#20: The Mother and the Midnight Road - Shots in the Dark

7/12/202536 min read

Full Episode Transcript

The Mother and the Midnight Road

Springfield, Oregon. A Thursday night in late May, 1983.

By ten-thirty, the emergency room at McKenzie-Willamette Hospital had settled into its usual rhythm. The nurses were catching up on paperwork. The receptionist sat behind a desk marked by years of wear—scuffed chrome legs, worn vinyl, a faint trace of antiseptic in the air.

Then, a horn blared in the circular driveway. The shouting followed.

Judy Patterson, working her second shift of the day, rose from the desk and glanced toward the entrance. A red foreign car was pulled up under the rain roof, its doors flung open. The woman standing outside it wasn’t screaming, wasn’t crying—just pale, brisk, and demanding help.

Rosie Martin, an RN in her second trimester of pregnancy, stepped through the hospital’s double doors and reached the car first. Inside, slumped across the back seat, was a child. Rosie didn’t stop to ask questions. She lifted the small figure—a girl, long brown hair—and carried her straight through the ER.

Behind her, she called out a warning to the receptionist:

“Judy! Call a code! It’s bad!”

The code summoned everyone available. More staff rushed outside.

A second child was spotted in the back seat—a toddler, motionless. Dr. John Mackey, the ER physician, arrived, took one look, and muttered:

“Oh, Jesus Christ.”

He reached in, lifted the little boy into his arms, and then saw another body—a girl, hidden in the footwell of the front passenger side, her small frame covered with a dark sweater. She didn’t respond when touched.

Her mother presented herself as Elizabeth Downs, though she went by Diane. Her arm was wrapped in a colorful towel, and she had a wound—deep, raw, but not life-threatening. She explained to Judy Patterson that she and her three children—Christie, age eight; Cheryl, seven; and Danny, just three—had been driving along Old Mohawk Road after visiting a friend when they encountered a man standing in the road. She thought he needed help.

Instead, he demanded her car. She told him, “You’ve got to be kidding,” and claimed he then shoved her aside and opened fire on her children. She said she feigned tossing the car keys, then jumped in and sped away toward the hospital after being shot herself.

The medical team moved quickly. But it was already too late for Cheryl Lynn.

She had been covered by Diane’s postal sweater and lay across the floor of the front seat. There were two gunshot wounds to her upper torso—one near-contact through the left shoulder blade, the other close-range over her right. Her aorta had been torn. She had bled to death in the car.

Stephen “Danny” Downs was found on the rear seat. He was still alive, though barely, with a bullet wound to the center of his spine. The shot had shattered his vertebrae and left him struggling for breath. Doctors would later confirm he was paralyzed from the chest down.

Christie Ann had been hit twice—one bullet entered near her left nipple and exited her back; another struck near the base of her neck. She was ice-cold, barely breathing, her heartbeat erratic. A stroke from blood loss had paralyzed her right arm.

A white male, around five-foot-nine, shaggy dark hair, stubbled beard, dirty T-shirt, Levi jacket, blue jeans, possibly driving a beat-up yellow Chevrolet Chevelle. This was the man Diane Downs claimed had ambushed her on a quiet Oregon road and opened fire on her children.

But for those who’d witnessed her arrival that night, something didn’t feel right.

And before long, the questions would begin.

1.

On August 7th, 1955, at 7:35 p.m. on a sweltering Sunday evening in Phoenix, Arizona, Elizabeth Diane Frederickson was born to Wes and Willadene Frederickson. Wes was twenty-five, Willadene just seventeen.

Both parents came from large families and were devout members of a fundamentalist Southern Baptist church, where traditional gender roles were strictly observed. Willadene was expected to defer to her husband in all matters, and discussions about sexuality were forbidden.

Diane would later describe her childhood as bleak. She remembered herself as a "skinny, wistful little girl, ignored by her mother, tormented by her father." She felt invisible, like "a child caught behind a wall of glass—screaming and screaming for someone to notice her and rescue her."

When overwhelming situations arose, Diane developed a coping mechanism. She would "blank out" or "go inside herself," slipping into what she described as "blurry places without memory."

Her father, Wes, was the family disciplinarian. The children were taught "not to be cry-babies" and to "be tough." Diane learned to laugh even when inappropriate because she was "never allowed to cry." She detested her father intensely.

Between ages eleven and twelve, when her mother began working late shifts, Diane was sexually molested by her father. She later described it as "talking... touching... fondling." At thirteen, she cut her wrists, though the wounds were only superficial scratches. The abuse stopped after a state trooper spoke to Wes, though Diane lied to protect her family during the interview.

Her rage toward her father eventually turned inward. She would "rake her nails down her own face."

Despite these challenges, Diane excelled academically. She scored a full-scale IQ of 125, placing her just below genius level. However, she felt unpopular and had few friends.

Around age fourteen, Diane became a compulsive talker, desperately yearning to be noticed. At fifteen, she met Steve Downs, seven months her senior. Steve walked with a swagger and possessed a sensuality that attracted women. He represented everything Diane's conservative parents opposed.

Within months, the now sixteen-year-old Diane was sleeping with Steve. She confided in him about her father's abuse, but Steve "mumbled something and changed the subject."

After Steve joined the Navy, Diane worked as a waitress and in an office in North Phoenix, waiting for his return. They married on November 13th, 1973, when Diane was eighteen. She later admitted she saw Steve primarily as her "ticket out" of her parents' home.

The marriage quickly revealed its limitations. Steve's interest was "purely sexual," and he immediately changed his mind about having children. Diane realized he didn't love her the way she desperately desired.

Without telling Steve, Diane threw away her birth control pills. She wanted to conceive her "own source of love"—what she called "pure love" that would be an extension of herself.

Christie Ann was born on October 7th, 1974. However, Christie's birth didn't solidify the marriage. Diane's love for Christie seemed to make Steve's love feel "vile" to her. Steve was often impatient and angered by babies crying.

