Hi and welcome to Cereal Sisters, a podcast where my sister and I tell each other true crime stories. I'm Kristen and I'm Devana and this week Devana has a story for me. All right so this week I decided I was gonna well I usually try to stay away from well-known cases but this is one that's always been one of the most shocking murder cases to me so I'm gonna tell you a story of Diane Downs. Oh yeah I know this one.
Yeah so there are a lot of other podcast books and TV shows that cover her case so I'm really just gonna try to do my best and go over the stuff that I think is important so I'm not really looking to like do a super comprehensive overview of this. Yeah so I got information from Ann Rose Small Sacrifices as well as Wikipedia and like a few other stuff that I remember watching about her. Yeah our Lord and Savior Ann Rose. Yes so on May 19th 1983 Diane Downs arrived at the Mackenzie Willamette Hospital with her three injured children in the car.
When nurses encountered her she informed that someone had shot had just shot her kids. The nurses noted that she was pale but not hysterical and appeared in control. She also had a gunshot wound to her left forearm. She said that she had been carjacked on a rural road near Springfield Oregon by a strange bushy-haired man who shot her and her children.
His possible staff jumped into action removing the injured children from the car but sadly Cheryl Diane's oldest child at seven years old was already deceased and Christy H8 has suffered a massive stroke and Danny the youngest at three was paralyzed from the waist down. So that's the hard part right out of the way. I know well no it's all the hard part because she's the worst but yeah the worst so I wish I had enough time to really go over into a detailed background of her life but again there's so many other people that have done it better than I ever will so I'll just go over some pale highlights and I'll get back to the present. So she was born in Phoenix Arizona to Wesley and Willidine Frederickson.
She attended Moon Valley High School where she met her future husband Steve Downs. After high school she attended Pacific Coast Baptist Bible College in Orange California who was expelled after her first year for promiscuous behavior and she returned to Arizona in Arizona at that time. Everyone has promiscuous behavior in college but because it's a Christian college you get kicked out. So anyways I know it's all hard with her because like when you read small sacrifices there are moments where you're like she almost didn't have a chance and they're like wait no she's a fucking crazy person.
Yeah there are other people that are fucked up too and don't do bad things. So on November 13th 1973 Diane married Steve after running away from home. Their first child Christy was born a year later in 1974. Cheryl was born in 76 and Steve had expressed a Diane that he didn't want any more children at this point as they were struggling financially.
So Steve out of his sector me but he didn't return to the clinic the 10 weeks later for the sperm cat to ensure that he was really sterile. Yeah so Diane got pregnant again and Steve accused Diane of having an affair but when he returned to the clinic for the check it was discovered that he was still fertile. Yeah so at this point Diane's 20 years old and she's already a mother of two. In Anne-Rill's book Diane's quoted as saying that she couldn't take one more pressure and decide to have an abortion.
Steve said that he would have accepted this pregnancy but Diane had made up her mind. For the two years after her abortion she said that she didn't feel any residual grief but that all changed when she was at a fair in Arizona. She walked past a right to life booth and they managed to manipulate and guilt her in ways only they can. Right so they made basically made her feel that she had murdered her baby so she named her lost baby Carrie and certain that it would have been a girl she then decided to replace her.
So Diane asked Steve to reverse his vasectomy. She said that she had asked him for a year and he kept saying no. So fun side note. So our cousin and her husband he had a vasectomy and she's talked about how the doctors told them that if she hit some hard enough in the balls it'll reverse the vasectomy.
Oh my gosh I did not know that. Yep she's talking about it before. She's looking really back. I got it.
Uh-huh. Uh-huh. So I'm just saying it doesn't have to be up to him. She's just hitting a hard nut in the choke.
Oh my gosh. That's great. I get it. Like I guess I tell them that just because you should be careful if you get smacked hard enough on like the job or when you're fucking around.
I guess that makes sense. Right now if you need to be aware that if you get hit hard enough it can reverse. I did not know that. Uh-huh.
