I was worring, Eugene. I don't remember the time. I think it was morning, but I don't remember June twenty seventh, nineteen eighty four.
And do you wonder about what the day was like that you came into this world?
I do.
I mean, I wonder I've heard she was induced, but I'm not really sure. So I wonder what it was like. Was she in her jail cell and her water broke and she was rushed to the hospital, or you know, was it planned for that day?
And then, you know, I wonder what.
It was like after I was born, as she was showing me off and you know that sort of stuff. It's a little strange to me. But I'm wondering being taken away from her, how did that go? Because I remember when when I gave my son to the nurse, it broke me. You know that that was that was a moment of just pain, sheer pain. But I knew he was going somewhere where he would be, you know, well, taken care of and loved. And I chose that family.
So it's a little bit different than Diane, where she didn't get to choose the family, and you know, she didn't have a say in any of it. In no way am I saying she's a victim. I'm just saying that it might have been hard on her, but with her mental state, it may not have been anything to her. I guess that's kind of what I'm curious is how did she handle it but she just like, okay, take my kid, or was it hard for her?
Okay?
I just have one more question, is that Okay, when you reached out to Diane and asked her about what was that like bringing me into the world, what was her answer?
She was acting like it was the best thing in the world, you know, and how she was so happy and she got to hold me and how much she loved me. And she didn't say anything about having to hand me over or me being taken away or anything like that. It was just that she got to hold me for a very long time. And I don't know, it still kind of red creeps me out a little bit.
I don't know.
It's just really strange to be born from a person that you cannot relate to. You know, that's my biological mother, But I don't understand her at all.
I don't ever want to be here.
I was about eight years old when my adoptive mom started telling me about my biological mom, about how she had done bad things. And I continued to ask and pester her throughout the next three years, and she finally got to the point where she just decided, you know, you're not old enough to know this is something that's awful. I don't ever want to tell you. In a sense as a little kid, it was more curiosity than anything.
I was frustrated with her, and I was a little angry that she wouldn't tell me, and so I really just wanted to know. And then once I got that in my head that I wanted to know that they were, you know who she was because my mom had given me little tidbits, you know that she was bad, that she was in jail, that all this stuff, and I wanted to know why. So it was more frustrating, and I was a little bit angry when she wouldn't tell me, And then my brain went to work of how can I find out on my own.
And of course by tricking her babysitter, Becky did finally find out who her mother was. Later, after watching Small Sacrifices. Eric Mason was one of the first people to help Becky bring her story to the press, and has a unique insight into Becky's reasons for wanting her story out into the world.
Yeah, well, I think all of us have family secrets. We all have that crazy uncle, we all have something that we don't want to share with the rest of the world. And so as a story that one day Becky living in Bend is watching Farah Fawcet in the movie Small Sacrifices on television and thinking to herself, oh,
my god, that is my mother. That in that sense, we all have to come to terms with what came before us and who came before us, and their crimes or their contributions, and to make peace with all of it is to understand ourselves a whole lot more. And so you know, the journey that we are all on
is to understand why. And with Rebecca Wow, she has a lot of it that she can read about watch and that she has kind of a front row seat to this very infamous person and in so doing being able to talk about it in the magazine and on twenty twenty and on Oprah being able to talk about it, and everyone think to themselves, you know what, I think I can deal with my past a little bit better too.
You know, it's been surprising to me, Eric, is that when I've been working on this case, I've had people attached to the case that worked with the children, anybody who's worked with Christy or Danny or came in contact with the deceased. Cheryl told me, why why does anybody care about Becky's story? She didn't get shocked, like that's kind of surprising to me, Like, what is she really suffering from? She was raised by a fabulous family. Why do this big quest? Is she just seeking fame?
