At 10:48 P.M. on the night of May 19th, 1983, a car pulled up to the emergency room of McKenzie-Willamette Hospital in Springfield, Oregon. The woman in the car yelled for help and frantically honked her car’s horn. As a couple of nurses came out, they saw a slender blonde woman in jeans and a plaid shirt step out of the car. Her arm was visibly injured.
“What’s going on here?” one of the nurses asked her.
She replied, “Somebody just shot my kids!”
The nurses acted quickly, calling the hospital staff out in order to help the injured children. There were three of them in all. Eight-year old Christie Ann and her three-year old brother Danny were in critical condition, and immediately rushed inside for treatment. However, for their seven-year old sister Cheryl, it was too late. She was dead before they had even reached the hospital.
While the medical staff attended to the children, a nurse spoke to the mother to comfort her and find out what happened. The woman’s name was Elizabeth Downs, but went by her middle name, Diane. She was 27 years old, and worked as a mail carrier. According to Diane, she was driving down a local road that evening when a “shaggy-haired stranger” stood in the road and stopped the car before demanding the car’s keys.
When Diane refused, the man unloaded his gun at the family before fleeing the scene. Diane herself had been shot in her left arm, though her wounds were comparatively minor.
Her parents, Wes and Willadene Frederickson, lived less than two miles from the hospital. Despite it being in the middle of the night, the two of them rushed there as soon as they were called, so quickly that Wes had forgotten his dentures and had to make a return trip. Meanwhile, Willadene tried to process what had happened to her grandchildren; she had been with them mere hours beforehand.
While the children were being treated, sergeant Rob Rutherford from Lane County Sheriff’s office arrived to speak to Diane about the incident. Worried that the killer was still out there, he asked her if she could show him where the shooting took place. After Diane’s arm was put in a cast, she, along with her father Wes, rode with Rutherford to the bridge where her children were shot.
On the way, Diane told them about a memento she had just bought. “I bought the kids a beautiful brass unicorn, and I had their names engraved on it – just a couple of days ago. It was… you know… It meant we had a new life. I shouldn’t have bought it.”
When they arrived at the scene, a bridge out in the middle of nowhere on Old Mohawk Road, there was nobody around. Diane spoke about an “icky yellow car” she had seen, but there was no sign of it. Whoever this man was, he had long since fled the area.
When Diane arrived back at the hospital, doctors stepped out to inform her of the condition of the children. Christie still needed a lot of medical attention, and they were unsure if she would survive the night. Cheryl had been dead for over an hour. The young mother remained stoic upon hearing the news. However, doctors were cautiously optimistic about Danny. Upon examining his body, they found that the bullet had not hit any of his vital organs.
“You mean it missed his heart?” Diane asked.
“Yes.”
As officers interviewed her about the incident, they found that Diane was very articulate and helpful. She appeared to be quite intelligent, and there were no signs that she had been drinking or doing drugs. As she described her attacker, though, they felt that her replies were stilted, as if she was holding information back. Perhaps the mysterious gunman had some connection to her?
They requested to search her home for evidence, to which Diane complied. Upon searching the home, however, they did not find much of note. They collected some guns she owned, as well as her diary, hoping it would have some clues as to who her mystery attacker was. They also came across the brass unicorn she spoke of earlier.
As for her car, along with the bullet cases, police recovered a Duran Duran cassette tape that was in the player.
Also that night, Wes, Diane’s father, called Steve Downs, 28, Diane’s ex-husband and father of her children. Steve had been staying in Arizona, and upon hearing what had happened, took the first plane to Oregon in the middle of the night.
The following morning, Diane called Chandler Post Office in Arizona as soon as it opened to speak to some of her friends and former coworkers. In particular, she wanted to talk to Robert Knickerbocker, also known as Nick, a married man with whom she had been having an affair, though he had broken it off earlier that year. Prior to this incident, he had not heard from her in weeks, so he reluctantly spoke to her. Upon hearing what had happened, Nick offered his condolences, but declined to speak with her much longer.
Among the men from Lane County who came to the hospital the following morning was Prosecutor Fred Hugi. Upon seeing the bodies of the injured children, he felt a paternalistic affection for them, wanting to do whatever he could to bring their attacker to justice.
After a long night, Christie’s condition stabilized. While badly injured, it became more and more likely that she would survive her ordeal alongside her brother. Diane quietly entered the room and sat down near her, squeezing Christie’s hand in hers, repeating the words, “Christie, I love you.”
However, instead of the tender reunion between mother and daughter that you might expect, something unusual happened: Christie’s heart rate spiked considerably, to a pulse of 147 times a minute, well above a normal resting rate of 80. Her heart rate remained elevated until her mother left the room some time later. As a staff member described it, there was fear in Christie’s eyes.
So, who exactly was this woman? Hospital staff and investigators noticed inconsistencies in her story, not to mention the implausibility of the incident. Was there really a deranged killer wandering around town that night? Was this attack truly random, or was Diane involved in some way? And why did her own daughter seem afraid of her?
Livin’ in a Lonely World
Elizabeth Diane Frederickson was born August 7th, 1955 in Phoenix, Arizona. Diane’s mother Willadene was practically still a child herself, giving birth to Diane when she was just 17, while her husband Wes was 25. The couple wound up having five children in all, the last being born when Willadene herself was 25. Outwardly, the Fredericksons were a perfect, happy family. They were very religious, visiting their church twice on Sundays and again on Wednesdays.
