Episode Transcript
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0:00
I mean it was a huge story. It made, you
0:02
know, national news when Diane
0:05
Downs drives to the
0:07
Springfield hospital with those
0:09
kids, and I think
0:11
it shocked everybody just because somewhere
0:14
deep in their gut, it's like a mom
0:16
and kids that just that doesn't
0:18
make sense. And the story of the shaggy haired stranger
0:21
didn't make a lot of sense either at
0:24
first. But everybody was willing to go
0:26
along with that for quite a while. And
0:28
I think what really sort
0:30
of snapped things was
0:32
the re enactment and
0:35
having Diane with the car
0:38
and having the police ask her various
0:40
questions and to reenact that moment, I
0:43
think began the real questions
0:45
in that story.
0:58
The reenactment Eric Mason is referring
1:00
to is a video shot by Springfield,
1:02
Oregon Police. In it, they asked
1:04
Diane to walk them through the events of that night
1:06
to try and get a better understanding what happened.
1:09
We'll get to that in a bit, but first
1:11
we have to ask who exactly is
1:14
Diane Downs. How does
1:16
a seven year old mal carrier and mother
1:18
of three wind up at a Springfield,
1:20
Oregan hospital on a random weeknight,
1:23
having apparently shot her children and herself.
1:26
The story starts in Arizona. Her
1:28
brother James, describes her family life.
1:31
Describe your dad for me, help me understand your
1:33
household. Sure, I was
1:35
thinking about this last night. The
1:37
year is nineteen sixty. Right,
1:40
they got married in the fifties, and
1:42
in the fifties and the sixties. It was before
1:44
the bra burnings. You know, there
1:46
was a patriarch, and there was a matriarch,
1:48
and there was a mom, and there was a dad. The
1:50
dads did this, and the moms
1:53
did this. The dad's provided the moms
1:55
around the house. Right. The one of
1:57
the questions I had, well, what happens when there was conflict
2:00
in your house? Well, there wasn't conflict
2:02
in my house because that was my dad's
2:04
job to take care of the conflict that there
2:07
ever was conflict, and his job
2:09
was resolved the conflict. And
2:12
by doing that, there was no
2:14
conflict in the house because he took it all. He
2:17
took it all. It's truly a patriarch
2:20
kind of house. Diane's
2:23
childhood was, by most accounts, pretty
2:26
normal, according to her brother, although
2:28
Diane herself claims that she was sexually
2:30
abused by her father. She spent
2:32
part of her childhood and a Phoenix suburb
2:34
before she and her family moved to a farm.
2:37
So your mother always conferred to your
2:39
father on decisions. Always
2:42
that was her job. How big was your
2:44
household? But there's five. Yeah,
2:47
I had a really fantastic childhood. My
2:49
sister had a fantastic childhood. Remember
2:52
growing up on Charter Roak Road, And
2:54
I remember we had a block fence
2:56
in our backyard and over in the right hand corner,
2:58
Diane had pigeons, you
3:00
know, and I thought, those are the coolest thing. Pigeons,
3:03
you know what I mean, their pets. There
3:05
were homing pigeons. Yeah, you put
3:07
little bands on their their little
3:10
foot and they fly off and
3:12
then they come back. You know. I was
3:14
fat in third Gray, right, So, and
3:16
I don't remember a whole lot of a lot, a whole lot about arming
3:18
pigeons at the time. Yeah,
3:20
Diane was one of the real
3:23
I don't want to say main driving factor, but I'll
3:25
use the words to basically leave
3:28
Phoenix and moved to the farm, where she
3:30
inevitably changed her life
3:32
forever by meeting Steve. You
3:35
know, we moved from Phoenix to the farm, and out
3:37
on the farm, it was a great time. Man. Diane
3:40
had a horse, and Cathy
3:42
had a horse, and John had a steer,
3:44
and I raised pigs. I
3:47
raised pigs with my grandpa. As a matter of fact,
3:51
Diane started dating Steve when she was in
3:53
high school. Early on, she tried
3:55
to establish a sense of standards with who
3:57
she dated, but with Steve it didn't
4:00
last. I remember that
4:02
I was in the sixth grade and she was a
4:04
junior in high school and Steve had dropped out. But
4:06
it's part of dating Diana,
4:09
part of being with Diane. One of the things that was
4:11
requested was that you got to check back
4:13
into school, and so he did
4:15
start going to high school and who
4:18
subsequently got kicked out because
4:21
she was talking to somebody and he ended
4:23
up beating the guy up. I
4:25
actually admired Steve growing up.
