Diane Schuler: The Wrong Way Home

of the cars traveling on the freeway that day. They were returning home from a trip up to Delaware County when they noticed a red forward Windstar driving behind them. The car got closer and closer until it was right on their tail. The driver flashed her lights and honked repeatedly. Jean braced herself for a crash. As the vehicle came within a hard stopping distance of their back bumper. The Windstar swerved to the right. It tried to pull up

onto the grassy shoulder and pass them. As the minivan edged off the road, the driver seemed to reconsider and dove back into traffic. There was something oddly precise about the driver's movements. She moved in and out of the lanes, almost as if she were doing it with a purpose. The Bagglies watched in horror as the other cars swerved out of her way, allowing the red minivan to zigzag

its way down the crowded highway. Jean and Frances didn't catch a glimpse of the driver's face as she sped by them, but there were plenty of other witnesses who did. What they described was a middle aged woman with an oddly placid expression. She sat in the driver's seat with her back straight and her hands gripping the steering wheel. At ten and two, she looked forward, unblinking, focusing intently

on the road in front of her. As one witness would later put it, she didn't stop, she didn't slow down, she didn't move. I thought it was some one who was dead set on killing themselves. Welcome to the greatest true crime stories ever told. I'm Mary Kay mac braer. To day's episode, We're calling Diane Schuller the Wrong Way Home.

It's the story of an ordinary suburban mom who did something extraordinarily terrible and how the people who were left to pick up the pieces found themselves, asking the same question over and over again, why more after the break? When I listen to true chrome stories, even when I watch very fictional horror movies, I want an actual ending, no ambiguous was it all a dream? Closing scenes in fiction that's lazy writing. Nothing will get me to quit

a TV show faster than a cliffhanger ending. It's not a cliffhanger. You just didn't finish the story, and that means you don't believe in your show enough to trust that your audience will return if you give them an answer to the question you've been posing all along. What they don't tell you unless you're in a writing class, is that real life doesn't have that tidy causality. Event A doesn't ever directly cause event B, and all conclusions

have been chosen. You have to transpose the meaning when you tell the story, otherwise it's just a list of shit that happened. The example I always used when teaching creative writing was this, real life, the queen died and then the king died. In writing, the queen died and then the king died of grief. We add the causality when we tell us story, whether we mean to or not, fiction or nonfiction. The telling of the story is what

makes the cause and effect. It's why the answer to who done it is so easy to spot after the fact. We know what happened, so in retrospect we can build the narrative with relevant details and leave out almost everything else. On the other hand, journalism has to put the lead at the top. Leaving it till the end implies too much, and a plot is a creative device. Basically, there are no true stories. Life is too subjective to have three acts, or even five. If you want to be fatalistic, you

could say that everything that happens is random. We get to decide the meaning based on how we tell the story, like Joan Diddyon said, and we tell ourselves stories in order to live. So we avoided telling this story about Diane Shuller for a while because the causality is so subjective that it seems to not exist. There are too many theories that leave too much unanswered, and that bothers me. But we're telling it now because this is an important

story and it needs a conclusion. So bear with me as I walk you through what happened, because it did happen. Maybe you'll find a narrative thread that I couldn't see. When people describe Diane Schuller, the person they remember was a domestic machine. Diane took care of everything. She made sure the car got washed, the gutters got cleaned, and the kids got picked up from soccer practice, and she did it all with a smile on her face, without complaint.

Diane was born in nineteen seventy three in Floral Park, New York. Floral Park is a quiet suburb on the eastern edge of Long Island. It's the kind of small East Coast town where everyone knows everyone, where people know their roles and they don't question them. Diane's mother left the family when she was only nine. Though she was the youngest child, Diane was the girl of the house, and that meant that the role of mother figure passed

to her. She became the one who cleaned the kitchen and did the laundry, who took care of her three older brothers. If Diane resented all that responsibility, she did not show it. In fact, she seemed to take to the role. Diane liked being in control. Floral Park is the kind of town where most women are married with children by their early twenties, but Diane never dated much. For a while, it must have seemed like the whole marriage and family thing just wasn't going to happen for her,

