Continued from page 1: Diane Downs, “Small Sacrifices” Murder Mom, up For Parole

The hospital staff was unable to save 7-yr-old Cheryl. Cheryl had been in the passenger seat next to Diane, while Christie and Danny had sat in the rear seat. When Downs was allowed to visit 8-yr-old Christie in Intensive Care, the staff noted that Downs’ demeanor was “icy”. When Downs took her daughter’s hand in hers, and said “I love you”, she said it through “clenched teeth”. Even more telling was her daughter’s reaction: Christie, who was unable to speak, had looked at her mother with what seemed to be fear in her eyes. Christie’s heart monitor “jumped” when Downs took her daughter’s hand into her own, from 104 beats per minute, to 147.

When detectives searched Downs’ residence they found her diary and personal letters as well as a .22 caliber rifle, and a box of standard .22 shells. They also noticed a photo of a man with a beard on top of Downs’ television. The detectives wondered if the photo was of the mysterious man Downs called soon after reaching the hospital. A call made before she knew her children’s condition and before she called her parents. Downs’ diary was a cornucopia of entries where she wrote about her obsessive desire to be reunited with a former lover in Arizona.

Fred Hugi, assigned by the District Attorney’s office to prosecute the case, had already begun to view Downs as a suspect. Hugi, upon hearing of Christie’s reaction to her mother’s visit, as well as the circumstances surrounding the shootings, made the decision to order round the clock protection for Danny and Christie. Protection, not from the “bushy haired stranger”, but from their own mother, Diane Downs. Hugi also ordered a child psychologist to “remain” at Christie’s side. Hugi hoped to eventually gain the girl’s trust in order for Christie to feel “safe” enough” to talk about what really happened at the side of Old Mohawk Road.

Steve Downs, Diane’s ex, who lived in Chandler, told detectives over the phone that his ex-wife was a “bed hopper” but that he “carried no grudge”. He seemed “genuinely upset” over the news of the death of his daughter, Cheryl, and the attempted murders of Danny and Christie. Steve told detectives about the married man with whom Diane had a “torrid” affair before she moved to Oregon. The man was a postal worker who worked at the same location as Diane. The man had ended the affair with Diane and had returned to his wife. When the detectives asked Steve if his ex-wife were capable of harming her children, Steve told them, “no way” and “she loves those kids”.

When questioned again, Diane Downs denied she owned a .22 caliber pistol, the type of weapon used in the shootings.

During the next few days, Downs’ version of the story changed “slightly”. Detectives visited Steve Downs in Chandler, Arizona, where they learned that Downs owned a .22 pistol. They also contacted the friend of Downs whom she claimed she had visitied before the shootings. Detectives learned that Downs had shown up with an ad for a horse.

ABOVE: Diane Downs, “re-enacting” the attack on her and her children

Four days after the shootings, authorities filmed Diane, who “re-enacted” her version of what occurred on Old Mohawk Road. Diane is seen “giggling” in the film. The tape is now used by the Lane County Sheriff’s Department as part of training on how to spot someone who is lying.

Lane County spent 1,149 hours searching for the .22 pistol used in the attack at the location Downs claimed the shootings took place. Searchers combed through the thick berry vines and lush green vegetation and sent divers into the McKenzie River, a favorite spot for fly fishing and white water rafting. Detectives were unable to find the murder weapon but were able to locate ejected .22 caliber bullet casings in the vicinity.

The prosecutor’s office never “bought” Downs story. To them, the use of the bushy haired stranger raised immediate red flags. Questions were raised: if the man had wanted the car, why didn’t he shoot Diane instead of targeting the children inside the car? Forensics were unable to find any bullet holes in the car which meant that each shot had hit its mark. They also found that despite the massive amounts of blood, blood smears, and spatter, there was none to be found on the driver’s side, as well as on the steering wheel, even though Downs had suffered a gunshot wound to her forearm.

Investigators went through Downs’ diary and letters she’d written. Down’s words painted a picture of a woman who carried an obsessive torch and fantasized about a future together with her former lover. Hugi sent 2 detectives down to Chandler to talk to the man that Diane Downs fantasized about and yearned to be with: Robert “Nick” Knickerbocker.

Nick Knickerbocker was the man whom Diane Downs saw as her soul mate. Nick and Diane worked at a postal station in Chandler. Nick insisted that his wife, Nora, attend the interview with the detectives. Nora already knew about the affair and had forgiven him.