4:27
I looked up to him, as you
4:30
know, he was a male figure, you
4:32
know, and I put him to the word mail. You
4:35
know, he was a manly man, you
4:37
know, he took no gelf. And this something
4:40
Diane says, you know, basically, you know, whatever, if
4:42
if there was another guy that was bugging her, he would
4:45
beat him up, and she felt safe and
4:47
she felt protected until
4:49
there was nobody else to beat up Unfortunately,
4:53
Steve's propensity for expressing his
4:55
anger stopped with people who were bothering
4:57
Diane, and he began to physically
4:59
abuse Diane as well. Apparently
5:01
those two fought. They
5:04
would physically fight fairly
5:06
often, I mean punching to the face kind of
5:08
fighting. Diane briefly joined
5:10
the military, possibly to escape
5:12
her home life. Diane joined
5:14
the Air Force, probably
5:16
to get away. Um.
5:19
But Diane joined the Air Force and flags
5:21
now and um, she was away
5:23
for a little while and Steve was there taking
5:25
care of Christie. What year
5:27
was this about. I
5:30
was a freshman nine.
5:33
Then Diane said, you know, I
5:35
can't stay away from the kids. And so
5:37
she got an honorable discharge
5:39
or whatever happens with the Air Force, and
5:42
she came back. When Diane went
5:44
to the Air Force, Steve and I were playing pool and
5:46
there was a lady there, and he says, I
5:49
bet you I can get her to go to bed with me,
5:52
you know, as a conquest. And
5:55
it's like, I'm I'm a freshman in high
5:58
school. You know. It's like, and his
6:00
wife's brother right
6:03
right, and she's in the Air Force
6:05
and she's not there. And Um,
6:08
whether he did or whether he didn't. I don't know, but
6:10
I just know what he said to me. They
6:12
fought. They fought a lot.
6:15
And one time when I was there, they
6:17
were fighting and he was on her
6:19
back, beating on her back. I
6:22
remember he didn't hit her in the face.
6:25
He was he was sitting on her. I
6:27
think he was even sitting on her head, holding her
6:29
down like that and beating her on the back. It
6:33
was just it was pretty intense.
6:40
After her son, Danny's birth, Diane
6:43
and Steve divorced. Steve believed he
6:45
couldn't be Danny's father since he claimed
6:47
to have had a vasectomy. Despite
6:49
their divorce, Diane continued to be on the
6:51
receiving end of his physical abuse. According
6:54
to James, later on and
6:56
she got tired of and she started fighting
6:58
back, so she
7:00
she would engage him. He and
7:02
but obviously, you know, she lost
7:05
um. So he shoved her onto the bed and
7:08
at that point Cheryl came in.
7:12
So these took place in front of the kids
7:14
at times, and it
7:16
was never in Diana starting
7:18
the first engaging. It was always heard offending
7:20
herself from him, and so she said,
7:23
you know, gets Cheryl out of the room. And
7:26
by that time Steve was sitting on Diana,
7:28
punching her in the face, and blood was everywhere.
7:32
Diane shouted to take the
7:34
kids and run, so we
7:37
dragged Cheryl away and got Christie
7:39
and Danny. When they fled, it
7:41
seemed inescapable called
7:43
the police, and by the time the Americoba County's
7:46
sheriff, Deputy Sean Carnahan, Steve
7:49
was gone. And when he walked into
7:51
Diana's living room he saw my bloody
7:53
sister sitting in the chair, his
7:55
shoulders dropped, the bruises,
7:58
her broken nose, eyes, dark neck,
8:01
ringing red the drink. Deputy said,
8:04
Diane, my god, what happened to you? What
8:07
do you think? She said, It's
8:10
like, he says, you've
8:12
two been doing this for six years now. It says
8:14
when will it stop? And
8:18
she just said, I don't know. You
8:20
know, sas I divorced, I mean
8:22
a year ago I thought it would stop. Then I
8:24
guess it was wrong. Eventually
8:27
Diane was pushed to her breaking point. Diane
8:30
shot a bullet through the floor
8:32
of her trailer when he was there one night. The
8:35
next Tuesday, judge signed a restraining order
8:37
to keep Steve away from Diane's home to
8:40
be sure that was the first or the last meeting
8:42
he inflicted on my sister. Ten
8:44
days later, we chased her down into the bathroom.