Yeah, that's a good point. I mean when the woman came to me who was in the film festival from Ben and said, do you want to meet Dianoun's daughter, I was like, Oh my god, could this even be true? And I don't think she really was per se looking for that. I think she was searching for the understanding of her own life. And I think she saw journalism and getting the story out there as a way to maybe find the other missing pieces of the puzzle. And so sort of crying out to the universe is not
such a bad thing. I mean, I think in some ways it's therapeutic, and for her, I think The point of the story is this is the amazing control part of the experiment is she was raised in the absolute best surroundings environment, place to live, resources from parents, and yet she felt this toe from the water of that genetics, and it still was pulling on her and still in controlling her, even from in some ways from a prison in California. There was this element there that was just
really strong, this current. And to be able to fight that current, you really have to understand and do your work to figure out how to overcome it.
When we contacted Diane Downs about this podcast, she responded with a short and somewhat strange letter claiming that Becky was not her biological daughter. And even more odd was the fact that she included several Q tips enclosed in a small plastic bag inside an envelope with the words try it glued to the front, presumably saturated with her saliva, so that we could have her DNA. In Becky's quest to find out more about her family lineage, DNA is
all she really has to start with. We enlisted the help of a DNA detective to help with the process, but first we spoke to doctor Greg hammikin a DNA expert to learn a bit about the process and what to expect.
You know, my mother told me not to talk about myself. I violate that constantly, So tell.
Your mom you have permission to brag.
I started about twenty something years ago doing forensic work. Got into forensics really through teaching. I started using a murder scenario with the DNA. But then I met Calvin Johnson, who was a guy who got out through DNA through the Innocence Project in New York. He was released near where I was teaching in Georgia. He'd done seventeen years in prison, and he's on the radio talking and they asked him, how do you feel about the criminal justice system now? And he said, you got to have laws.
He's not better. He's just a really great guy and believes in the system still after what he's been through. So we invited him too school, and as he was speaking to my students, I wrote chapter one of Exits to Freedom, which became his autobiography. After that book, in nineteen ninety nine, I started getting casework because people thought, well, if I can write about it, maybe I could help
out with some cases. So I started doing case for free, helping out and then I testified, came back to Georgia, tried to start a Georgia Innocence Project, and there were already some students doing at the law school. So I got on their board as the DNA expert and we started working down there, and I think they worked on
six cases with people goingxonerate with them. When I was in London working on a private case, I was doing research on how they do things in Europe, and so I got in touch with Amanda Knox's being she was a trial at that point. I joined the team, got a bunch of American experts to look at the case along with with Johnson. She was doing the same thing. We wrote a report to the court, the court couldn't
accept it. She's convicted, and then I just kept working on a case of the family for about four years. That case really got so much press attention and so many fans and people who hated her. It was kind of like you know, O Jay's case. It was such a controversial case. So that really kind of thrusts our little project with much more in the limelight for a while, both in positive and negative ways.
I called you a couple of weeks ago because I wanted to ask you where to start with DNA because Becky and I are on an interesting journey together and I have no knowledge of DNA, and it's critical to the journey that Becky and I are going on.
I am the biological daughter of Diane Downes, and I am just curious about everything with DNA. So Diane actually denies that I'm her biological daughter. My original birth certificate actually says that she is my birth mother. Diane has sent her DNA to the studio so that we can, you know, try and match that. But I'm actually really interested to going to search for my biological father. Would that be something that we could do with running my DNA through some system.
We found out that, due to Becky's ethnic background, is actually highly likely that she'll be able to find a lot of information through commercial DNA service.
There's good news in that because the American genealogical databases are populated disproportionately with Caucasians, whereas the criminal databases are not. It's just just the opposite and the criminal databases, you know, the good news for Caucasians who are looking for their families is you're likely to get a lot of information from any of the commercial genealogy companies.
According to doctor Greg interestingly enough, men often have a much easier time tracing the lineage.
Because that men definitely you know, usually gives their last name. But no, you should be able to find out pretty easily with the genetic test that you can send off to any of the commercial shops and they link to all these great pay pertrayals. There are lots of things people are doing that with the through these ancestry records. I don't think you're going to have a terrible problem finding at least the lineage of both your parents.
