September 15, 2020 • 34 mins
Just four days after the shooting Diane participated in a reenactment of the night of May 19th for the police. Her affect throughout the reenactment caused the police and community to look at her as a suspect.
Melissa G. Moore: IG @melissag.moore; Tik Tok @melissa.g.moore
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I mean it was a huge story. It made, you know,
national news when Diane Downs drives to the Springfield hospital
with those kids, and I think it shocked everybody just
because somewhere deep in their gut, it's like a mom
and kids that just that doesn't make sense. And the
story of the shaggy haired stranger didn't make sense either
(00:23):
at first. But everybody was willing to go along with
that for quite a while. And I think what really
sort of snapped things was the reenactment and having Diane
with the car and having the police ask her various questions,
and to reenact that moment, I think began the real
(00:44):
questions in that story.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
The reenactment Eric Mason is referring to is a video
shop by Springfield Orgon Police. In it, they asked Diane
to walk them through the events of that night to
try and get a better understanding of what happened.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
We'll get to that in a bit.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
But first we have to ask who exactly is Diane Downs.
How does a twenty seven year old mail carrier and
mother of three wind up at a Springfield organ hospital
on a random weeknight having apparently shot her children and herself.
The story starts in Arizona. Her brother James, describes her
family life.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
Describe your dad for me, help me understand your household.
Speaker 4 (01:34):
Sure, I was thinking about this last night. The year
is nineteen sixty, right. They got married in the fifties,
and in the fifties and the sixties. It was before
the bra burnings. You know, there was a patriarch, and
there was a matriarch, and there was a mom, and
there was a dad. The dads did this, and the
moms did this. The dads provided the moms around the house. Right.
(01:57):
One of the questions I had, well, what happens when
there was conflict in your house? Well, there wasn't conflict
in my house because that was my dad's job to
take care of the conflict that there ever was conflict,
and his job was to resolve the conflict. And by
doing that, there was no conflict in the house because
he took it all. He took it all. It's truly
(02:19):
a patriarch kind of house.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Diane's childhood was, by most accounts, pretty normal, according to
her brother, although Diane herself claims that she was sexually
abused by her father. She spent part of her childhood
in a Phoenix suppurb before she and her family moved
to a farm. So your mother always conferred to your
father on decisions.
Speaker 4 (02:41):
Always that was her job.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
How big was your house?
Speaker 4 (02:45):
But there was five? Yeah, I had a really fantastic
child that my sister had a fantastic child. And I
remember growing up on Charter Oak Road, and I remember
we had a block fence in our backyard and over
in the right hand corner, Diane had a pigeons. You know,
I thought those were the coolest thing. Pigeons, you know
what I mean, there were homing pigeons. Yeah, you put
(03:07):
little bands on their their little foot and they fly
off and then they come back. You know, I was
whatting in third grade, right, So I don't remember a
whole lot and a lot, a whole lot about homing
pigeons at the time. Yeah, Diane was one of the
I don't want to say main driving factor, but I'll
use the words to basically leave Phoenix and move to
(03:29):
the farm where she inevitably changed her life forever by
meeting Steve. You know, we moved from Phoenix to the farm,
and out on the farm, it was a great time. Man.
Diane had a horse and Kathy had a horse, and
John had a steer, and I raised pigs. I raised
pigs with my grandpa. As a matter of.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Fact, Diane started dating Steve when she was in high school.
Early on, she tried to establish a sense of standards
with who she dated, but with Steve it didn't last.
Speaker 4 (04:01):
I remember that I was in the sixth grade and
she was a junior in high school and Steve had
dropped out. But it's part of dating Diane or a
part of being with Diane. One of the things that
was requested was that you got to check back into school,
and so he did start going to high school and
subsequently got kicked out because she was talking to somebody
(04:22):
and he ended up beating the guy up. I actually
admired Steve growing in. I looked up to him, as
you know, he was a male figure, you know, and
I put him to the Lord Mayo. You know, he
was a manly man. You know, he took no guph
And this something Diane says, you know, basically, you know, whatever,
if there was another guy that was bugging her, he
(04:44):
would beat him up, and she felt safe and she
felt protected until there was nobody else to beat up.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Unfortunately, Steve's propensity for expressing his anger stopped with people
who were bothering Diane, and he began to physically abuse
Diane as well.
Speaker 5 (05:01):
Apparently those two fought. They would physically fight really often,
I mean punching to the face kind of fighting.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Diane briefly joined the military, possibly to escape her home life.
Speaker 4 (05:14):
Diane joined the Air Force, probably to get away. But
Diane joined the Air Force and flag style, and she
was away for a little while, and Steve was there
taking care of Christy.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
What year was this about.
Speaker 4 (05:29):
I was a freshman, so nineteen seventy four. Then Diane said,
you know, I can't stay away from the kids, and
so she got an honorable discharger whatever happens with the
Air Force, and she came back. When Diane went to
the Air Force, Steve and I were playing pool and
there was a lady there, and he says, I bet
you I can get her to go to bed with
(05:51):
me as a conquest. And it's like, I'm a freshman
in high school, you know. It's like.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
His wife's brother, right.
Speaker 4 (06:03):
Right, and she's in the Air Force and she's not there.
And whether he did or whether he didn't, I don't know.
But I just know what he said to me. They fought.
They fought a lot, and one time when I was there,
they were fighting and he was on her back, beating
on her back. I remember it. He didn't hit her
(06:23):
in the face. He was sitting on her. I think
he was even sitting on her head, holding her down
like that and beating her on the back. It was
just it was pretty intense.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
After her son, Danny's birth, Diane and Steve divorced. Steve
believed he couldn't be Danny's father since he claimed to
have had a vasectomy. Despite their divorce, Diane continued to
be on the receiving end of his physical abuse.