8:47
The restraining order to forget forbidding him
8:49
access to her home was only a week old.
8:52
She still wore the bruises from the last attack.
8:55
He didn't know she grabbed a gun to defend
8:57
herself. The gun that Diane
8:59
used to shoot through the floor would later be the
9:01
subject of a search by police as a
9:03
potential murder weapon. We'll come
9:05
back to that in another episode.
9:11
Not long after the incident where Diane fired
9:13
a shot into the floor, her mobile home
9:16
caught on fire when she flew
9:18
to I think it was Kentucky.
9:21
She wanted to be a circuit mom. She had done
9:23
that once. She was trying to do it again. And
9:25
one of these trips the day or the
9:28
maybe the evening of the day that she left, her
9:30
trailer caught on fire, and
9:32
you know, she filed an insurance claim. They paid
9:35
out, and she later
9:37
when things frayed between her and Steve,
9:39
turned him in for that and he
9:42
was arrested and charged with the insurance
9:44
fraud and had to pay some money back. Everything
9:47
she owned was gone. She and her children
9:49
were homeless, and this was a brand new mobile
9:51
It was a brand new mobile home. Yeah, it was four
9:53
months old. They used to Steve and Diane
9:55
worked at mobile home manufacturing plans.
9:58
Oh, I didn't know this growing
10:00
up I called growing up twenties.
10:02
Right. They worked
10:04
together in manufacturing plans, you
10:06
know, and always you can keep better tracks.
10:08
Ever if he's working with her. I
10:11
remember that, um my sister came over to
10:13
visit, and when she was over to visit, um
10:15
I had a guitar and
10:17
she borrowed my guitar and she took it back
10:19
with her. And what I remember about the mobile
10:21
home burning is the fact that my guitar was
10:24
in the mobile hole when it burned, and
10:26
I never got my guitar back. They
10:45
actually, I'm labeled an electrical fire and
10:49
labeled an electrical fire, but it
10:51
came out that that's not what I was. That's
10:54
came out in court, but that's not what it was. How
10:58
much an insurance pay out for
11:00
for the mobile homes seven thousand dollars
11:02
right there and
11:05
back in that was a
11:07
chunk of money, seven thousand
11:09
dollars to repair the mobile home, which
11:11
wasn't used to repair the mobile's correct,
11:14
where did the seven thousand Steve? Yeah,
11:18
Steve, and again he crossed
11:20
the line. So
11:24
but go moving forward. Do you wonder why Steve
11:26
might have testified that I guess my sister.
11:28
Well, here's here's the reasons. You know, Steve
11:31
confessed to the crime of arson, rendering
11:33
a homeless and putting hard as mercy. But
11:35
he Steve actually said that they
11:38
conspired together to burn her home for
11:40
the insurance money. Diane's
11:42
living situation put Steve back into
11:44
a position of power over her. She
11:46
willingly gave Steve custody of their children
11:49
to prevent them from being homeless. According
11:51
to James, Steve leveraged this into a
11:54
means of control, but everything she owned
11:56
was gone. She and her kids
11:58
were homeless. This is after their restraining
12:01
order and Steve says, hey, come live
12:03
with me. Diane refused,
12:06
but had to let her children move in with him because
12:08
she didn't want him to live in the car. Right, So
12:11
she kept paying on the mortgage for the mobile home,
12:13
and she went to a person's
12:16
named Karen's house and offered her a spare
12:18
room until the November of nine
12:21
two. But the kids weren't welcome because
12:23
you know, it's just a bedroom in the house from Karen
12:25
was her coworker at the
12:27
post office. I believe so yes.
