survived their mother’s attack.
On July the 11th 1987, three years after her incarceration, she escaped. She climbed the fence. She was loose for more than a week and she was only about 10 blocks away. She was staying with some men, allegedly her cellmate’s boyfriend was one of them. Later, one of the men said he thought she was trying to get pregnant Diane Downs, to this day, protests her innocence.
Several times parole board denied her parole. Her stories has becoming more and more delusional. She was diagnosed with Antisocial personality disorder, Narcissistic personality disorder and Histrionic personality disorder.
Robert D. Hare, PhD, considered one of the world’s foremost experts on psychopathy. He developed one of the most widely used tools for assessing psychopathy – Hare Psychopathy Checklist (PCL-Revised). Diane Downs scored very high, she is between Richard Ramirez and Ted Bundy. She was not a “successful psychopath”.
Diane Downs’ most disturbing interview │ Full 1984 Special with Anne Jaeger
Part of the interview
What you’re about to see is a conversation with Elizabeth Diane Downs in November. In the next 30 minutes we’re going to try to give you the inside story about what Elizabeth Diane Downs is like in her own words. How she feels about her life, her former marriage, her children and the events that have happened over the past year. You may be wondering why we haven’t aired this interview. Eyewitness News waited until now, because of the sensitivity of some of the things said and it does contain some graphic language. These comments represent Elizabeth Diane Down’s thoughts and opinions and are not necessarily shared by “Kezi”. We’ve also been concerned about the effect of this material on potential jurors. Now that a jury has been picked, we want to share some of the background of the Downs case with you.
Let’s start by taking a look back at what happened on May 19, 1983.
A year ago, this week, one of the most horrendous crimes took place along this stretch of old Mohawk road east of Eugene. A 28-year-old woman and her three small children were brutally shot. Elizabeth Diane Downs says the family was on a sightseeing trip when a shaggy-haired stranger flagged her down and demanded her car. She refused and the assailant shot Downs and her children at close range with a 22-caliber gun.
Nine-year-old Christy was shot first threw the hand into the chest, as she tried to protect herself. Three-year-old Danny was shot in the back and is now paralyzed from the waist down. Seven-year-old Cheryl was shot twice from behind and died on the way to the hospital. Police searched the brush and nearby river looking for the murder weapon. The gun was never found and neither was the shaggy-haired stranger. Police started suspecting Downs as the culprit. The prosecution claims her obsessive love for an ex-boyfriend in Arizona was her motive. The state says Downs felt her children were getting in the way and preventing a romantic relationship with that former boyfriend. And strangely enough, even the people who knew Downs best, questioned her account of the shootings on the night of the murder. Down’s father Wesley Frederickson doubts:
- Was there ever a time, from the beginning when you first heard, that you had any doubts about her innocence?
- Was there a time when I had doubts? Yes, there was. The first night, as a matter of fact, I had doubts. I felt, well, I sat and I sized up the situation and I saw at one point that Diane had been shot, and, everybody knows her as Elizabeth, but Diane had been shot in the left arm and she’s right-handed. And I made the comment to the police department there that night ‘it looks to me like Diane did it, because the children have been shot in the chest and Diane has only been shot in the arm’, and I says ‘it really looks like she did it’. And that really is the thing that’s for them to go and check. To do the q-tips around her finger to check for the powder residue and to also spray her hands to see if she held a gun. So it was a good thing that I expressed that. And I’m a very open person. If I think that somebody did something, I’m not about to hesitate to say they didn’t. You know, I’ll tell them that I think they did. And I’d say the same thing again, if I believed it. I’ve had plenty of opportunity to follow and that’s one of the main reasons, I guess, for peace of mind I’ve followed through and I know that my daughter didn’t do it.
Diane Downs:
- I have been through that night so many times. I’ve even been through it with my psychologist. It’s very hard, it’s very tearful. There are a lot of memories that… I don’t know. A lot of people when something traumatic happens to them, they suppress immediately, I kept those memories, because I knew that I was the only person that was going to be able to tell them what happened, when we got to the hospital. And when I got there, the first thing I said was ‘call the doctor’, second thing was the blood type third thing was ‘call the cops’, because they’ve got to find him and… I had to remember as much as I could remember. When this man shot my daughter, my first reaction was to snap back to my childhood, to the pain that had happened to me back then. My marriage, my entrapment by society. This man was bigger than me, he was stronger than me, he had more power because he had a gun. He was in control and I was not and I had… There was nothing I could do and… I stood there and I looked at Christy reaching and the blood that just kept gushing out of her mouth and… What do you do? You just stand there trapped and the gun kept firing and firing and firing and it made… It was monotonous. It just kept going. It was like a slow motion picture. And then he swung around towards me and I… and this is something that I did not recall when I was explaining to the cops, because It wasn’t like a movie when I was telling them. I was telling them what happened, the important details. He shot my kids, I pushed him, I ran. When he swung around, he was pointing when he swung around, it hit the tips of my fingers the gun hit the tips of my fingers and that snapped me, and I went ‘wait a minute I’m not trapped by society, I don’t care if he is bigger. if I stand here and I say – yeah, here, take the keys… I mean there’s nothing I can do, you win because you have the gun’, my kids are going to die and I’m not going to let my kids die and so… Instead of giving him the keys, I feigned throwing the keys. He did not take time to point the gun and shoot me obviously, because he would have shot me the same way he did the kids. When he was swinging in the direction of the keys firing the gun, he hit my arm. Everybody says you sure were lucky. Well, I don’t feel very lucky. I couldn’t tie my damn shoes for about two months. It is very painful. It is still painful. I have a steel plate on my arm. I will for a year and a half. The scar is going to be there forever. I’m going to remember that night for the rest of my life whether I want to or not. I don’t think I was very lucky. I think my kids were lucky. If I had been shot the way they were, we all would have died, except maybe Danny.
