Well, they were just catastrophic injuries, and it's really amazing that all three didn't die that night. One sure, as far as we know, was dead on arrival at Mackenzue Alamat Hospital. The staff there was clearly not expecting this. They hear a car honking, and somebody runs out and there's a mom or a woman standing by a car saying, somebody shot my kids. So the doctors are dispatched out there and the nurses and sort of horrified to find one, two, and then a third kid, and they had been shot
in the chest. And the doctor would tell you that there's just a few more catastrophic injuries essocially for a young child than two have gunshots to the chest. And I remember dying at one of her news conferences saying, if I had shot my kids, would I had not have done a good job of it. And I remember thinking not too long after that, you did a tremendous job. If that was what you wanted to do, you did a great job.
The story of the crime begins on the evening of May nineteenth, nineteen eighty three. Diane Downs and her three children are riding along Mohawk Road. Dana Tims was a reporter for The Orgonian at the time a correspondent for Eugene County. He describes the area around the shooting.
It's a really pretty area. It's kind of a gateway to a couple of different river valleys. The Mackenzie River is really the defining water feature that comes down through there, with a couple of other branches going off of it. A lot of farming activity and ranches up there, some cattle, a lot of grass, very green, very emerald. It's very pretty.
There were probably homes spaced out or maybe every half mile or so, sort of the way that you would have anticipated homesteaders in fifty years before that, everyone having enough land to do what if they wanted to do.
Diane was on the road at ten pm on a school night with her three young children. According to Diane, her kids liked to sight see and they would just drive for enjoyment. She stands by her story even now after several decades in jail. She claims she saw a stranger in the road who flagged her down and she stopped to help.
She was portraying herself as a good Samaritan. But even if you're going to do that, my sense would be maybe you just stay on the road and you roll your windo down a little bit and say what's the problem. But she pulled off the road, turned off the car, how the keys in her head, and gets out of the car to go talk to this guy. It just seemed like an a natural thing to do.
According to Diane. The man then attacked her and her family in an attempt to steal a car, a quote unquote carjacking gone wrong.
In her telling, this guy wants the car, so what does he do. It's dark out, the headlights are shining forward. He walks up to the car, leans in and fires five to seven bullets at sleeping kids.
The man then apparently fled, and Diane, having sustained a gunshot wound to her forearm, wrapped the arm in a towel and drove to a nearby hospital. But according to a witness, she wasn't exactly driving with a sense of urgency.
One thing that has struck me then has always struck me. It was the testimony of somebody who was driving behind her on Old Mohawk Road as she was heading toward the hospital, and she claimed she had driven as fast as she could and yet her arm was wrapped in a towel, in a perfectly folded towel that had been placed obviously in her car for some reason. So she was as a clinical narcissist, which is one of the
three personality disorders that was diagnosed for her. The driver of that car said, we were going five to seven miles an hour. I would have passed, but there was a double yellow line and it was just pretty dark and curvy out there, so he didn't feel safe doing that. But identified the Arizona plate that hadn't been changed yet, and again, you know that's not enough on his own, but it was just a very very telling point to me in terms of just the logic of the situation.
It's not that far from where the shooting occurred to Mackenzie Lambat hospital where she ended up with the kids.
What is the distance from the location of the shooting to the hospital.
Oh, I'm sure it's less than two miles, and a lot of that's rural, so you can you can move along at a pretty good clip if you need to get there.
Diane's brother, James maintains that Diane had an excuse for driving slowly and that she still made it as quickly as possible. When I spoke to him about it, he was quick to point out that the witness who saw her driving wasn't behind her the entire way to the hospital.