12:30
Diane rented a two bedroom apartment in December.
12:33
Steve refused to let her take her children until
12:35
after Christmas. H Diane
12:37
had to go to his house your children. Steve
12:40
wasn't letting go of that control that
12:42
he had of her. Every time she went
12:44
to their house, they fought he wanted
12:46
to remarry. She didn't. This
12:49
was in December of two
12:51
and the shooting happened in May of n
12:55
Diane eventually moved back into the mobile
12:57
home along with her children and
12:59
January of nine, strapped
13:01
for cash, my sister moved back into
13:03
her burned out mobile home and
13:05
stopped seeing your children at Steve's, so
13:08
she brought the kids to back to the
13:10
home. Steve was calling my
13:13
sister a worthless mother who didn't
13:15
take care of her kids to go see them.
13:17
He said he was sick of her
13:19
having fun while he was burdened with raising the
13:21
kids. So basically, the kids are still at his house
13:24
and she's living there, and he's
13:26
really unhappy about that because basically
13:29
she's probably out having a good time
13:31
and he's having to take care of the kids. Diane
13:36
had been living for years under the constraints
13:38
of an abusive relationship. Although
13:41
she had been unfaithful along with Steve, she
13:43
was now able to see whoever she pleased
13:45
without immediate fear of reprisal. And
13:48
Diane seemed to love male attention.
13:50
Over the course of time. You watch this
13:53
plate out all the time, and you
13:55
when you see someone like
13:57
Diane, when you see
14:00
one trying desperately
14:02
to get attention and to
14:05
move a certain way and to shake her body
14:07
a certain way, you
14:09
think to yourself, Wow, there's
14:12
a person looking for attention, and
14:14
do I want to get inside the kill
14:17
radius of that person? And
14:19
I could get blown up? It could blow
14:22
me up, And so a little
14:25
bell goes off. I think in your head
14:27
when you're the person who's the target
14:30
of a Diane Downs, thinking
14:32
to yourself, do I want
14:34
to be in the kill radius? Do I do
14:36
I want to risk being blown up? And
14:39
the answer for most men is no. But
14:42
for these guys who all of a sudden
14:44
attached to Diane Downs, I
14:47
think they understood it was a quick, easy,
14:50
gratifying way to spend the night.
14:53
I think that's kind of what got
14:55
them going. The problem is, I think
14:57
once they saw what kind
14:59
of a mentally
15:02
damaged person that she was, they
15:04
would run. I think I think that
15:06
happened over and over and over again. Diane
15:14
took a job with a postal service where she
15:16
met Nick Knickerbocker. This
15:18
was the relationship that many would speculate
15:21
to be the motivation behind the attempted murder
15:23
of her children. My sister was
15:25
she was she worked in the post office.
15:28
UM, she was a rural route carrier.
15:30
I remember that was one of their fights in Arizona.
15:33
I remember seeing this because Diane was a
15:35
rural rock carrier and UM as
15:37
a rural rock carrier, she would continually
15:40
break the mirror off of the vehicle because
15:43
you drive the right hand side, and
15:45
she would continually hit the mailboxes with
15:47
the mirror and knocked it off. And Steve would get
15:50
so mad about that. Why
15:52
would he get mad? Well, because she broke the mirror
15:54
off the car continually. I was
15:56
thinking, she was driving, it's
15:59
a rural old routes. On a rural route, you
16:02
you basically sub let your own vehicle,
16:05
yeah and so yeah, driving
16:07
out in the country delivering mail basically, and
16:09
she would hit the mailboxes with the mirror. It
16:12
wasn't a physical fight, but
16:14
it was it was like he crazy, and you
16:16
know, he wasn't very happy, and
16:19
he made it known that she wasn't that
16:21
he wasn't happy. But um, that's
16:23
what she did an Oregon. She transferred
16:26
from Chandler where
16:29
she met Nick, and
16:31
you know, and she moved up to Oregon. And
16:34
my dad lived in Oregon, and my dad was a
16:36
postmaster in Springfield, Oregon. And
16:39
so she came up here to start her new
16:41
family with, you know, to start a new life.