Speaker 4 (06:53):
According to James, later on she got tired of it
and she started fighting back, and so she would engage him,
but obviously, you know, she lost, so he shoved her
onto the bed, and at that point Cheryl came in.
So these took place in front of the kids at times,
(07:15):
and it was never Diane starting the first engaging. It
was always her defending herself from him. And so she said,
you know, get Cheryl out of the room. And by
that time, Steve was sitting on Diana, punching her in
the face and blood was everywhere. Diane shouted to take
the kids and run, So we dragged Cheryl away and
(07:38):
got Christy and Danny and they fled.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
It seemed inescapable.
Speaker 4 (07:43):
Called the police, and by the time the Maricopa County
Sheriff Deputy Sean Carnahan, Steve was gone. And when he
walked into Diane's living room he saw my bloody sister
sitting in the chair, his shoulders dropped, the bruises, her
broken nose, eyes, dark neck, ringing red. The deputy said, Diane,
(08:04):
my god, what happened to you? What do you think?
She said, It's like, he says, you've two been doing
this for six years now. He says, when will it stop?
And she just said, I don't know. You know, she said,
I divorced him a year ago. I thought it would stop.
Then I guess was wrong.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Eventually Diane was pushed to her breaking point.
Speaker 5 (08:29):
Diane shot a bullet through the floor of her trailer
when he was there one night.
Speaker 4 (08:35):
The next Tuesday, judge signed a restraining order to keep
Steve away from Diane's home. To be sure that was
the first or the last beating he inflicted on my sister.
Ten days later, he chased her down into the bathroom.
The restraining order forbidding him access to her home was
only a week old. She still wore the bruises from
the last attack. He didn't know she'd grabbed a gun
(08:57):
to defend herself.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
The gun that Diane used to shoot through the floor
would later be the subject of a search by police
as a potential murder weapon. We'll come back to that
in another episode. Not long after the incident where Diane
fired or shot into the floor, her mobile home caught
on fire.
Speaker 5 (09:17):
When she flew to I think it was Kentucky. She
wanted to be a circuit mom. She had done that once.
She was trying to do it again on one of
these trips. The day or the maybe the evening of
the day that she left, her trailer caught on fire,
and you know, she filed an insurance claim. They paid out,
and she later when things frayed between her and Steve,
(09:39):
turned him in for that and he was arrested and
charged with the insurance fraud and had to pay some
money back.
Speaker 4 (09:46):
Everything she owned was gone. She and her children were homeless.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
And this was a brand new mobile It.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
Was a brand new mobile home. Yeah, it was four
months old. They used to Stephen Diane worked at mobile
home manufacturing plans.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
Oh I didn't know this, Okay.
Speaker 4 (09:59):
Yeah, growing up I called growing up twenties. Right, They
worked together in manufacturing plans. You know that way is Steve,
you could keep better tracks of her if he's working
with her. I remember that my sister came over to visit,
and when she was over to visit, I had a
guitar and she borrowed my guitar and she took it
back with her. And what I remember about the mobile
(10:21):
home burning is the fact that my guitar was in
the mobile home when it burned, and I never got
my guitar back. They actually labeled an electrical fire.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
That's what the court said.
Speaker 4 (10:49):
The labeled an electrical fire, but it came out that
that's not what it was. That came out in court,
but that's not what it was.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
How much an insurance pay out for for the mobile home.
Speaker 4 (11:01):
Says seven thousand dollars right there.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
And back in nineteen eighty three. That was a chunk
of money.
Speaker 4 (11:08):
It was seven thousand dollars to repair the mobile.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
Home, which wasn't used to repair the mobile that's correct.
Where did the seven thousand Steve.
Speaker 4 (11:17):
Yeah, Steve, and again he crossed the line. So but
go moving forward. Do you wonder why Steve might have
testified that against my sister, Well, here's the reasons. You know,
Steve confessed to the crime of arson, rendering her homeless.
I'm putting her at his mercy. But Steve actually said
that they conspired together to burn her home for the
(11:40):
insurance money.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Diane's living situation put Steve back into a position of
power over her. She willingly gave Steve custody of their
children to prevent them from being homeless. According to James,
Steve leveraged this into a means of control, but.
Speaker 4 (11:55):
Everything she owned was gone. She and her kids were homeless.
This is after the restraining order and Steve says, hey,
come live with me. Diane refused, but had to let
her children move in with him because she didn't want
him to live in the car. Right, So she kept
paying on the mortgage for the mobile home, and she
went to a person's named Karen's house and offered her
(12:18):
a spare room until the inner November of nineteen eighty two.
But the kids weren't welcome because you know, it's just
a bedroom and a.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
House, and Karen was her coworker at the post office.
Speaker 4 (12:29):
I believe so yes. Diane rented a two bedroom apartment
in December. Steve refused to let her take her children
until after Christmas. Diane had to go to his house
to your children, and Steve wasn't letting go of that
control that he had of her. Every time she went
to their house, they fought. He wanted to remarry, she didn't,
and this was in December of nineteen eighty two. The
(12:51):
shooting happened in May of nineteen eighty three.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
Diane eventually moved back into the mobile home along with
her children.
Speaker 4 (12:59):
And Janeyorry of nineteen eighty five, Strapped for cash, my
sister moved back into her burned out mobile home and
stopped seeing her children at Steve's, so she brought the
kids back to the home. Steve was calling my sister
a worthless mother who didn't take care of her kids
to go see them. He said he was sick of
(13:19):
her having fun while he was burdened with raising the kids.
