Warning: Graphic content, readers’ discretion advised. This article contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some, readers’ discretion advised.
On May 19, 1983, Downs shot her three children, and drove them in a blood-spattered car to McKenzie-Willamette Hospital in Springfield, Oregon. Upon arrival,Cheryl (7) was already dead, Danny (3)was paralyzed from the waist down, and Christie (aged 8) had suffered a disabling stroke.Downs herself had been shot in the left forearm.
She claimed that she was carjacked on a rural road near Springfield by a strange man who shot her and the children. However, investigators and hospital workers became suspicious, because they decided that Downs’ manner was too calm for a person who had just experienced such a traumatic event. She also made a number of statements that both police and hospital workers considered highly inappropriate.
Downs claimed that on a drive home from a friends house, she decided to take the scenic route home. All the kids were asleep as it was past 9 p.m. and her children were fairly young. Downs claimed that during this drive home, around 10 p.m. she saw a strange man standing in the road flagging her down. She said she pulled over and got out to talk to the man.
She described him as a “bushy haired stranger”. When she got out to talk to this man, he immediately demanded that she give him her car keys, Downs claimed she refused and they got into a physical altercation that resulted in him shooting her in the left arm. He then opened the driver’s side door and shot all 3 of her children. Downs then said she pretended to throw her car keys in a bush and the man went to go look for them. While he was looking for the keys, she jumped back in the car and sped off to the nearest hospital.
diane and ex-husband with the children .
Suspicions heightened when Downs, upon arrival at the hospital to visit her children, phoned Robert Knickerbocker, a married man and former coworker in Arizona with whom she had been having an affair.The forensic evidence did not match her story; there was no blood spatter on the driver’s side of the car, nor was there any gunpowder residue on the driver’s door or on the interior door panel. Knickerbocker also reported to police that Downs had stalked him, and seemed willing to kill his wife if it meant that she could have him to herself; he stated that he was relieved that she had left for Oregon, and that he was able to reconcile with his wife.
Diane did not disclose to police that she owned a .22 caliber handgun, but both Steve and Knickerbocker informed authorities that she did. Investigators later discovered that she had bought the handgun in Arizona. While they were unable to find the weapon, they found unfired casings in her home with extractor markings from the murder weapon.
Most damaging, witnesses saw her car being driven very slowly toward the hospital, at an estimated speed of 5–7 mph (8–11 km/h)—contradicting her claim that she drove to the hospital at a “high speed” after the shooting. Based on this and additional evidence, Downs was arrested on February 28, 1984, nine months after the shooting, and charged with one count of murder, and two counts each of attempted murder and criminal assault
Prosecutors argued that Downs shot her children to be free of them, so that she could continue her affair with Knickerbocker, as she claimed that he let it be known that he did not want children in his life. Much of the case against her rested on the testimony of her surviving daughter, Christie, who, once she recovered her ability to speak, described how her mother shot all three children while parked at the side of the road, and then shot herself in the arm.
Downs was convicted on all charges on June 17, 1984, and sentenced to life in prison plus fifty years. She was required to serve twenty-five years before being considered for parole. Most of Downs’ sentence is to be served consecutively. The judge made it clear that he did not intend for Downs to ever be free again.
Psychiatrists diagnosed her with narcissistic, histrionic, and antisocial personality disorders, labeling her as a “deviant sociopath.”
Downs’ two surviving children eventually went to live with the lead prosecutor on the case, Fred Hugi. He and his wife, Joanne, adopted them in 1986. Christie Downs, Diane Downs’ first child who testified at her trial, suffers from a speech disability. She has a son (born 2005) and a daughter, whom she named Cheryl in memory of her late sister.
Prior to her arrest, Downs became pregnant with a fifth child, and gave birth to a girl, whom she named Amy Elizabeth, a month after her 1984 trial. Ten days before Downs’ sentencing, Amy was seized by the State of Oregon, and adopted by Chris and Jackie Babcock, who subsequently renamed her Rebecca. As an adult, Rebecca (Becky) appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show and ABC’s 20/20, where she discussed how she felt about her biological mother.
Rebecca wrote to Downs in her younger years, and has stated that she regrets the contact, regarding her mother as “a monster.”
Downs was initially incarcerated at the Oregon Women’s Correctional Center in Salem. On July 11, 1987, she escaped from her cell by scaling an eighteen-foot razor wire fence. For ten days, Downs managed to evade law enforcement—despite a fourteen-state manhunt—before she was recaptured. She received an additional five-year sentence for the escape.
After her recapture, Downs was transferred to the New Jersey Department of Corrections Clinton Correctional Facility for Women after heavy lobbying from Hugi. The Salem prison was located 66 miles from Hugi’s home in Springfield; during her ten days of freedom, Hugi had feared that Downs would attempt to travel there in hopes of contacting her children, Christie and Danny.
Despite significant security upgrades at the women’s facility after the escape, state officials accepted Hugi’s argument that the risk of harm to Christie and Danny, in the event of another escape, was too great for Downs to remain incarcerated in Oregon.
In 1994, after serving ten years, Downs was transferred to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.While in prison, she earned an associate degree in General Studies.