As a child, Diane was shy, lacking confidence. She was often bullied by her classmates, and too frail to excel at sports. Yet, she was very smart for her age, burying herself in books, and excelling academically. However, part of this was due to her father. Wes was very strict when it came to homework, going so far as to have his children memorize the dictionary when there were no assignments in the evening.
As she entered her teenage years, Diane aspired to be popular, which was difficult considering her strict upbringing. She would wear long skirts as she left home to appease her parents, rolling them up as she arrived at school. Eventually, her mother would catch on as to why her skirts seemed wrinkled.
One day, Wes arrived home complaining about a “guy with a beautiful head of hair” he had seen. It inspired him to order Diane to cut her hair short and curl it as tightly as possible. No one quite figured out why a man so obsessed with gender roles would ask his daughter to cut her hair short.
However, the strict upbringing was not the worst part of Diane’s childhood. When she was twelve years old, before she even knew was sex was, her father began to molest her. This was not a one-off event. She had been trained all her life not to fight back, not to tell anyone. She could not talk to her mother, nor did she have any friends to discuss this with. Diane cut her wrists to deal with the pain.
She became physically ill from her lack of sleep, so ill that her father took her to the doctor, though she was instructed not to tell him anything. On the ride home, on a stretch of road in the Arizona desert, Wes told Diane to take her clothes off. She acquiesced at first, but when he demanded she strip further, she protested, screaming at her father, trying her best to open the car door and jump out. Before she could escape, he pulled her back and locked the door.
The car swerved in the road, and a highway patrolman pulled them over.
The patrolman questioned them, but Diane was tight-lipped, scared that she would lose her home if her father was arrested. Regardless, the patrolman noticed her lack of clothing, and wished to speak to her dad in private. The officer and Wes had a conversation out of earshot, in which her father appeared uncharacteristically coy. Whatever was said, the sexual abuse stopped.
In the years following, Diane became more outgoing, learning how to put on makeup, dress less conservatively, and went from being a shy, quiet girl to an extremely talkative one. At age fifteen, she met Steve Downs at their high school in Phoenix, and the two began dating. Wes and Willadene thought Steve was too immature for Diane and urged her to date other men, which of course, only made her more attracted to him.
Growing up, Diane loved animals, and had all types of pets, but over time, this too proved to be a source of trauma. Her cocker spaniel was crushed by a tractor Steve drove. Diane blamed her father for the dog’s death, as he had called the dog moments before the accident. She also cared for a pet goat and its baby, both of which were killed by her father. Lastly, Wes shot Diane’s cats when they contracted ringworm.
Steve joined the Navy in 1972, and the pair were separated for a time. After graduating high school, Diane went to Pacific Coast Baptist Bible College to become a missionary. However, she only lasted two semesters at the school, ultimately being kicked out for promiscuity. After Steve’s tour in the Navy was over, he returned home and the two reunited.
Eventually, Wes forced the two into a shotgun marriage – literally. One night when Diane did not return home after a date, her father showed up at Steve’s door with a shotgun, telling him to either marry Diane or bring her home. A week later, the two were married. Now that they were married, she was officially Mrs.
Elizabeth Diane Downs.
Two weeks after their wedding, Steve told Diane that he had a date. Evidently, he had asked this woman out a month before, and felt he had to keep his word. He asked Diane to press his pants for him.
She obliged.
A Little Ditty ‘Bout Steve and Diane
On her wedding night, Diane’s mother gave her a box of birth control pills, but after Steve’s infidelity, she decided to stop taking them, hoping to conceive a child. Her wish was granted, and before long, her first child Christie was born. Diane doted on her baby, while lamenting the fact that married life was not much better than living with her father. Steve was demanding and abusive, insisting that Diane cook him meals right at 5:00.
He would tell her to dress up for nights out, then become furious when other men looked at her.
“He’d choke me, shake me, throw me down – almost every day.”
Diane needed to take control of her life somehow, and almost on a whim, she decided to sign up for the Air Force, baffling her husband. It was short-lived. Diane served in the Air Force for only three weeks before being discharged.
Soon after, Diane suffered a concussion while playfully wrestling with her husband. Both parties admitted it was an accident. After a blackout while driving, her doctor advised her to stop taking the birth control pills. Soon after, she was pregnant with her second child, Cheryl Lynn.
While their first child brought joy to the young couple, Cheryl’s birth enraged Steve. He felt he could not take care of a second child, and at the very least hoped it would be a boy.
One evening, while preparing dinner, Diane was alerted by 18-month old Christie. Cheryl was choking. Diane quickly patted her child on the back, managing to get her to spit out what was in her mouth. Moments later, Steve demanded to know where his supper was. Diane explained the situation with tears in her eyes. Her husband took a look at her daughter and said, “Well, she looks OK now…”
In an attempt to stem any more children, Steve got a vasectomy. However, he failed to attend a follow-up appointment, and soon after, Diane was pregnant a third time. Steve accused her of cheating on him, but a checkup confirmed that he was still fertile.
Ultimately, Diane got an abortion.
In 1977, Diane took her children and ran away from the marriage. She went to live with her sister Kathy in Flagstaff. There, she got a position as a concrete truck driver. Unfortunately, the job only lasted a month. The reason? Diane was raped by her boss. She swiftly returned to Steve.