That's when knew every day. Uh-huh. So at this point she alleges, Diane alleges that she had told Steve that she would find a suitable donor but Steve has no memory of this conversation he says. So at this point Diane has set out to find a man to have an affair with and in her words she watched people she worked with.
She picked somebody that was attractive healthy not to drugs or alcohol strong with good bone structure so basically just a good specimen which is so gross. It's like that episode of Friends when Chandler brings John Stamos over. Oh yes. I talked about him pregnant Monica.
Oh gross. Uh-huh. So the man she chose was 19 years old and she was 23 at this point. She's still so young.
I know. So Diane knew her cycle well enough that it only took seducing the young man once and she was pregnant. Damn. So she began to grow her replacement baby and both Steve and the young father urged Diane to get an abortion but of course she found a suggestion just completely ridiculous.
Yeah. So she played both men happy to feel a little power over men for once in her life because that seems to be a running theme and her life is that she felt powerless against men but then she also doesn't feel powerful without a man. Yeah. So Diane was born in 1979 on a Friday and by that Monday she was back at work at the post office her depression was not.
Yeah just like pop baby out go back to work. No you need some time. I know everything is destroyed. Yeah you were hit by a truck.
Uh-huh. So her depression returned. I can imagine after going back to work right away. Yeah.
And she began lashing out of her family. She would punch Steve and hurt her children by pinching hair pulling spanking and screaming into their faces which was so hard to read about. Yeah. And Cheryl always seemed to take the words of Diane's anger.
In April of 1980 Diane watched an episode of the Donahue show with a subject of surrogate parenting. The guests were a couple who weren't able to have children of their own who were open to using the husband's serum for artificial insemination. So a light bulb went off in her head at this point and she could empathize with the couple having big Steve for another child and decided that she was the perfect woman to carry a baby for the guest on the Donahue show. No.
Right. Just complete narcissist. So she wrote to the surrogate parenting clinic in Kentucky the next day. She did lie on her application form calling her abortion and miscarriage.
She was contacted and started the vetting process undergoing medical and psychiatric testing. She did. She did. They're my blunk.
Her first round of tests. Because the examiner didn't believe that she was going to surrender the baby. Yeah. But she was not informed that she failed.
So she thought that she was accepted. Nice. But then they ended up having more testing done. And at this point she's barely passed.
Like barely squeaked through. And she was. Why the fuck would you test her again? Right.
Like if she's already failed once. Call again. Yeah. But they did accept her into the program.
Jesus. So in May of 1982 she gave her to a baby girl. She named a child Jennifer for turning her over to the intended parents. She flew home to Arizona and she could hardly wait to start the process over again.
No. Yep. She was like, I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna do that again.
Did the parents keep the name Jennifer? I don't know. I don't think so. I wouldn't.
Why would you? No. You already know that she's kind of crazy and you probably shouldn't come with her as a circuit anyways. Exactly.
But. And especially after all of us came out. I can't imagine. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. So Diane went back to work in Arizona three weeks after she gave birth. So again.
She took a little bit of a break. But yeah. Like still like right back to work. And she began affairs with men.
She worked with a course, mostly married men. And she moved really quickly. She never stayed with one man very long. She worked closely with two different men and began a fair with one of them named Jack Lenta in Anne Roles book.
But after about three weeks, Lenta told Diane the affair couldn't continue. She quickly set her sights upon the other man she worked closely with called Lew Lewiston in Anne Roles book for privacy. But whose real name is Robert Knickerbacher. That's a fun last name.
Yeah. And I only say that because it's out now in the public that that's his real name. Yeah. So the affair will be the turning point in Diane's life.
And Robert was also married. He fascinated between letting Diane manipulate him and wanting to break off the affair and repair his marriage to his wife. Diane wrote letters to Robert in her diary, a letter she never sent. So it was basically just like this thick book of like love letter she would write.