In 2010, she was relocated to the Valley State Prison for Women in Chowchilla, California,but was transferred out when the facility was converted to an all-male institution in 2013.
Author Ann Rule wrote the book Small Sacrifices (1987), which detailed Downs’ life and murder trial. The book documented accounts by friends, acquaintances, neighbors, and her surviving daughter, Christie, who questioned the quality of her parenting.A made-for-TV movie, also titled Small Sacrifices, starred Farrah Fawcett as Downs, and was aired on ABC in 1989.
Downs’ sentence meant she could not be considered for parole until 2009. Under Oregon law at the time, as a dangerous offender, Downs would have been eligible for a parole hearing every two years until she is released or dies in prison.
In her first application for parole in 2008, Downs reaffirmed her innocence.
Downs insisted that, “Over the years, I have told you and the rest of the world that a man shot me and my children. I have never changed my story.”Her first parole hearing was on December 9, 2008. Lane County District Attorney Douglas Harcleroad wrote to the parole board: “Downs continues to fail to demonstrate any honest insight into her criminal behavior… even after her convictions, she continues to fabricate new versions of events under which the crimes occurred.
” He also wrote that “she alternately refers to her assailants as a bushy-haired stranger, two men wearing ski masks, or drug dealers and corrupt law enforcement officials.”
Downs participated in the hearing from the Valley State Prison for Women.She was not permitted a statement, but answered questions from the parole board. After three hours of interviews and thirty minutes of deliberation, she was denied parole.
Downs had parole hearings in 2010 and 2020, which were both denied.Downs maintained her innocence in all parole hearings.
The Diane Downs case is a notorious piece of Oregon crime history. But was justice served? Not by today’s standards.
On May 19, 1983, Elizabeth Diane Downs and her three small children were shot on a country road near Springfield, Oregon. Her 7-year old daughter Cheryl died, but her 3-year old son Danny and her 8-year old daughter Christie survived.
Within three weeks, Diane had lost custody of her remaining wounded children and had become the number one suspect in the eyes of the police department and District Attorney’s office.
former KEZI TV reporter Anne Jaeger reads from a letter Diane Downs sent her. Jaeger covered the case for the Eugene TV station in the early 1980s
Former TV reporter Anne Jaeger still has notes and files from covering Diane Downs’ trial and conviction for shooting her own three young children in May 1983, killing Downs’ 7-year-old daughter, Cheryl.
Downs sent Jaeger letters.
“The only people who will rail against the truth are the lovers of lies,” Jaeger says, reading from one of the letters sent to her by Downs from prison.
Downs has always maintained her innocence.“I can see Christie reaching her hand out to me while I’m driving,” said Downs in one interview, “and the blood just keep coming out of her mouth. But that — maybe it will fade with time, but I don’t think so. That haunts me the most.”
FILE — Diane Downs from a 1983 TV interview.
Downs is serving a life sentence plus 50 years in prison for her crime.
Downs has always maintained that a mysterious stranger shot her three young children.
Evidence during Downs’ trial showed one child was actually shot outside Downs’ car and that Downs shot herself in the arm to try to cover up the crime.
Downs got pregnant just before her trial, delivered that baby in prison and gave it up for adoption.
Becky Babcock is now grown and spoke out for the first time on ABC’s 20/20.”The first letter I wrote Diane, I must have written a hundred times. I was nervous,” said Babcock.
Jaeger still can’t believe the violence committed by a mother against her own children.
” For her to take such aggressive action, holding a gun –point blank – to her children and shooting it repeatedly, that’s unheard of in the annals of crime. We still don’t hear of it,” said Jaeger.Jaeger said despite decades of research, interviews, books and correspondence, she still doesn’t understand what drove Diane Downs to that violence or what keeps Downs from admitting what she’s done.
“I think all of us would hope, at some time, she would genuinely say, ‘I did this, and I am sorry,” said Jaeger.
Late one May night in 1983, Diane Downs sped into an emergency room dropoff in Springfield, Ore., with a horrifying story to tell.
Her three small children, Christie, 8; Cheryl, 7; and Danny, 3, were inside her blood-soaked car, shot at close range.
In the frantic scene, hospital employees quickly determined that Cheryl was already dead and that Christie and Danny were clinging to life.
Downs had also been shot, in the left forearm, though her wound was not life threatening.
When police arrived at the scene, Downs, 27 at the time, told them a bizarre story of being flagged down by a bushy-haired stranger on a dark and deserted country road.
Doug Welch, then a detective with the Lane County Sheriff’s Office, remembers getting the call for what would turn out to be his first homicide investigation. He responded to McKenzie-Willamette Hospital and immediately interviewed Downs, a postal worker.
“It was an interesting interview. We found that Diane Downs was emotionally flat. She’d been shot in the left forearm,” said Welch. “She said she had been out visiting a friend who had a horse up in the Marcola area — she and the kids — and when it grew dark they headed home. She took a detour off of Marcola Road onto Old Mohawk Road to do some sightseeing.”
“By this time it was dark, and the kids were sleeping. And as she drove down the road, a man stepped out from the brush, the side of the road, and she stopped the car. And got out and ask what he wanted. And he replied, ‘I want your car.’ She said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding,’ at which time he pushed her aside and reached in with a gun and began shooting the kids– the three kids.”