In 1975, Diane conceived again, explicitly stating she needed to "fight back" against unhappiness and build a "wall of love" with two children. Cheryl Lynn was born January 10th, 1976. Diane described Cheryl as a "fussy, screaming creature who wasn't even cute."

When Diane became pregnant again, she had an abortion because she "couldn't take one more pressure" and the baby "wouldn't have been loved." Initially, she felt no guilt about the abortion, but a revelation in fall 1978 led her to believe the "child she had destroyed returned to haunt her."

To make amends for her abortion and find what she called a "good specimen" to father her next child after Steve’s vasectomy, Diane engaged in three affairs at her workplace, the Palm Harbor Mobile Home Company in Mesa, Arizona. She described this as "genetic research," seeking attractive, healthy men who were not abusive.

She seduced nineteen-year-old Russ Phillips and conceived in one encounter. Steve discovered the affair and confronted them both. Diane then gave birth to Steven Daniel—"Danny" Downs—on December 29th, 1979.

Steve eventually adored Danny, but Diane didn't recognize his love as the "pure love" she sought. Their home became what she called an "armed camp," with physical fights lasting far into the night. Diane's depression returned, and she began to "relish punching her husband." She also lashed out at her children with pinches, hair-pulling, spanking, and screaming.

Following a definitive rejection from Lew Lewiston, a married co-worker with whom she'd been having an affair, Diane realized he wasn't going to Oregon as she'd hoped. Her surrogate parenting business had failed to get off the ground, leaving her with no additional income.

In this context, Diane requested a transfer from the Chandler, Arizona post office she was now working at to the Eugene area. Her father, Wes Frederickson, was the postmaster of Springfield, Oregon, and had assured her employment would be no problem. Her parents wanted her and the children to move to Oregon.

Chandler postal administrators accepted her transfer application with enthusiasm. They considered her a "strange, disruptive woman" whose affairs and temper tantrums were common knowledge.

At work, Diane was known to undergo what colleagues described as a "complete metamorphosis." While sullen at home, she became "vivacious and fun" at work, blooming "scarlet and lush." She and her co-workers Jack Lenta and Lew Lewiston prided themselves on being the "swiftest mail carriers."

Diane's move to Oregon became effective in April 1983. She drove there over two days, envisioning it as a "fantasy land." She went ahead to "prepare a place for him," still believing Lew might join her. She convinced herself that her children's presence wouldn't "bother Lew" because they were "terribly independent and require very little care."

Upon moving to Oregon, she transferred to the Cottage Grove Post Office. Officials said she wanted a smaller facility to learn all aspects of the postal business. She started with a rural route but soon earned a city route.

Her new supervisor, Floyd Gohn, described her as a "number-one worker and quick to pick up new skills," and was "one of the best electricians on the line." Ron Sartin, Superintendent of the Cottage Grove Post Office, also praised her work. She was known for bringing home-baked goods to share with colleagues.

However, investigators developed what they called a "hinky" feeling about her story from the beginning. Police detectives Doug Welch and Dick Tracy found her demeanor "flat, almost brittle," and observed her laughing inappropriately. Prosecutor Fred Hugi noted her "brittle shell of vivacious cooperation" and described her words as "verbal vomit," constantly flowing.

Her colleagues in Chandler often had mixed or negative feelings. Many thought she was a "slut" due to her affairs. Karl Gamersfelder, her supervisor, recalled Diane admitting she'd hit the kids.

Informants described her as having "single-mindedness" and "abrasive frankness." Some flatly stated, "Diane didn't care for her kids, Diane's not a good mother. The children were a hindrance to her." Others found her "moody," "flippy-floppy, up and down, mad and sad." Some called her "pure poison" and "whacked out."

In Oregon, Diane initially "came on" to males in her new post office. Cord Samuelson, an instructor, found her to like "punk rock, bourbon and coke, and sex." However, as the investigation progressed, her Cottage Grove coworkers, who were once supportive, "had dropped away." She had "no friends, male or female."

Diane frequently left her children unsupervised or with others, especially when pursuing her own interests or affairs. Lew Lewiston noted that he "wouldn't be with her if the children were around" and that Diane "shuttled the kids around between Steve, Mary Ward —who was a neighbor of the Downs’ in Chandler— and her Aunt Irene."

After Cheryl came home from morning kindergarten, she was often left alone because Diane "couldn't afford to send her to daycare." Cheryl would either sit on the porch of the locked house waiting for Diane to return hours later, or wander off to find someone in the neighborhood who would let her in.

Mary Ward's concern for Cheryl reached a point where she had to intervene. Diane admitted she'd been abusive, though claimed she'd stopped. Cheryl once darted in front of a car, saying, "It doesn't matter. Nobody cares."

When there were no willing sitters, Diane "left the kids home alone" when Christie was six, Cheryl five, and Danny fifteen months.

In fall 1981, when Diane was pregnant with a surrogate baby, her children were "sick all winter." Danny's strep infections were exacerbated by playing outside "with bare feet and no coat." They often ate fast food or Christie made peanut butter sandwiches for them.

Lewiston was angered when Diane told him she'd left the kids alone, stating that "eight wasn't old enough for a little girl to look after two other little kids."

A co-worker noted, "When she picked the kids up and Danny wanted affection, she pushed him away. She would come to visit and leave the kids home alone—from thirty minutes to two hours."

—

Diane's flirtatious behavior was noted by many, particularly her male co-workers. At the Palm Harbor Mobile Home Company, she "worked around lots and lots of guys" and, quote: "met men who treated me like a woman."

She "set out to work her way sexually through the male employees of the Chandler post office." She easily attracted lovers by being "available, submissive, and gigglingly flirtatious."

Her affair with Tim Lowry, another co-worker there, began when she invited him home for lunch, and it "ended up in bed." Tim observed that Diane "craved attention."

