In 1983, Diane Downs said a stranger shot her 3 kids, but police decided

In 1983, Diane Downs said a stranger shot her 3 kids, but police decided

On May 19, 1983, Diane Downs pulled her car over to the side of a rural Oregon road and shot her three young children in the back seat, beginning with her eldest daughter, eight-year-old Christie Downs. Then, Diane shot herself in the arm and drove to the hospital, where she claimed to have been the victim of a carjacking.

By the time Diane arrived, her youngest daughter Cheryl had already died, so doctors raced to save Christie and her brother Danny. When Christie took a turn for the worse, Diane told the doctors to "pull the plug" on her. But instead, the doctors convinced a judge to issue a court order making them Christie's legal guardians so that they could save her life.

See the photos and learn how Christie Downs survived her mother's cold-blooded attack — and then bravely testified against her in court —

Elizabeth Diane Downs (née Frederickson; born August 7, 1955) is an American criminal who murdered her daughter and attempted to murder her other two children near Springfield, Oregon, in May 1983. Following the crimes, she made claims to police that a man had attempted to carjack her and had shot the children. She was convicted in 1984 and sentenced to life in prison plus fifty years. She briefly escaped in 1987, but was quickly recaptured.

Downs was denied parole in December 2008, December 2010, and in 2020

On May 19, 1983, Downs shot her three children, and drove them in a blood-spattered car to McKenzie-Willamette Hospital in Springfield, Oregon.[8][9] Upon arrival, Cheryl (aged 7) was already dead, Danny (aged 3) was paralyzed from the waist down, and Christie (aged 8) had suffered a disabling stroke.[10] 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.

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[citation needed]. 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.

Prosecution

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.”

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