Forty years ago, on May 19, 1983, twenty-seven-year-old Diane Downs drove her three children

Forty years ago, on May 19, 1983, twenty-seven-year-old Diane Downs drove her three children:

eight-year-old Christie, seven-year-old Cheryl and three-year-old Danny into the emergency room at McKenzie-Willamette Hospital in Springfield Oregon. She claimed that a “bushy haired stranger” shot her and her children.

Cheryl was shot in her right shoulder blade and just below her left shoulder blade. She was pronounced dead on arrival. Danny was shot once in the back, permanently paralyzing him from the waist down. Christie was shot three times: twice in her left chest and once near the base of her left thumb.... 

While the doctors and nurses were working to save the lives of her two surviving children, Diane was being treated for a minor gunshot wound to her left arm and to the shock and surprise of the hospital staff, the divorced postal worker was non emotional and had made several comments that were suspicious and inappropriate.

Diane had told the police was that she and the children had been visiting a woman she knew and she left around 9:30 that night. While driving down Old Mohawk Road, the kids fell asleep while the song Hungry Like The Wolf by Duran Duran played on the car’s tape deck....

 

She said that a man was standing on the side of the road, flagging her down and so she pulled over to see what he wanted. Diane asked the man what the problem was and he said “I want your car” and she said “You’ve got to be kidding me.” And it’s at that point when he shoved her, reached in and shot the three sleeping children.

At that point, she says after struggling with this man, he shot her in the left forearm and once again demanded her car. Diane claimed that she pretended to throw her keys in a ditch and when he was distracted, she jumped back into her Nissan Pulsar and sped off to the hospital.

Several parts of her story made no sense at all. What mother takes her kids sightseeing after dark? What mother then pulls over to see what a mysterious man would want? And why was she only shot in the arm while her children had fatal and critical injuries?

Even though Diane had said that she raced pedal to the metal to the hospital, she took the time to neatly fold a towel over her arm but she did not render aid to her children who were bleeding in the front and back seats.

Four days after the shooting, the police decided to do a reenactment with Diane to get the forensics right and throughout the tape, she laughed and made jokes and wasn’t upset over reliving the gruesome shooting of her children.

Diane gave one interview in full hair and makeup after the next thinking that it would garner sympathy for her but all it did was raise the hair on the back of people’s necks. She never smiled when talking about Christie and Danny but smiled when she talked about Cheryl because in her eyes, she wasn’t the perfect child and never would be.

During her interview with Anne Bradley Jaeger, Diane revealed she was pregnant with her fourth child. She said: “You can’t replace children, but you can replace the effect they give you. And they give me love, they give me satisfaction, they give me stability, they give me a reason to live and a reason to be happy, and that's gone, they took it from me, but children are so easy to conceive."

The father of Diane’s unborn child was a man she met on her mail delivery route. She showed up at his house one evening with whiskey and marijuana and they ended up having sex.

Police were looking for a possible motive and when they discovered Diane’s diary, they found out that she had written almost daily to a former co worker she had fallen in love with named Robert Knickerbocker. He was married but he was separated from his wife, Charlene at the time.

Knick (as he was known to his friends and family) ended the relationship because Diane was possessive and even though he liked kids, he didn’t want to be a father to her children. When Diane moved from Chandler, Arizona to Springfield, Oregon, she thought Knick would follow her but he had no intention of getting back together with her and he and his wife reconciled a short time later.

Diane was heartbroken and felt that her children were hindering her happily ever after with Knick and thought if the kids weren’t in the picture anymore, she could have Knick back.

Despite all the evidence and public pressure to arrest Diane, she remained a free woman because the DA wanted Christie to be well enough to tell the investigators what happened that night. The stroke Christie Downs suffered impaired her speech and initially prevented her from telling police what she had seen.

After months of physical and mental therapy, Christie was asked to write the name of the person who shot her and her siblings on a piece of paper and of course when the therapist opened it, it said two words: “My mom.”

Diane Downs was arrested on February 28, 1984, nine months after she shot her children. She was charged with one count of murder, and two counts each of attempted murder and criminal assault.

Prosecutors argued that the motive was simple: Diane shot her children to be free of them, so that she could continue her affair with Knick. Much of the case against her rested on the testimony of her surviving daughter, Christie, who, once she recovered her ability to speak, described how her mother shot all three children while parked at the side of the road, and then shot herself in the arm.

On June 17, 1984, Diane Downs was found guilty of shooting her three children. Days later, she gave birth to a fourth child, a daughter, whom she named Amy Elizabeth Downs. The baby was immediately adopted by Jackie and Chris Babcock and renamed Rebecca. Christie and Danny were adopted by the prosecutor Fred Hugi and his wife Joanne.

Diane was sentenced to life in prison plus fifty years for the murder of her daughter Cheryl and the attempted murder of Christie and Danny. Judge Gregory Foote made it very clear that he never wanted her to regain her freedom.

On July 11, 1987, three years into her sentence, Diane escaped from her cell by scaling an eighteen-foot razor wire fence. For ten days, she managed to evade law enforcement despite a fourteen-state manhunt before she was recaptured at the home of a fellow inmate’s husband. She received an additional five year sentence for the escape.

As of 2023, Diane Downs remains behind bars, likely for the rest of her life. She’s been denied parole three times: in 2008, 2010 and 2020. She and her family maintain her innocence to this day. 

Christie is a married mother of three and named her youngest daughter after her late sister Cheryl. Danny is a computer whiz and has also chosen to live privately.

Rebecca Babcock has done interviews discussing her birth mother and how that information nearly destroyed her as a person. Over the years, she’s reached out to Christie and Danny but they’ve chosen to not to have a relationship with her due to all the history. Today, she works as a behavioral health coordinator and is a proud mother to her son Christian.

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