So basically, the kids are still at his house, okay,
and she's living there, and he's really unhappy about that
because Basically, she's probably out having a good time and
he's having to take care of the kids.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Diane had been living for years under the constraints of
an abusive relationship. Although she had been unfaithful along with Steve,
she was now able to see whoever she pleased without
immediate fear of reprisal. And Diane seemed to love male attention.
Speaker 6 (13:50):
Over the course of time. You watch this plate out
all the time, and you when you see someone like Diane,
when you see so one trying desperately to get attention
and to move a certain way and to shake her
body a certain way, you think to yourself, Wow, there's
(14:12):
a person looking for attention, and do I want to
get inside the kill radius of that person? And I
could get blown up? It could blow me up, And
so a little bell goes off. I think in your
head when you're the person who's the target of a
Diane Downs, thinking to yourself, do I want to be
(14:34):
in the kill radius? Do I want a risk being
blown up? And the answer for most men is no.
But for these guys who all of a sudden attached
to Diane Downs, I think they understood it was a quick,
easy gratifying way to spend the night. I think that's
kind of what got them going. The problem is, I
(14:57):
think once they saw what kind of a mentally damaged
person that she was, they would run. I think I
think that happened over and over and over again.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Diane took a job with the Postal Service, where she
met Nick Knickerbocker. This was the relationship that many would
speculate to be the motivation behind the attempted murder of
her children.
Speaker 4 (15:24):
My says, sir, was she was a she worked in
the post office. She was a rural route carrier. I
remember that was one of their fights in Arizona. I
remember seeing this because Diane was a rural rock carrier,
and as a rural rock carrier, she would continually break
the mirror off of the vehicle because you drive from
the right hand side, and she would continually hit the
(15:47):
mailboxes with the mirror and knocked it off. And Steve
would get so mad about that.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
Why would he get mad, Well, because she broke.
Speaker 4 (15:54):
The mirror off the car continually.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
Oh, I was thinking she was driving a rule routes.
Speaker 4 (16:00):
On a road route, you you basically sub let your
own vehicle, Okay, yeah, and so yeah, driving out in
the country delivering mail basically, and she would hit the
mailboxes with the mirror. It wasn't a physical fight, but
it was it was like crazy. You know. He wasn't
very happy, and he made it known that she wasn't
(16:21):
that he wasn't happy. But that's what she did. In Oregon,
she transferred from Chandler where she met Nick, and you know,
and she moved up to Oregon, and my dad lived
in Oregon, and my dad was a postmaster in Springfield, Oregon.
And so she came up here to start her new
(16:41):
family with, you know, a start of new life. And
she was working in the post office, so she was
she was truly on her way, man, she was on
her way to getting her life. But this happened to her.
And and it's really, you know, sort of sad because
I mean the reason, you know, talking about the post office,
(17:02):
and you know, it makes me think of Nick Knickerbocker,
the guy she met at the post office, the guy
that you know, they say that everything got done for
if she did this fine the motive, yes, thank you
very much.
Speaker 5 (17:14):
He was a letter carrier also, so they worked eight
hour shifts beside each other, would spent at least two
hours after that, oftentimes having sex at one location or another.
So they did paint a picture that when they were
in Arizona. Because he was a married guy and for
the longest time didn't tell his wife about Diane, she
(17:37):
eventually found out, and he still sort of carried on
and was not very forthcoming.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Diane was apparently obsessed with Nick to the point where
she would have done anything for him. There were unsent
letters and journals found in her apartment where she declared
her feelings.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
Seems to me that he was fairly nice looking, strong jaw,
kind of wiry hair, and this person that seemingly Diane
down his head over heels about, and that she when
any of the male partners sex partners said to her, listen,
(18:14):
you're a really wonderful sexual partner, but I don't really.
I don't think I want to raise kids that would
absolutely crash her world.
Speaker 7 (18:25):
And so I think with respect to Robert, the question
of whether or not he could deal with kids, you know,
was certainly a part of the narrative.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
After Nick's rejection, in years of abuse from Steve, Diane
decided to leave Arizona. Her father was a postmaster in Oregon,
so she moved and was able to get a letter
carrier job in Springfield.
Speaker 4 (18:48):
When you're an abusive relationship, it's the same question that
everybody asks everybody that's in that kind of relationship, how
long are you going to let this happen before you
change something? But when you then she did changed something,
and that's when she moved to Oregon. She was changing
her life. She'd been in order for six weeks when
she was attacked. She left Steve in Arizona. She left
(19:10):
her boyfriends. And I don't say Nick I said she
left her boyfriends in Arizona. I mean, I can't say
that she didn't have a thing for Nick. And I
can't say that Nick didn't have a thing for her,
because obviously they did. But she left him there because
really he was a married man, you know, and you're
not going to get together with a married man because
(19:32):
the married man is not going to leave his wife.
That's just what married men do.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
And then in nineteen eighty three, the shooting occurs. From
the beginning, the press made every effort to find all
the information they could about the incident and about Diane herself.
Speaker 5 (20:05):
The whole goal was to figure out who she was,
how long she had been in Eugene or the Eugene
Springfield area. So you had kind of this small army
of media types, mainly local print and television stations, doing
their own things. So we were all sort of learning
from each other too. If Kval and Eugene had a
(20:25):
news broadcast that night with something a little bit new,
well figured I wish I had gotten that in first,
but nonetheless put that into the notebook and just kept
on trying to compile our best ability to figure out
who was involved. And you also had at the same
time the search for the assailant. That was still the
(20:47):
official line that there's somebody out there, although even early
on my feeling was and I think other media people
were having questions.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
Although the police department wasn't very forthcoming with the details
of the case and the investigation, Diane herself proved to
be very willing to talk to the press.