Diane took a new job at a trailer park, where she hit it off with a fellow employee. For the first time in their marriage, she had an affair. And another. And a third. The type of man she was attracted to was, in her own words, a “good specimen.”
One morning, Steve followed her to confirm his suspicions that she was cheating on him. When he caught them in the act, a fight ensued. One of her lover’s roommates pulled a gun on him. Fortunately, nobody was shot.
However, there was more news – Diane was pregnant once more, with a baby whose father was not her husband’s. Steve threatened to kick her and the other two children out of the house, but ultimately, things worked out as well as they could have. After nine months, Danny was born, and Steve was more than happy to have a son, even if it was not actually his.
Now, with three children in the household, the two parents became even more unstable. Diane would oscillate between being a kind, loving mother, and a verbally abusive parent, no different than her father. Diane left Steve again, moving in with Danny’s father. A week later, she came back.
Soon after, Diane learned about surrogate parenting while watching TV. She decided that this should be her calling in life, and decided to apply. She was given a number of tests to determine if she would be a good fit for the program. For IQ and other other intelligence-based tests, she excelled.
However, when it came to psychological evaluations, the test givers were much more skeptical, noting her abusive upbringing and severe mental health issues. There were concerns that if she was a surrogate mother, she would refuse to give up the baby. However, due to the fact that she had already birthed three healthy children, she was accepted.
In the time spent waiting to become a surrogate, the Downs’ marriage continued to crumble. Diane continued to see Danny’s father, and had numerous affairs with other men during this period. When Diane was interviewed years later, she defended herself, saying, “In two years’ time, I had ten separate lovers. Two years! That’s not very many. And less than half of them were married!”
Finally, Diane and Steve divorced. Two weeks after he moved out, another of Diane’s lovers moved in, bringing two daughters of his own. This relationship was, as you would expect, also short-lived. Shortly thereafter, Diane went to a clinic in Kentucky and became pregnant with her surrogate child.
During this period, one of her neighbors took concern over Diane’s lackluster parenting, going so far as to let Cheryl regularly spend time at her house. One day, the neighbor wrote an angry letter to Diane, prompting her to storm over to the neighbor’s house. During the argument, Diane said to Cheryl, “You’re such a bad little girl! If you don’t obey Mommy, you deserve to be killed.”
Despite being divorced, Steve was still a presence in Diane’s life, regularly coming over to check on her kids. One night, as she was lying on the coach, he smirked and pointed a gun to her head. Before she could even comprehend what was happening, he pulled the trigger. There was a hollow click.
Finally, Diane flew to Kentucky to deliver the baby. It was born without complications, and despite concerns that she would not give up the baby, it was handed over to its parents without any issues. Diane recalls that the baby’s parents were far more excited to meet their new child than Steve had been with his own kids. Afterwards, she returned to her job at the Chandler Post Office in Arizona. She had numerous affairs, but one man in particular would change her life: Robert Knickerbocker.
Oh Nicky, You’re so Fine
Diane and Robert Knickerbocker, who went by “Nick”, first met each other in November 1981. Diane had been pregnant with her surrogate child at the time, but after she gave birth and returned to work, she and Nick worked together on a regular basis. He was not the first man at the post office she had an affair with, nor was he a stranger to affairs himself. Diane had also been looking to become a surrogate mother a second time, and was worried she would get pregnant if she kept having affairs.
As it turned out, Nick was infertile.
May 19th was the first day the two became intimate – we know this because Diane marked it on her calendar. Nick wanted the affair to be kept private, but Diane talked about him with their coworkers so regularly that there wasn’t much he could do. Nick had hoped it would remain a casual fling, but it quickly became clear that Diane had marriage on her mind.
Of course, there was a problem – Nick did not want to have children. He got along with Diane’s kids well enough, but he had no desire to be a father himself, which is why he had gotten a vasectomy. Not only that, but he had not given up on his own marriage just yet.
Before Diane’s second trip to the clinic to become a surrogate mother, she contracted an STI. She accused Nick of giving it to her, despite the fact that she herself had slept with four men just that summer. To protect his wife, Nick came clean about the entire affair and broke it off with Diane, just before her next flight to Kentucky. At the clinic, she was unable to conceive.
When she arrived back home, Steve picked her up at the airport instead of Nick, hoping to reconcile after a fight the two of them had had two weeks earlier in which he had beaten her so badly that she showed up to work the next day with a black eye. That night, Diane locked herself in the bathroom with a gun and pulled the trigger, frightening her ex-husband. She threatened to kill Steve, but he was able to talk her down enough to grab the gun away from her, taking it with him.
Diane remained obsessed with Nick, going so far as to get a rose tattoo with his name on her shoulder. They still worked together, and before long, the affair was back on.
In October, another strange incident occurred: Diane’s trailer was partially burned. The home was still habitable, but she wound up getting a $7,000 payout after only making $1200 in insurance payments. Arson investigators determined the fire was due to an electrical short, but later on, Diane confessed that she and Steve had planned the fire, blaming her ex-husband for not being able to burn the entire trailer down.
Weeks later, Steve was sitting on the back of his truck with Cheryl, when Diane drove up to them, brandishing the gun he had taken from her. Steve ran up to her and tried to take the gun from her through the window. She hit the gas, and Steve hung on for about twenty feet before losing his balance and falling.
With the money from her job, her surrogate parenting, and the insurance payout, Diane tried to start her own surrogate parent clinic. As you might expect, this did not get very far, with the first prospective couple splitting up before a contract could be signed, not to mention Diane’s inexperience running a business.
