“Someone just shot my children!” Diane screamed as she honked her car's horn and left it at the emergency room door. Quickly, the staff came out alarmed, finding three bloodied and gunshot-wounded children in the back seat, and her mother, with a badly injured arm. While a team was working hard to save the children's lives, one of the nurses immediately called the police. That looked bad.
Several units moved and managed to speak with the mother: a man had attacked her when she went to help him on the road. However, the scene of the events, the car, which had the upholstery and windows soaked in blood, indicated that something was wrong in the version of events. Why were there no blood spatters or gunpowder residue on the driver's door?
Elizabeth Diane Frederickson (married, Downs) was born on August 7, 1955 into a Phoenix family with a strict upbringing and conservative values. So much so that her parents forbade her from wearing ready-to-wear clothes, putting on makeup or buying jewelry or any beauty utensils. This led her to be mocked and insulted by her colleagues, who saw Diane as someone outdated and old.
To avoid the harassment, the girl chose to change her clothes when she arrived at school and rub shoulders with the most popular classmates, even going out with boys from higher grades. That's how she met Steven Downs, her first boyfriend and with whom she fell madly in love. The couple continued their courtship after graduation and decided to marry on November 13, 1973.
But that relationship also hid financial problems and, mainly, infidelities. Despite this, Diane and Steven were parents of three children: Christie (1974), Cheryl Lynn (1976) and Stephen Daniel -Danny- (1979). Happiness did not last much longer in the marriage.
It was when the third child was born and Steven fought with Diane for suspecting that Danny was not his biological son but the product of one of his love affairs. The situation reached its limit in 1980: he asked for her divorce.
At that time, Diane was subjected to various psychiatric tests to assess whether she was capable of taking care of her children: her ex-husband had raised the alarm about the negligence she showed with the children.
The children were usually neglected and malnourished; they were left alone at home or the eldest, Christie, was left in charge of her siblings when she was only six years old. The results of the tests indicated that Diane showed signs of psychosis.
In 1981, the woman began an affair with Robert “Nick” Knickerbocker, a married man with whom she fell madly in love. The happiness did not last long, because Nick ended up abandoning her because he had no interest in “being a dad” to her children. This saddened Diane, and she decided to move to Springfield to work as a postal worker. It was April 1983.
It was then that the woman devised a plan to murder her children. Getting the little ones out of the way was the only way to get Nick back. He didn't want anything or anyone to stop him from being happy. The plan was undertaken on May 19.
Around ten at night, Diane was driving with her little ones asleep in the back seat. When she sighted a rural road with no witnesses, she parked the car, pulled out a .22 caliber pistol that she had previously purchased, opened the back door, and unloaded the weapon at the children.
The little ones screamed without knowing what was happening. Seven-year-old Cheryl died immediately, while three-year-old Danny was paralyzed from the waist down by the bullets, and eight-year-old Christie suffered a stroke.
Immediately afterwards, the woman shot herself in the left forearm, got behind the wheel and drove to the nearest hospital at an unusually slow speed, as verified by a witness who passed them. Upon arriving at the emergency room, Diane explained that they had suffered an assault by “a bushy-haired stranger” who had faked a breakdown on the road.
The police began the investigation of the attack by highlighting the mother's testimony. So far, Danny couldn't tell them anything of interest because he was asleep during the attack, and Christie had lost her speech after the stroke. The girl was still between life and death. Meanwhile, the scientist analyzed the car, the children's injuries and the crime scene. Her conclusion: the mother was lying.
For one thing, there was no blood spatter on the driver's side of Diane's vehicle, no gunpowder residue on the driver's door, or even the interior door panel. Not to mention, the injuries to the children or the woman, which did not fit the woman's version.
Added to this was the testimony of a witness who saw how Diane drove slowly instead of at full speed to ask for help, that she was more concerned about her vacation and talking to Nick than about the health of her own children, or that she had registered in his name a pistol that, at first, he claimed he did not have.
Finally, months after the alleged attack by a thief, Christie came out of a coma, regained her speech and was able to tell what had happened. “My mom,” she responded to the agents when they asked her who had shot them. On February 28, 1984, Diane was arrested and charged with one murder and two more attempted murders.
“Not a tear,” said one of the investigators who interviewed Diane after the alleged assault. “Within thirty minutes of speaking with that woman I knew that she was guilty,” said the agent. However, they needed proof and they had gotten it.
Something anecdotal about this story is that Diane, at the time of her arrest, was pregnant again. In those nine months she had rebuilt her life with another man and she was happy. So she lived through the entire judicial process in the midst of the gestation process.
During the trial, which began in June 1984, the psychiatrists who analyzed the accused diagnosed her with narcissism, histrionics and antisocial personality. That is to say, they were looking at a textbook sociopath.
"She does not show any remorse. She considers her children without empathy and as objects or possessions. Any feeling she has for them is superficial and only extends to the fact that they are part of her and her life," said the expert.
Although it was Christie's statement in court that ended up blaming Diane as the only one responsible for what happened. For this, she was sentenced to life in prison and an additional fifty years. A month after the verdict, the filicide gave birth to her fourth daughter, whom she gave up for adoption. The girl's name was Rebecca 'Becky' Babcock. As for the surviving children, Danny and Christie, they were adopted by the prosecutor in the case, Fred Hugi, and his wife.
Currently, the murderer is in the Valley State Prison for Women in Chowchilla (California), but before that she underwent a journey of transfers due to the escape she carried out in July 1987. Diane managed to scale a barbed wire fence in almost six meters and hide for ten days before being captured. As a result, she received an additional five-year sentence.
Likewise, Diane has filed numerous appeals to obtain parole, something that has always been denied. “Downs continues to fail to demonstrate any honest insight into his criminal behavior…even after his convictions, he continues to fabricate new versions of the events in which the crimes occurred,” Lane County District Attorney Douglas Harcleroad wrote to the parole board.
And Diane continues talking about a “stranger with bushy hair,” but also about “two men in balaclavas,” and even about “drug dealers” and “corrupt agents.” Any excuse is good not to admit that she is a murderer.