Speaker 5 (21:06):
I was trying to find out who among law enforcement
was primarily assigned to the case, and would there be
a chance of getting an interview with these folks, And
I was able to do that after a while, but
not early on, and the police were never open and
forthcoming with reporters as far as I could find out,
Almost all the information as the case developed ended up
(21:29):
coming really out of Diane's mouth. She was a prolific talker.
When we finally got a chance to sit down and
get her a story, and once she started, she just
didn't stop.
Speaker 4 (21:42):
Mom and Dad said, quit talking. Then, do not talk
to the press. They are not your friends. Diane was
the most publicized and talked about individual in the state
of Oregon in nineteen eighty three, and a lot of
that was due to her. I mean, as she would
talk to everybody.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
Diane gave several interviews with the press and insisted that
she and her kids were attacked by a shaggy haired stranger,
a description which over time has become a trope when
describing non existent suspects of crimes.
Speaker 3 (22:14):
Do you think that helped her?
Speaker 4 (22:16):
No, no, no, absolutely not. It did the opposite. You know.
It's like and she was really the worst witness for herself,
you know, I mean, it's like she she would get
up and she would talk, and she would talk, and
you know, and they think it's because she liked to
(22:37):
hear herself talk. Well, the reality is that she wanted
to have them listen. They wanted She wanted him to listen,
but they would never listen. They would never look for anybody.
She would go down there. You know, it's like, why
aren't you looking, Well, we're looking for the guy. We're
looking for the guy, you know. But if then you
take a look into the newspapers and the time, you know.
(23:01):
Two weeks after the shooting, Pat hort and the district
attorney says, the search for the shaggy haired stranger is
not a priority on our list. Two weeks after the shooting,
the district attorney says, the search for the shaggy haired
stranger his words, not hers. The search for the shaggy
head stranger is not a priority on our list. But
anytime she goes and talks to him, we're looking for him.
(23:23):
We're looking for him.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
Months after the shooting, the police had produced no additional
suspects beyond Diane herself. They had no leads, and only
the Frederickson's themselves seemed to be providing contacts of potential
witnesses and suspects to the police.
Speaker 5 (23:49):
There didn't seem to be any elits. And this was
coming from Diane's camp to say we have somebody had
phoned us and indicated there was there was some guy
who had shown up at the Springfield country Club, or
she was advising police be on the lookout for some
dinged up yellow car that was in the area. There
weren't solidly so I know that the police got a
(24:11):
lot of contacts, and as far as I know, they
and this was one of the stories we were trying
to keep up on. They were tracking these leaves down,
going and talk to the people who phone them in,
but as far as we could tell, that never really
got a solid start. There was nothing that felt like
a breakthrough in terms of finding somebody else who might
(24:32):
be involved in this.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
Diane would talk and tell her story to anyone who
would listen. She seemed to love talking to the press.
Speaker 5 (24:40):
I do remember very clearly, and Diane would even in
news conferences talk about dreams that she had had, and
she would call me, and I'm sure she called other
reporters on a fairly regular basis, just too because she
needed to talk. And she was one day talking about
having driven down to her letter carrying route in Cottage
Grover that morning. She said it was kind of foggy,
(25:02):
and I five and she could see Cheryl coming out
of the mist, kind of holding her hand toward her,
and Diane said, and there we were the four Musketeers again.
I think that's how she referred to them, at least
for the police sake, because it did come out that
I think it had have been a terrible place to
be raised in her house, because they got hit, they
(25:25):
got slapped, they were treated very, very poorly.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
The police struggled to make sense of the events that
night based on the story Diane had provided. They asked
her to recreate everything that happened that night, step by
step and a reenactment.
Speaker 8 (25:40):
And I think for the detectives and the officers who
were working on it, that was the moment that things
shifted a little bit. And to go back to Detective
Welch and some of the first folks on the scene,
their radar was going off I think before that. But
at first, certainly the stories were all about who is
(26:01):
this shaggy haired stranger, what was the motive of this
person to shoot kids? And was even that you know
the highway back there near Mohawk, Was that folks danger
back there living out in the rural part of Lane
County And the more I think Diane spoke the more
(26:23):
there were questions about what it is that the motive
was all about, and about who the.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
Shooter might be.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
The reenactment was strange, to say the least. Diana seemed
to be a mother who was struggling to explain the
murder and an attempted murder of her children by a stranger.
She came across like an actress playing a part and
catering to the audience.
Speaker 6 (26:44):
I think that when they videotaped her and they wanted
her to say, Hey, this is where I was standing,
this is where the shaggy haired stranger is standing, this
was the song playing on the radio, this is how
I reacted. This is what I did when I threw
the car keys into the bushes. The police saw something
(27:07):
there that didn't quite add up, and that was what
the children ended up seeing from inside the car and
what it is she was saying, and that was a contradiction.
There was an immediate contradiction when they viewed what she
did with the video re enactment in the car, and
(27:27):
they got a lot of things right down to the
detail about the car and other things so that they
could understand what happened.
Speaker 4 (27:38):
And so.
Speaker 6 (27:40):
I think the detectives right off the bat thought, wow,
this is not right. There's something here that's not right,
and you could see it, I think in the way
Diane even acted in the video. This wasn't a mom
who was shell shocked. She was a actress playing out
(28:02):
a scene in a movie that we hadn't seen yet.
Speaker 3 (28:06):
Tell me about her behavior in the video.
Speaker 6 (28:08):
Re enactment, mm hmm. Well, it was almost as if,
I mean, as from what I can remember of the
details and then showing it. It was almost as if
she had to think about what it was that was
the right answer that they wanted as opposed to this
is exactly what happened, and instead of it being something
(28:30):
that was ingrained in a part of her sailor understanding
of that shooting from this stranger, she was thinking out loud,
almost about what it is that they would buy as
a story. And you could see that, you could.
Speaker 3 (28:46):
I'm throwing the keys.