Doctor Gray continued to explain some of the technical aspects of examining DNA, as well as the process itself and some of the science behind it, but ultimately his suggestion was that we contact a genealogist, someone whose job it is to do a deep dive into the results provided by commercial DNA service and really trace the backgrounds and family lines by using the results as a foundation and researching beyond them. So we reached out to Michelle Leonard, a self proclaimed DNA detective.
I'm Michelle, and I am a professional genealogist, a DNA detective, an author, a historian, and my main specialism is working with DNA testing in order to identify unknown ancestors, so all sorts of unknown ancestor misters mainly unknown parentage so unknown parents, unknown grandparents. But people will come to me with more distant unknown ancestor mysteries as well, like ann
great and second great grandparents. What I do is I marry up all my years of genealogical expertise in creating and building family trees and in living person tracing, and with my DNA know how to try and identify these mystery ancestors. In general, people will come to me because they've heard or maybe they've seen something on TV, or they've read an article, or they've just found out that
DNA testing can help with their mystery. Some people come to me right at the beginning, like I think Becky is, where they've not yet done any testing. They don't know where they should test, they don't know how to go about it. They've just found out. They've got this idea that doing DNA testing might solve their mystery, might help them find out who their father was or who their
grandfather was, that kind of thing. Others will come to me after they've tested, and they don't know what to do with it, and so they maybe google for a DNA expert, a DNA detective, or a genetic genealogist, and
they might hit upon me and contact me. At that point, they might already have been building perhaps a maternal tree or trees for the lines that they know of, and they want to do it themselves, but then they just hit a roadblock and they can't get any further, and they're frustrated with it, and they think, I need somebody with a bit more expertise on this than I have, and then they'll come to me at that point.
One of the advantages of knowing your family line is having an understanding of their medical history. Becky has experienced some health problems in recent years, and she believes that knowing who her father is will help provide some insight to not only where she comes from, but also help establish a background on some of the medical problems she may be genetically predisposed to.
I just would like to find out who my biological father is, not because my family life is disrupted or unhealthy. Because my parents are amazing. I love them dearly, but I'm just getting older. I have quite a bit of health problems that are going on as I'm aging, and I'm realizing that I never met my biological father, and it is something that I kind of wanted to do.
Oh, medical history is something important, then.
Yes, definitely.
It's it's like when you go to the doctor and they say, you know, do you have family history of xyz?
I always have to put adopted. I don't know.
And you can see there's a big part of Becky that needs to know that some part of her comes from something decent.
Many many people have said that to me, and they want to know what their medical history is, and you know, I think everyone has a right to know that as well.
Yeah, And I mean I really just want to know where I come from. I want to know just my background. I know my life now and I know my family parents, and this is all just beautiful and amazing, but I'd like to know the other half of me.
You know.
I know Diane Downs is my biological mother, and that is the half of me that I am not proud of, and I would love to find the other half. So when I was eighteen, I was able to order my original birth certificate and that was the real answer that was Oh, my gosh, it's actually true. There's no denying it at that point because Diane Down's, well, Elizabeth Diane Downs, was listed as my biological mother, but there was no mention of a father.
And that's very common that there's just a big blank for the father. Very common, you know, in all time periods and in all places, really, And I agree with what you're saying about the aspect of taking back control in a sense in terms of what you can get from documents, that varies from state to state, from country
to country. That varies a lot. But what doesn't vary is the fact that whatever you might get from adoption papers or from hearsay, from what somebody may be able to tell you is simply something that is very difficult to corroborate, in fact, impossible to corroborate without that DNA evidence.
Michelle's believe is that documents can sometimes have false information, but DNA evidence is more or less irrefutable.