She moved from man to man, draining power from married men and finding excitement in forbidden relationships. She openly stated, "I loved them all... I just don't go to bed with people; I love them."

She pursued Lew Lewiston persistently, even choreographing their affair. Lew initially saw their relationship as a "brief fling," not a lasting alliance.

A Springfield woman observed Diane at a dance hall, approaching a man she didn't know, dancing, necking, and then leaving with him, describing it as "Just like that."

Her behavior was said to "verge on nymphomania." She told men she had "perfected the art of sex” and openly admitted to prosecutor Hugi that, "I flirt with everybody."

2.

At McKenzie-Willamette Hospital, medical teams worked in tense silence. Every second counted. One child was already gone. Another might not make it through the night. The third, just a toddler, was struggling to breathe.

Cheryl Lynn, seven, had arrived without a pulse. She’d been lying facedown on the floor of the passenger seat, partially covered with her mother’s postal sweater. Two close-range bullet wounds to her upper back had torn through her aorta.

Three-year-old Danny was found on the rear seat. His wound—a single bullet to the spine—was almost centered. The doctors noted black powder and unburnt residue, suggesting the shot had been fired from close range. He was paralyzed from the chest down. Whether it was permanent was still unknown.

Christie, the oldest, had taken two bullets. One passed near her heart, the other just below her neck. Her skin was cold. Her lips were blue. Her heartbeat flickered. She had bled out so severely she’d suffered a stroke. Her right arm hung limp. But she was still alive. Barely.

At 10:48 p.m., Officer Rich Charboneau arrived at the hospital. Diane’s parents, Wes and Willadene, lived less than two miles away and had rushed over after a call from the hospital. Inside the ER, Diane was being tended to for a single gunshot wound to her forearm. It looked painful, but not serious.

To some of the staff, she seemed composed—too composed. Detective Dick Tracy would later describe her as rational under the circumstances. But Officer Doug Welch found her tone frangible. There was laughter where there shouldn’t have been, and an absence of the emotional chaos expected from a mother whose children had just been gunned down.

Still, there was a job to do. Judy Patterson had phoned the Springfield Police Department, initially assuming a domestic dispute. If someone was willing to shoot three children, she reasoned, he might still be coming.

Diane told the police the shooting happened somewhere between Mohawk and Marcola roads but the details were unclear. She was angry at the delay in response so when Charboneau arrived, she snapped, “It’s about time you got here! There’s some maniac out there shooting people.”

Charboneau quickly realized the scene was outside the city limits and contacted the Lane County Sheriff's Office. Sergeant Robin Rutherford responded. He listened carefully to Diane’s version of events, then asked if she would return to the location with him. She agreed. Despite her injury, she seemed eager to have something to do.

As Rutherford and Diane drove the stretch of Old Mohawk Road, Diane pointed out the area where she claimed the shooting occurred. Her father Wes followed behind.

Diane described the gunman as a white male, late twenties, five-foot-nine, 150 to 170 pounds, dark shaggy hair, and a stubble beard. He wore a Levi jacket, jeans, and a dirty off-white T-shirt. She said he stepped into the road, asked for her car, and when she refused, pushed her aside and started shooting.

By 11:40 p.m., Lane County had issued a statewide teletype. The suspect was said to possibly be driving a yellow Chevrolet Chevelle from the 1960s or '70s, beaten-up, possibly abandoned nearby.

Search teams fanned out. Officers used metal detectors and brought in search dogs. Boy Scouts joined the sweep. Divers scanned the Little Mohawk River. Helicopters flew overhead. The stretch between Hayden Bridge and Marcola was combed with machetes and brush hooks.

Jim Pex, a senior criminalist from the Oregon State Police lab, arrived the next morning. By then, the area had been turned over. Only two .22 caliber bullet casings were found on the pavement. No gun. No signs of a struggle. A few beer cans, some bubble gum, and tractor tire tracks were collected—but nothing directly linked to a shooter.

The Downs vehicle, a red Nissan Pulsar, was towed for inspection. There was no damage to the car’s exterior. No sign of forced entry. The interior, covered in deep red fabric, made it difficult to spot blood stains—but there was one detail that stood out. The driver’s side was clean. No blood on the steering wheel, no visible transfer on the controls, nothing to suggest the shooter had reached inside from the outside.

The inconsistencies weren’t lost on investigators. Diane had said the man leaned in—or perhaps stuck his arm inside—and began firing. But whether he approached on foot, jogged up to the window, or waited in the road was already starting to shift in her retelling.

Still, no conclusions were drawn publicly. There were no press briefings suggesting disbelief. No statements hinting at suspicion.

But privately, within the ranks of law enforcement, doubts had already begun to surface.

And they were growing.

3.

In the days that followed, the shooting of Diane Downs’ three children became the central story across Lane County. What had started as a horrifying local crime began to spread through the regional press—then, rapidly, to a national audience.

The first headlines focused on tragedy. A mother ambushed on a rural road. Her children gunned down by a stranger.

The public was "squarely behind Diane Downs." Floral offerings and cards flooded her hospital room and she was viewed as a "bereaved mother." Floyd Gohn stated she was as "good a mother as an employee." Superintendent Ron Sartin expressed public outrage, saying "Here's a gal with three kids and something like this happens out of the blue."

Strangers wrote letters of support.

Local papers like the Eugene Register-Guard, the Springfield News, and the Cottage Grove Sentinel ran updates across their front pages. The case touched a nerve in the community.

But as spring turned to summer, the story shifted.

Diane Downs didn’t retreat from public view. She made herself available—almost constantly. She gave interviews to newspapers and television, both local and national. She held press conferences outside the hospital and later from home. She spoke to reporters at length, recounting the night of the shooting, sometimes offering new theories, sometimes minor new details.

She believed it was her duty to keep the public informed. That if the police wouldn’t listen, she had to go on television and make them listen. She told journalists she was smarter than the investigators and that they were missing obvious clues.