So one question I did have is why was she driving her vehicle very slowly on the way to the hospital after the incident? Real hard to describe that one. Basically, I think Enman was his name, said he was following her on Old Mohawk Road. The following period took place for about two maybe three miles, right, so the shooting was two miles away from where and he followed her on Curby Roads for two miles. We must remember, really
truly must remember. She was just shot. She just had her child in the back seat, was gurgling with blood because she got shot alung right, Her lung had collapsed and she couldn't breathe, and she had to maybe tend with the child in the back seat, getting her to roll over so she would stopped gurgling. Her other boy in the back seat had been shot in the chest
and he was also in the midst of dying. She was maybe reaching over to the child that was laying on the floor and saying Cheryl, Cheryl, Cheryl Cheryl, I wasn't there, right, But I mean it's like I maybe she was obviously wrapping her arm with a towel. You know, I don't know. I can't really talk about the towel. I don't have any idea, But I don't know why she was driving slow. But if you can imagine, put
yourself in that situation being shot. And he only followed her for about I don't really know, be honest with that two or three miles, but I know it wasn't a long waist. And yes, indeed she was going slow, and she almost drove off the road and things like that. But then what's important from my point of view is that when she got to that stop sign where she went right and he went left, that it's a fifteen minute drive to the hospital from that point, right, she
did it in ten minutes. So yes, on the wine he rode, she was driving slow, right, tending to her childs that have just been murdered and shot. Right. And but once she got to the open road and where all the kids were, I'm going to use the word stabilize in her mind, then she went to the right and she drove to the hospital and she got there and fast than the police could get there.
The next day, I think she was saying it took something like twenty minutes and her telling to get there. It just wouldn't have taken that long, especially if you were hurrying along with your shot kids.
No matter which version you believe. In the end, when Diane arrived at the hospital, the injuries to her children were catastrophic. Cheryl, her seven year old daughter, was dead on arrival, Danny three was paralyzed, and Christy Ate had suffered a stroke due to massive blood loss and was unable to speak. James recalls the moment he heard about the shootings. Let's go back to the night of the shooting. How did you hear the news. You're in California. I
want to know your experience. What happened that night?
I was sleeping. My dad called me at two thirty in the morning and said, your sister has been attached. She's been shot.
I wondered whether or not James believed her ex husband had anything to do with it. Even when talking about this, James can't resist starting to put the pieces into place to demonstrate his sister's innocence. What did your mind go to? Did you think, Steve, what did you think?
I didn't think any of that. I really just I stayed in the moment, and I said what my dad said, Yeah, your sister has been shot. No, I didn't think anybody the state actually thought. Steve, that's a really valid question. And Diane says that the state, Doug Welch, actually came to her and he said that we don't we know you didn't do this. And Steve has given us three alibis, and none of those three alibis turned out to be any good. So we really want to look at him,
but we need you to testify against him. We need you to say it was him, so we can do that. And she says it wasn't him. You know, if it was him, I would be telling you that it wasn't him. I mean if it was two thirty in the morning and somebody just attacked my sister. And so it's like I just started thinking about getting up there to be with family, and that's about all. That's all my mind was, just, you know, I need to go. I need to leave.
James also states that Diane was tested for gunpowder residue and none was found, which he also attempts to explain. James has spent years trying to prove Diane's innocence and has a counter argument for nearly everything that might potentially point to Diane's guilt.
The shooter that killed Cheryl, shooter that wounded Christy and wounded Danny and shot my sister. When he was killing the family, he got in her car. The inside of that car was covered with blood spatter. The inside of that car had gunpowder residue, and my sister didn't have any on her. The driver's seat was clear or void of any gunpowder residue, and blood spotner where the shooter would have been sitting or kneeling when he shot them.
And so you come back and you put it all together, it's like, well, she didn't really have the gun, so somebody else did. She didn't have any gunpowder residue on her, somebody else did. She didn't have any blood spatter on her, even though it was all over the car, so somebody else did.
It's worth noting that while Diane hast to negative for gunshot residue or GSR, the bullets were from a twenty two caliber gun. We spoke to forensic scientist Jim Pex, who worked on the Dian Down's case. He explains more about the residue test.