Speaker 4 (28:47):
Okay, I'm throwing the keys.
Speaker 3 (28:49):
Yes, but I didn't let go.
Speaker 4 (28:51):
He thinks I threw them, but I did not throw them.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
Again.
Speaker 4 (28:55):
He swings around at the same time, watching the keys
and swings around his shoot, which he shot me in
the stumm, I like that, Kesan, I just hit my kids,
started the car and.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
Left the car door shut itself.
Speaker 4 (29:14):
Okay, this is the person.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
The police weren't the only ones who found Diane's behavior
and explanation strange. The press also saw the video, and
for many it confirmed their suspicions that Diane was the
most likely suspect in the shooting.
Speaker 5 (29:33):
She did a reenactant with the police that was shown
later that kind of verified this feeling that that a
lot of us had gotten from the start the story
just didn't really add up. She claimed, for instance, that
when she got out of her car, this guy said
I want your car, and she said, and she's she's
consistent as far as I know to this day in
(29:54):
saying you gotta be kidding me. That's about the only
part of her story that has remained consistent.
Speaker 6 (30:00):
Her affect is not one of somebody who's trying to
protect their kids. It was almost as if she'd never
done these things before, and she was saying, well, what
are you asking me to do? And they say, no,
just do it just like it happened, and that was
their question. It didn't seem she was operating from memory
(30:20):
it was almost like, how would you want me to be?
And so that sort of raised alarm bells as they
went through her reenacting.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
What it was like to have a stranger outside her car.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
After the re enactment video, Diane's increasingly casual attitude and interviews,
and the lack of any real evidence pointing to a
shooter on the loose, everyone began to accept that Diane
was most likely guilty.
Speaker 6 (30:45):
So at the beginning, I think all of us wanted
to believe that it made sense that this stranger was
out there and that all the police had to do
was just find this person and track them down and
the things would be over. But over time, and you
really didn't want to believe it at first that Diane
(31:07):
had some of these strange characteristics about her. They didn't
make sense.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
Eventually police felt like they had gathered enough evidence. On
February twenty eighth, nineteen eighty four, Diane Downs was arrested.
Speaker 5 (31:24):
It was a huge deal. Diane's been arrested again. She'd
been out in the community for months saying what if
she wanted to disparaging the police, which that's okay. People
are unfairly charged and it's certainly fair to push back
on that, but I think among most people that there
was just no goodwill left for Diane. With no other
suspect ever having come close to being charged or arrested
(31:50):
or identified. She was in the spotlight, she was the one,
and it was a big deal, and she was arrested.
She was looking tired, be draggled. The emotional strain I
think had taken a toll on her. She was still
kind of prone to smirk and smile a lot, whether
she should be or not, but she was I think
(32:11):
kind of beaten down by a circumstance when they finally
took her into custody. At that point, we all knew that, well,
we're going to be going to trial in about three months.
I think Lane County had a stipulation of that point
that once you were charged with that kind of serious crime,
just to a speedy process, we'll have you start your
trial within three months.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
It wasn't just the reenactment, her strange behavior and the
inconsistent story that led police to arrest Diane. During the
nine months between the shooting and the arrest, a key
witness was at last able to provide the final piece
of the puzzle needed to charge Diane.
Speaker 5 (32:47):
Diane was ultimately charged because Christy could talk, Christie felt
safe enough emotionally to share her thoughts. She'd been going
through lots of therapy. As part of these sessions, her therapist,
a guy named Carl Peterson, would ask her eventually, just
(33:08):
in talking about this, do you know who shot you?
And Christy would nod and he would say, do you
want to write that down? And I'll put this in
an envelope and we'll just burn it when it's done,
so no harm, no foul. So she did that for
quite a while, and I think there was probably one
day in particular where she felt okay about sharing that
(33:29):
with him, what she had written on the paper and
what did she say, said my mom.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
On the next episode of Happy Face Presents Two Face,
we received a bizarre letter from Diane Down's in prison
that included her surprising claims of her relation to Becky.
This leads us to enlist the help from DNA detective
Michel Leonard to help us solve the answer of who
are the biological parents of Becky. Ben Bolan is our
(34:02):
executive producer. Melissa Moore is our co executive producer. Maya
Cole is our primary producer, Paul Dekant is our supervising producer,
Sam T. Garnan is our researcher, and Matt Riddle is
our story editor. Featured music by dream Tent Happy Face
Presents to Phase is a production of iHeartRadio
I mean it was a huge story. It made, you know,
national news when Diane Downs drives to the Springfield hospital
with those kids, and I think it shocked everybody just
because somewhere deep in their gut, it's like a mom
and kids that just that doesn't make sense. And the
story of the shaggy haired stranger didn't make sense either
(00:23):
at first. But everybody was willing to go along with
that for quite a while. And I think what really
sort of snapped things was the reenactment and having Diane
with the car and having the police ask her various questions,
and to reenact that moment, I think began the real
(00:44):
questions in that story.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
The reenactment Eric Mason is referring to is a video
shop by Springfield Orgon Police. In it, they asked Diane
to walk them through the events of that night to
try and get a better understanding of what happened.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
We'll get to that in a bit.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
But first we have to ask who exactly is Diane Downs.
How does a twenty seven year old mail carrier and
mother of three wind up at a Springfield organ hospital
on a random weeknight having apparently shot her children and herself.
The story starts in Arizona. Her brother James, describes her
family life.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
Describe your dad for me, help me understand your household.
Speaker 4 (01:34):
Sure, I was thinking about this last night. The year
is nineteen sixty, right. They got married in the fifties,
and in the fifties and the sixties. It was before
the bra burnings. You know, there was a patriarch, and
there was a matriarch, and there was a mom, and
there was a dad. The dads did this, and the
moms did this. The dads provided the moms around the house. Right.