Downs said she then faked throwing her keys to divert the gunman’s attention, pushed him out of the way, jumped back in her car and raced to the hospital with her badly wounded children. She says it was during the struggle with the stranger that she was shot in the arm.
Elizabeth Diane Downs talks about her conviction for killing her 7 year old daughter and wounding two of her other children in Springfield, Ore., during an interview at the Correctional Institute for Woman in Clinton, N.J., March 12, 1989./Peter Cannata/AP, FILE
Police Tell Public to Be on Lookout
Fearing there could be a gun-wielding killer on the loose, police released information to the public to be on the lookout.
But suspicions of Downs herself quickly began to surface.
“There were all kinds of red flags that went up as we took her statement, but we wanted her to give us a complete statement,” Welch said. “But there were a number of things… which didn’t make any sense.”
“Why would a mother sightsee when it’s dark out? Why does a mom with three sleeping children in the car stop for a stranger or anyone for that matter? Why is she wounded in the arm? And the kids– one is fatally shot and the other two are seriously injured.”
Welch said there were “a lot” of problems with her story and by the end of the interview, “we knew that she had been lying’.”
diane! throwing away the keys”
Within a month of the shootings, with her two surviving children still in the hospital, Downs began giving a series of bizarre interviews to the media.
“I have used the term verbal ‘vomit’ when talking’ about Diane because she talked a lot. Too much for her own good,” Welch said. “I think that’s one of the things that– ended up hurting her case. She didn’t know when to keep her mouth shut.”
While police increasingly suspected Downs, she adamantly denied any involvement when speaking to the media.
“Why would I have taken my kids to the hospital?” she said in an interview. “Wouldn’t I have made sure they were dead and then cried crocodile tears? That’s insane to think that I would do such a thing and then bring the witnesses in against myself — that’s crazy.”
Anne Bradley Jaeger was a local reporter for ABC affiliate KEZI in Eugene, Ore., at the time. She remembers Downs’ demeanor in her interviews as peculiar.
“The more she talked, and she talked a lot and frequently, the more she talked, the more things didn’t make any sense. It was as if she thought that if she kept talking enough, that you would believe her,” Jaeger said.
Although police had found spent .22 caliber bullet casings at the crime scene, an exhaustive search of the area did not turn up the murder weapon. And Christie Downs, the only witness to the crime (her younger brother Danny was believed to have been asleep at the time), had suffered a stroke that impaired her speech and initially prevented her from telling police what she had seen.
Although Downs denied having ever owned a .22 caliber gun, ex-husband Steve Downs told police she took one with her when she moved to Oregon.
Meanwhile, Christie Downs was slowly beginning to tell what she remembered of the shootings. She said she had not seen a male stranger that night. A judge had already placed Downs’ two surviving children in protective custody.
A break in the case finally came when investigators discovered Downs’ secret diaries. They told of her obsession with a married man who didn’t want her kids around.
“We believe the motive for the shooting was to get Nick up here to Oregon to be with her. Diane considered the kids to be a burden or a hindrance to Nick’s arrival,” Welch said. “And as long as he said that he wasn’t going to be a father to anyone’s children, they had to go.”
Police arrested Downs Feb. 28, 1984, nine months after the shootings. In May of that year, the trial against Downs began with yet another inconceivable twist.
The woman who was on trial for shooting her own children was pregnant again — and it was no accident.
In another one of her strange media appearances Downs spoke about the pregnancy.
“I got pregnant because I miss Christie and I miss Danny and I miss Cheryl so much,” she said. “I’m never going to see Cheryl on Earth again and I just, you can’t replace children, but you can replace the effect they give you. And they give me love, they give me satisfaction, they give me stability, they give me a reason to live and a reason to be happy, and that’s gone, they took it from me, but children are so easy to conceive.”
Jaeger says Downs told her she had picked someone on her postal route to seduce prior to her arrest. Jaeger remembers worrying that Downs’ pregnancy could affect the way jurors viewed her.
“She knew that, if she got pregnant, that people would look at her and say, ‘How could a woman who loves children this much and got pregnant have killed her children? Look at her,’” Jaeger said.
Prosecutors laid out the evidence against Downs, all leading up to their star witness. After months of physical and mental therapy, Christie Downs was finally able to take the stand and tell what happened to her that horrible night.
District Attorney Fred Hugi asked Christie if she remembered who shot her.
She replied simply: “My mom.”
Downs was found guilty in June, and sentenced to life in prison plus 50 years.
Between the verdict and sentencing, the court recessed so that Downs could give birth to a girl she named Amy Elizabeth. The baby was taken by the state and delivered to adoptive parents. The girl was later renamed Becky Babcock.
In 1987, just three years into her sentence, Downs escaped from the correctional facility in Oregon where she was being held.
Within two weeks police had tracked her down to the home of another inmate’s husband just blocks from the prison. After being recaptured, she was transferred to a more secure facility.
Diane Downs remains in prison in California. She was denied parole in 2008 and again in 2010. She will be eligible for parole in 2020 and continues to proclaim her innocence.
Famous cases of mothers accused of killing their kids have shocked the nation.