16:44
And she was working the post office, so
16:46
she was she was truly on her way, man, she
16:48
was on her way to getting her life. But
16:52
this happened to her. And
16:54
and it's really, you know, sort of sad because
16:56
I mean the reason, you
17:00
know, talking about the post office,
17:02
and you know, it makes me think of Nick
17:04
Nickerbocker, the guy she met at the post office,
17:07
the guy that you know, they say that everything
17:09
got done for she did
17:12
the motive, yes, thank you very much. He
17:14
was a letter carry also, so they worked
17:17
eight hour shifts beside each other,
17:19
but spent at least two hours after that, um
17:22
oftentimes having um sex
17:24
at one location or another
17:27
um, so they did paint a picture
17:29
that when they were in Arizona. Because he was a married guy
17:31
and for the longest time
17:33
didn't tell his wife about
17:36
Diane. She eventually found out, and
17:39
he still sort of carried on and it
17:41
was not not very forthcoming. Diane
17:44
was apparently obsessed with Nick to the
17:46
point where she would have done anything for him.
17:48
There were unsent letters and journals found
17:50
in her apartment where she declared her feelings.
17:53
Seems to me that he was fairly
17:55
nice looking, strong jaw,
17:58
kind of wiry hair, and
18:00
this person that seemingly
18:03
Diane downs head over heels
18:05
about, and that she
18:09
when any of the male partner
18:12
sex partners said to her, listen, you're
18:15
a really wonderful sexual partner,
18:18
but I don't really I don't think I want
18:20
to raise kids that would absolutely
18:23
crash her world. And
18:25
so I think with
18:27
respect to Robert, the
18:30
question of whether or not he could deal with
18:32
kids, you know, it was certainly
18:34
a part of the narrative. After
18:37
nixt rejection and years of abuse
18:39
from Steve, Diane decided to leave
18:41
Arizona. Her father was a postmaster
18:44
in Oregan, so she moved and was able
18:46
to get a letter carrier job in Springfield.
18:48
When you're an abusive relationship is the same question
18:51
that everybody asks everybody that's in that
18:53
kind of relationship. How are you going to let this happen
18:55
before you change something? But
18:58
when you And then she did change something,
19:01
and that's when she moved to Oregon. She
19:03
was changing her life. She'd been an order for six
19:06
weeks since she was attacked. She left
19:08
Steven Arizona. She left
19:10
her boyfriend's and I don't
19:12
say Nick I said she left her boyfriend's
19:14
in Arizona. I mean, I can't
19:16
say that she didn't have a thing for Nick. And
19:19
I can't say that Nick didn't have a thing for her,
19:21
because obviously they did. But
19:24
she left him there because really
19:27
he was a married man, you
19:30
know, And you're not going to get together with a married man
19:32
because the married man is not going to leave his wife.
19:35
That's just what Mary Penn do.
19:54
And then in the shooting
19:57
occurs. From the beginning, the
19:59
press made every the effort to find all
20:01
the information they could about the incident and
20:03
about Diane herself. The whole goal
20:05
was to figure out who she was, how
20:08
long she had been in Eugene or the Eugene
20:10
Springfield area, So you had
20:12
kind of the small army of media
20:14
types, mainly local print
20:17
and television stations, doing
20:19
their own things. So we were all sort of learning from
20:21
each other too. If if k v
20:24
A L and Eugene had a news broadcast
20:26
at night, was something a little bit new, well figured.