I always say that with this, while I want to know everything that it's possible to know about the adoption papers and the hearsay evidence, I always follow the DNA. Always put the DNA first, and I don't let that other evidence the documentary evidence or the hearsay evidence cloud my judgment and lead to confirmation bias because that information can always be wrong or falsely given. The DNA, however,
if followed correctly, will lead to the truth. And you'll hear people say a lot things like DNA doesn't lie, human beings do. And while that is very generally true, it's also quite an overused and oversimplified saying, because a DNA results on their own can be misinterpreted at times, in that if you don't know what you're doing with them, and you're trying to find an unknown father, you could misinterpret the DNA matches and end up identifying the wrong
man or several wrong men. I've seen that happen before. Tister is looking for answers that hit upon someone with a similar name to one given in an adoption document, or they perhaps message a match who says, oh, I think it could be my dad's cousin, and people get taken along in the wave of that, and when somebody who understands the DNA looks at it properly realizes that the DNA doesn't support that conclusion of it being that man. So it's a bit more complicated than simply saying DNA
will give you the truth. DNA doesn't lie. That is true, but at the same time, it has to be worked with correctly in order to get to the correct answer.
DNA is a very scientific way of going about a very emotional process. There's no denying that your clients and Becky here are absolutely going to be subjected to strong
emotions about this. And then also there's questions about when you find Becky's father, what do we do with that information, Because I've read different reports from Diane downs herself where she has said the father knows he's the father, he's a dear friend of mine, and so there's that and the reports, and then Becky's heard other things.
Oh, there's so many stories circling around my biological father. I've heard that he doesn't know that he's the father. I've heard that he has fought for me when I was born to keep custody. I heard that he was a reporter during the case. I also heard that he was worked at the mail office with Diane. And then I also heard it was just some guy that was a husband of her cellmate. I mean, there's just so many stories. I would really love to just find that one answer.
And there's also the possibility that he's aware of who he is and simply doesn't have any desire to be involved.
That's something that I am worried about too, because I have been so out there, you know, I've been open about who I am, and if he had wanted to contact me, I've been in the media for ten years now, you know, So why hasn't he My fear is that maybe he has passed away, or he doesn't want to be found, or he just doesn't know.
It's a very tough thing to do, and you have to go into it understanding that it's going to bring up an awful lot of emotion. You have to have a good support network on hand, and you might want to even consider professional support, counseling and that kind of thing to help through the process in terms of when you get to that point, if you get to that point, because not all cases are solvable, or at least not
all cases are immediately solvable. Some take weeks, some take months, some take years, and depending on the ethnicity of the man in question, sometime there are some cases that will take years. Yet because if he's of an ethnicity, say that there isn't a society that tends to DNA test. Then that makes life a lot more difficult, because if you don't have the matches to work with, you can't identify the man on the end of it. But having said all that, if you get to that point you
identify a person. First off, you might have a number of candidates. You know, the DNA might be pointing to a particular family, say, but there might be three brothers, or you might only be able to say, well, it's one of these brothers, or it's one of their first cousins, it's one of these five men, for instance. And the only way to get to the bottom of which one of the five is is target testing. On those lines, anyone who DNA tests, they can find shops and surprises.
They can find some close ancestors aren't who they believe them to be, so for instance, finding out your father's not your father, or your grandfather wasn't your grandfather. These things can happen. Also, they might find that they have close relatives they didn't know existed, like say Becky testing and showing up on somebody's list. She could be a close relative, a half sibling, a first cousin they never
knew existed. So in terms of contacting people, in most cases you're going to have several candidates and you might have to narrow things down to the right one. But if you do know exactly who it is, then there are a number of prevailing ideas on who should make the contact and how that contact should be made.
It's clear that for Becky this whole process is going to be extremely emotional. It's not only her own discoveries that she's concerned about, but also the effect it might have on the people who raised her and took care of her.
Also.
At this point, Becky's could be whatever she imagines him to be, but once she knows, whatever fantasy or vision she has might be crushed.
There's so many aspects to it that, you know, I don't want to hurt my adopted parents because I do love them. And then there's the fact that I am on this journey that I never thought I was going to go on. I found Diane and I didn't want to know anymore. And now there's this search for finding
in the other half. And I've always been able just to pretend that my biological dad's an amazing person that he loves me, and that I don't know some great person that hasn't done anything wrong and is a positive person in society. But the reality is I don't know, and he may not be a positive person. He may not be the person that I thought he was my whole life.
