Diane Downs, Small Sacrifices Murder Mom, up For Parole – page 3

Continued from page 2: Diane Downs, Small Sacrifices Murder Mom, up For Parole – page 2

During Diane Downs’ trial her daughter Christie told the jurors a tale of unbelievable horror: How her mother stopped the car and then took a gun out of the trunk. How Diane shot her little brother Danny sitting next to Christie in the back seat. Prosecutor Fred Hugi asked Christie, ‘Do you remember when you got shot?’ When Christie said ‘Yes’, Hugi asked her, ‘Who shot you?’, Christie, tears streaming down her face, said, ‘My mom’.

Diane Downs was found guilty on all counts on June 14, 1984. In 1984 the state of Oregon didn’t have the death penalty. Diane was sentenced to a life term plus an additional 50 years for the use of a firearm.

Diane gave birth to baby girl that was adopted while Danny was sentenced to life in a wheelchair. Christie suffered permanent partial paralysis on one side of her body.

Diane Downs’ story was far from over when she was led away in handcuffs to serve her life sentence.

In 1987, Diane escaped from the Oregon Women’s Correctional Center by scaling a barbed fence in broad daylight.

Diane was caught 10 days later in a rundown house occupied by three men one mile from the prison. When officials searched her cell they discovered a blank piece of paper with indentations that turned out to be a map to the house.

For the escape Diane received an additional 5-year sentence. Diane was then transferred to a prison in New Jersey where in 1989, she published a book, Diane Downs: Best Kept Secrets.

Diane dedicated the 318 page book to her children:

I dedicate this book to all my children because they have lost more than anyone else.’

Diane’s father Wes Frederickson claimed he spent $50,000 to publish his daughter’s book. In the book Diane attempted to refute the evidence against her using court transcripts and personal recollections. The book is ranked on Amazon, 705,141 in sales. There are currently 18 reviews written by customers.

One of the reviews:

I read this because I have read and seen the accounts of Diane Downes and her crime. Although, I have always believed that she is guilty some of the points she made regarding how her case was handled made sense-in the beginning. By the last page, her desperate grasping and self made conclusions as to why she convicted were those of a mentally disturbed person who views the whole world as one big conspiracy against her. Everything she says is about HER.

Frederickson still believes his daughter is innocent even though Diane told authorities that, by age 11, her father had begun to molest her with repeated instances of fondling and caressing. In interviews Frederick denied he sexually abused Diane.

On September 26, 1988, Diane Downs appeared via satellite on the Oprah Winfrey Show, with author Ann Rule whose true crime book, Small Sacrifices, is based on Diane Downs and the crimes she committed against her children.

In 1989, the TV movie Small Sacrifices starring Farah Fawcett, was broadcast on national television. Diane’s father called the show a stereotype that unfairly portrayed his family as hayseeds. Diane’s father announced that he expected an arrest in the next few months of the bushy haired stranger:

‘We know who shot them and we’re going to get him,’ Frederickson said. ‘We are moving slowly in order to build some additional evidence.’

Frederickson must be moving as slow as his daughter drove to the hospital the night in May of 1983 after her children were shot-A witness testified seeing a car matching the description of Down’s car driving between 5-7 mph on Old Mohawk Road during the time period investigators believe Diane had already shot her kids.

While incarcerated at the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility in Clinton, N. J., Downs was caught preparing for another escape in May of 1989. A man who had followed Downs to New Jersey from Oregon and then became engaged to Diane told authorities Diane had tried to push him into taking helicopter lessons. According to Diane’s ‘fiance’, Diane wanted him to pilot a helicopter into the prison yard and spirit her away. After spending a year in solitary confinement Downs was caught planning her next escape in May of 1991.

Diane filed a civil suit against the state of Oregon claiming her constitutional rights were violated because her attorney failed to effectively represent her. Diane was sent back to the Oregon prison for the trial. In August of 1991, Downs was sent to a more secure facility in Washington, Gig Harbor.

In 1993, Diane Downs attempted to use the federal courts to force visitation rights with her daughter Christie who had turned 18. Diane claimed keeping her from seeing her daughter, was “cruel and inhuman punishment” and that it “violates her daughter’s constitutional rights to free speech”.

A more cynical view would be Diane using state-enforced visits as an attempt to sway Christie into changing her testimony.

