Diane Downs | |
|---|---|
 Downs in 1984 | |
| Born | Elizabeth Diane Frederickson August 7, 1955 |
| Occupation | Postal worker |
| Criminal status | Incarcerated; earliest possible release 2025 |
| Spouse |
Steve Downs
(m. 1973; div. 1980) |
| Children | 5[a] |
| Conviction(s) |
|
| Criminal penalty | Life imprisonment with the possibility of parole after 25 years |
| Escaped | July 11–21, 1987 |
| Details | |
| Date | May 19, 1983 |
| Location(s) | Springfield, Oregon |
| Killed | 1 |
| Injured | 2 |
Date apprehended | February 28, 1984 |
Elizabeth Diane Downs (née Frederickson; born August 7, 1955) is an American woman who murdered her daughter and attempted to murder her other two children near Springfield, Oregon, on May 19, 1983. Following the crimes, she made claims to police that a man had attempted to carjack her and had shot the children. She was convicted in 1984 and sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 25 years. She briefly escaped in 1987, but was quickly recaptured. Downs has been repeatedly denied parole and psychiatrists have diagnosed her with narcissistic, histrionic, and antisocial personality disorders, with one labelling her as a "deviant sociopath".[1][2]
Diane Downs was born on August 7, 1955, in Phoenix, Arizona, to Danish and English American parents Wesley Linden Frederickson (October 12, 1930 – September 30, 2017) and Willadene Frederickson (née Engle) who were married on April 11, 1954.[3] In adulthood, Diane spoke extremely negatively of her father, criticizing his lecturing, disciplinarianism, and the power he had over her mother. "He spent way too much time with my mom, and my mom spent no time with me," Downs later said. She has testified that her father sexually abused her when she was a child, although she later recanted the allegations, and both of her parents denied that any incident took place.[4]
Diane came from a family with strict conservative values and her parents forbade her to wear fashionable clothes or makeup which made her the subject of frequent bullying. However, after the age of 14, she became more rebellious and she graduated from Moon Valley High School in Phoenix, where she met her future husband Steve Downs.[3] Despite her parents' disapproval, Downs continued the relationship. After high school, she enrolled at Pacific Coast Baptist Bible College in Orange, California, but was expelled after one year for promiscuous behavior and returned to her parents' home in Arizona.[3]
On November 13, 1973, Diane married Downs (who had enlisted in the U.S. Navy) after running away from home.[3][4] "I did not marry Steve for love," Diane later said at her trial. "I married Steve to get out of the family." Their first child, Christie Ann, was born in 1974; Cheryl followed in 1976. She ended her next pregnancy with an abortion, but after witnessing pictures of fetuses at an anti-abortion booth in a local fair, she regretted her decision. "I felt the need to do something to make amends for what I had done wrong," she testified. "When I had the abortion, I was led to believe that a six-week fetus is nothing more than mucus." Diane later testified that Steve had had a vasectomy, so she seduced a male friend, Mark Sager, who became the father of her third child, Stephen Daniel, who was born in 1979.
Diane and Steve regularly argued about financial issues and fought over alleged infidelities, which resulted in their divorce in 1980 when it was discovered that Daniel was the result of an extramarital affair by Diane.[5] On May 8, 1982, Diane gave birth to a girl named Jennifer while acting as a surrogate mother, despite failing her psychiatric tests twice due to their indicating signs of psychosis.[6][7] Prior to her arrest, Downs was employed by the United States Postal Service, assigned to the mail routes in the city of Cottage Grove, Oregon. According to Steve, Diane treated her children like "crap" and lacked any maternal instincts. Steve later elaborated; "Diane forbade everything to her children. If Danny demanded a little attention, she rejected him... but the worst was when one day I caught Cheryl jumping on her bed, I told her that it was not allowed. I made her sit down and think about what she had done. Cheryl remained calm while looking up and asked, 'Is there a gun here?' I replied that no and the reason for this question to which she told me: 'I want to kill me. My mom says I'm bad.'"[8]
On May 19, 1983, Downs shot her three children, and drove them in a blood-spattered car to McKenzie-Willamette Hospital in Springfield, Oregon.[9][10] Upon arrival, Danny, aged 3, was paralyzed from the waist down, Christie, 8, had suffered a disabling stroke and Cheryl Lynn Downs, 7, was dead.[11] Downs herself had been shot in the left forearm. She claimed that she was carjacked on a rural road near Springfield, Oregon, by a strange man who shot her and the children. However, investigators and hospital workers became suspicious because they decided that Downs' manner was too calm for a person who had just experienced such a traumatic event. She also made a number of statements that both police and hospital workers considered highly inappropriate.[4]
Downs claimed that on a drive home from a friends house, she decided to take a scenic route home. All her children were asleep and Downs claimed that during this drive home, at around 10 p.m., she saw a strange man standing in the road flagging her down. She said she pulled over and got out to talk to the man. She described him as a "bushy haired stranger". He then immediately demanded that she give him her car keys; Downs claimed she refused and they got into a physical altercation that resulted in his shooting her in the left arm. He then opened the driver's side door and shot all three of her children. Downs then said she pretended to throw her car keys in a bush and the man went to go look for them. While he was looking for the keys, she jumped back in the car and sped off to the nearest hospital.