so Diane focused on other things. She spent a few years attending Nassau Community College, but dropped out after getting an administrative job at an East Coast television network called Cablevision. It was exactly the kind of move that an organized, efficient, take charge sort of person might make. At Cablevision, there was room for Diane to grow. Before long, she wasn't the assistant anymore. Someone else was assisting her. She moved up to the role of corporate accounting executive, and soon

she was making six figures. Her life was going well, and then at a friend's wedding in nineteen ninety six, Diane met Danny. Daniel Schuler was handsome and fun. He loved camping and fishing, and he was on his way to becoming a public safety officer for the Nassau County Public Parks Department. But more important than any of that, he and Diane just clicked from the start. In one interview, Danny's mother described how Diane made all the decisions. Danny

was like her eldest son. Look, it takes all kinds and if it worked for them, it worked for them. Diane and Danny bought a beige split level with a big yard and a small town of West Babylon. It was just twenty miles away from the house where Diane grew up. In two thousand and four, Diane gave birth to a son, Brian, and then two years later she had a daughter, Aaron. Diane settled into the role of matriarch, the same role she'd always played, only now it was

her own house and her own family. Diane made sure that her kids never had to worry about their mother abandoning them. The house in West Babylon seemed like a happy one. There were parties and cookouts in the big backyard, picture perfect Christmases and Easter dinners, and Diane presided over all of it. She was the one who decorated the house and sent out the Christmas cards. She made Valentines for her brothers and nieces, photo albums for their in laws.

She made most of the money, paid the bills, cooked dinner, and took the kids into bed, all without a word of complaint. After all, Diane liked being in charge. She was good at it, and she had to be good at it. In July of two thousand and nine, Danny and Diane planned to take their two kids and three nieces on a camping trip up to Hunter Lake Campground in the Catskills. The nieces were the three daughters of Diane's older brother, Warren Hants. There was eight year old Emma,

seven year old Allison, and five year old Katie. Diane was always close with her brother Warren and his wife Jackie. The two families often spent time together, but the Hants adults were not exactly camping people, which same, so they decided to sit the trip out. Diane was going to borrow Jackie's larger car and drive all five children to the campsite on her own. On Friday, Danny left early to set up the camp site. A few hours later, Diane drove to the Hanses to pick up their three girls.

Diane and the kids piled into Jackie's red Ford Windstar, and Jackie Hans waved goodbye as they drove away. Jackie was prone to anxiety, so perhaps it wasn't surprising that she felt a pang of nerves when she learned Warren and Diane's father would not be joining the trip. She dismissed the thought as irrational. The campsite was only a few hours away, and besides, Diane was one of the

most responsible people she knew. Jackie could trust Diane. The last weekend of July two thousand and nine was a beautiful one. Danny, Diane, and the kids spent it fishing, hiking, and swimming in the lake. When Sunday rolled around, they were tired, happy, and ready to go home. According to Danny, he woke up around six am and went down to

the dock to clean out his boat. Diane was up around seven cleaning, packing, and doing what needed to be done so they could hit the road before traffic got bad. By nine point thirty they were ready to leave. Danny got into his truck with the dog. Diane and the kids followed behind in the minivan. The owner of the campground bid them goodbye. She remembered hugging Diane, and everything seemed perfectly normal in a way. This moment when Danny

and Diane's path diverged is where the mystery begins. What exactly happened after that point is anyone's guess. While many of the events of July twenty sixth, two thousand and nine remain a mystery, there are some things we can piece together from the various people who encountered Diane Schuler that day. Danny headed straight home and put in a load of laundry, while Diane and the kids stopped for breakfast at a McDonald's about fifteen minutes from the campsite.

Diane bought breakfast for the kids and coffee and an orange juice for herself. The employees at the McDonald's remembered Diane her son Brian, wanted to order chicken nuggets, but they didn't serve them that early, so Diane asked to speak to a manager. It seems like Diane was unusual for and I want to speak to the manager type, because according to the employees, she was perfectly reasonable. She was polite, sane, and sober, just determined to get some

chicken nuggets for her son. Diane and the kids were in and out of the McDonald's within half an hour, no small feat for a single adult with five children. The next record of their journey comes from a gas station at eleven Diane stopped at a Sonoko and went into the Minimore to ask if they stalked tylan al or aspirin. The clerk told her they didn't have anything, and Diane left without incident. The clerk remembers her seeming normal,