It's my understanding that the deputy who was took the initial report at the hospital swabbed her for GSR, and at the time we would send those to a consulting laboratory for analysis. But in this case, you have to keep in mind that when we talk about swabbing person's hands for GSR, which you're looking for are two rare earth elements that are not common in nature. One is burium and one is animony. These are intentionally placed in the primers of center fire cartridges. A twenty two is
a rim fire. There is no barium in animony in a rimfire cartridge, so there is nothing to find.
Diane also sustained an injury at close range, so testing her for lead would have been somewhat inconclusive because she was and what's referred to as the LUOD cloud. Hex explains, No.
That's a when a weapon is discharged and the bullet exits the barrel, there is a cloud of vaporized gases that contain these trace elements and a little bit of trace element lead, and in center fire casings, he would find your burium and animony he posited from this cloud and the fact that she was shot herself, you would have found lead on her hands anyway.
Despite this, James stands by his theory that Diane was not the shooter that night.
Actually, it's a funny thing. There was a picture of Dian at the hospital when she was sitting there, and you notice that it's been destroyed at this point. Actually they destroyed it, and you can notice that her fingers are not full of dirt where she might have buried something, her hands are not clean, or she might have washed her hands, because there's been a lot of theories out there that while she did this and that she washed up. Well,
my sister was shot in the left arm. The common theory out there is that when you get wounded in the left arm, it must be self inflicted. If if you self inflict your wound, you have stippling around where the gun was next to your arm. There was no stippling on her arm. And more importantly, when you talk about her left arm being broken, it didn't have a hole in it. She had one inch of bone that was removed from her arm where it shattered her bone. And so if you say, well, she didn't have any
gunpowdered residue on her because she washed her hands. She didn't have any blood spot around her because she washed up. Well, it's impossible. If you've ever broken your arm, you would know it would be impossible to move your arm. It's impossible to lift anything with your arm. It's possible to do anything with your arm, especially when you have a one inch bone shattering. It was not a flesh mound, it was a traumatic, traumatic injury to her arm.
Not long after Diane and her children's arrival at the hospital, she became the main suspect. However, no arrest or charges were brought against Diane right away.
I think that the press got the impression after about four or five days that the police were the ones who were perhaps looking at Diane. There hadn't been any other suspects.
Police began to gather evidence to build their case. Officers were dispatched to search Diane's Springfield home and look for any potential clues or evidence, and found some not so subtle clues that might point to Diane.
They did get a break a little bit when they searched Diane's apartment in Springfield and found bullets that appeared to have very similar markings on them from the extractor mechanism in a gun that moves bullets through the chamber. The rifle they found in her apartment was the twenty two caliber rifle, but so the bullets were also twenty two caliber that they would also fit into a handgun.
After examination, the rifle was determined not to be the same weapon that fired the bullets at the crime scene. The bullets and the rifle, however, had markings as if they had been ejected from another weapon, possibly a pistol, and then loaded into the rifle. Jim Pecks explains, we.
Looked under the bed and there was a rifle, twenty two rifle under the bed. First thought was, oh, is this a possible murder weapon, and so we seized the rifle and I took it back to the laboratory after we finished processing, and the rifle had cartridges in the
tubular magazine and there were nine of them. That's a significant number because a lot of twenty two caliber semi automatic pistols have nine cartridges in the magazine, and it's not uncommon for people when they're through shooting and they still have ammunition in the weapon. To take it out and maybe use it in another weapon, which appeared to be the case here, because there weren't any markings on these cartridges that they had worked through the action of
the twenty two rifle. There were only markings from some other weapon.
This wasn't enough to charge Diane with a crime. There was also something else strange about Diane's apartment. It was nearly empty.