Diane continued to see Nick, who was torn between her and his wife. One night, Diane pressed him to answer which one of them he loved more. He answered his wife. As you might expect, Diane went ballistic. Nick called his wife and went home. The two of them spent the remainder of the night with Diane pounding on their door.
Shortly afterwards, Nick and his wife took a trip to Texas for a two-week vacation. However, when Diane noticed that he was no longer at work, she assumed that he had gone to Texas to escape her. She requested a transfer to Oregon, where her parents had moved to, to start life over. The Arizona office was more than happy to assist with her transfer. Some employees noted that despite her promiscuity, Diane refused to deliver copies of Playboy or Penthouse to subscribers on her route.
Upon finding out that Nick had not abandoned her, Diane tried to get her transfer canceled. However, it was denied. She tried to get Nick to move to Oregon with her, and he considered, going so far as to have dinner with her parents Wes and Willadene, who encouraged him to move with her.
Ultimately, Diane packed up with her kids to move across the country, a trip which took two days. Nick thought things with Diane were finally over. At least, he thought he did, until he got a surprise: just weeks after her move, Diane showed up at his mail route at work, having borrowed a jeep from one of her ex-lovers. She told him all about the friends she had made in Oregon, while he barely said a word.
He made it clear that he wasn’t willing to move with her, that he wasn’t ready to be a father. Diane returned home without incident.
Now, it’s at this point in the story where we should point out how much of what we know about Diane’s life comes from her diary. She was a prolific writer, so it’s very easy to build a mental image of her. Combine that with the numerous interviews of the people around her, and it seems like Diane’s entire life can be easily documented.
But on May 11, 1983, a week before the incident, there was a sudden shift in tone in her diary. Previously, she obsessively wrote about Nick, barely mentioning her children at all. Now, her children came front and center, with entries that sound so saccharine they’re more suspicious than sweet.
“They stand by me- no matter what. Danny says he’s my best buddy, and I’m his best buddy. He’s always giving me kisses and hugs. Every morning, when I go to work, he waves and says, ‘Bye Mom. Pick me up after work. I love you.’ He’s beautiful- and always so happy.”
She stopped just short of writing, “Boy, I sure would be sad if somebody tried to murder my children!”
Of particular note was a passage describing the brass unicorn she had bought:
“Oh, I found a beautiful brass Unicorn in a store window. I’m going to buy it for Christie & Cheryl & Danny. Then I’ll have it engraved. I know they’ll like it.”
She had told the store clerk that she needed to have the unicorn engraved with the date of May 13th, 1983. Which was quite puzzling, as there was no anniversary or special event on that day. In fact, nothing of note had happened at all.
That is, unless the unicorn was not meant to be a present, but a memorial…
She Can’t Seem to Face Up to the Facts
Now, we return to that fateful night. Out on a dark road, three children had been shot. Cheryl was dead. Christie and Danny had survived their injuries, but only thanks to the quick work of the hospital staff. Diane herself had been shot, though a bullet in the arm was far less life-threatening than what her children had gone through.
After reading through her diary, lead prosecutor Fred Hugi was still puzzled. He thought Steve or Nick could have been the mysterious “shaggy-haired stranger” that Diane described, but both of them were across the country that night. It was more likely that she had shot them herself, but the lack of any hard evidence would make it hard to obtain an arrest warrant.
Diane had given many interviews to investigators, but as cooperative as she had been, she became impatient with them. She refused to give consent for surgery that would remove the bullet fragments from Christie’s shoulder, or to let the children’s wounds be photographed. When she was subpoenaed to testify in front of a Grand Jury, she refused to go for months. It was unheard of for a victim to refuse to testify in a murder investigation, but Diane was not your average victim.
In one of the interviews she gave police during this period, she reenacted the night of the murder on a videotape with a similar car. It should be noted that not everyone processes grief in the same way. Having said that, Diane’s behavior during this video is straight-up odd. For a woman who supposedly watched a stranger shoot her children mere days earlier, she was in a remarkably good mood. Giddy, giggling, telling jokes as she retraced her steps.
At one point she accidentally bumps her cast on the door frame, wincing in pain. After regaining her composure, she laughs and says, “This is worse than the…” before stopping herself. Worse than when she was shot, perhaps?
Diane continued to visit her children in the hospital. Christie was slowly regaining her ability to speak, working with counselor Paula Krogdahl, and her mother often communicated with her in hushed whispers. On June 10th, the deputy witnessed Christie say to her mother, “Paula was here today but I didn’t talk about nothing.” Nevertheless, guards refused to let Diane speak to her daughter alone.
Diane underwent surgery for her arm. When it was finally completed, she woke up to a nasty surprise: Prosecutor Hugi had requested Christie and Danny be removed from Diane’s custody, which a judge granted. She was still allowed to see them in the hospital, but she would not be taking them home. Naturally, Diane was furious, and told them she would take the children out of the hospital herself.
However, with one child in a wheelchair and the other hooked up to life support, even the most devoted mother would have a hard time making good on that threat.
While Diane was under surgery, another investigator tried to interview Danny about what happened. Unfortunately, the three-year old was not able to talk at any length about the incident, either not able to comprehend the events of the night, or too scared to, saying “Not supposed to answer… not supposed to answer.”