She's nice. She allegedly stalked Robert and seemed willing to do whatever it took to secure his affection. It was well known that Robert didn't watch children and it clearly expressed that he didn't think it was right that he was around Diane and Steve's children. Yeah.
So at least he had a conscience in that sense. I mean, granted he still should have been cheating on his wife with another married baby. Yeah, that's not so great. So Diane was still in communication with Steve and in 1982, Steve had asked for a trial of a conciliation.
So they had been apart for this time. And Robert allegedly had told her to go for it and try to work out things in her marriage. The reunion was short lived low. Steve moved into her trailer and out again in the span of a week.
So like clearly, they are just crashing and burning. Yeah. Robert was trying to pull away from the affair, especially after Diane gave him and his wife of the marital disease. Nice.
But Diane had convinced Robert to sleep with her again and her depression lifted. She convinced herself that she and Robert was what they had was pure love and decided to get a rose tattoo on her right shoulder. She called Robert and asked him to write his name so she could add it under the rose in his handwriting. But he refused, but she got the tattoo anyway.
She's just a fucking psycho. Okay. So throughout 82 and 83, the affair continued. And despite this, Diane had moved back in with Steve and her children.
Okay. So now we're in 1983 in the hospital after the shooting. Hospital workers noted Diane's calm manner and thought that her behavior was too comfort for a person who had just seen her children shot. I mean, on the one hand, obviously, yeah, but on the other hand, you can't really judge how someone's dealing with grief.
For sure. Like, people always think it's fight or flight and there's definitely a freeze component as well. I mean, it's not even remotely the same thing, but when I got rear ended, I was fine. I was talking to the cops.
I was talking to the paramedics. Everything was cool. Mom and dad showed up and I immediately lost my shit and started crying. Exactly, right?
It's yeah. You just you can't expect how people are going to react. Yeah. But so she said that she had gone out with the kids to see a friend in her new horse and then had gone up sightseeing in the pitch black night.
So it's completely dark and they're like, I'm going to go sightseeing. What the fuck are you going to look at? Exactly, right? And it's late and she's got those young kids like you would think she would just want to get them home.
Yeah. She also made a number of statements to both police and hospital workers that gave them pause. At one point, she said that she hoped her car was okay and asked if there were any bullet holes in it. She asked.
So she told police that she suddenly remembered an icky yellow car parked somewhere along the road where she and her children were shot. But of course, no yellow car was really ever found. She also did herself no favors by calling Robert when she arrived to the hospital. Yeah.
So the forensic evidence didn't match with her story, of course. So she said that the stranger had leaned into the driver's side window and shot her children, but there was no blood slatter on the driver's side of the car. And there wasn't any gunpowder residue on the driver's door or the interior door panel. She also did not tell police that she owned a 22 caliber handgun, but both Steve and Robert informed them that she did.
It was later discovered that she had bought the weapon in Arizona. The gun itself was never found, but police did find unfired casings in her home with extractor markings from the murder weapon. Nice. Yeah.
So at least they got her that way. And one of the most damning pieces of evidence was from eyewitness who saw her car on the road directly after the shooting. And this is always the most chilling part of the story for me, like just gives me the chills every time. Because the witness testified that they saw her car being driven very slowly about five to seven miles per hour towards the hospital after the shooting.
Like she just wanted to give them time to die. Yeah. Oh, it's just fucking awful. I just and you know, she says she raced there and oh, just what I hate her so much.
I know. And so she was arrested on February 28, 1984, nine months after the shooting and charged with one count of murder and two counts each of attempted murder and criminal assault. Didn't she have to go on her well, though, in between? I think she did.
I would like to talk about her story. Yeah. So during the trial, prosecutors argued that Diane had shot her children to be free of them so she could continue her affair with Robert since it was known that he didn't want kids. But the real hero in this story is Christy, who after recovering her ability to speak after being shot and suffering a stroke, testified against her mother.
Yeah. She described how her mother shot all three of the children while parked on the side of the road and then shot herself in the arm. Christy was also able to remember that the song, Hungry Like A Wolf, had been playing on the radio when the shootings occurred. And this directly conflicted with what Diane alleged happened.