Diane was moved from Washington back to Oregon in order to attend the legal motion Diane filed to get a new trial. At that time, the ruling had still not been issued. Diane was then transferred to a new state and new prison: Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla in August of 1993.

In 1996, after being rejected by the state courts for a new trial, Diane filed suit in federal court. Diane continued to use the same argument: A bushy haired stranger was the culprit. Diane claimed she had new evidence.

In February of 1999, Diane was turned down by the federal courts for a new trial.

In 2003, Eric Mortenson of the Oregonian talked to individuals who were affected 20 years earlier by Diane Downs’ actions. An emergency room physician, John Mackey, spoke to Mortenson, and the horror he witnessed:

“To see these three kids moribund in a car that pulls up outside your door …” Mackey begins. “Initially we didn’t know how many there were. I was just horrified — there’s another one — it was just too horrifying.”

Nothing can be done for Cheryl, shot twice in the back. Surgeon Steven Wilhite stops the internal bleeding and miraculously saves Christie, shot twice in the left chest. Danny, shot near the spinal cord, wails in pain and fright; he survives, paralyzed from mid-chest down.

“After we were through doing what we needed to do, I went in a back room and cried like a baby,”Mackey says. “It was just the kind of thing that does a number on your brain.”

Danny and Christie’s story merged with that of prosecutor, Fred Hugi, after Hugi and his wife adopted Diane’s two children.

Detective Doug Welsh, assigned to his first homicide case, found Diane Downs’ behavior odd the night he interviewed her at the hospital:

“It was probably an hour, maybe a little more, into the interview . . . when I began to have some serious doubts about her story,” Welch said.

“Her demeanor was really odd. Coupled with the fact that she was not nearly as interested in talking about the suspect and giving us a description of him, than in talking about her boyfriend in Arizona and what a great lover he was, and how she missed him.”

Mackey told Downs that Cheryl was dead and Christie’s condition was critical.

“She was flat, emotionally flat, no tears,”Welch says. “She had a lot to be upset about.”

Diane Downs, 2007

Time has taken a toll on 53-year-old Diane Downs. No longer the fair-haired beauty, December 9 is the date of Downs’ first appearance before a parole board. Downs has served 25 years of her life plus 50 years sentence. Downs wrote a 15 page letter to the parole board maintaining her innocence and stated reasons as to why her attempts to escape indicated a “healthy attitude about society”:

“Of all the felonies on the law books, ‘escape from prison’ is the only one that indicates a healthy attitude about society,” Downs writes to the parole board in a letter obtained by The Oregonian. “If you truly want to know what sort of prisoner won’t come back to prison, your first clue is the prisoner who thinks more about being on the outside of this place than being ‘well programmed’ or ‘adjusted’ HERE.”"

The Diane Downs case caught the nation’s attention because it was about a mother who sought to murder own children. Not because she was certifiably insane, but because her ex-lover claimed he didn’t want children. Downs, when planning the crime, must have fantasized her ex-lover would view her as a mother who valiantly fought off a bushy haired stranger after he attacked her and her children. Diane had visions of ‘Nick’ rushing to her side in her time of tragedy and heroic efforts to save her children.

Diane’s goal was to eliminate all three of her children. Ironically, it was 7-year-old Cheryl who died. The same little girl who told others of how her mother wanted to kill her because she was a “bad” little girl.

Between 1974, when Diane was 19, and 1984, when Diane turned 28, Diane had six pregnancies: one abortion, four children which were Diane’s and one baby where Diane was a surrogate mother.

Noted true crime author Ann Rule’s book Small Sacrifices continues to capture the interest of true crime fans. According to Rule, the book kept Rule from worrying about the bills and was more successful than her first book written about the infamous serial killer Ted Bundy, The Stranger Beside Me.

Page 2
Page 1
DBKP Front Page

Source – KVAL. com – Does Murderer Diane Downs Deserve Parole?Source – Mind Disorders.com
Source- CMM Forum Source – Oregon Live, Rick Attig
Image – Diane Downs
Image – Diane Downs, 1st day of trial
Source – Oregon Live
Source – TruTv.com
Source – Diane Downs photo

Back to DBKP Front Page.

Your Ad Here

Tags: children, Diane Downs, murder, oregon, parole, prison, sociopath, Women