She had just moved there, but it was very spare, very spartan inside beds for the kids. But when police who went there as soon as they could, looks at the refrigerator, there was nothing there, nothing to eat, a real shortage of comfortable and warm, suitable clothes for the kids. I think Diane's closet was probably the best stocked thing in the house, and besides that, no books, nowhere to
really sit. There was a TV because she liked to watch TV, so she was taking care of her her own needs there, but apparently nobody else's being thought about.
Diane's brother, James, offers his own explanation. He believes the lack of possessions was a product of circumstance and not a sign of a bad mother.
My mom and dad drove to Arizona with a pickup truck. That's sort of you know, as part of the state's theory is that her house was she was a bad mother. She had a house in Oregon and there was no furniture in it. There was no food in the refrigerator or dad lived about, you know, four blocks away, and the kids were always over there because my sister was always working. There was no furniture because they just got
there six weeks previous with a pickup truck. They didn't her house just burned down four months before that.
Can you remember what she packed up in that pickup?
Just personal items. I was not there. My mom and dad drove down there and did that. I was in California working, But yeah, I did not. I was not there. I just thought it was just a pick up, so you can't have too much, But yeah, there was. Her house was very sparse.
They did, however, find Diane's journals and letters to a lover in Arizona, which helped paint a picture of who she was and what investigators would later argue could serve as a motive.
One thing she had kind of pointed them out, like, hey, I've got all these diaries. The writings in the first diary were all about this guy thin Arizona, long poems she wrote voluminously.
The guy in Arizona was Robert Nick Nickerbocker.
I did not know Nick existed until the state went to her house the night of the shooting and collected her diary letters. She gave them permission to go to her apartment and get the letters or get I'm sorry, to go get evidence that might help. I don't know why they'd want to go to her house and get evidence, but they went to her house to get evidence, and some of that evidence was I'll call them diary letters. They weren't really in a diary. They were just handwritten letters.
The letters were unmailed, James claims, but there were, according to law enforcement accounts, tons of journals where Diane had written nearly every day about Nick.
Basically told Nick, you know, it's like, you know, I wish that you were here. I wish that I was with you. I wish things were different. I want you, you know, I you know, I never read the letters. But there were just love letters, you know. I mean, there's no doubt which they were loved letters, and that was their motive.
James theory is that the letters were just a way for Diane to vent privately, and the fact that they were never mailed, he believed, shows that they weren't an act of a woman obsessed with a man, despite the claims to the contrary.
Well, I mean, it's really just a think about it situation. It had been six weeks since she left Arizona. She hadn't called him, she hadn't emailed him. There was no emails. She hadn't written him. You know, there was letters written to him but never mailed.
It also came out that Nick may have half heartedly proposed to her at some point.
It seemed to go back and forth a little bit. He did, I think I proposed, but maybe in a kind of a backhanded kind of way, and like, well, yeah, sure that might be interesting, but nothing that would last for more than a day perhaps. But when Diane heard that, she was just convinced that, well, he wants to be with me. If I just kind of hang in there, I think I can make this work.
As for the question of why the relationship with Nick ended, a person she clearly cared for, the belief is that Diane's promiscuity led to her contracting an STD that she later gave to Nick, who subsequently gave it to his wife.
He basically had to tell her, I think that I have this and you probably have it. Now you better get tested, and here's where I got it. And so he had to sort of admit that, and I think his wife ultimately forgave him, and I think that was kind of a turning point where it's not that he never saw Diane again, her wasn't physical with her again, perhaps, but it did seem to mark something of a break in their relationship.
Even with Diane supposedly over the relationship with Nick, the police still believed he was a motive behind the killing, and would eventually push that narrative during Diane's trial. A phone call that apparently took place between Nick and the police didn't help to dissuade them the motive.
Yes, I read a police report, and on the police report it shows a conversation between when the police called him to tell him what had happened Nick. They says, you know, basically, Diane and the kids have been shot, and his first words were, I cannot believe she did this for me. I cannot believe she did this for me.
While Diane's children were hospitalized for their injuries. Diane herself was also undergoing surgery for the injuries to her arm. It was during this time that full custody of Diane's children was taken away.