Nick told the detectives that he had met Diane Downs in 1981, shortly after her divorce from Steve. A flirtation led to an affair in 1982 where Nick and Diane met at cheap hotels. Nick also refused to see her when she had her kids.

“I wouldn’t be with her if the children were around,” he explained. “It was an affair — it didn’t seem right.”

Nick began to tire of Diane’s incessant demands to be together. The relationship came to a head in February of ‘83 when Diane demanded to know who Nick”loved” more, her, or his wife, Nora. Nick stated that when he told Diane he loved his wife, Diane went into rage unlike he’d ever witnessed. Diane followed him home and up the front steps where Nora stood. Nora stated that Diane “pounded” on the front door “all night long” and that Diane later continued to call on the phone. Diane wasn’t going to let Nick go so easily: she reappeared on Nick and Nora’s front stoop the next day and “lectured” Nora about what to do with Nora’s marriage, and Nora’s relationship with Nick, until Nora slammed the door in Diane’s face. Diane continued to call and post letters to Nick. Nick told the detectives that Diane owned a .22 caliber pistol.

A woman who babysat for Diane’s children told detectives that Diane “put everything before those kids”. The babysitter also told of an incident where she caught Cheryl, the little girl who was now deceased, jumping on a bed. The babysitter then made Cheryl, who was 3 at the time, sit in a chair and “think” about what she had done wrong. The little girl asked her in a “quiet” voice, “do you have a gun here?” When the babysitter said no, and why did you ask?, Cheryl responded: ‘I want to shoot myself. My mom says I’m bad.’”

In June the prosecutor’s office determined there still wasn’t enough evidence to convict Diane. Investigators were able to piece together a time-line of when Diane visited her friend with her kids and when she reached the hospital with her blood soaked car and critically injured children.

According to detectives, Diane and her kids left her friend’s house at 9:45 p.m. and then arrived at the hospital at 10:48. A witness had come forward and reported seeing a car, that he was sure was Diane’s, traveling along Old Mohawk Road at 10:20 at an estimated “five to seven” miles per hour. Prosecutors surmised that Diane had probably shot her kids at 10:15, and that the “slow” ride to the hospital was to give the kids more time to succumb to their wounds.

A county judge placed both Danny and Christie into protective custody while Diane remained yet to be placed under arrest, nor charged with any crime.

In the spring of 1984, Diane met again with detectives to “explain” her side of the story. It was at this meeting that Diane claimed that the bushy haired stranger was “someone she might have known” and that he had “called her by name”. The detectives decided to play “hard ball”. They asked Diane why she had waited to tell them this new info. Diane responded saying “she didn’t know”. Did the man follow her? Diane “didn’t know”. How long did it take for her to drive to the hospital after the shootings. Again, Diane “didn’t know”. One thing Diane did know, she was pregnant.

“I got pregnant because I miss Christie, and I miss Danny and I miss Cheryl so much…You can’t replace children — but you can replace the effect that 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…”
-Diane Downs

Diane subsequently concocted different stories: in one version she linked the shootings to two men wearing ski masks, and in another, tied the shootings to “a set up by rival drug dealers and corrupt law enforcement officials”.

Diane married Steve Downs in 1973, when she was 18 and Steve, 19. The couple lived in Chandler, Arizona, where Diane gave birth to Christie in October of 1974. The marital relationship was rocky: Diane would return home to her parents, who then lived in Chandler, numerous times, while Steve worked a series of jobs.

In 1976, Diane was 21 when she gave birth to her second child, Cheryl, in January. During this period Steve got a vasectomy, yet Diane had become pregnant again, this time opting for an abortion. Steve has his vasectomy “redone”. The couple then move to Flagstaff, Arizona, where the same pattern of Diane running back to her parents with her kids, continued. In 1977, Diane decided she wanted another baby and asked Steve to have his vasectomy reversed. Steve refused.

In 1978, Diane and Steve moved to Mesa, Arizona, where the two found work at a mobile home manufacturer. Diane became pregnant, the father, a 19-yr-old co-worker, Russ Phillips. Both Phillips and Steve wanted Diane to get an abortion, which she refused to do. Steve accepted the baby as his own while Russ Phillips was allowed to visit his son whenever Diane needed a babysitter.