She said that an attempt to get the strange man away from her car that she had pretended to throw the keys into a field but really kept them in her hand and was able to jump back in the car and race to the hospital. Because that totally works on people like you do with the dog or that redirection. But if Christy heard the music, it meant that the keys have been in the ignition the whole time. Like it just wasn't possible, that wasn't going to work.
And Christy was only nine years old at the time of the trial. Diane was convicted on all charges on June 17, 1984 and sentenced to life in prison plus 50 years. She was required to serve 25 years before being considered for parole. She was diagnosed with narcissistic, histrionic, and antisocial personality disorder.
Her sentences are to be served consecutively. And the judge made it clear that he did not intend her to ever be free again, hallelujah. But to make this even more complicated, she was pregnant prior to her arrest with a fourth child. She gave birth to a girl who she named Amy Elizabeth a month after her trial.
But 10 days before her sentencing, the baby was seized by the state of Oregon and adopted by Chris and Jackie Badcock, whom he named her Rebecca. Whose baby was it? Was it Steve's or was it Robert's? I think it was just some other random man that she she manipulated.
Jesus. Yeah. Because she knew that it would make her more sympathetic. And she said that she missed her daughter that was dead so much.
Oh my god. You shouldn't have fucking killed her. I know just fuck you. You wouldn't miss her if she was alive.
So Rebecca appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show in 2020 as an adult and discussed how she feels about her biological mother. She rose to Diane Downs in her younger years, but has started stated that she regrets it in regards to her mother as a monster. Yeah, no shit. She's a father monster.
Uh-huh. One of the best parts of the story too is that Danny and Chrissy went to live with the prosecutor on the case for a hugi. And he and his wife- What? What about Steve?
What about their dad? I think that because all of this, I think Steve wasn't exactly stable as well. I mean, I don't know. So but yeah, so Danny and Chrissy went to live with the prosecutor on the case and he and his wife later adopted the children in 1986.
Yeah, so that's nice. They have a nice stable home. And Diane was incarcerated at the Oregon Women's Correctional Center in Salem, Oregon. On July 11, 1987, she escaped and was recaptured just a few blocks from the prison on July 21st.
She alleged that she escaped because she was trying to find the man she thought killed her children. She's like, give a fuck over yourself. She's crazy. Yeah.
She received an additional five-year sentence with the escape. After her recapture, Diane was transferred to the New Jersey Department of Corrections Clinton facility for women after heavy lobbying from Fred Hugh GV, Dr. Father, Chrissy and Danny. The Salem prison was only located 66 miles from Hugh G's home.
And during Diane's 10 days of freedom, he had feared that Diane would attempt to travel there in hopes of contacting Danny and Chrissy, which I can totally say. Oh my God, so terrifying. Yeah. So while in prison, she earned an associate's degree in general studies.
In 2010, she was housed in the Valley State Prison in Shauci, California. What was transferred out in the facility was converted to an all-male institution in 2013. So I was sorry, I know she's still in California. Diane was not eligible for parole until 2009.
In her first application, she maintained her as an innocence. Oh shit. And so, of course, so parole was denied. Yeah.
She had another parole hearing in 2010, but again, she was denied and under a new law is not eligible for parole until this year, 2020. I hope she doesn't get it. Me too. So she'll be 65 years old, and we hope that she never sees the outside of a prison ever again.
Yeah. And fuck her. That is Diane Downs. What a dollar.
I know. It was one where it was like, I don't know what to do. She's one that's always bothered me. She's just the fucking worst.
I know. And it's like, I thought that I knew a lot about her, but until I read small sacrifices, like, I don't think I knew half of what was in that book. Yeah. Just buzzers.
Because Anne Roll is the shit. She is the shit. Thanks for listening. You can email us at serialsistersatoutlook.com or follow us on Instagram and Twitter at serialsisters.
Bye.