Officers interviewed people who had been in the area that night, even potential suspects who could be the “shaggy-haired stranger”. Every lead turned out to be a dead end, with men of interest having been in jail the night in question, or not matching the description Diane gave.
The closest thing they had to a witness was a man who had spotted her red Nissan driving down the road that night. It would have been after the shooting had happened, yet the man noted the only thing unusual about the car was how slowly it was moving, maxing out at 10 miles per hour. There was no cry for help, no sounds of yelling or screaming. Diane had been shot, yes, but you might reasonably expect that a woman whose kids were dying would have a greater sense of urgency.
Danny continued to give conflicting accounts of the events of the night, saying that there had indeed been a man there that night, but on another occasion, told officers his mother had ran him over with her car. As abusive a mother as Diane may have been, there was no evidence of this. Christie, on the other hand, was slowly regaining both her ability to speak, and her memory of the night. With more counseling, she might be the only person who could give a clear account of what had happened.
After five weeks of treatment, she was finally released from the hospital, and put into a foster home.
The police had trouble finding enough hard evidence to prove Diane was the killer. The main issue was the gun used in the shooting – from the bullets that were recovered, they knew she had access to a gun that matched, but the gun itself was nowhere to be seen, likely disposed of in the river. An extensive party searched the surrounding area, including diving in the river, but nothing was found. At least they had the support of those who knew Diane best – Steve, Nick, and her sister, Kathy, all believed Diane was the culprit.
Nick had even gone so far as to call her himself, recording the call and trying to get her to confess over the phone. During one of these calls, she even claimed there had been two assailants. Diane’s parents were the only ones who believed in her innocence.
Going against her lawyer’s advice, Diane would talk to absolutely everyone who would listen. She made numerous media appearances, and before long everyone in town knew who she was. They also knew she was a suspect herself. Despite her antagonism with the police, Diane insisted on talking to them regularly, often changing her story.
She changed the man’s appearance, now claiming he had called her by name and knew about her tattoo. Police poked as many holes in her story as they could, but she remained adamant that it was a man who had shot her children.
Diane interviewed with the investigators endlessly, going through multiple tapes in a single session. Over time, they became more agitated with her, beginning to accuse her more and more directly. She frequently threatened to leave, only for the investigators to remind her she was free to go at any time.
When pressed on why the man would have been okay with Diane driving away with her children, she responded, “I told you he didn’t come to take the car.”
The interviewers could not have been more confused, and when asked for clarification, Diane became evasive. They continued to point out the implausibility of her story, when she had finally had enough.
She told them, “OK! Since you guys seem to think I should have brought the guy in with me, I will get him myself and I’ll bring him back. ‘Cause I know who did it!”
Understandably, they were stunned. “You know his name?”
“Yes I do. Yes, I do.”
“You know him by name?”
“Yes.”
However, she walked out. Without telling them the name of the man who shot her children.
Later that day, the phone rang. It was Diane. She rambled incoherently for a while before hanging up, still not giving up the name of her attacker.
Soon, after five months in the hospital, Danny would join his sister in the foster home. He remained in a wheelchair, and unfortunately, would require one for the rest of his life. Christie herself had suffered partial facial paralysis from the incident. Even if their minds could move on from the trauma of that night, their bodies would not.
Diane, meanwhile, was the loneliest she had ever been in her life. She drank frequently, would go out and pick up random men. None of her friends in Oregon or Arizona wanted anything to do with her.
There was one exception: a man she had met while working her postal route in Oregon. He had heard the news stories, of course, but had trouble believing that this friendly woman could have done something so horrible. The two began to date, and before long they became intimate. Soon, Diane began to obsess over him, showing up at his home constantly, wanting to spend as much time with him as possible.
Feeling smothered, he gave notice to his landlord and found a new home twenty minutes away, not telling her his new address.
But two nights before he was due to move out, Diane came over for one last date. The man was reluctant, but she was determined to get him in bed. Ultimately, she succeeded, and the two made love.
Diane Downs was pregnant once again.
Hungry Like the Wolf
While Diane had been barred from seeing her children, Steve wasn’t. However, he had started to gain sympathy for her, and decided that while taking Christie out, he would allow Diane to spend time with their daughter. However, Danny had to be supervised, so Diane was able to spend time with Christie alone, unsupervised. Steve briefly thought she had kidnapped her daughter, but fortunately the child was returned without further incident. That said, Christie was noticeably quiet that evening at the foster home.
Meanwhile, the man who had just gotten Diane pregnant had a friend over, who did not believe him when he said he had known the woman from the media. With a few drinks in him, he called Diane and invited her over to his new address to prove his friend wrong. She came immediately, sharing the news about her pregnancy. For months afterwards she sent numerous letters to his home, which he ignored.
On occasion he would find messages left on his car’s window, and got in the habit of hiding whenever the postal jeep approached.
Diane also made a point of filing tort claims against Lane County, regarding how they had taken custody of her children without charging her of a crime. She went to the media, frequently asking why they wouldn’t arrest her if they thought she was guilty. The reason, of course, was because they needed Christie to be able to testify about what happened, but forcing an eight-year old victim into court before she’s ready would be a recipe for disaster.
Diane’s pregnancy was also a concern – bringing charges against a pregnant woman could help her gain sympathy with the jury. The best they could do for the time being was to give Diane a one-year suspended sentence for violating visitation rights.