Nobody can imagine why seemingly loving, devoted mothers would ever harm their own flesh and blood. But more than 200 women a year kill their children in the United States, according to the American Anthropological Association.
The shocking and unimaginable crimes of child-killers have gripped the nation for decades. Here’s a look back at the famous cases of mothers accused of murder.
Long before the infamous cases of Susan Smith and Andrea Yates, the nation was gripped by the story of Diane Downs, who shot her three children, killing one.
In 1983, Downs, a 27-year-old divorced postal service worker, told police that a “bushy-haired stranger” flagged down her car and shot her three children on a back road near Springfield, Oregon.
Her daughter Cheryl, 7, was dead on arrival at the hospital, and her other children — Christie, 8, and Danny, 3, were clinging to life.
Downs’ story about the stranger did not add up. Reading through her secret diaries, police found a motive: an obsession with a married man who didn’t want her children. In February 1984, nine months after the shootings, they arrested her and charged her with one count of murder and two counts of attempted murder.
Downs’ trial was a national spectacle that was later depicted in the TV movie “Small Sacrifices,” starring Farrah Fawcett as Downs.
She was sentenced to life in prison plus 50 years. Downs will be eligible for parole in 2011.
susan smith
In October 1994, Susan Smith drowned her two young sons, buckling them into their car seats and pushing the car into a South Carolina lake. The car sank with the sleeping children in the back.
Smith initially told police that a black man had hijacked her car and abducted the children. Americans desperately searched for the boys for nine days until Smith confessed that she killed her sons, Michael, 3, and 14-month-old Alex.
She was convicted of the two murders in July 1995 and sentenced to life in prison. A judge rejected Smith’s appeal in March 2010. She is eligible for parole in November 2024.
andrea Yates
In June 2001, Andrea Yates methodically drowned her five children in the bathtub in their Houston home. The case shocked the American public.
Yates told police and psychiatrists after the crime that Satan ordered her to kill sons Noah, 7; John, 5; Paul, 3; Luke, 2; and 6-month-old daughter Mary, to save them from eternal damnation.
Yates, a former nurse and the valedictorian of her high school, suffered from mental illness for years — depression with bouts of psychosis, suicide attempts and hospitalizations.
In tapes of Yates’ psychological evaluation, released exclusively to “Primetime” in 2006, she recalled details of the morning she murdered her kids, describing how she waited until her husband left to start filling the tub. “Drowning them” was “all I thought about,” she said.
Yates was convicted of capital murder in March 2002, rejecting the defense argument that she was insane at the time of the killings. But in 2006, Yates was retried and found not guilty by reason of insanity and was committed to a state mental hospital.
It was an unthinkable, brutal killing in 1983 that terrified parents around the country. A mother was driving one night down a rural road in Oregon when her three children, who were asleep in the car, were shot at point-blank range by a stranger in the dark. At least, that’s the story Diane Downs told police. What really happened is almost too horrific to imagine.
Diane said a shaggy-haired stranger flagged down her car on the night of May 19, 1983, and after what she claimed was a botched carjacking attempt, the man shot her three sleeping children. As she tried to flee, Diane said he also shot her in the forearm.
Diane told police she pushed the man away and sped to the nearest hospital- but a witness testified she was driving less than 10 miles an hour.
By the time Diane arrived at the hospital, her 7-year-old daughter, Cheryl, was dead. Eight-year-old Christie had lost so much blood she suffered a stroke, and 3-year-old Danny was left paralyzed.
Police said Diane’s story never added up. Then, at the trial, Diane’s surviving daughter, Christie, took the witness stand and testified that her mother was the shooter.
Diane was convicted of shooting her children, killing one and critically wounding the others. She was sentenced to life in prison plus 50 years.
Diane is still in jail and maintains her innocence to this day. Her surviving children were adopted by the prosecutor in this case and his wife. Christie and Danny are now in their 30s and have chosen to live private lives.
However, there is one more child entangled in this story. During the trial, it was revealed that Diane was pregnant. She never identified the baby’s father, and the media speculated she did it to gain sympathy from the jury.
In 1988, Oprah interviewed Diane from prison and asked her why she got pregnant. “I missed my kids desperately. I had just seen Christie on the 2nd of October, and it’s like opening a wound and pouring salt in,” Diane said. “I was extremely lonely beyond belief and beyond explanation. On October 13, I just went and got pregnant because I was so lonely.”
Ten days after she was found guilty, Diane gave birth to a baby girl who was adopted soon after. Today, that baby is a 26-year-old woman named Becky. After years of hiding from the truth, she’s speaking out about what it was like to discover that her birth mother is a cold-blooded killer.
Becky says she always knew she was adopted, but when she turned 8, she started asking questions about her biological mother. “My mom told me that she was in prison, that there was a book about her and when I was old enough, she would tell me more,” Becky says.
Three years later, Becky tricked a babysitter into revealing the name of her birth mother: Diane Downs. Becky went to a bookstore to look her up and was shocked at what she found. “I flipped through the pictures, and there was a picture of Diane sitting at a table with her hand up, and her fingers were eerily the same as mine—like identical—and it scared me,” she says. “I slammed the book shut, and I left.”