In private, detectives noted how eager she seemed to regain control of the narrative. She contacted reporters with supposed new memories. She showed some where her children used to live. She invited others to breakfast.

The spotlight suited her.

But to the public, the tone finally began to feel... off.

Her laughter, her ease in front of the camera, her willingness to talk at length about herself—these things began to sit uncomfortably with viewers. Sympathy gave way to uncertainty.

The first sign that something was shifting came when her attorney filed a motion to prevent further interviews with the children. It was a standard legal maneuver, but its meaning wasn’t lost on the public. Why would questioning need to stop—unless there was something to hide?

4.

At McKenzie-Willamette Hospital, the trauma team worked in silence and urgency.

Christie Ann Downs, eight, arrived in a state best described as suspended between life and death. A scan revealed that Christie had suffered a stroke which had damaged Broca’s Area, the section responsible for speech. It had also paralyzed her right arm.

She had survived. But now, she could no longer speak.

Investigators already understood that Christie might hold the only clear memory of what had happened in the car that night. Detectives Dick Tracy and Doug Welch took early note of her significance—but it was Deputy District Attorney Fred Hugi who became her protector. He visited her often, stood by her bedside, and made it quietly known among the team: they would wait. However long it took.

He told his colleagues that they would not rush an arrest without Christie’s words. If they acted too early, if they went to trial with only circumstantial evidence, Diane Downs might walk free—and if she did, Christie and Danny would go back into her custody. That possibility haunted Hugi. He believed that Christie would speak, and that when she did, her voice would be enough. But it had to come in her time, and safely.

In the meantime, other signs began to surface.

Paul Alton, an investigator with the DA’s office, happened to be in the ICU when Diane Downs arrived to visit Christie for the first time. Alton wasn’t prepared for what he saw. As Diane approached, he glanced at the monitor. Christie’s heart rate was elevated already—104 beats per minute. As Diane took her hand, repeating the words “Christie, I love you,” the monitor climbed again. 147 beats per minute. The doctors in the room said nothing. Christie’s face stayed still, but her body betrayed her. Her heart, Alton would later recall, was telling the truth.

He didn’t know what to call the expression he saw in Christie’s eyes as she looked up at her mother. Not at first. But eventually, he settled on a word: fear.

Doctors confirmed it. When Diane entered the room, Christie’s physical reactions were consistent. Heart rate spikes. Stiffness. No words, just the signal of alarm. Diane, meanwhile, remained calm. Her speech was controlled. Her tone, soft. Her composure never broke.

For nearly a year, the question of what happened inside the red Nissan Pulsar on Old Mohawk Road remained unanswered—officially.

Christie Ann Downs had survived two bullets, massive blood loss, and a stroke that damaged the speech center of her brain. In the early days, doctors weren’t sure she would live. She was pale, silent, and afraid but her comprehension remained intact—she could understand what was said to her—but she couldn’t speak. At times, she couldn’t even nod.

Her recovery was slow and deliberate. She was moved to the foster home of Ray and Evelyn Slaven, where her nightmares became less frequent and her sense of safety began to return. Doctors noticed subtle signs of improvement: the way her eyes followed people around the room, the way she stiffened when certain names were spoken. The most alarming response was always the same—when her mother entered the room, Christie’s heart rate spiked, her muscles tensed, and her expression flattened into something unreadable. It was fear. And it was consistent.

Dr. Carl Peterson, a child psychologist, began working with Christie in the summer of 1983. He believed that, with the right conditions, she would eventually be able to articulate what she remembered. He met with her weekly. He never pushed. In those early sessions, Christie didn’t speak about the shooting directly. But she didn’t deny it either. When asked whether anyone unfamiliar had been in the car that night, she shook her head. When asked if it had just been her family, she nodded.

Over time, Peterson developed quiet, indirect methods to help her communicate what she couldn’t yet say aloud. In one exercise, he gave her slips of paper and asked her to write down names. She would seal them in envelopes and burn them in a small metal dish. Later, she stopped burning them. Eventually, she allowed them to be opened. The handwriting was careful, the letters large and uncertain. But the meaning was unambiguous. When asked, “Who shot Cheryl?” she had written: “Mom.” When asked, “Who shot Christie?”—again: “Mom.”

5.

From the beginning, detectives had harbored doubts. The story was too neat, too implausible, and lacked any clear motive on the part of the supposed assailant. But it wasn’t until they began layering physical evidence over Diane’s own narrative that those suspicions deepened into something firmer.

Jim Pex, a criminalist with the Oregon State Police, conducted a detailed analysis of the red Nissan Pulsar. He examined it both at the scene and later in daylight, looking for any trace that could corroborate—or contradict—what Diane had told police.

According to Diane, she had stopped the car when she saw a man in the road, a stranger who approached her, demanded the vehicle, and then opened fire on the children inside. But Pex found no gunpowder residue on the driver’s side door or window. When a firearm is discharged, it releases a mix of gas, soot, and unburned powder. These particles spread outward in a distinct pattern—particularly in close-range shootings. And yet, there was nothing. No residue on or around the door where Diane claimed the shots were fired.

There was, however, a misting of dark red specks along the rocker panel beneath the passenger-side door. Pex recognized it instantly. It was high-velocity back-spatter—blood expelled in the opposite direction of a gunshot wound. That pattern, and its placement low on the vehicle, told a different story. Someone had likely been shot outside the car, at or near ground level. That person had not survived.

The interior of the Pulsar told its own story. Blood had pooled in the passenger seat and rear floorboards—but not on the steering wheel, not on the driver's seat, and not around the keys. And those keys, despite Diane’s claim that she threw them as a distraction, were still in the ignition when police arrived. Pex discovered something else: the car’s cassette player only operated if the keys were in place.

When Christie later indicated that Duran Duran’s “Hungry Like the Wolf” was playing during the shooting, it rendered Diane’s account impossible. If the keys had been removed, the song would have stopped.