So she was initially hospitalized. Herself released really soon after that, but she still had visitation right. She was still the mom with one right to go see her kids. But we learned at some point that Christie's heart rate was just spiking on the monitor when her mom came into the room. Again, some of this is hindsight, but you now know that she sees the person who killed her sister and shot her and her brother is right in
the room with her little scary. Also, the county authorities moved to limit Diane's access to the kids after hospital staff were reporting that Christie appeared to be very traumatized when her mom was in the room. And I think that within four or five days the police not have any any solid leads on any other suspects. Were feeling that we need to limit access that Diane had to her kids for their safety, for their mental stability, and all kinds of things, so they did and file orders
that were approved. Bilin County judge barring Diane from having access to her kids.
According to James, there's a more complicated story behind why Diane's custody was taken away.
I know that they had police sitting outside the hospital room whenever we went to visit. It's like, you know, we were turned away, and so I don't know why. Well I do know why, because it's real obvious why, and it's because they had an agenda that they had defend.
There were armed police outside the room because if there was a shooter on the loose who had tried to shoot them once, perhaps that could happen again. So they still had to take precautions. It wasn't a situation where they were dismissing any possibility that there was anybody else out there who could have intended this.
I mean, you have a little eight year old girl who was just brutally attacked, she had a stroke, her sister's death, and her brother is not even in the same hospital. There's two hospitals in the Springfield area, and her brother's at a different hospital.
Dan was apparently upset that the siblings were separated and felt that they should be in the same hospital.
And that was one of Diane's major contentions is to put them together so they can be a family together.
One of the doctors had been given temporary guardianship over the children, and according to James, believed that Diane's custody should be taken away because she was trying to take Christie out of the hospital.
And she was trying to take Christie out of the hospital. She was trying to get her to the other hospital or vice versa, get Danny to come to Christie's hospital so they could be in the same room and they could get better together. And that is that's what I was trying to get at, is the fact that they they said that she's trying to get take Christie out of the hospital before it's time. She was trying to take Christie out of the hospital to get her with
her brother. So it was the day when she was due to have surgery that they ended up taking her rights away because she can't be court on that day. As her feelings to defend herself basically, and if you're not there to defend yourself, then you lose.
But one has to wonder what the real motivation was behind keeping the children protected from Diane, especially Christie. Christie suffered a stroke from blood loss and was unable to speak for months following the shooting. But aside from Diane herself, Christy was the only other probable witness to whoever actually did the shooting.
It took a long time for charges to finally be leveled against Diane, and I think that everyone knew that her older daughter, Christie, who had survived her I think Christy was eight when she was shot, her younger sister Cheryl, who died with seven, and their brother Danny was three.
The police were very clear in saying, we haven't found a murder weapon yet, So the search went on for that, and they spent one hundreds of hours with divers deployed in the local rivers where Diane said that the shooting had occurred. She had pulled over right next to the Little Mohawk River, and so the assumption was well, she
tossed the gun in there. Nothing was ever found. So it became really clear that if anything was going to develop, it's probably going to be short of any other kind of physical evidence, it's going to be on Christy getting well enough that she could tell what happened that night.
On the next episode of Happy Face Presents Two Face. Diane sticks to her story that a bushy hair stranger is the shooter, going as far as to record a play by play reenactment video for police, but a surprise past encounter with her ex husband before the shooting could hold the evidence detectives need to charge Diane. Meanwhile, month by month, Christy survivor, daughter of Diane, it's getting stronger to share in court what really happened the night of
May nineteenth, nineteen eighty three. Our executive producer is Ben Boleen. Melissa More is our co executive producer, Maya Cole is our primary producer, and Paul Dekint is our supervising producer. Our story editor is Matt Riddle. Research assistance from Sam Teagarden. Featured music by a dream Tent. Happy Vace Presents To Face is a production of iHeartMedia