When she was 16, a boyfriend showed Becky the TV movie Small Sacrifices starring Farrah Fawcett, which is based on her mother’s life. It was then,
Becky says, that the reality of who Diane was truly sunk in. “She’s not a mother,” Becky says. “She’s a monster.”
From there, Becky says she went into a downward spiral.
“I started drinking, doing drugs, sleeping around,” she says.
“I really was just trying to find love from anywhere I could.
I ended up getting pregnant when I was 17 years old.”
At 20 years old, Becky found herself broke, homeless and pregnant for a second time.
“I made the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make,” she says. “I decided to put my son up for adoption.”
Hoping to find someone who could understand, Becky turned to the woman who had given her up as a baby
“I was in so much pain from losing my son that I wanted to relate to somebody,” she says. “I wanted to know that the pain I felt was okay, and I reached out to Diane.”
Becky wrote a letter to Diane in prison telling her who she was.
“She responded quite normally, actually,” Becky says. “She related to some of the things that I had written to her. She had been excited that I contacted her, and she said that she always knew I would.
The next letter she received from Diane wasn’t so nice.
“About the second letter, I became curious about my biological father, and I had asked her questions. It angered her,” Becky says. “She seemed to throw tantrums, and she didn’t understand why I wanted to find him. I think it was her way of keeping me in contact with her…she wouldn’t tell me who he was.”
As time went on, Becky says Diane’s letters became frightening.
“Her letters started to be conspiracy theories-she believed that she was being kept in prison to be kept safe,” she says. “I asked her to stop writing at one point—this was after she told me people had been watching me my whole life and were trying to kill me- and at that point, she then accused me of being one trying to kill her.
Becky says she now regrets ever writing to Diane.
“I have an amazing family, and there’s not room in my life for someone like Diane Downs,” Becky says.
Still, Becky says there have been moments when she was fearful of turning into her biological mother.After a particularly hard day, Becky says she sought advice from a counselor.
“I was stressed out—bills were due, I had just lost a child-I had the weight of the world on my shoulders,” Becky says. “I felt like I was going crazy, honestly.
I went into my counselor and I said:
Am I like her? Am I going crazy?’ And she grabbed my hand, she looked me straight in the eye, and she said, ‘Honey, crazy people don’t know they’re crazy.
She says, ‘You’re dealing with life.'”
Diane may be the woman who gave birth to her, but Becky says they don’t have to have a connection.
“I was raised in a godly home, and I’m well adjusted,” she says. “My son is amazing and well adjusted. And if I don’t want to, I don’t have to think about Diane again.”
Becky has tried to reach out to her surviving half-brother and half-sister, but they have chosen to remain private. “Understandably, it was something that was very difficult for them to get through,”
Becky says. “But they’re doing well. They’re very well adjusted and happy, and we kind of left it at that.”
Nobody wants to imagine that a mother can harm her own child. Parents are supposed to protect and care for their children and raise them with unconditional love. From the moment you bring a bundle of joy into the world, you don’t stop caring for them. Parents are always worried that something might happen to their precious child.
That’s why it always comes as a shock when you hear the horror stories about a mother murdering her own child. A mother is supposed to have natural compassion, and not loving her child goes against nature in so many ways. It makes no sense from biological, evolutional, and psychological standpoints. So, the big question is, what kind of psychotic mother is capable of committing such heinous crimes against her own babies.
In 1984, Elizabeth Diane Downs was sentenced to life in prison after being convicted for the shooting and attempted murder of her three young children. One of them died after what she did. At the time this all took place, Downs told police that some guy attempted to carjack them and took out a gun. Of course, that was quickly proven to be a lie.
Downs managed to escape prison in 1987, and she was on the run for a brief time before getting recaptured. She deserves to rot and die in there.
She attended Moon Valley High School in Phoenix, and that’s where she met her high school sweetheart and future husband, Steven Downs. She then attended Pacific Coast Baptist Bible College in Orange, California. But she got expelled for promiscuity and moved back to her parents’ home.
On November 13, 1973, she walked down the aisle with Steve Downs. They split up in 1980, but not before she had his babies. By all accounts from neighbors, acquaintances, and even friends and family, Diane Downs was an unfit mother who put everything before her children.
They noted that she was especially cruel to her daughter Cheryl. Shortly before her death, Cheryl reportedly told people that she was scared of her mother. Downs was creepily addicted to being pregnant, but we’ll get into all of that in just a moment.
As we mentioned, Diane grew up in a religious household but became a rebellious child when she was about 14. She even dropped “Elizabeth” from her name and decided the conservative life wasn’t for her. She dated Steve Downs despite her parents’ disapproval.
After they eloped, Diane’s extramarital affairs caused a strain on their marriage, so she left Steve and went back to her parents. But she was already pregnant by that point and gave birth to their first child, Christie Ann, in 1974.
They welcomed their second daughter, Cheryl Lynn, in 1976. Despite Steve’s vasectomy, Diane ended up pregnant once again, but she had an abortion. She and Steve started working at a mobile-home manufacturing company, and Downs was fooling around with some of her co-workers.
