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