For Christie’s therapy sessions, the counselor had been given a copy of Rio, the Duran Duran cassette found in Diane’s car the night of the murder. He would play it for her, hoping the songs on the tape might jog her memory. For months, they tried different tactics to get Christie to open up, when one day, they finally had a breakthrough. They made different children’s dolls to represent her and her siblings, and arranged two couches to imitate the front and back seat of her car.
They asked Christie to play the part of her mother. They then watched as she walked to the rear, where they presumed Diane had kept her gun, then to the doors, where she leaned in and made pointing motions at each of the dolls. She began sobbing hysterically, so they ended the session before she could be upset further. It would take more time before she would be ready to testify.
But make no mistake, they finally had what they needed for a conviction.
On February 28th, 1984 (appropriately, nine months after the incident), Diane Downs was arrested, on charges of murder, attempted murder, and assault in the first degree. At this point, the five-months-pregnant mother had resigned herself to the inevitable, having finally confessed to Willadene about the sexual abuse she suffered as a child. She even had her diaries in her car the morning she was arrested. An officer stated she seemed relieved.
When she arrived in the courtroom the next day, she pleaded Not Guilty. The case would go to trial.
At first, it appeared as if Diane’s defense attorney would be Melvin Belli, who had previously defended Jack Ruby. Ruby, if you’re not aware, was the man who shot Lee Harvey Oswald, assassin of President Kennedy. Ultimately, due to a scheduling conflict, he would not be able to participate.
Even in prison, Diane found love. While awaiting her trial, she made a pen pal of Randall Woodfield, better known as the I-5 Killer. Diane was not surprised at all to learn she had been writing back and forth with a serial killer.
On the first day of the trial, Prosecutor Fred Hugi outlined what had happened: Diane had fell in love with Robert Knickerbocker, and when he told her he did not want to be a father, she attempted to end her children’s lives so that she could have him. She then shot herself in the arm and drove them to the hospital to make it look like she was trying to rescue them. Hugi produced one of the letters Diane wrote to Nick, known as the “Masturbation Poem.”
A witness from the ER that night testified that Diane asked her, “Are they dead yet?” with no emotion whatsoever. Various employees from the hospital talked about how composed she was, expecting a woman in that position to be in hysterics.
Doctors testified how Christie had teetered on the edge of death more than any patient they’d ever had. According to the surgeon who operated on Christie, Diane had come into the room during treatment and told him, “I know that Christie has sustained brain damage, and I don’t want you to sustain her life.” The X-ray technician recalled how Diane complained about having her X-ray picture taken when she wasn’t wearing makeup.
Finally, it was Christie’s turn. The now-nine-year-old girl had suffered a stroke and developed a speech impediment, so no one, prosecution or defense, could say with 100% certainty how reliable a witness she would be. To make matters easier, they brought one of Christie’s foster sisters into the room to sit in the front row during her testimony. As Christie took the stand, she had to lift her right arm into her lap with her other hand, as she had lost motor function of it during that night.
Fred Hugi carefully asked Christie to recall the events of that night, step by step. She gave short answers, but was still able to describe the night with Hugi’s help. She told the room that her mother had shot Cheryl, herself, and Danny.
In fact, she remembered hearing the song Hungry Like the Wolf the moment it happened.
Once Hugi was finished questioning Christie, Diane’s lawyer proceeded to cross-examine her, in what must have been the worst moment of his entire life. Evidently, Diane’s defense strategy was to see if Christie may have confused the events of that night with a prior trip they had taken to the beach earlier that week. Christie remained steadfast and firm about what she had seen.
Later testimonies revealed that when they had replayed the cassette in the counselor’s office, Hungry Like the Wolf caused Christie’s expression to change to one of sheer terror. In fact, it turned out that the tape player in the car only worked when the keys were in the ignition. Diane had repeatedly told authorities that she had pretended to throw her keys to distract the shooter, which we now know couldn’t have been the case if Christie heard the song.
To help recreate the events of the night, the prosecution brought in a stereo to play Hungry Like the Wolf. If you’re unfamiliar with the hit 1982 song from Duran Duran, here are the lyrics to the chorus:
In touch with the ground I’m on the hunt I’m after you Smell like I sound, I’m lost in a crowd And I’m hungry like the wolf
While the song was played just to give a sense of what happened the night of the murder, it had an unexpected side effect: Diane began to smile and giggle. She could be seen tapping her foot to the rhythm, snapping her fingers, mouthing the words to the song. You would expect a woman on trial for murder to be more on edge, but evidently, she didn’t have a care in the world.
After the prosecution rested, Diane finally took the stand to present her case. She spent four days on the stand, describing every event in her life, from the abuse she suffered as a child, her failed marriage, her affairs, numerous pregnancies, trying to present the image of a frail woman incapable of harming her children. More witnesses were called to try to give credence to the “shaggy-haired stranger” theory. The defense seemed to argue that Christie was unreliable as a witness due to her age and injuries, yet simultaneously Diane’s wildly different versions of the night were understandable as the byproduct of a traumatized mind.
The biggest hole, though, was that the murder weapon was never found. It was true that the bullets recovered matched a gun Diane had had access to, but without the murder weapon itself, it was impossible to confirm with certainty. It’s true that she could have tossed the gun in the river, where it drifted downstream, never to be seen again, but it was nothing more than a theory.
Finally, after closing arguments, the jury went to deliberate. With a mountain of diary entries, tape recordings, and witness testimonies to look over, deliberations were not swift. It took three full days of waiting, but finally, the jury came back with a verdict.