As a result, Diane got pregnant yet again. She gave birth to Stephen Daniel “Danny” Downs in December 1979. Steve was well-aware that he wasn’t the father, but he accepted the child anyway. By 1980, Steve and Diane had split up. After the divorce, she had countless affairs while trying to reconcile with Steve.
In order to bring in money, Diane decided to become a surrogate mother (which is so disturbing in retrospect). As it turned out, Diane didn’t qualify after failing two psychiatric exams. The test reports indicated that she was intelligent but also psychotic.
In 1981, Diane started working as a postal carrier for the United States Post Office. During that time, the children stayed with her parents, Steve, and Danny’s biological father, in rotation. Neighbors reported that Diane didn’t care for her children properly when they stayed with her.
Despite failing two psychiatric exams that showed signs of being a psychopath, Diane got an offer to be a surrogate toward the end of that year. She gave birth to a baby through surrogacy on May 8, 1982. Soon enough, she wanted to make her passion a hobby and launch a surrogacy clinic. Thankfully, that venture failed.
During that time, Downs began a whirlwind affair with a married man named Robert “Nick” Knickerbocker. The more she nagged him to leave his wife, the more suffocated Nick felt, and he ended their relationship. Diane moved back to Oregon, but instead of getting over Nick, she became obsessed with him.
On the eerie night of May 19, 1983, Diane Downs arrived at an emergency room in Springfield, Oregon. Her three children, Christie, 8, Cheryl, 7, and Danny, 3, were all covered in blood in the back seat: they had been shot point-blank. Sadly, the doctors declared Cheryl dead at the scene, and the other two children were suffering from life-threatening injuries.
Investigators were suspicious of Diane from the start. They immediately noticed she was way too calm for someone who had just gone through something so traumatic. But their suspicions increased when Diane went to see Christie in the hospital for the first time.
As soon as Christie saw her mother, the little girl looked terrified, and her heart rate jumped dramatically. They also realized that Diane called Nick, her married ex-lover, as soon as she got to the hospital. She seemed to be enjoying the attention.
christine downs
When she was asked what happened that night, Downs told a story that was farfetched, to say the least.
She explained that she was flagged by a man on the side of a dirt road while her children were sleeping in the car.
She described a “shaggy-haired” man who demanded her car. When she refused, he shot her children. During the struggle, this man also shot her in the arm, but conveniently, her injuries weren’t serious at all.
While her children were fighting for their lives in the hospital, Downs started giving a bunch of media interviews, telling weird stories, and maintaining her innocence. Unfortunately for Diane, her story didn’t add up. It was filled with unnecessary details that brought down the legitimacy of her statements and is common when people are lying.
She described that she was taking the kids to go sightseeing in the dark… while they were sleeping. This made no sense, and the police were on to her. There were so many red flags. When they got ahold of her journal, they discovered that she had been having an affair with a married man. Her lover did not want kids, which caused Diane to see them as a burden.
Little Christie suffered a stroke that impaired her ability to speak, but when she woke up, she managed to tell police what she remembered. Spoiler alert: It didn’t involve a “shaggy-haired” man.
Let’s get one thing straight; although uncommon, it’s not impossible that a random dude would have shot her kids with absolutely no motive or personal gain. It was Diane’s disturbing behavior that raised red flags for the police.
First of all, it was clear Diane loved the attention. Most people can’t put a sentence together after going through something so heartbreaking, let alone give interviews. She didn’t seem sad or even shed a tear for her poor babies. Doctors were shocked at her demeanor following the incident.
As you could imagine, doctors were not looking forward to telling Diane that Christie had a stroke and that Danny was going to be partially paralyzed for the rest of his life. But what they were dreading the most was breaking the news about Cheryl’s death.
Stunningly, Diane didn’t seem bothered by this horrifying news. The doctors explained that they were expecting waterworks. Sure, people react to trauma in different ways, but the hospital staff noted that there was something really unsettling about Diane’s reaction.
The most disturbing of all is a video you can find on YouTube. Just a few days after the incident, Diane is sitting in a car, acting out what happened to the police. Most people would be bawling their eyes while reenacting the most terrible night of their life.
Evidently, the evidence didn’t match Diane’s story. There was no blood on the driver’s side of the car, nor was there any gun powder residue on the driver’s panel. Nick reported to the police that Diane was stalking him and seemed like she would go as far as to kill his wife if that meant she had him to herself.
Nick went on to say that he was relieved when Diane moved to Oregon, and he was able to work things out with his wife. Downs also didn’t tell police that she had a .22 caliber handgun. But her ex-husband and ex-lover confirmed that she did, in fact, own a gun.
Investigators eventually found out she had bought the handgun in Arizona. Although they couldn’t find the actual weapon, they did discover unfired castings in her house with extractor markings from the same gun that shot her kids. Things were not looking good for Diane, and evidence continued to pile up against her.
Source: ABC News
The most damning evidence was Christie’s witness statement claiming their mother did this and then drove them to the hospital slowly (estimated speed of 5-7 mph). Thanks to Christie’s statement, police were able to arrest Downs in February 1984, nine months after the shooting. She was charged with murder and two counts of attempted murder and criminal assault.
The prosecutors explained that Diane wanted to get rid of her children so she could continue her affair with Nick – who didn’t want kids. Although it sounds absurd, this was an easy one for the prosecution. There was just so much evidence against her. Oh, and by the way, Diane was eight months pregnant during her trial.