just like everyone else. There's a video of Diane and walking into the mini mart, grainy footage of her striding confidently into the store and surveying the aisles of chips and candy. She does seem normal, but then you can never quite know what's going on under the surface. At eleven thirty seven, Emma, the oldest of Diane's nieces, called her father on Diane's cell. She told him they hit

traffic and would be getting home later than planned. Then, at twelve oh eight pm, Jackie Hans called Diane to ask what time they'd be arriving. It was an ordinary conversation. They chatted about logistics, Diane asked about getting tickets for a play that Emma was in. After a few minutes, they hung up. Jackie wasn't worried, as far as she knew, there was no reason to be. But the next time Emma called her mother, there was very clear cause for concern.

When Jackie picked up. Emma said there's something wrong with Aunt Diane. Jackie could hear her other daughters crying in the background. She asked Emma what was going on, but the eight year old was too upset to give her a real answer. Before Jackie could get any more information, Diane took the phone from Emma. She told Jackie that the kids were just playing around, being silly. Diane's words sounded slurred as she continued talking. Jackie noticed that her

sentences were incoherent. Jackie was growing increasingly panicked. She asked Diane to give the phone back to Emma, but Diane ignored her. Soon the call was cut off. Jackie's husband and Diane's brother, Warren, arrived home just as the call ended. He called Diane back right away. They stayed on the phone for eight minutes as Diane drove through a toll booth and then pulled over at a rest stop. Warren told his sister not to go anywhere. Then he got her to hand the phone back to Emma, who read

him the nearby road signs. Warren thought they must be just beyond the tappan Zee Bridge, near the village of Terrytown. It was only forty five minutes away. He told Diane to stay where she was he was coming to get her. That was the last time anyone ever spoke to Diane. Half an hour after Warren left his house, calls flooded into nine one one. There was a woman driving seventy five miles an hour down the Taconic State Parkway and

she was going the wrong way. The north and southbound lanes of Taconic State Parkway are separated by a wide, grassy median. The road wasn't made for cars going seventy or eighty miles an hour, and it's obvious the narrow, twisting highway has a reputation for being a scary road. For whatever unknown reason. After the call with her brother,

Diane exited the freeway headed back north. She drove fifteen miles in the opposite direction of her home before entering the Taconic State Parkway at one thirty three pm via an exit ramp. People who witnessed her driving said that her expression was almost serene, that she drove in a straight line without swerving or veering off course. Diane raced down the two lane highway for almost two miles, unfazed by the honking cars that lurched out of her way

as she barreled down on them. Finally, one of those cars didn't make it out of her way. Guy Bastardi was driving up to his sister's house in Yorktown Heights for dinner along with his eighty one year old father and a family friend. Seven miles from their destination, a GMC driving in front of them swerved out of the way to avoid Diane's minivan. There was no time to react. Guy's car collided head on with Diane's minivan in a blast of tearing metal. The Windstar rolled down the grassy

slope beside the highway and burst into flames. Guy bas Stardi's car was flung in the opposite direction. It skidded across the two lane freeway and was hit by the stun driver of a Chevy Tracker. The occupants of that car escaped with only minor injuries, but seven of the nine people and the other two cars were killed on impact. Five year old ca Katie was rushed to the hospital, but she died soon after her arrival. The only survivor was Diane's five year old son, Brian. The media frenzy

began almost immediately. By eleven PM, reporters arrived at the Bustardes' home. The following morning, a media mob gathered outside the Hans's house. Donations to the families came flooding in, including nearby restaurants that provided food for the Hans girl's funeral. Thousands of people attended the wake, and a local priest pulled strings so that the girls could be buried right away alongside their aunt and cousin. Reporters questioned whether there was enough

signage at the exit ramp. A few speculated that Diane may have been trying to kill herself, but for the most part, those covering the crash did not blame Diane. She was painted as a loving and responsible parent. As far as anyone could see. Diane was just as much a victim as anyone else, which leaves the question why did this happen? Maybe there weren't as many wrong way signs as there could be, but there were signs. Why didn't she try to pull off the road when she

