"My Mom Did It": The Chilling Tale of a Psychopath who Tried to Get Rid of her Children
In May 1983, 27-year-old Diane Downs claimed that a stranger had shot her and her 3 children after trying to carjack them. However, a deeper investigation would reveal something far more sinister
Background
Just before 11 p.m. on the night of May 19, 1983, the calm, quiet of the McKenzie-Willamette Hospital in Springfield, Oregon, was shattered by the blaring horn coming from the red Nissan parked in front of the hospital’s emergency drop-off. As the doctors and nurses looked out, a blonde woman was frantically waving her arms for help. As hospital staff rushed to assist, the woman exclaimed, “Somebody just shot my kids!”
Inside the blood-spattered car was a horrifying scene. On the front passenger seat lay a little girl, no more than seven or eight, and in the back seat lay another young girl and a toddler. All three children had been shot and were in critical condition. The children’s mother, 27-year-old Diane Downs, had also been shot in her forearm.
As surgeons raced to try and save the children, the hospital’s receptionist was on the phone with the police, assesing them of the situation. Downs would later tell them that as she and the children were on their way back from visiting a friend, she was attacked by a stranger who she described as “white, in his late twenties, about five foot nine, with dark shag-wavy hair, wearing a Levi jacket and an off-colored t-shirt.”
She claimed that he had pulled a gun and demanded her car. When she pretended to throw the car keys, the man pointed the gun inside the car and shot the three children before shooting her in the arm and fleeing.
Due to the heroic efforts of the medical staff, two of the children, 8-year-old Chrisite and 3-year-old Danny, survived. However, Danny was paralyzed from the waist down, and Christie had suffered a stroke. Tragically, 7-year-old Cheryl was pronounced dead.
At the hospital, both police and hospital staff became suspicious of Diane’s calm, almost detached demeanor. They also noticed inconsistencies in her account of events, which seemed to change with each retelling. These suspicions led to an investigation, which would reveal the true depths of Diane Downs’s ultimate betrayal and pure evil.
Diane Downs
Elizabeth Diane Frederickson was born on August 7, 1955, to Willadene and Wes Frederickson in Phoenix, Arizona. She did not have a particularly happy childhood, and spoke negatively about her father, claiming that he was sexually abusive and a strict disciplinarian whose demands kept her mother from giving her attention.
Elizabeth, who, as the years passed, went by her middle name Diane, also claims that her parents’ strict religious views forbade her from wearing makeup or trendy clothes, which caused her to be bullied.
However, according to the book Small Sacrifices by Ann Rule, which details the life and trial of Diane Downs, when she was 14, her father allowed her to enroll in a charm school and she was allowed to dress and wear her hair as she pleased. This change brought newfound attention from many of the boys at Moon View High School, including a teenager named Steve Downs. The two of them began dating and were constantly together.
Marriage
After graduation, they parted ways for a brief time, as Steve joined the Navy and Diane enrolled in the Pacific Coast Baptist College, where she was later expelled for promiscuity. However, the two of them kept in touch and corresponded regularly. When Steve returned home, the pair got married on November 13, 1973.
Later, Diane would claim that she didn’t marry Steve for love, but rather to get away from her family. Though their marriage was neither warm or loving, Diane found a new purpose when she became pregnant with her first child, Christie Ann, who was born in October 1974.
Unfortunately for Diane, things between her and Steve did not change much after the birth of Christie, and by January 1976, Diane had given birth to the couple’s second daughter, Cheryl Lynn. Over the next few years, Diane would leave with the kids on several occasions, but would always return.
By 1978, the family had moved to Mesa, Arizona, and according to the book Small Sacrifices, Diane had become “Hostile but passive, she was both bored and angry.” Diane became pregnant after having an affair with a co-worker, and gave birth to Stephen Daniel in December 1979.
This betrayal, in addition to their frequent fights over finances and other matters, led to Steve and Diane’s eventual divorce in 1980. Steve recalled that towards the end of their marriage, Diane was very cold and distant with her children, often denying them attention or affection.
Obsessed
In 1981, Diane Downs began working for the U.S. Postal Service in Chandler, Arizona. There she met co-worker Robert Knickerbocker. The two embarked on a ‘sleazy affair’ (as he was married), and the pair would meet up in hotel rooms for sexual encounters. Knickerbocker was aware of her pattern of short-term relationships and did not expect the affair to last long.
Instead, Knickerbocker observed that Downs was becoming increasingly obsessed with him, and she began pressuring him to leave his wife for her. He refused. She would also beg him to interact with her children, which he refused, as to him, it was an affair, and it wouldn’t have been right for him to have contact with her children.
Robert eventually broke things off with Diane, who did not take it well. She followed him home, banged on his door, and confronted his wife. She would call their home to harass them, and Robert recalled that when he ended things with Diane, she screamed and ranted at him in a way that he had never seen before.
Not long after their breakup, Downs requested and was given a transfer to Springfield, Oregon, and though she was now in another state, her letters and phone calls to Knickerbocker continued.
May 19, 1983
Diane Downs told detectives that she and her three children had gone to visit the home of one of Donna’s co-workers, Heather Plourd. According to Downs, Heather had expressed interest in buying a horse, and when Downs saw a newspaper advertisement for renting horses, she wanted to show Plourd. Since she didn’t have her phone number, she decided to take a drive to her home.
It was on the way back from Heather’s place - after taking a detour onto rustic Old Mohawk Road - that she allegedly encountered a man standing in the road and waving her down. After Diane exited her vehicle, the man produced a pistol from under his jacket and demanded that she hand over her car keys.