There was no evidence of forced entry. No damage to the doors or locks. No drag marks on the gravel. And no shell casings inside the vehicle—only two found on the asphalt nearby. There were no footprints leading away from the road. No tire tracks that matched a yellow Chevelle. No sign that anyone had been lying in wait.

For detectives like Dick Tracy and Doug Welch, these gaps weren’t just troubling—they were telling.

Then came the diary.

Shortly after the shooting, Diane had asked Sergeant Jerry Smith to retrieve her spiral-bound notebook from home. She said she wanted it for comfort, something familiar during her stay at the hospital. But when Smith handed it over to investigators, its contents changed the direction of the case.

The entries were written in the form of letters. All were addressed to a man named Lew. It was Lew Lewiston, her former co-worker from Arizona, a married man.

The relationship had ended months earlier—Lew had made it clear he did not want children. But Diane’s diary painted a different picture. She wrote about how they would be together. She expressed confusion as to why Lew hadn’t followed her to Oregon. She wrote that the children would not be a problem. That they wouldn’t interfere.

To the prosecution, the motive began to emerge. Diane wanted to be with Lew, the children stood in the way.

It was this theory that DA investigator Fred Hugi began to follow. Not just as a hypothetical—but as the only explanation that made sense of Diane’s actions.

Her behavior in the weeks following the shooting only reinforced those concerns.

She brought a unicorn to Christie’s hospital room. A shiny figurine, soft and childish, the kind of thing a parent might bring to comfort a child. But Diane told Christie that the unicorn belonged to Cheryl now. And that unicorns never died. She said it with a smile.

Fred Hugi saw it as a gesture of preparation. A child’s memorial—wrapped in fantasy.

Diane had also been heard talking about reincarnation. That Cheryl might return someday. That maybe her fourth child—the baby she was carrying as a surrogate—was the spirit of Carrie, the child she had aborted years earlier.

Doctors and nurses were disturbed by the way she spoke. The absence of grief. The fixation on her vacation. The concern for the car. Her laughter during the television reenactment of the shooting. Her composure, brittle and unwavering.

Her manner of speaking made interviews difficult. She spoke quickly, almost without pausing, her voice described as breathy and adolescent. Sentences trailed off without conclusion. Her energy seemed driven not by distress but by performance.

And when she wasn’t speaking, she was often smiling.

So when Christie began to recover her speech and explicitly named her mom as the shooter, everything changed.

It was clear now that there had been no stranger. No bushy-haired man.

The final thread came from Diane herself. Over time, her own story began to shift. She admitted that she might have exaggerated certain things. That she had faked throwing the keys. That some of the changes were due to dreams. She mentioned two gunmen at one point. Then returned to one.

The shifts were subtle but cumulative.

Diane said she changed details because she was tired of being hassled. Because the detectives didn’t ask the right questions.

But her story, once stable, had begun to erode.

Piece by piece, the structure fell away. And underneath it, the picture that remained was growing clearer.

6.

Nine months and one week after the shooting that left one child dead and two gravely injured, Diane Downs was arrested on February 28, 1984, following a secret indictment charging her with one count of murder, two counts of attempted murder, and two counts of first-degree assault. The delay, while criticized by some within law enforcement who wanted a quicker resolution, had been intentional. District Attorney Fred Hugi had insisted on building a case that would hold—not one that simply cast suspicion, but one grounded in evidence strong enough to secure a conviction. He knew that a premature arrest could lead to acquittal, and if that happened, Diane would not only walk free, but could potentially regain custody of Christie and Danny. Hugi’s strategy relied not just on physical evidence but on testimony, particularly from Christie, and he waited until she could speak clearly enough to testify before moving forward.

Diane was arrested at her job in Cottage Grove. Detectives Doug Welch and Ray Broderick arrived alongside female deputy Chris Rosage, who carried out the arrest. Diane was informed of her Miranda rights and the charges against her. She wasn’t handcuffed. On the way to jail, Diane talked continuously, bringing up past trauma—including an allegation that her father had molested her, and that she had been thrown out of the house for fear she would tell—seeming less anxious about the arrest itself than about the uncertainty that had preceded it. In some ways, she appeared relieved.

By the time of her arrest, Diane was visibly pregnant. During a December 1983 court hearing, it had been revealed that she was two to three months along, meaning she had conceived around mid-October—squarely in the middle of the investigation. Diane later explained that she had wanted another child because she missed the love she received from Christie, Danny, and Cheryl, and had been trying for a year to get pregnant again, even attempting to conceive at a fertility clinic in Louisville. Fred Hugi worried the pregnancy would delay the trial or affect how a jury might view the case—trying a visibly pregnant woman for the attempted murder of her surviving children and the murder of her middle child risked triggering complex emotions in jurors. In her mugshot, her pregnancy was obvious. She was placed in an isolated intake cell, and during the trial she frequently cradled her abdomen or stroked it absentmindedly, drawing attention to it without speaking a word.

The baby, a girl Diane named Amy Elizabeth Downs, was born at 10:06 p.m. on June 16, 1984, while Diane remained in custody. She was permitted to hold the child for an extended time before the infant was taken from her, in accordance with a juvenile court order that stripped her of parental rights.

The trial began on May 8, 1984. Prosecutors had meticulously prepared Christie’s testimony, understanding that her account could make or break the case. While Diane had given dozens of interviews and press conferences, none of them amounted to a direct confession, and without a murder weapon or a surviving witness besides the children, the prosecution had long known that Christie’s voice would be pivotal. She had recovered slowly but steadily from the stroke that left her speech-impaired, living in the Slaven foster home, away from the pressure of the investigation and the presence of her mother, which had caused her visible distress during hospital visits. Doctors Carl Peterson and Robert Becker had worked with her in therapy, guiding her through the trauma without leading her. They prepared the jury for her halting speech and warned that she might show signs of emotional strain on the stand.