Source: YouTube
Once Christie recovered her ability to speak, she took the stand and told the terrifying story of how her mother shot all three of them and then shot herself in the arm. Christie was just eight when they were shot and nine during the trial. The poor girl went through so much before she even turned ten years old.
It didn’t take much to convince a jury. For a psychopath, Diane Downs was horrible at faking emotions and pretending to care. It was like she was asking for a jury to convict her. Of course, Diane was found guilty on all charges.
Psychiatrists diagnosed her with narcissistic, histrionic, and antisocial personality disorder, but an insanity defense wouldn’t get her out of this one. She was sentenced to life plus 50 years in prison. The judge made it clear that he hoped Diane Downs will never regain her freedom and see the light of day.
The two surviving children were taken in by Fred Hugi, the prosecutor of the case. He and his wife Joanne officially adopted them in 1984. As we mentioned, Diane was pregnant with her fourth child in court. She had her baby in jail a month after her trial ended. She named her daughter Amy.
Diane Downs. Source: YouTube
Ten days before her sentencing, the baby was seized by the State of Oregon. Soon after, she was adopted by a loving family and was renamed Rebecca “Becky” Babcock. She grew up not knowing who her birth mother was, but she was always curious.
Even while she was locked up, Diane couldn’t stay out of trouble. On July 11, 1987, the convicted child killer escaped the Oregon Women’s Correctional Center of the Oregon Department of Corrections. It didn’t take long for police to recapture her in Oregon on June 21.
Becky Babcock. Source: ABC News
Ten days before her sentencing, the baby was seized by the State of Oregon. Soon after, she was adopted by a loving family and was renamed Rebecca “Becky” Babcock. She grew up not knowing who her birth mother was, but she was always curious.
Even while she was locked up, Diane couldn’t stay out of trouble. On July 11, 1987, the convicted child killer escaped the Oregon Women’s Correctional Center of the Oregon Department of Corrections. It didn’t take long for police to recapture her in Oregon on june 21
She was sentenced to an additional five years in prison for the jailbreak, to be served simultaneously with her current sentences. That sounds like a small punishment for a big crime. She would be eligible for parole in 25 years… which is a scary thought.
After 25, year it was time for the parole consideration for Diane. Diane Downs is considered a yearsdangerous offender, and under Oregon law, that means she will be eligible for a parole hearing every two years until she’s released or dies behind bars.
In her first parole application, the murderous mother reaffirmed her innocence. “Over the years,” she explained, “I have told you and the rest of the world that a man shot me and my children. I have never changed my story.”
She probably should change her
story because, clearly, this one’s not working for her.
Diane’s first parole hearing was in December 2008
Lane County District Attorney Douglas
Harcleroad wrote to the parole board: “Downs continues to fail to demonstrate any honest insight into her criminal behavior… even after her convictions, she continues to fabricate new versions of events under which the crimes occurred.”
Diane alternately refers to her attacker as a “bushy-haired stranger,” two men wearing ski masks or drug dealers. I guess she can’t keep her story straight. It’s just insane that she continues to lie. Literally nobody believes her.
Downs participated in the hearing. She was not allowed to give a statement, but she answered some questions from the parole board. After three hours of interviews and a half-hour of deliberation, Diane Downs was denied parole. She was eligible to reapply in 2010.
Diane Downs faced her second parole hearing in December 2010. As you could imagine, she was denied again. Under a new law, Diane would not be eligible for parole.
This means she needed to wait until 2020. That was a bad year for everyone, and Diane Downs was certainly no exception.
Diane spoke to OregonLive about coronavirus sweeping through her jail. Her next parole hearing was scheduled for 2021, but I couldn’t find any information about it. Either it got pushed off again, or more likely, she was denied parole once again. Let’s hope the 65-year-old dies in there.
Diane’s fourth child, Becky, appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show in 2010 and shared her heartbreaking story. She also did an interview with 20/20 detailing her life’s downward spiral after she found out who her birth mother is.
True crime author Ann Rule, known for her book The Stranger Beside Me (about serial killer Ted Bundy), wrote Small Sacrifices in 1987, a story detailing the life of Diane Downs. Small Sacrifices was turned into a made-for-TV movie in 1989, with Farrah Fawcett starring as Downs.
Ann Rule. Photo by Peter Power/Toronto Star/Getty Images
As for Becky, she grew up in a appy home, but the crimes of her mother still haunted her. When she was about 11, Becky tricked her babysitter into telling her the name of her biological mother: Diane Downs. This life-changing revelation took Becky on her own crazy journey.
She now says, “The impact of Diane Downs being my mom has altered the course of my life so many times. But I’m on track and really happy with the way life is.” It’s nice to know she is doing well now, but she went through a lot to achieve that happiness.
Growing up, Becky’s adoptive mother, Jackie Babcock, tried to calm her daughter’s curiosity about her adoption, so she gave her “little bits of information.” However, the questions kept coming. Eventually, Jackie stopped answering her questions, knowing the truth would be too much for a little kid to handle.