Suspicions heightened when Downs, upon arrival at the hospital to visit her children, phoned Robert Knickerbocker, a married man and former coworker in Arizona with whom she had been having an affair.[12] The forensic evidence also did not match her story; there was no blood spatter on the driver's side of the car nor was there any gunpowder residue on the driver's door or on the interior door panel. Knickerbocker also reported to police that Downs had stalked him and seemed willing to kill his wife if it meant that she could have him to herself; he stated that he was relieved that she had left for Oregon and that he was able to reconcile with his wife.[13]
Diane did not disclose to police that she owned a .22 caliber handgun, but both Steve and Knickerbocker informed authorities that she did. Investigators later discovered that she had bought the handgun in Arizona during her marriage to Steve. While they were unable to find the weapon, they found unfired casings in her home with extractor markings from the murder weapon. Most damaging, witnesses saw her car being driven very slowly toward the hospital, at an estimated speed of 5–7 mph (8–11 km/h)—contradicting her claim that she drove to the hospital at a "high speed" after the shooting. Based on this and additional evidence, Downs was arrested nine months after the shooting on February 28, 1984, and charged with one count of murder and two counts each of attempted murder and criminal assault.[14]
Prosecutors argued that Downs shot her children to be free of them so that she could continue her affair with Knickerbocker, as she claimed that he let it be known that he did not want children in his life.[4] Much of the case against her rested on the testimony of her surviving daughter, Christie, who, once she recovered her ability to speak, described how her mother shot all three children while parked at the side of the road then shot herself in the arm.[4][15] Downs was convicted on all charges on June 17, 1984, and sentenced to life in prison plus fifty years. She was required to serve twenty-five years before being considered for parole. Most of Downs' sentence is to be served consecutively. The judge made it clear that he did not intend for Downs ever to be free again.[16]
Downs' sentence meant she could not be considered for parole until 2009. Under Oregon law at the time, as a dangerous offender, Downs would have been eligible for a parole hearing every two years until she is released or dies in prison.[17] In her first application for parole in 2008, Downs reaffirmed her innocence. She insisted that, "Over the years, I have told you and the rest of the world that a man shot me and my children. I have never changed my story."[18] Her first parole hearing was on December 9, 2008.[18]
Lane County District Attorney Douglas Harcleroad wrote to the parole board: "Downs continues to fail to demonstrate any honest insight into her criminal behavior... even after her convictions, she continues to fabricate new versions of events under which the crimes occurred."[18] He also wrote that "she alternately refers to her assailants as a bushy-haired stranger, two men wearing ski masks, or drug dealers and corrupt law enforcement officials."[18] Downs participated in the hearing from the Valley State Prison for Women.[18] She was not permitted a statement, but answered questions from the parole board.[18] After three hours of interviews and thirty minutes of deliberation, she was denied parole.[18] Downs had parole hearings in 2010 and 2020, which were both denied.[19][20][2] Downs maintained her innocence in all parole hearings.[21]
Downs' two surviving children eventually went to live with the lead prosecutor on the case, Fred Hugi. He and his wife, Joanne, adopted them in 1986.[16] Christie Downs, Downs' first child who testified at her trial, suffers from a speech disability. She has a son and a daughter whom she named Cheryl in memory of her late sister.[22] Prior to her arrest, Downs became pregnant with a fifth child, and gave birth to a girl, whom she named Amy Elizabeth, a month after her 1984 trial. Ten days before Downs' sentencing, Amy was seized by the State of Oregon and adopted by Chris and Jackie Babcock, who subsequently renamed her Rebecca Babcock. As an adult, Rebecca appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show[23] and ABC's 20/20,[24] where she discussed how she felt about her biological mother. Rebecca wrote to Downs in her younger years, and has stated that she regrets the contact, regarding her mother as "a monster".[25][26] In 2020 Rebecca was the subject of Season 2 of the podcast "Happy Face", where she is trying to find her biological father.[27]
Downs was initially incarcerated at the Oregon Women's Correctional Center in Salem. On July 11, 1987, she escaped from her cell by scaling an eighteen-foot (5.5-meter) razor wire fence. For ten days, Downs managed to evade law enforcement—despite a fourteen-state manhunt—before she was recaptured.[28] She received an additional five-year sentence for the escape. After her recapture, Downs was transferred to the New Jersey Department of Corrections Clinton Correctional Facility for Women after heavy lobbying from Hugi.[29] The Salem prison was located 66 miles from Hugi's home in Springfield; during her ten days of freedom, Hugi had feared that Downs would attempt to travel there in hopes of contacting Christie and Danny. Despite significant security upgrades at the women's facility after the escape, state officials accepted Hugi's argument that the risk of harm to Christie and Danny, in the event of another escape, was too great for Downs to remain incarcerated in Oregon.
Author Ann Rule wrote the book Small Sacrifices in 1987, which detailed Downs' life and murder trial.[30] The book documented accounts by friends, acquaintances, neighbors, and her surviving daughter Christie who questioned the quality of her parenting.[31] A made-for-TV movie, also titled Small Sacrifices, starring Farrah Fawcett as Downs aired on ABC in 1989. In 1994, after serving ten years, Downs was transferred to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.[32] While in prison, she earned an associate degree in General Studies.[32] In 2010, she was relocated to the Valley State Prison for Women in Chowchilla, California,[29] but was transferred out when the facility was converted to an all-male institution in 2013.[33]