Christie took the stand on Monday, May 14. Her right arm hung limp at her side. Her posture was rigid, her face full of fear. Diane, seated at the defense table, leaned forward and smiled at her daughter, a smile that didn't waver, as though it might somehow soften what was coming. Fred Hugi, known to Christie from prior visits, asked her who had shot Cheryl. Christie, already crying, answered: "My mom." When asked who had shot her, she repeated the same. She confirmed that no stranger had been present, and that she had watched the events unfold from the back seat. She described seeing both a long and a short gun in the trunk that night, and said her mother had put them there. She remembered the music—“Hungry Like the Wolf”—playing as the shots were fired, and she said Diane was not crying afterward, or if she had cried, it wasn’t much.

Dr. Peterson testified that Christie had never indicated anyone other than her mother as the shooter, not once, not even in therapy sessions where she might have felt safe offering another version.

The physical evidence supported her words. The two .22 caliber shell casings found at the scene bore microscopic extractor marks identical to those on cartridges retrieved from Diane’s Glenfield rifle, which was located in her closet. Although the rifle itself had not been fired, the markings proved that the bullets had been chambered through the same firearm. While the murder weapon—the .22 Ruger semi-automatic pistol—was never found, testimony from Steve Downs, Diane’s ex-husband, placed the gun in her possession shortly before she moved to Oregon. He said he had last seen it in the trunk of her car. Forensic scientist Jim Pex testified that a pistol in a zippered case could float, possibly explaining why divers failed to recover it from the river despite repeated searches.

Diane claimed she only owned a .22 rifle and a .38 revolver, both accounted for. She insisted she no longer had the Ruger, and at one point told Lew Lewiston that Steve had taken it back. But the evidence told a different story.

Lewiston, Diane’s former lover, also took the stand. A married man who had worked with Diane as a mail carrier in Arizona, he described their affair in blunt terms. He said Diane was obsessed with him and that she had pressured him to leave his wife, promising they could build a life together. He said, plainly, that he had told her he did not want children—ever—and that he had no desire to be a father. The prosecution used his testimony, along with Diane’s own diary entries and recordings, to argue motive. Diane, they claimed, saw her children not as loved dependents, but as obstacles to a fantasy future with a man who did not want them.

Hugi leaned heavily into this point, describing a life full of failed ambitions: Diane’s dreams of becoming a doctor, or a successful entrepreneur, long since abandoned, leaving behind a sense of futility that, in the state’s view, twisted itself into a solution. Remove the children. Free herself to chase what she believed was still within reach.

From the moment of her arrest through the final days of the trial, Diane showed little change in demeanor. She smiled in court, often at inappropriate times. She maintained her innocence, clinging to the story of the bushy-haired stranger. But that version had begun to collapse from the inside—and by the time the jury heard from her own daughter, it no longer resembled a story at all.

7.

The trial of Diane Downs concluded in the early hours of a Saturday morning after six and a half weeks of testimony and twenty-two hours of deliberation. The jury had retired late Friday night, and just after midnight—at 12:20 a.m.—they returned with a verdict. In a hushed courtroom, jury foreman Daniel Bendt read out the findings: guilty of murder in the first degree for the death of Cheryl Lynn, guilty of attempted murder and first-degree assault for the attacks on Christie and Danny Downs. The verdict was unanimous.

Diane, who had remained composed throughout most of the proceedings, turned visibly pale as the verdicts were announced. For the first time since the shootings, her façade showed signs of cracking. She trembled, her posture stiffened, but even then, she tried to maintain control. Observers noted how she managed a strained smile as she was led from the courtroom. When asked for a reaction, she responded blankly that she didn’t know what she was “supposed to think.” It wasn’t until she was placed in the jail wagon, away from the public eye, that she finally cried.

Her defense attorney, Jim Jagger, later acknowledged he had expected this outcome. He revealed that the jury had reached a consensus on the four lesser charges early in their deliberations, and that only one juror had initially hesitated on the murder count, though that too was resolved before the night was over.

Two months later, on August 28, 1984, Diane appeared again in court for sentencing. Under Oregon law, a conviction for murder carried a mandatory life sentence, but the court had the discretion to impose additional time if the defendant was deemed a “Dangerous Offender.” The state had prepared for this. Dr. Barbara Suckow, the psychiatrist who examined Diane on behalf of the prosecution, testified that Diane met the criteria. She was diagnosed with narcissistic, histrionic, and antisocial personality disorders—conditions that, taken together, painted the picture of a woman deeply self-absorbed, manipulative, and dangerously detached from the consequences of her actions.

Before sentencing, Diane was given the chance to speak. She insisted she was a law-abiding citizen, told the court she would serve her time "for this man"—again blaming the fictional bushy-haired stranger—and professed her love for her children, including the infant daughter she had only held for four hours. She vowed to find the real killer, repeating the story that had unraveled over the previous year.

Judge Gregory Foote, unmoved, addressed her directly. He acknowledged the horror inflicted not just on the victims but on the entire community, and spoke plainly about her inability to express genuine remorse. He described her actions as the calculated disposal of her children—"objectified," he said, "like useless baggage." His words were precise, and his tone unyielding.

To make certain that future parole boards would remember the full weight of her crimes, Judge Foote ruled that the sentences would run consecutively. For the murder of Cheryl Lynn Downs, Diane received life in prison plus an additional five years for the use of a firearm. For the attempted murders of Christie and Danny, she was given thirty years, with a fifteen-year mandatory minimum. For the assaults, she received twenty years, with ten-year minimums. In total, Diane Downs was sentenced to life plus fifty years, with twenty-five of those years to be served before any possibility of parole. Judge Foote concluded with a clear statement of his intent: that Diane Downs would never be free again.

The Oregon Parole Board affirmed this decision, stating she would not be eligible for parole until 2009, at which point she would be fifty-four years old.