realized she was going the wrong way? Why did she go fifteen miles in the wrong direction? How did she end up on the Taconic in the first place. As the investigation proceeded, a different story started to emerge. Investigators soon managed to track down witnesses who encountered the forward Windstar earlier in the day. They spoke to one couple who remembered seeing the car around eleven thirty am, just half an hour after Diane was at the Sunoco station,

seeming perfectly normal. Several drivers saw the minivan honking, aggressively, tailgating other cars, and zigzagging between the lanes of traffic. Then, at eleven forty five, just fifteen minutes before that very ordinary conversation with Jackie Hans, a couple reported seeing the car pulled over by the side of the road. Diane appeared to be standing beside it, vomiting into the grass. Another couple reported a similar story from a half hour later.

Diane pulled over with her hands on her knees, apparently throwing up. And there was another clue. After accident, reconstructionists moved the seats from the minivan, they found a broken vodka bottle. Then came the autopsy report. According to the report, Diane's blood alcohol content was zero point one nine percent, well past the legal limit of point zero eight. There were six grams of undigested alcohol still in her stomach, and a high level of tetrahydrocannabinol. That's THHC, the part

of pot that gets you high. The conclusion reached by the medical examiner was that Diane consumed the equivalent of ten drinks that day and smoked within an hour of the crash. After the details of the autopsy came out, the backlash was swift and fierce. People were furious with Diane Schuler. The New York Post reported rumors that Diane was a drinker and her marriage was on the rocks. They claimed the campground where Danny and Diane took the

kids was a known party spot. Hateful messages from people all over the country filled Danny's social media feed. The Bustardi family thought Diane was a murderer and suspected that Danny knew she was drinking. They wondered if the Hanses could have known as well, if that was why they drove to get Diane rather than immediately calling nine one one. Danny was an ordinary guy, and suddenly he was thrust into the spotlight. He needed someone to help him handle

the national media machine. Enter Dominic, Barbara Dominic, Barbara was a Long Island lawyer famous for defending high profile clients. At least at the time, that's what he was known for. These days, he's remembered for his multiple arrests for extortion and assault. Of everyone in this story, he's the only one who strikes me as a true villain. Up until he got involved, there was some tension between the Hanses and Danny Schuler, but things got so much worse after

Dominick entered the picture. As Jackie hans put it, quote, that's when the small rift between our families became a chasm. On August sixth, Dominic called a press conference where a deeply grieving Danny spoke about his late wife. He described Diane as a perfect wife and mother, an innately responsible person, and the love of his life. When he talked about Diane, Danny's expression softened, and it was easy to believe that

he meant everything he said. But it definitely wasn't what the grieving families wanted to hear, And what they found especially infuriating was what he said at the end of the press conference. He said, listen to this. My heart is clear. She didn't drink. She's not an alcoholic did you get that I go to bed every night knowing my heart is clear. That sentence, more than any other, enraged the Hands and Bustardi families, and it stoked the

media's fascination with the case. Over the next few weeks, Dominic Barbara lined up a series of media appearances for Danny and his sister in law, Jay Jay was married to Danny's brother, but she was always close with Danny and Diane, Aaron's godmother, and after the crash, she took up the cause of being Diane's defender. Every interview only seemed to make things worse for Danny's reputation and inflame

the animosity between the families. The Bustardes in particular, were frustrated by the pace of the investigation into Danny's possible knowledge of Diane's drinking. Once they learned that there would be no grand jury hearing, the family decided to file a civil suit against Diane's estate and Warren Hands. The case against Warren Hants might seem uncalled for, but apparently the Bustardes needed to include them in the case because

the mini van had belonged to Warren. Before the case could go to court, Danny filed his own suit against the State of New York and against Warren Hants. Danny was more certain than ever that his wife had knowingly drunk ten shots of vodka and then gotten into a van with five children. Now claimed that the highway's poor construction and lack of signage contributed to the accident, and that the mini van Warren loaned Diane was in a

state of disrepair, making Warren quote vicariously liable. To me, this lawsuit feels like the last grasp of a desperate man. He was suing the state for building bad roads and Warren for loaning them a faulty car. Danny was also trying to get another medical examiner to exhume Diane's body, and he wanted to retest the results from the toxicology report. From what I can tell, there was nothing wrong with