Diane Downs was guilty of all charges.
She Fought the Law and the Law Won
p>Weren’t we forgetting something? Oh, that’s right, Diane was pregnant!
Ten days after her verdict, Diane went into labor. It’s odd looking back at it now, considering Elizabeth Holmes’ 2022 trial was delayed due to her pregnancy, but perhaps it makes sense that a first-degree murder charge is less likely to have a delayed trial than wire fraud.
Amy Elizabeth Downs was born June 27th, 1984. Hours later, Diane was back in jail, having been stripped of her newly born child. She wrote to the father, who, knowing full well how promiscuous she was, refused to believe the child was really his.
Two months later, the judge sentenced Diane to life plus fifty years in prison, with a 25-year mandatory minimum. “The Court hopes the defendant will never again be free.” During the drive to the prison, Diane reportedly wriggled onto her back, spread her legs wide, and made seductive eye contact with the driver when he turned to look at her.
Thankfully, she wasn’t his type.
Christie and Danny spent three years in the foster home before being adopted by Fred Hugi. Since seeing them in the hospital in 1983, he had felt a sense of duty to protect them, a duty that still felt unfulfilled now that their mother was in prison. Amy was adopted by another family, and would have no memories of her birth mother.
And yet… Diane’s story was not quite over!
On the morning of July 11, 1987, three years after her conviction, Diane Downs dressed in layers as she entered the prison yard. She told a couple of fellow prisoners “I’m going now” and proceeded to climb the fence of the medium-security prison, the razor wire proving not to be a hindrance. She made it to the other side and ran to freedom. Embarrassingly, this was the prison’s fifth successful escape in the past decade.
The police received a call from a woman who claimed to have seen her. Evidently, this woman was driving down the road with her family when a woman who fit Diane’s description stood in the road and stopped their van.
Diane told the woman her boyfriend was hurt, and that she needed a ride into town, forcing her way into the front seat of the car. The woman drove Diane to her destination and let her out, thankfully with nobody being hurt.
Everyone with even a vague connection to the Downs case was on high alert. Nick and his wife were contacted by the local S.W.A.T. Team, worried that she may track them down for revenge. Her ex-husband Steve, Prosecutor Hugi, and Ann Rule (the author of the book about the case), were all worried Diane might try to find and kill them.
Over a week passed. The tip line was flooded with calls of potential sightings, though it was difficult to parse what was real and what was just the imagination of frightened citizens.
Finally, a detective looked back over the papers in Diane’s cell and noticed faint markings on one of them. The markings could not be read with the naked eye, so they were sent to a lab for analysis. After a few days, in a moment straight out of CSI, they were able to discern an address from the markings, which was not far from where Diane had asked to be dropped off. Upon searching the house, it was discovered that Diane had been staying with Wayne Seifer, the husband of one of her fellow inmates, Louise Seifer.
Diane would later claim that she had identified the man responsible for killing her children, and that she had escaped so she could hunt him down herself. While staying with Wayne, the two had had sex multiple times, but she did not get pregnant. Upon her capture, Diane was transferred to a maximum security prison. She remains in prison to this day.
Wrap-Up
Diane Downs may not be a serial killer, but she is terrifying nonetheless. Like many subjects in true crime, she had an abusive childhood that turned her into a monster. She had a strong intellect and a weak emotional state, a deadly combination. She was cunning, manipulative, and saw the people around her, even her children, as nothing more than pawns to get what she wanted. Which, ironically, was to be loved.
Let’s say she succeeded in her mission. Her three kids died, and she got to play the role of the grieving mother. Would Nick have felt so much sympathy he would leave his own wife and marry her, unburdened by children? Probably not.
Her plan was incoherent and short-sighted, which makes it all the stranger that she nearly got away with it. If Christie had not come back from the brink of death, it’s possible she would have walked free. The brass unicorn, meant to be a memento of her dead children, turned out to be nothing more than a symbol of her failed plot.
Sadly, Diane is not the only mother who has murdered their own children. In October 1994, Susan Leigh Smith left her two boys in her car, letting it roll into a South Carolina lake and drowning them. Similar to Diane, she had also been having a relationship with a man who did not want children. Susan confessed to the crime, and was convicted of murder.
In 2001, Andrea Yates drowned her five children in their bathtub in Houston, TX. She was initially convicted of murder, but a retrial found her not guilty by reason of insanity due to postpartum depression. Yates is currently being held in a mental institution, and has expressed no desire to leave.
Smith and Yates have both expressed regret over their crimes. Yet, to this day, Diane refuses to admit she was the one to shoot her children, insisting the real killer is still free, changing her story whenever it suits her. She grants interviews to nearly anyone who asks, desperate for attention.
In 1988, Diane was interviewed on The Oprah Winfrey Show alongside Ann Rule, the author of Small Sacrifices, the book about the case. While it’s questionable practice to give killers a platform to speak on, the interview is certainly memorable. It’s clear Diane is enjoying being on national television, even if the audience in the room loathes her. At times, it almost seems like she is treating Rule not as an adversary, but as an old friend.
As for the children, Danny and Christie have kept quiet lives. Their disabilities remain with them to this day, but they are alive and well, Christie having named one of her children Cheryl, after her deceased sister. Downs’ last child, Amy, was renamed Becky Babcock, and has made media appearances where she talks about the mother she never knew.