(01:57):
One of the questions I had, well, what happens when
there was conflict in your house? Well, there wasn't conflict
in my house because that was my dad's job to
take care of the conflict that there ever was conflict,
and his job was to resolve the conflict. And by
doing that, there was no conflict in the house because
he took it all. He took it all. It's truly
(02:19):
a patriarch kind of house.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Diane's childhood was, by most accounts, pretty normal, according to
her brother, although Diane herself claims that she was sexually
abused by her father. She spent part of her childhood
in a Phoenix suppurb before she and her family moved
to a farm. So your mother always conferred to your
father on decisions.
Speaker 4 (02:41):
Always that was her job.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
How big was your house?
Speaker 4 (02:45):
But there was five? Yeah, I had a really fantastic
child that my sister had a fantastic child. And I
remember growing up on Charter Oak Road, and I remember
we had a block fence in our backyard and over
in the right hand corner, Diane had a pigeons. You know,
I thought those were the coolest thing. Pigeons, you know
what I mean, there were homing pigeons. Yeah, you put
(03:07):
little bands on their their little foot and they fly
off and then they come back. You know, I was
whatting in third grade, right, So I don't remember a
whole lot and a lot, a whole lot about homing
pigeons at the time. Yeah, Diane was one of the
I don't want to say main driving factor, but I'll
use the words to basically leave Phoenix and move to
(03:29):
the farm where she inevitably changed her life forever by
meeting Steve. You know, we moved from Phoenix to the farm,
and out on the farm, it was a great time. Man.
Diane had a horse and Kathy had a horse, and
John had a steer, and I raised pigs. I raised
pigs with my grandpa. As a matter of.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Fact, Diane started dating Steve when she was in high school.
Early on, she tried to establish a sense of standards
with who she dated, but with Steve it didn't last.
Speaker 4 (04:01):
I remember that I was in the sixth grade and
she was a junior in high school and Steve had
dropped out. But it's part of dating Diane or a
part of being with Diane. One of the things that
was requested was that you got to check back into school,
and so he did start going to high school and
subsequently got kicked out because she was talking to somebody
(04:22):
and he ended up beating the guy up. I actually
admired Steve growing in. I looked up to him, as
you know, he was a male figure, you know, and
I put him to the Lord Mayo. You know, he
was a manly man. You know, he took no guph
And this something Diane says, you know, basically, you know, whatever,
if there was another guy that was bugging her, he
(04:44):
would beat him up, and she felt safe and she
felt protected until there was nobody else to beat up.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Unfortunately, Steve's propensity for expressing his anger stopped with people
who were bothering Diane, and he began to physically abuse
Diane as well.
Speaker 5 (05:01):
Apparently those two fought. They would physically fight really often,
I mean punching to the face kind of fighting.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Diane briefly joined the military, possibly to escape her home life.
Speaker 4 (05:14):
Diane joined the Air Force, probably to get away. But
Diane joined the Air Force and flag style, and she
was away for a little while, and Steve was there
taking care of Christy.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
What year was this about.
Speaker 4 (05:29):
I was a freshman, so nineteen seventy four. Then Diane said,
you know, I can't stay away from the kids, and
so she got an honorable discharger whatever happens with the
Air Force, and she came back. When Diane went to
the Air Force, Steve and I were playing pool and
there was a lady there, and he says, I bet
you I can get her to go to bed with
(05:51):
me as a conquest. And it's like, I'm a freshman
in high school, you know. It's like.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
His wife's brother, right.
Speaker 4 (06:03):
Right, and she's in the Air Force and she's not there.
And whether he did or whether he didn't, I don't know.
But I just know what he said to me. They fought.
They fought a lot, and one time when I was there,
they were fighting and he was on her back, beating
on her back. I remember it. He didn't hit her
(06:23):
in the face. He was sitting on her. I think
he was even sitting on her head, holding her down
like that and beating her on the back. It was
just it was pretty intense.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
After her son, Danny's birth, Diane and Steve divorced. Steve
believed he couldn't be Danny's father since he claimed to
have had a vasectomy. Despite their divorce, Diane continued to
be on the receiving end of his physical abuse.
Speaker 4 (06:53):
According to James, later on she got tired of it
and she started fighting back, and so she would engage him,
but obviously, you know, she lost, so he shoved her
onto the bed, and at that point Cheryl came in.
So these took place in front of the kids at times,
(07:15):
and it was never Diane starting the first engaging. It
was always her defending herself from him. And so she said,
you know, get Cheryl out of the room. And by
that time, Steve was sitting on Diana, punching her in
the face and blood was everywhere. Diane shouted to take
the kids and run, So we dragged Cheryl away and
(07:38):
got Christy and Danny and they fled.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
It seemed inescapable.
Speaker 4 (07:43):
Called the police, and by the time the Maricopa County
Sheriff Deputy Sean Carnahan, Steve was gone. And when he
walked into Diane's living room he saw my bloody sister
sitting in the chair, his shoulders dropped, the bruises, her
broken nose, eyes, dark neck, ringing red. The deputy said, Diane,
(08:04):
my god, what happened to you? What do you think?
She said, It's like, he says, you've two been doing
this for six years now. He says, when will it stop?
And she just said, I don't know. You know, she said,
I divorced him a year ago. I thought it would stop.
Then I guess was wrong.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Eventually Diane was pushed to her breaking point.
Speaker 5 (08:29):
Diane shot a bullet through the floor of her trailer
when he was there one night.
Speaker 4 (08:35):
The next Tuesday, judge signed a restraining order to keep
Steve away from Diane's home. To be sure that was
the first or the last beating he inflicted on my sister.