Absolutely, Yeah, as I say that, this is not a comfortable thing to do, and it's not an easy thing to do, and it can be emotionally training, and there can be times where client has to step back and so you know, this is taking over my life and I need a break from it for a while. And I think anyone if they get to that point, then they need to take that break from it, if they're getting scared about getting close to the truth and things like that. And that's a really really important point when
you're doing something like this. It's not just about identifying someone. It's the whole range of emotions and how that person is feeling at any given point in the process is extremely important and has to be taken on board. And I completely understand what Becky is saying about having this fantasy about this great person in society that while she doesn't know that can remain intact. But at the same time,
there's that gnawing away because of not knowing. Clients who have found out things about their birth parents that they didn't expect and that they found very tough to deal with that because they had built up an image of a person that didn't exist in essence, that wasn't the reality. And others of course have been pleasantly surprised by what they found. It's every single case is so individual, and there's just no way to generalize about any of this at all.
Michelle explained to Becky and me in depth about how the process will work. Once Becky sends in her sample and receives her profile, Michelle will wade through all of the potential DNA relatives and form a complex family tree, gradually forming the branches that directly connect Becky to anyone else in the database who may hold clues to her father's identity.
I want to have that maternal side as reference, so you want the maternal tree, but just as good, in fact, even better than having the maternal tree as well, is having a close maternal relatives test that the closest that you can test, and when you're trying to solve a mystery, I want to just be working on the pertinent matches, the paternal matches, and if a maternal relatives can tell even better because everyone that matches them as well, I
can just eliminate them. I can put them in a group maternal and I can just put them to one side. And the people that don't match your uncle are the people I really want to look at because they're going to be on the paternal side. So actually your uncle testing is something I would hugely recommend in this situation.
Awesome, amazing, thank you Michelle for taking the time to speak with Becky and I.
Yeah, Michelle, thank you so much.
Thankfully James did in fact submit his DNA, so hopefully Michelle will in fact be able to find a complete picture of Becky's maternal line which will not only help begin the search for her paternal lineage, but also provide Becky the conclusive confirmation that she is in fact Diane's daughter, despite Diane's recent claims to the contrary. All that remains now is to wait for the results.
And it's that big web where there's so many more things, which is the reason that I have never done DNA Testine have been a little bit worried about how deep it goes.
You know, it's good. We need to know. You know my.
Heritage, and you know what health problems run in the family. But I've never been ready to find my biological father until now.
Well I can see how emotional that I've I've been thinking about your process and how we've were parallel and different in these ways. Like I told Michelle, just the fact that I know who my mom is and I've never had to fantasize about who she is. But she said it so well, like, yeah, what do you do with that fantasy if it's not real? If the father that you painted in your mind. I mean, this is
a big part of your structure and your history. This is ingrained and how you've been able to formulate who you are as a person.
Yeah, luckily I had my adopted parents.
And I've always said, you know that blood doesn't my blood in my veins may be somebody else's.
But well, let me think about that.
Getics that I have don't make me who I am. You know, there's that nature versus nurture concept. And I was raised right. I was raised with good family ethics and values and morals, and you know, I think my genetics have played a part in a lot of the things that I've done. But even if my biological father is somebody that doesn't live up to that fantasy, I think that I'll be okay because I have that strong family structure.
It's taken Becky a long time to reach the point where she's prepared to accept the idea that her biological father is out there. It could potentially be located thanks to DNA, and what that will ultimately mean for her sense of identity remains to be seen, along with the uncertainty that he's even willing to cooperate or come forward.
On the next episode of Happy Face Presents to Face Diane Down's trial, we explore her aspects of Diane's trial, as some of her bizarre behavior leading up to and during the trial, as well as a strange letter she wrote to our attorney after us all over. Ben Bolan is our executive producer, Melissa Moore is our co executive producer. Maya Cole is our primary producer. Paul Decand is our supervising producer. Sam T. Garnian is our researcher, and Matt
Riddle is our story editor. Featured music by dream Tent Happy Face presents to Face as a production of iHeartRadio