Diane Downs last had a parole hearing in 2020, but was denied. More than likely, she will remain in prison for the rest of her life.
Dismembered Appendixes
If you recognize the name Ann Rule, it’s because she was a prolific True Crime writer. Her most famous book was The Stranger Beside Me, detailing her time working at the suicide hotline alongside her coworker, Ted Bundy. Her book about the Downs case, Small Sacrifices, was later made into a movie in 1989 starring Farrah Fawcett. You may not recognize the actress’ name, but you might know her as the red swimsuit model on the best-selling poster of all time.
In 2014, Yoplait had to retract an ad it had made to sell yogurt. Why? Because the ad featured the song Hungry Like the Wolf, and received so much backlash that Duran Duran made a public statement asking them to pull it from television. Yoplait denied having any knowledge of the Downs case when the advertisement was made, which was 30 years after the incident. Curiously, an Old Spice ad starring Bruce Campbell, made several years earlier, also featured the song, but came and went without controversy.
Key Takeaways
- Diane Downs shot her three children in 1983, killing her daughter Cheryl and injuring Christie and Danny.
- Downs claimed a stranger shot her children, but inconsistencies in her story and her behavior raised suspicions.
- Christie’s testimony and her reaction to the song ‘Hungry Like the Wolf’ were crucial in convicting Downs.
- Downs was sentenced to life plus fifty years in prison after being found guilty of murder and attempted murder.
- Downs escaped from prison in 1987 but was recaptured and remains in prison to this day.
Dana Ortiz covers prosecutorial mechanics, evidentiary procedure, and how investigations unwind decades after the original case file went cold.
Frequently Asked Questions
What happened on the night of May 19th, 1983, involving Diane Downs?
On the night of May 19th, 1983, Diane Downs drove to McKenzie-Willamette Hospital in Springfield, Oregon, claiming that a ‘shaggy-haired stranger’ had shot her and her three children. Her daughter Cheryl was pronounced dead upon arrival, while her other two children, Christie and Danny, were critically injured.
What was Diane Downs’ background and early life like?
Diane Downs, born Elizabeth Diane Frederickson, had a strict and abusive upbringing. Her father, Wes, was very controlling and molested her starting at the age of twelve. Diane was shy and bullied as a child but became more outgoing as she entered her teenage years. She met Steve Downs in high school and eventually married him, despite his abusive behavior.
What was the nature of Diane Downs’ relationship with Robert Knickerbocker?
Diane Downs had an affair with Robert Knickerbocker, who went by ‘Nick.’ They first became intimate on May 19th, 1981. Nick wanted the affair to remain private, but Diane was more open about it. Nick did not want children and had a vasectomy, which was a point of contention in their relationship. They had an on-again, off-again relationship leading up to the shooting incident.
What inconsistencies were noticed in Diane Downs’ story about the shooting?
Investigators noticed several inconsistencies in Diane Downs’ story. Her description of the attacker was vague and changed over time. She refused to allow the children’s wounds to be photographed and resisted surgery to remove bullet fragments from Christie’s shoulder. Her behavior during a reenactment of the night was unusually cheerful, and she seemed more concerned with her own injuries than her children’s.
What role did Christie Downs play in the investigation?
Christie Downs, who survived the shooting, played a crucial role in the investigation. Through therapy sessions, she was able to recall details of the night and eventually testified in court, stating that her mother had shot her and her siblings. Her testimony was instrumental in Diane Downs’ conviction.
What was the outcome of Diane Downs’ trial?
Diane Downs was found guilty of murder, attempted murder, and assault in the first degree. She was sentenced to life plus fifty years in prison, with a 25-year mandatory minimum. She gave birth to a daughter, Amy, just days after her conviction and was stripped of custody. Diane remains in prison to this day.
What was the significance of the Duran Duran cassette tape found in Diane Downs’ car?
The Duran Duran cassette tape, specifically the song ‘Hungry Like the Wolf,’ played a significant role in the investigation. Christie Downs recalled hearing the song at the moment of the shooting, which helped corroborate her testimony. The tape player in the car only worked when the keys were in the ignition, contradicting Diane’s claim that she had pretended to throw her keys to distract the shooter.
What was the reaction of Diane Downs’ family and friends to the shooting?
Diane Downs’ parents, Wes and Willadene Frederickson, believed in her innocence. However, her ex-husband Steve Downs, her sister Kathy, and her former lover Robert Knickerbocker all suspected Diane of being involved in the shooting. Nick even tried to record a confession from Diane over the phone.
What was the significance of the brass unicorn mentioned by Diane Downs?
Diane Downs mentioned a brass unicorn she had bought and engraved with her children’s names. She had it engraved with the date of May 13th, 1983, which was puzzling as there was no special event on that day. Investigators speculated that the unicorn might have been intended as a memorial for her children, suggesting premeditation.
What was the impact of the shooting on Christie and Danny Downs?
Christie and Danny Downs survived the shooting but suffered lifelong injuries. Christie developed a speech impediment and partial facial paralysis, while Danny required a wheelchair for the rest of his life. Both children were adopted by Prosecutor Fred Hugi and his wife, who felt a sense of duty to protect them after seeing them in the hospital.
Sources
- Original Casual Criminalist video: The Case of Diane Downs: Hungry Like the Wolf
- Hero image source by Laurel Lodged / openverse, by-sa.