Ten days later, he chased her down into the bathroom.
The restraining order forbidding him access to her home was
only a week old. She still wore the bruises from
the last attack. He didn't know she'd grabbed a gun
(08:57):
to defend herself.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
The gun that Diane used to shoot through the floor
would later be the subject of a search by police
as a potential murder weapon. We'll come back to that
in another episode. Not long after the incident where Diane
fired or shot into the floor, her mobile home caught
on fire.
Speaker 5 (09:17):
When she flew to I think it was Kentucky. She
wanted to be a circuit mom. She had done that once.
She was trying to do it again on one of
these trips. The day or the maybe the evening of
the day that she left, her trailer caught on fire,
and you know, she filed an insurance claim. They paid out,
and she later when things frayed between her and Steve,
(09:39):
turned him in for that and he was arrested and
charged with the insurance fraud and had to pay some
money back.
Speaker 4 (09:46):
Everything she owned was gone. She and her children were homeless.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
And this was a brand new mobile It.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
Was a brand new mobile home. Yeah, it was four
months old. They used to Stephen Diane worked at mobile
home manufacturing plans.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
Oh I didn't know this, Okay.
Speaker 4 (09:59):
Yeah, growing up I called growing up twenties. Right, They
worked together in manufacturing plans. You know that way is Steve,
you could keep better tracks of her if he's working
with her. I remember that my sister came over to visit,
and when she was over to visit, I had a
guitar and she borrowed my guitar and she took it
back with her. And what I remember about the mobile
(10:21):
home burning is the fact that my guitar was in
the mobile home when it burned, and I never got
my guitar back. They actually labeled an electrical fire.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
That's what the court said.
Speaker 4 (10:49):
The labeled an electrical fire, but it came out that
that's not what it was. That came out in court,
but that's not what it was.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
How much an insurance pay out for for the mobile home.
Speaker 4 (11:01):
Says seven thousand dollars right there.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
And back in nineteen eighty three. That was a chunk
of money.
Speaker 4 (11:08):
It was seven thousand dollars to repair the mobile.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
Home, which wasn't used to repair the mobile that's correct.
Where did the seven thousand Steve.
Speaker 4 (11:17):
Yeah, Steve, and again he crossed the line. So but
go moving forward. Do you wonder why Steve might have
testified that against my sister, Well, here's the reasons. You know,
Steve confessed to the crime of arson, rendering her homeless.
I'm putting her at his mercy. But Steve actually said
that they conspired together to burn her home for the
(11:40):
insurance money.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Diane's living situation put Steve back into a position of
power over her. She willingly gave Steve custody of their
children to prevent them from being homeless. According to James,
Steve leveraged this into a means of control, but.
Speaker 4 (11:55):
Everything she owned was gone. She and her kids were homeless.
This is after the restraining order and Steve says, hey,
come live with me. Diane refused, but had to let
her children move in with him because she didn't want
him to live in the car. Right, So she kept
paying on the mortgage for the mobile home, and she
went to a person's named Karen's house and offered her
(12:18):
a spare room until the inner November of nineteen eighty two.
But the kids weren't welcome because you know, it's just
a bedroom and a.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
House, and Karen was her coworker at the post office.
Speaker 4 (12:29):
I believe so yes. Diane rented a two bedroom apartment
in December. Steve refused to let her take her children
until after Christmas. Diane had to go to his house
to your children, and Steve wasn't letting go of that
control that he had of her. Every time she went
to their house, they fought. He wanted to remarry, she didn't,
and this was in December of nineteen eighty two. The
(12:51):
shooting happened in May of nineteen eighty three.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
Diane eventually moved back into the mobile home along with
her children.
Speaker 4 (12:59):
And Janeyorry of nineteen eighty five, Strapped for cash, my
sister moved back into her burned out mobile home and
stopped seeing her children at Steve's, so she brought the
kids back to the home. Steve was calling my sister
a worthless mother who didn't take care of her kids
to go see them. He said he was sick of
(13:19):
her having fun while he was burdened with raising the kids.
So basically, the kids are still at his house, okay,
and she's living there, and he's really unhappy about that
because Basically, she's probably out having a good time and
he's having to take care of the kids.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Diane had been living for years under the constraints of
an abusive relationship. Although she had been unfaithful along with Steve,
she was now able to see whoever she pleased without
immediate fear of reprisal. And Diane seemed to love male attention.
Speaker 6 (13:50):
Over the course of time. You watch this plate out
all the time, and you when you see someone like Diane,
when you see so one trying desperately to get attention
and to move a certain way and to shake her
body a certain way, you think to yourself, Wow, there's
(14:12):
a person looking for attention, and do I want to
get inside the kill radius of that person? And I
could get blown up? It could blow me up, And
so a little bell goes off. I think in your
head when you're the person who's the target of a
Diane Downs, thinking to yourself, do I want to be
(14:34):
in the kill radius? Do I want a risk being
blown up? And the answer for most men is no.
But for these guys who all of a sudden attached
to Diane Downs, I think they understood it was a quick,
easy gratifying way to spend the night. I think that's
kind of what got them going. The problem is, I
(14:57):
think once they saw what kind of a mentally damaged
person that she was, they would run. I think I
think that happened over and over and over again.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Diane took a job with the Postal Service, where she
met Nick Knickerbocker. This was the relationship that many would
speculate to be the motivation behind the attempted murder of
her children.
Speaker 4 (15:24):
My says, sir, was she was a she worked in
the post office. She was a rural route carrier. I
remember that was one of their fights in Arizona. I
remember seeing this because Diane was a rural rock carrier,
and as a rural rock carrier, she would continually break
the mirror off of the vehicle because you drive from
the right hand side, and she would continually hit the
(15:47):
mailboxes with the mirror and knocked it off. And Steve
would get so mad about that.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
Why would he get mad, Well, because she broke.