the car, and the road had plenty of signs. Danny did eventually get the toxicology results retested, and they came back the same, But it didn't matter. All that mattered was that Danny was doing anything and everything he could to avoid facing the truth. There are plenty of theories about why what happened happened, one of the most popular theories will call the tooth absess theory. Dominic Barbara said that about a year before the accident, Diane was having

severe tooth pain. She went to a dentist and was scheduled for a root canal, but left the dentist's office before the procedure could be completed. Diane didn't like accepting help or admitting that she was in pain. She was the kind of person who believed in toughing it out. If she was still in pain after that visit to the dentist, she didn't tell anyone, but that didn't mean nobody noticed. In the weeks leading up to the accident, friends and family members noticed Diane rubbing or holding her

lower jaw. If Diane did have an absessed tooth, and if that infection spread to her brain, which I know terrifying, it could have caused confusion and difficulty seeing. Maybe Diane, in a state of delirium, grabbed the bottle of vodka thinking it was water, or maybe she tried to use it to numb the pain from the abscess. After all, she did stop for pain relief at the Sunoco. I don't understand this mentality at all. But some people believe

that being on no medication is a moral statement. I again don't personally understand that at all, especially because if you're around these people then you have to hear about their discomfort. This martyrdom is for the final record, completely unnecessary, because you are suffering for nothing. According to her friends and family, Diane was definitely one of those people who avoid medicine, and if she was trying to buy a

pain relief, then something was very wrong. This brings up another of the theories about the crash, the idea that Diane may have suffered some kind of stroke or aneurysm. Most types of strokes would have been detected in the autopsy, but there is one kind that doesn't cause permanent damage. Dominic Barbara suggested that Diane could have suffered a transient ischemic attack, a condition caused by a blockage of blood

flow to the brain. This kind of attack usually only lasts for one or two minutes, but in very rare cases it can last up to twenty four hours. It can also cause confusion and disorientation. As with the tooth absess theory, this attack could have caused Diane to drink the vodka by mistake. These theories are both possible, but they're not exactly plausible. They don't explain the marijuana in Diane's system or the reason that the vodka bottle was

in the car in the first place. But there's one explanation that stands out above all the others because it does account for those things. That's the theory that Diane struggled with a substance abuse problem. In this theory, Diane didn't drink ten shots of vodka during that last hour of the day. She'd been drinking since she stopped at the McDonald's at ten am. She drank vodka because it was easy to hide. And Diane always hid her problems.

She hid tooth pain and emotional pain. And if she did have a drinking problem, I'm guessing she would have hidden that too. If you subscribe to the theory of Ockham's razor the idea that the simplest solution is the most accurate solution, then yeah, she had a substance abuse problem. And let's be honest here. As fun as it might be, life is not an Agatha Christie novel. No Owl knocked her down the staircase, and OJ did it in this version of events, Diane drank throughout the day, but if

she did, no one agreed to it in court. In twenty fourteen, all of the Taconic State lawsuits were settled privately, they talk about the case died down, and the families who had been impacted by the crash went back to their separate lives. When we hear this story, we want to think that there's some crazy explanation for Diane's behavior. It's always hard to see someone in a caregiving role as a killer, even if it is anavertent. We prefer a story that portrays her as a victim rather than

the very complicated, damaged person she really was. But the truth is there's no version of this story where Diane isn't complicated. Thank you to Jackie Hans for her book I'll See You Again. That book, along with the film There's Something Wrong with Aunt Diane, was a great help in writing this episode. Other sources include The Taconic Tragedy, A Son Search for Truth by Genie Bustardi, and several news articles. All of these sources are linked in our

show notes. If you want to learn more, join me next week on the Greatest True Crime Stories Ever. Told for the bizarre story of Rebecca Vance. Vance was a woman whose beliefs took her deep into the conspiracy theory rabbit hole. That rabbit hole led her, her sister, and her teenage son into the Colorado wilderness and left them there to die. And the Greatest True Crime Stories Ever Told is a production of Diversion Audio. Your host is me Mary Kay mcbraer and this episode was written by

Zoe Luisa Lewis. Our show is produced by Emma Dumouth and edited by Antonio Enriquez. Our theme music is by Tyler Cash. Executive produced by Scott Waxman.