20:29
I wish I had gotten that in first, but nonetheless
20:31
put that into the notebook and just kept on trying
20:34
to compile our
20:36
best ability to figure out who
20:39
was involved. And you
20:41
also had at the same time the
20:44
search for the assailant. That
20:46
was still the official line that there's
20:49
somebody out there, although even early
20:52
on my feeling was, and I think other media
20:54
people, we're having
20:56
questions. Although the police
20:58
department wasn't very forthcoming with the details
21:01
of the case and the investigation, Diane
21:03
herself proved to be very willing to talk
21:05
to the press. I was trying to find out
21:08
who among law enforcement was primarily
21:10
assigned to the case, and would there be a chance
21:12
of getting an interview with these folks,
21:15
And I was able to do that
21:18
after a while, but not early on, and
21:20
and the police were never open
21:22
and forthcoming with reporters as far as I could
21:24
find out. Almost all the information
21:27
as the case developed ended
21:29
up coming really out of
21:31
Diane's mouth. She was a prolific
21:33
talker. When we finally got a chance
21:36
to sit down and get her story,
21:38
and when she started, she
21:41
just didn't stop. Mom and Dad
21:43
said, quit talking, man, do
21:46
not talk to the press. They are not your
21:48
friends. Diane was the most publicized
21:51
and talked about individual in the state
21:53
of Oregon in nine and
21:56
a lot of that was due to her. I
21:59
mean, she would talk to everybody. Diane
22:02
gave several interviews with the press and
22:04
insisted that she and her kids were attacked
22:06
by a shaggy haired stranger, a
22:08
description which over time has become
22:11
a trope when describing non existent suspects
22:13
of crimes. Do you think that helped
22:15
her? No,
22:18
no, no, absolutely
22:20
not. It did the opposite.
22:22
You know. It's like and she was really the worst
22:24
witness for herself, you know, I mean, it's
22:27
like she
22:29
she would get up and she would talk, and
22:32
she would talk, and you
22:35
know, and they think it's because she liked
22:37
to hear herself talk. All the reality
22:39
is that she wanted to
22:42
have them listen. They
22:44
wanted she wanted him to listen. But
22:47
they would never listen, They would never look for
22:49
anybody. They she would go
22:51
down there. You know, it's like, why aren't you looking,
22:53
Well, we're looking for the guy. We're looking for the guy,
22:56
you know. But if then you take a look into
22:58
the newspapers and the time, you know. Two
23:01
weeks after the shooting, Pat Horton, the
23:03
district attorney says, the search
23:05
for the shaggy head stranger is not a priority
23:07
on our list. Two weeks after
23:10
the shooting, the district attorney says,
23:12
the search for the shaggy herd stranger
23:15
his words, not hers. The search for the shaggy
23:17
heard stranger is not a priority
23:19
on our list. But only time she goes
23:21
and talks to him. We're looking for him. We're looking
23:23
for him.
23:35
Months after the shooting, the police had produced
23:37
no additional suspects beyond Diane
23:40
herself. They had no leads, and
23:42
only the Fredericksons themselves seemed
23:44
to be providing contacts of potential
23:46
witnesses and suspects to the police.
23:49
There didn't seem to be any elites, and this
23:51
was coming from Diane's camp to say we
23:53
have somebody had phoned
23:56
us and indicated there was there
23:58
was some guy who had shown up at the Springfield country
24:01
Club, or she was
24:03
advising police be on the lookout for some ding
24:05
up yellow car that was in the area.
24:08
There weren't solidly so I know that
24:10
the police got a lot of contacts and as
24:12
far as I know, they this was this was one of the stories
24:15
we were trying to keep up on. They
24:17
were tracking these leaves
24:19
down, going and talk to the people who phoned them in,
24:22
But as far as we could tell, that never
24:24
really got a solid
24:26
start. There. There was nothing that felt like
24:29
a breakthrough in terms of finding somebody
24:31
else who might be involved in this. Diane
24:34
would talk and tell her story to anyone
24:36
who would listen. She seemed to love
24:38
talking to the press. I do remember
24:41
very clearly, and Diane, but even
24:43
in news conferences talk about dreams that she had had,
24:46
and she would call me, and I'm sure she called other
24:48
reporters on a fairly regular
24:51
basis, just too because she needed
24:53
to talk. And she was one
24:55
day talking about having driven
24:57
down to her letter carrying route
24:59
in Cottage go Over that morning. She said it was kind of foggy
25:02
and I five and she
25:04
could see Cheryl coming
25:07
out of the mist, kind of holding her hand toward
25:09
her, and Diane said, and there
25:11
we were. We were the four Musketeers. Again. I
25:13
think that's how she referred to them, at least for the
25:16
police sake, because it did come out that I
25:18
think it would be a terrible place
25:21
to be raised in her house, because they
25:25
got hit, they got slapped, they were treated
25:27
very, very poorly. The
25:29
police struggled to make sense of the events that
25:31
night based on the story Diane had provided.