Fred Hugi called her a “cold-blooded, cruel, vicious murderer,” noting that her testimony remained a denial from start to finish. She expressed no regret, no introspection. Even after giving birth to Amy Elizabeth in custody—an event that might have softened or shifted her outlook—there was no sign of postnatal depression or emotional struggle over the separation from the child. Instead, she radiated what prison staff later described as joy and a sense of renewed purpose, even blaming Matt Jensen, the baby's father, for the loss, asking him pointedly whether he would miss her.

Inside prison, Diane’s behavior remained troubling. She was cheerful. She still insisted on her innocence. She pushed autopsy photographs of Cheryl in front of guards and fellow inmates, demanding they look. She referred to herself as “just a little girl,” and insisted she posed no threat. But by then, the story she once controlled had taken on a life of its own.

The courtroom had seen through the mask. The jury had believed her daughter. And the sentence was final.

8.

Just before midnight on June 14, 1984, Diane Downs gave birth inside a secured hospital room, with a uniformed deputy at her side, to a baby girl she named Amy Elizabeth Downs. The newborn, eight pounds five ounces, with delicate, almond-shaped eyes and long, slender fingers, bore a strong resemblance to Christie at birth. Diane had briefly considered naming her “Charity Lynn” but changed her mind after hearing Fred Hugi refer to her children as “fungible” during the trial, a word that seemed to strike a nerve. Diane was allowed to hold the child for an extended period—far longer than most in custody deliveries—and Chris Rosage, the female deputy present during the arrest, stayed with her at Diane’s request. But this moment was quiet, uncelebrated, watched only by state officials, and marked not by joy but by finality. Within hours, Diane was back in her jail cell, alone and, by her own words, feeling emptied of the love and presence that the pregnancy had given her during the preceding months.

She later wrote to Matt Jensen, the child’s likely father, blaming him for the loss of their daughter, warning him he would never see her, and explicitly stating that she hoped to pass her pain on to him. Jensen had already signed documents relinquishing his parental rights, adding only a note of uncertainty—“I believe I could be the biological father”—and expressing no desire for involvement, though he wished the child a good life. That baby, later adopted and renamed Rebecca “Becky” Babcock, grew up far from the courtroom, in a quiet high desert home surrounded by 80 acres of serenity and the care of adoptive parents Chris and Jackie Babcock, who already had one adopted daughter and had no intention of disclosing the details of Becky’s biological heritage unless it became necessary.

For years, it didn’t. But when Becky was sixteen, watching television with her boyfriend, a dramatization of Diane Downs’s story appeared on screen. The moment Farrah Fawcett screamed, “Someone just shot my kids! There’s blood—blood everywhere!” Becky felt a jolt of unease, then the creeping realization that this wasn’t just another true crime movie—it was her origin story. She had always known she was adopted, and she was vaguely aware that her birth mother was incarcerated, but no one had told her why, and she had never felt the need to ask. That night changed everything. Watching her birth mother’s crimes played out in front of her, she described the experience as watching horror shift from fiction to memory, the crime moving from “something that happened” to something that was now inextricably part of her life.

She would later learn that her adoptive parents had been warned of Diane’s prison escape in 1987, just three years after her birth. Authorities feared she might try to find her newborn daughter, and Becky’s parents were advised to alert her preschool and babysitter.

Three years into her sentence, Diane Downs orchestrated a daring escape from the Oregon Women's Correctional Institute that would briefly terrorize the community and expose serious security flaws in the prison system.

On the morning of the escape, Diane walked into the unsupervised prison recreation yard and scaled an 18-foot fence, maneuvering over rolls of razor ribbon before jumping to freedom. The perimeter alarm system was triggered, but she was already out and heading toward a vehicle by the time an officer responded.

After hiding under a truck, Diane ran to State Street where she hitched a ride from a Salem woman, claiming she was involved in a car accident and her boyfriend was injured. She was dropped off at a family restaurant about one mile from the correctional facility, then traveled on foot into town.

Authorities considered her "cunning and dangerous" given her history. The escape forced correction center administrators to confront the reality that their security system had failed to prevent three breakouts in that area of the prison in the last 10 years. The perimeter fence, though alarmed, and the interior fence, which was not, were deemed "not an effective deterrent."

Salem Marion County and State Police officers joined forces, combing the downtown area with air patrol support. Officers noted the escape was "not well planned" and checked prison visiting lists while patrolling areas where most of Diane's friends lived.

Ten days later, Diane was captured at a house in Salem, just blocks from the prison. The breakthrough came when authorities found a blank piece of paper with indentations in her cell. Sophisticated equipment revealed a map and an address that had been written on a sheet above it.

When police arrived at the house, they found Diane upstairs in a bedroom with Wayne Cipher, a man who claimed he didn't know her when she first arrived. Cipher later stated she came over, said she'd "just got out of prison," and he allowed her to stay for a "couple nights." He found her "the most honest girl I'd ever talked to in my life."

Upon arrest, Diane "just kind of stood there in the room like she didn't know what to do." She was subsequently held in strict isolation in a secluded cell with no personal belongings and faced charges for second-degree escape, which could add another five years to her prison sentence.

—

By age eight, Becky had begun asking questions. Her mother offered little, describing a blonde-haired, green-eyed woman who had “done something bad” and promising to explain more when Becky was older. Curious, Becky convinced a babysitter to tell her Diane’s full name and to mention a book that had been written about her. Becky found the book at a Barnes & Noble, flipped through the pages, saw the photographs, and quietly returned it to the shelf. “I wasn’t ready,” she later said. “I was still playing with Barbies.”