But Becky said that before the answers stopped, Jackie told her that there was a book written about her biological mother. Days after she secretly got the name from her babysitter, Becky headed to a bookstore
Becky didn’t know what to expect when she opened the book. She explained that when she looked at the pictures, “I saw who she was and what she looked like,” but it didn’t satisfy her. “It wasn’t a face I wanted to see… just the cold look in her eyes scared me.”
She added, “The reality set in that that’s who gave birth to me… I slammed the book shut and left.” Becky said that she didn’t tell her parents what she had discovered. Over the years, she heard a few more details about her biological mother, but it wasn’t until she was 16 that it really affected her.
The teenager was at her boyfriend’s house, and the pair decided to watch a two-part miniseries based on a book. She said that she told him a few things about her mother, and without Becky’s knowledge, he decided to rent the tape.
Becky explained that watching the movie broke her heart and her life went into a “downward spiral.” She said, “it was gut-wrenching. It changed me… my innocence was gone.” She couldn’t cope with the fact that this was the person who made her.
Becky explained that she started taking drugs and dropped out of school. Like her birth mother, Becky began dating multiple men and got pregnant as a teen. She also told 20/20 that her relationship with her adopted mother started to deteriorate during that time.
“It was very scary to have any relation to that woman… that’s what really scared me… to feel any sort of connection to such a monster. A part of me was afraid that that’s where I came from. Does that mean that’s where I’m going?”
When she was 17, Becky got pregnant with her first son. She got pregnant again at 21, but her relationship with her baby daddy ended before she gave birth. After she was forced to move into a homeless shelter, Becky made the tough (but wise) decision to give the second child up for adoption.
Becky explained that giving up that baby for adoption made her decide to reach out to Diane in jail: “I wanted her to be a person. I wanted to relate to her not as a mother because I had a mother. Just as somebody who was heartbroken to give up her child.” She added that she hopes to have a connection.
They exchanged several letters, but then Becky said they kept getting stranger. “That’s when I completely regretted messaging… she sent, you know, 12 pages of how she’s innocent, and ‘this is who really did it,’ she thinks,” Becky said.
“I had to accept that she really does struggle mentally. She really did have something wrong with her. And it doesn’t mean that I do too.” Thankfully, she came out stronger on the other side, saying, “When I was young, I worried that I would be like Diane Downs. As I grew up, I realized nature is not gonna win over nurture.”/becky
After her arrest, Diane still wanted the spotlight on her. She appeared on Oprah via satellite from jail. Ann Rule – author of Small Sacrifices – was there with Oprah, and let’s just say Diane wasn’t very happy with the book and how she was portrayed in it.
Even after her conviction, Diane continued to deny the truth. She maintains this “bushy-haired” man story. But don’t worry, Orpah asked Diane all the tough questions that she didn’t answer. She even called Diane out for telling the tragic story as if she were talking about a trip to the state fair.
The interview goes on with Diane bashing Anne Rule for her book, yet everything the prisoner said made absolutely no sense. She went on and on about how someone else did this to her children. Nobody believed a word of it, especially Oprah.
When the talk-show host asked Diane why her own daughter Christie would say her mother did this, Diane had another excuse. She explained how the police coerced the young girl into testifying against her mother. According to Diane, Christie wanted to see her mom so badly, and police told her the only way she’d see her as if she told them what they wanted to hear.
However, that’s not what happened at all. First off, we know Christie was terrified of her mother, considering her heart rate increased as soon as she saw her in the hospital. Second of all, the reason Christie didn’t speak at first was because of a stroke she that had impaired her hearing.
Once she recovered and began speaking, it took psychologists months to get the nine-year-old to trust them enough to tell them what she saw that traumatic night. Can you blame the poor girl for having trust issues? Diane says it’s because Christie knows Diane didn’t do it.
Oprah went on to ask Diane about her jailbreak; I’m sure you’re wondering where she was for ten days. As it turns out, Diane went to her cell mate’s husband’s house. She claims the reason she left was to find the man who really did this to her children.
But as you might have guessed, Oprah didn’t buy it. Ann Rule explained how she thinks Diane did this because she saw children as “replaceable.” That’s why she had an obsession with getting pregnant. Diane actually laughed and denied all those allegations.
So, Oprah asked why she got pregnant during her trial? It clearly wasn’t a good time to have another baby considering she was facing a lot of jail time. Diane knew it wasn’t the right time but decided to get pregnant anyway.
Yeah, this wasn’t an accidental pregnancy. Diane told Oprah that she loved her kids, and at that time, she felt so alone. She wanted someone to love and someone to love her, which is incredibly selfish. Luckily, they got the child out of there and gave Becky a beautiful life – despite the lingering effects, her mother’s actions took an emotional toll on the young girl.
Oprah concluded the interview by telling Diane that she looks like the girl next door, except she is a really bad person. Oprah called her out for all the sleeping around she did, cheating on her husband, putting men before her children, and then sleeping with her own cell mate’s husband!
Diane’s defense was that they were going to get divorced and hadn’t seen/slept with each other in years. Oprah basically told her that it didn’t make it any better. Diane’s response to Oprah was, “well, the ‘girl next door’ does exactly what I did.” Does she mean they sleep around? Or that they try to kill their own children?