In 1979, Diane landed a job at the Chandler post office and gave birth to Stephen Daniel (Danny) Downs in December. Diane’s Christmas present to Steve, a .22 Glenfield rifle.

In 1980, Diane decided she would make an excellent surrogate mother, which paid a hefty $10,000 fee, and filed an application filled with false statements. In December, as part of their screening process, the surrogate agency required Diane to meet with a psychiatrist in Arizona. The psychiatrist found Diane “neurotic” then referred Diane for more “tests”. Diane gave Steve a .38 revolver for Christmas.

In February, Diane was ordered to meet with a psychiatrist in Kentucky who diagnosed Diane as having Histrionic Personality Disorder.

The psychiatrist also found Diane to be a “less than stellar” candidate:

“The couple’s last child, reportedly, was the result of Ms. Downs’ picking five “ugly” younger men to seduce in order to have a child by one of them….” “Ms. Downs’s conversation was effusive, immature and frequently self-disparaging.” “This individual has poor ability to express anger in a modulated fashion and tends to have poor behavioral controls.” (Anne Rule’s Small Sacrifices)
–CMM Forum

Diane was accepted as a surrogate.

Histrionic Personality Disorder, or HPD, is a personality related disorder where an individual displays a pattern of “attention seeking” and “excessive dramatic behavior” beginning in early adulthood. People who exhibit HPD can be “highly emotional, charming, energetic, manipulative, seductive, impulsive, erratic, and demanding”.

HPD is the only personality disorder linked to physical appearance. Researchers found that sufferers of HPD generally have “above average” looks. HPD individuals have a strong need to be the center of attention. An HPD individual will “exaggerate, throw temper tantrums, and cry” if they perceive they aren’t the center of attention and are “naive, gullible, have low frustration levels, and strong dependency needs”. In personal relationships, they use “dramatization” in order to impress others. Not surprisingly, they are also “insincere”. They also lack cognitive skills such as “reasoning, learning, thinking, understanding, making decisions, and using memory”.

Some symptoms of HPD include “inappropriate sexually or provocative behaviors towards others”, and an “overestimation of the level of intimacy in a relationship”.

Even though Diane Downs loved “being” pregnant, her children received substandard care. Diane would leave the children at home, alone, with Christie, then age 6, in charge of her younger siblings. At that time, Cheryl was 5, and Danny, 15 months.

In the spring, Steve and Diane made the decision to divorce. Shortly after, co-worker, Mark Richmond, whose marriage was “on the rocks”, with two daughters, moved in with Diane and her kids. By the fall, Mark and his kids moved out, “unhappy” with Diane and her “lack of parenting”.

In September of 1981, Diane traveled to Kentucky for her first round of artificial insemination. The trip was a success.

A neighbor wrote a letter to Diane with concerns about Cheryl. While Christie was in school, Cheryl was forced to sit on the porch of Diane’s locked house after kindergarten class. Cheryl also showed up a neighbor’s homes, hungry, looking for something to eat, and other children to play with.

Diane angrily confronted the neighbor who wrote the letter, and was adamant that she hadn’t neglected Cheryl. The neighbor reported that Cheryl had told her that her mother had threatened to “kill her” for being a “bad girl”. The neighbor subsequently agreed to baby sit all three of Diane’s kids. By November, neighbors grew worried about Diane’s children, who were often seen playing outside “in their bare feet” and no jackets, while Cheryl would ask neighbors for something to eat.

While Diane’s kids were often left to their own devices, with 6-yr-old Christie in charge, the now pregnant surrogate “mom” Diane was featured, along with two other women, in the Washington Post in an article written by Elizabeth Beaumiller about surrogate mothers.

In May, Diane delivered her surrogate baby in Kentucky then returned with a payment of $10,000. Diane, now age 25, with three children at home, an abortion, and a surrogate baby under her belt, planned to become pregnant again as a surrogate.

In June, Diane bought a trailer for her and her kids and began taking college courses. An essay, written by Diane, as part of her class assignment, was about child abuse.

“Excerpts from an essay, by Elizabeth Diane Downs, Mesa Community College, July 1982

“The gruesome crime of child abuse not only destroys the lives of our children but it usually brings terror into the lives of our grandchildren….
Abused children develope (sic) different personalities depending on the type of abuse they receive and the amount of abuse they must endure. The personalities developed in abused children stay with them all their lives. They may receive conciling (sic) or some form of help which turns the childre(sic) around, but no one can take away the scars and pain inflicted on an innocent child forced to submit to mistreatment…it will ultimately affect that child’s life as an adult. Then, when this scarred chld, turned adult, has children of his or her own, these children… are usually abused in some way or another by their parents….