25:34
They asked her to recreate everything
25:36
that happened that night step by step
25:38
in a reenactment, and I think for
25:41
the detectives and the officers
25:43
who were working on it, that was the
25:45
moment that things shifted a little bit. And
25:49
to go back to like Detective Welch
25:51
and some of the first folks on the scene
25:54
there radar was going off I think before
25:56
that. But at first, certainly the
25:58
stories were all about who
26:00
is this shaggy hair stranger,
26:02
What was the motive of this person
26:05
to shoot kids? And was
26:07
even that you know the highway
26:09
back there in your moh was
26:12
that folks danger back there
26:14
living out in the rural part of Lane
26:16
County, And Um, the more
26:19
I think Diane
26:21
spoke, the more
26:23
there were questions about what it
26:25
is that the motive was all about, and about
26:27
who the shooter might be. The reenactment
26:30
was strange, to say the least.
26:33
Diane didn't seemed to be a mother who was struggling
26:35
to explain the murder, an attempted murder
26:37
of her children by a stranger. She came
26:39
across like an actress, playing a part
26:42
and catering to the audience. I
26:44
think that when the videotaped
26:47
her and they wanted her
26:49
to say, Hey, this is where I was standing,
26:52
this is where the shaggy haired stranger is standing,
26:55
this was the song playing on the radio,
26:58
This is how I reacted. This
27:00
is what I did when I threw the car keys
27:02
into the bushes. The
27:04
police saw something
27:07
there that didn't quite add up, and
27:09
that was what
27:12
the children ended up seeing from
27:14
inside the car and
27:17
what it is she was saying, and that
27:19
was a contradiction. There
27:21
was an immediate contradiction when they
27:24
viewed what she did with the video
27:26
re enactment in the car, and they got a
27:29
lot of things right down
27:31
to the detail about the car and
27:33
other other things so that they could understand
27:36
what happened. And so
27:40
I think the detectives right off the bat thought
27:43
Wow, this is not right.
27:45
There's something here that's not right,
27:48
and you could see it, I think in
27:51
the way Diane even acted in the video.
27:54
This wasn't a mom who was shell
27:57
shocked. She was a
28:00
actress playing out a scene
28:02
in a movie that we
28:05
hadn't seen yet in
28:07
the video re enactment. M Well,
28:11
it was almost as if, I mean, it's from what
28:13
I can remember of the details, and then showing
28:15
it, it was almost as
28:17
if she had to
28:20
think about what it was that was the right
28:22
answer that they wanted as
28:24
opposed to this is exactly what happened,
28:27
and instead of it being
28:29
something that was ingrained in
28:31
a part of her sailor understanding
28:34
of that shooting from this stranger,
28:37
she was thinking out
28:39
loud, almost about what it is
28:41
that they would buy as a story. And
28:44
you could see that. You could. I'm
28:47
okay, I'm throwing the keys, Yes,
28:49
but I didn't let go of He thinks
28:52
I drew them, but I did not throw them
28:54
at the swings around at the same
28:56
time, watching the keys and swings
28:58
around the shoot who got shot
29:00
me? In sum I'd like to I
29:06
just hit my kids, started
29:09
the car and left the car door
29:12
shut itself. This
29:15
is person Okay.
29:20
The police weren't the only ones who found Diane's
29:23
behavior and explanation strange.
29:25
The press also saw the video and for many
29:28
it confirmed their suspicions that Diane
29:30
was the most likely suspect in the shooting.
29:33
She did a re enactment
29:35
with the police was shown later that
29:39
kind of verified this, this
29:41
feeling that that a lot of us had gotten from the
29:43
start, the story just didn't really add up. She
29:45
claimed, for instance, that when she got out of her
29:47
card this guy said I want your
29:49
car and she said, and she's she's
29:52
consistent as far as I know to this day
29:54
and saying you gotta be kidding me. That's
29:56
about the only part of her story that has
29:58
remained consistent. Her affect is
30:01
not one of somebody who's trying to protect
30:03
their kids. It was almost as if
30:06
she'd never done these things before, and
30:09
she was saying, well, what are you what are you asking
30:11
me to do? And they say, no, just do it
30:13
just like it happened, And that
30:16
was their question. It didn't seem she was
30:18
operating from memory. It was almost
30:21
like, how would you want me to be?