Years later, when she was seventeen and pregnant, Becky decided she couldn’t carry the secret alone. She gave birth to a son, Christian, in 2002, and though she loved him deeply, she continued to struggle with the weight of her biological inheritance. Her teen years had been unstable—she experimented with drugs, cycled through older partners, and believed that some part of her destructive behavior stemmed from her bloodline, thinking, “Maybe this is Diane in me.” The fear of becoming her birth mother never left her. She found herself addicted to male attention in ways that seemed to echo Diane’s patterns and admitted to questioning whether her sense of morality could be trusted at all.

Becky would go on to place a second child for adoption during a period of unemployment and emotional instability. She described the process of handing over her newborn to another mother as the hardest moment of her life, but also as a defining one. That night, she found the prison address an ex-boyfriend had once given her—he’d been obsessed with the Diane Downs case—and wrote to her birth mother. She kept her message simple, unsure what response she wanted, but when Diane replied, Becky described her physical reaction as a near-panic, her chest tightening, her pulse racing. The first letter was affectionate, warm, almost innocent. But the second—sent the next day—was disjointed, paranoid, and deeply unsettling, filled with references to a mysterious protector who had “watched over you for me,” and claims that Diane had been framed by the real killer. More letters followed, each stranger than the last, until Becky asked her to stop. Diane responded with a bitter note: “You are a piece of work, Rebecca…” and warned that Christian might grow up to be a killer too. Becky regretted ever making contact. She said later, “I didn’t want a murderer to love me.”

After that, things shifted. Becky stopped blaming herself. She stopped chasing some missing piece she thought only Diane could provide. She returned to school, made the dean’s list, and found purpose in proving—mainly to herself—that her life would not be defined by blood. She credits her adoptive parents with helping her believe that nurture could overpower whatever damage was passed down through genetics. She refuses to read the full details of Diane’s case to this day, describing it as a Pandora’s box she has no desire to open. Diane's father once reached out, but she declined a relationship, especially after discovering he operated a website dedicated to Diane’s “innocence.” She has no interest in learning the identity of her biological father. Jackie Babcock remains her closest confidant. Chris, her adoptive father, is her hero. Her son Christian, now grown, has Diane’s green eyes and slender fingers—but Becky says he is kind, respectful, and safe.

While Becky struggled to make peace with a past she never asked for, Christie and Danny Downs found something closer to stability. During the investigation, the children were placed under temporary protection by the state after Diane attempted to remove them from the hospital, and their exposure to her was tightly controlled from that point on. Doctors and caseworkers noted that Christie in particular began to show more clarity and less fear once her mother’s visits ended. In 1986, two years after the trial concluded, both children were legally adopted by Joanne and Fred Hugi. Fred, the man who had prosecuted their mother and coaxed the truth from a terrified little girl on the witness stand, became their legal father. The adoption severed all legal ties to Diane Downs. Christie, who continued to suffer speech and physical impairments, eventually regained confidence in the safety of her surroundings. Danny, who remained paralyzed from the chest down, was given assistive care and support. The Hugis raised the children with little fanfare, describing their approach simply as “love and protection.”

Diane Downs, meanwhile, remained in prison. Her behavior was consistent—cheerful when it suited her, defiant when challenged, always maintaining her innocence. She insisted the jury had been swayed by the press. She predicted she would be out in five to seven years, then revised her forecast to six months to two years, then doubled down on her claim that she’d been framed. She horrified fellow inmates and guards by shoving Cheryl’s autopsy photos in front of them, demanding they look. One guard reportedly vomited. Diane believed the photos were evidence of injustice—not of her crime, but of her victimhood. She told reporters she was “just a little girl,” incapable of doing harm, someone the jury had misunderstood. Even after decades behind bars, her story never changed—only its context did.

The story of Diane Downs, and the children she nearly destroyed, left behind more than a record of tragedy—it left behind children who survived, a daughter who was born in the shadow of violence but who reclaimed her life, and a courtroom that witnessed the collapse of a lie told too many times. There are still those who believe her story, and Diane herself continues to write letters, grant interviews, and spin alternate versions of the truth. But those who were there—those who heard Christie speak, who saw Danny’s injuries, who listened as the courtroom fell silent while the verdicts were read—have long since moved on, leaving Diane behind, not as a mystery, but as a fact.

9.

In cases such as this, the distance between appearance and reality can be vast, and heartbreakingly so. Diane Downs arrived at the hospital carrying the weight of a story she would tell over and over, one that cast her as the desperate mother, the victim of a ruthless stranger. Yet beneath that narrative, a darker truth was unfolding, one written not in shadows but in blood and silence. Her children, innocent and vulnerable, became the unwilling witnesses to a crime whose perpetrator hid behind the guise of motherhood.

The evidence, painstakingly gathered by investigators, and the brave testimony of a child forced to speak the unspeakable, revealed a story of betrayal and violence far removed from the version Diane offered. Christie Downs, only eight years old, summoned the strength to break through layers of confusion and fear, speaking words that shattered the carefully constructed illusion. Her voice became a beacon of truth in a case clouded by deception, and the court listened. The impact of her testimony resonated through the courtroom and beyond, reminding all who heard that the smallest voice can carry the heaviest weight.

Diane’s story, repeated countless times in interviews and courtroom appearances, never fully changed, but the cracks grew wider, the inconsistencies deeper. Her composure, often described as cold and detached, contrasted sharply with the devastation around her. The children she claimed to love were left forever marked—physically, emotionally, and psychologically—by a night that altered their lives irreparably.

In the years that followed, the consequences of that night rippled outward: a daughter born in confinement, raised far from the shadows of the past; children adopted by those who sought to give them safety and love; a community struggling to reconcile the horror of what happened with the seeming normality of those involved. Diane Downs remains incarcerated, a figure of fascination and revulsion, her narrative unchanged despite the passage of decades.

The Diane Downs case stands as a chilling reminder that evil sometimes wears the most familiar face, and that the truth can emerge from the most fragile voices. It challenges assumptions about family, trust, and the instinct to protect. At its core lies a story of survival and courage, one that endures long after the headlines fade, carried forward by those who refused to remain silent.