…I wish we could stop this vicious cycle. If we could only take a whole generation and stop child abuse, we could wipe out the plague…..
Generation after generation, the abuse continues. If you abuse your child, he or she will no doubt abuse your grandchildren.”
- Ann Rule, Small Sacrifices
-CMM Forum

Diane continued to have a series of affairs with married coworkers until she hooked up with Nick Knickerbocker. The relationship was purely physical between the two while Nick began to grow weary of Diane’s obsessive behavior. Nick, who had a vasectomy, told Diane that he had no desire to have children.

In September, Diane was due in Kentucky to receive artificial insemination in order to conceive her second surrogate baby. Diane discovered she was infected with a venereal disease. Diane accused Nick of being the cause of her having a sexually transmitted disease. As Nick had only been with his wife, Nora, and with Diane, it was Diane who had picked up the disease from one of her other “flings”. Nick decided to stop seeing Diane.

In January of 1983, Diane decided to open her own surrogate company, Arizona Surrogate Parenting.

In February, Diane had an appointment in Kentucky for a second round of insemination. Nick’s wife, Nora, contacted the agency. The end result, the agency terminated its agreement with Diane, while her own company folded. Diane once again begin to harass Nick and Nora at their home. By April Diane made the decision to move to Springfield, Oregon, to an area close to where her parents now resided. Diane was sure that Nick would follow. Diane would continue to bombard Nick with phone calls and letters while Nick was relieved Diane was gone. When Diane made a return trip to Arizona on April 28, Nick made sure Diane understood the relationship was finished. Less than one month later, Diane would stage the attack on her children and then claim the assailant was a bushy haired stranger.

Christie was making progress: the gunshot wounds caused a stroke which affected her speech. Christie had to “relearn” how to speak. Christie had also begun to remember what had happened the night her mother took her and her siblings on a “moon light ride”. Hugi had made the decision not to press Christie until she was ready to remember whether the person who shot her, her little brother, and killed her little sister, Cheryl, was a “bushy haired stranger”, or someone whom she depended upon for love and for protection: her mother, Diane Downs.

A grand jury met for nine months listening to evidence presented by the prosecution, as well as witnesses, including Diane. A forensic expert testified that unfired .22 caliber shells found in Diane’s home had gone through the same mechanism as the gun that was used in the crime. The same gun the police were unable to locate.

The Grand Jury returned with an indictment of one charge of murder, two charges of attempted murder, and two charges of criminal assault. Diane was arrested on February 28, 1984.

Rick Attig, a twenty-one-year old reporter for the The Springfield News, was one of the reporters that Downs would call and complain to about the case. Attig recalled that when Downs was finally arrested, she phoned Attig from the Lane County Jail and “complained” about the previous day’s article Attig had written about the case. She also told Attig that she had “new information”. The first thing Diane asked when Attig arrived for an interview at the jail was “how does my hair look”? Diane failed to provide any “new information”, instead she “rehashed” the bushy haired stranger claim.

Visibly pregnant Diane Downs, Day one of trial, 1984

During his opening remarks, Fred Hugi claimed Diane’s fixation with Nick Knickerbocker, a married man who didn’t want kids in his life, was Diane’s motive for shooting her kids. With her “kids out of the way”, Diane believed Nick would relent in his decision to end their relationship. Hugi also spoke to the jury about the method: the .22 caliber pistol that Diane bought in Arizona but denied owning in Oregon.

On May 14, the jury was taken out to Old Mohawk Road and also to inspect Diane’s car. A nurse testified that Diane, when told the doctors were working on her kids, laughed and said, “Only the best for my kids!” and that she laughed again and said, “Well, I have good insurance”.

An x-ray technician testified that Downs complained about “being seen in public without makeup” while the hospital staff worked feverishly to save her kids.

Diane had told the cops that the song, Hungry Like a Wolf, by Duran Duran, was playing on the radio when the attack occurred. When the prosecution played the song during the trial, Diane sat in her chair, “snapping her fingers” and “tapping her foot”.

Diane’s daughter, Christie, “tear-streaked and quivering”, took the stand for the prosecution.

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