30:23
And so that sort of raised alarm
30:26
bells as they went through her
30:28
reenacting what it was like to have a stranger
30:30
outside her car. After
30:33
the re enactment video, Diane's increasingly
30:36
casual attitude and interviews, and the
30:38
lack of any real evidence pointing to a shoot
30:40
her on the loose, everyone began to
30:42
accept that Diane was most likely guilty.
30:45
So at the beginning, I think all of us wanted to
30:47
believe that it made sense that
30:50
this stranger was out
30:52
there and that all
30:56
the police had to do is just find this person
30:58
and track them down and the things will be over but
31:01
over time, and you really didn't
31:03
want to believe it at first that Diane
31:07
had some of these strange characteristics
31:10
about her. They didn't make
31:13
sense. Eventually police
31:15
felt like they had gathered enough evidence. On
31:17
February, Diane
31:20
Downs was arrested. It
31:24
was a huge deal. Diane has been arrested
31:27
again. You know, she'd been out in the community
31:29
for months saying what if she wanted to disparaging the
31:32
police, which that's okay. People are unfairly
31:34
charged, and it's certainly fair to to push
31:36
back on that. But I think
31:38
among most people that there was just no goodwill
31:41
left for Diane, with no other
31:44
suspect ever having come
31:46
close to being
31:49
charged or arrested or identified. She
31:51
was in the spotlight. She was the one, and it was it
31:53
was a big deal, and she was arrested.
31:57
She was looking tired, be draggled.
32:00
The emotional strain I think had
32:02
taken a toll on her. She was
32:04
still kind of prone to smirk and smile
32:06
a lot, whether she should be or not. But
32:10
she was I think kind of beaten down by a circumstance
32:13
when they finally took her into custody.
32:16
But at that point we all knew that, well, uh,
32:19
we're going to be going to trial in about three months.
32:21
I think Lane County had a stipulation
32:24
of that point that once you were charged with that kind of
32:26
serious crime, just to speedy
32:28
process, we'll have you start your trial
32:30
within three months. It wasn't
32:32
just the reenactment, her strange behavior
32:35
and the inconsistent story that led police
32:37
to arrest Diane. During the nine months
32:39
between the shooting and the arrest, a key
32:42
witness was at last able to provide
32:44
the final piece of the puzzle needed to charge
32:46
Diane. Diane was ultimately
32:48
charged because Christie could
32:51
talk. Christie felt safe enough
32:54
emotionally to share
32:56
her thoughts. She'd been going through through lots
32:58
of therapy. As part
33:00
of these sessions, her
33:03
therapist, a guy named Carl Peterson,
33:05
would ask her eventually,
33:08
just in talking about this, do
33:10
you know who shot you?
33:13
And Christie would nod and he would
33:15
say, do you want to write that down? And I'll put this
33:17
in an envelope and we'll just burn it when
33:19
it's done, so no harm, no foul.
33:22
So she did that for quite a while, and
33:25
I think there was probably one day in particular where
33:27
she felt okay about sharing that with
33:30
him, what she had written on the paper and
33:32
what did she say, said my mom.
33:40
On the next episode of Happy Face
33:43
Presents To Face, we received
33:45
a bizarre letter from Diane Downs in
33:47
prison that included her surprising
33:49
claims of her relation to Becky. This
33:51
leads us to enlist the help from DNA detective
33:54
Michelle Leonard to help us solve the answer
33:56
of who are the biological parents of Becky.
34:01
Ben Boland is our executive producer,
34:04
Melissa Moore is our co executive producer.
34:06
Maya Cole is our primary producer.
34:09
Paul Decant is our supervising producer.
34:11
Sam Ti Garning is our researcher and
34:14
Matt Riddle is our story editor. Featured
34:16
music by dream Tent Happy Phase
34:18
Presents to Phase is a production of I Heart
34:21
Radio m
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