Speaker 4 (15:54):
The mirror off the car continually.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
Oh, I was thinking she was driving a rule routes.
Speaker 4 (16:00):
On a road route, you you basically sub let your
own vehicle, Okay, yeah, and so yeah, driving out in
the country delivering mail basically, and she would hit the
mailboxes with the mirror. It wasn't a physical fight, but
it was it was like crazy. You know. He wasn't
very happy, and he made it known that she wasn't
(16:21):
that he wasn't happy. But that's what she did. In Oregon,
she transferred from Chandler where she met Nick, and you know,
and she moved up to Oregon, and my dad lived
in Oregon, and my dad was a postmaster in Springfield, Oregon.
And so she came up here to start her new
(16:41):
family with, you know, a start of new life. And
she was working in the post office, so she was
she was truly on her way, man, she was on
her way to getting her life. But this happened to her.
And and it's really, you know, sort of sad because
I mean the reason, you know, talking about the post office,
(17:02):
and you know, it makes me think of Nick Knickerbocker,
the guy she met at the post office, the guy
that you know, they say that everything got done for
if she did this fine the motive, yes, thank you
very much.
Speaker 5 (17:14):
He was a letter carrier also, so they worked eight
hour shifts beside each other, would spent at least two
hours after that, oftentimes having sex at one location or another.
So they did paint a picture that when they were
in Arizona. Because he was a married guy and for
the longest time didn't tell his wife about Diane, she
(17:37):
eventually found out, and he still sort of carried on
and was not very forthcoming.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Diane was apparently obsessed with Nick to the point where
she would have done anything for him. There were unsent
letters and journals found in her apartment where she declared
her feelings.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
Seems to me that he was fairly nice looking, strong jaw,
kind of wiry hair, and this person that seemingly Diane
down his head over heels about, and that she when
any of the male partners sex partners said to her, listen,
(18:14):
you're a really wonderful sexual partner, but I don't really.
I don't think I want to raise kids that would
absolutely crash her world.
Speaker 7 (18:25):
And so I think with respect to Robert, the question
of whether or not he could deal with kids, you know,
was certainly a part of the narrative.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
After Nick's rejection, in years of abuse from Steve, Diane
decided to leave Arizona. Her father was a postmaster in Oregon,
so she moved and was able to get a letter
carrier job in Springfield.
Speaker 4 (18:48):
When you're an abusive relationship, it's the same question that
everybody asks everybody that's in that kind of relationship, how
long are you going to let this happen before you
change something? But when you then she did changed something,
and that's when she moved to Oregon. She was changing
her life. She'd been in order for six weeks when
she was attacked. She left Steve in Arizona. She left
(19:10):
her boyfriends. And I don't say Nick I said she
left her boyfriends in Arizona. I mean, I can't say
that she didn't have a thing for Nick. And I
can't say that Nick didn't have a thing for her,
because obviously they did. But she left him there because
really he was a married man, you know, and you're
not going to get together with a married man because
(19:32):
the married man is not going to leave his wife.
That's just what married men do.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
And then in nineteen eighty three, the shooting occurs. From
the beginning, the press made every effort to find all
the information they could about the incident and about Diane herself.
Speaker 5 (20:05):
The whole goal was to figure out who she was,
how long she had been in Eugene or the Eugene
Springfield area. So you had kind of this small army
of media types, mainly local print and television stations, doing
their own things. So we were all sort of learning
from each other too. If Kval and Eugene had a
(20:25):
news broadcast that night with something a little bit new,
well figured I wish I had gotten that in first,
but nonetheless put that into the notebook and just kept
on trying to compile our best ability to figure out
who was involved. And you also had at the same
time the search for the assailant. That was still the
(20:47):
official line that there's somebody out there, although even early
on my feeling was and I think other media people
were having questions.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
Although the police department wasn't very forthcoming with the details
of the case and the investigation, Diane herself proved to
be very willing to talk to the press.
Speaker 5 (21:06):
I was trying to find out who among law enforcement
was primarily assigned to the case, and would there be
a chance of getting an interview with these folks, And
I was able to do that after a while, but
not early on, and the police were never open and
forthcoming with reporters as far as I could find out,
Almost all the information as the case developed ended up
(21:29):
coming really out of Diane's mouth. She was a prolific talker.
When we finally got a chance to sit down and
get her a story, and once she started, she just
didn't stop.
Speaker 4 (21:42):
Mom and Dad said, quit talking. Then, do not talk
to the press. They are not your friends. Diane was
the most publicized and talked about individual in the state
of Oregon in nineteen eighty three, and a lot of
that was due to her. I mean, as she would
talk to everybody.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
Diane gave several interviews with the press and insisted that
she and her kids were attacked by a shaggy haired stranger,
a description which over time has become a trope when
describing non existent suspects of crimes.
Speaker 3 (22:14):
Do you think that helped her?
Speaker 4 (22:16):
No, no, no, absolutely not. It did the opposite. You know.
It's like and she was really the worst witness for herself,
you know, I mean, it's like she she would get
up and she would talk, and she would talk, and
you know, and they think it's because she liked to
(22:37):
hear herself talk. Well, the reality is that she wanted
to have them listen. They wanted She wanted him to listen,
but they would never listen. They would never look for anybody.
She would go down there. You know, it's like, why
aren't you looking, Well, we're looking for the guy. We're
looking for the guy, you know. But if then you
take a look into the newspapers and the time, you know.
(23:01):
Two weeks after the shooting, Pat hort and the district
attorney says, the search for the shaggy haired stranger is
not a priority on our list. Two weeks after the shooting,
the district attorney says, the search for the shaggy haired
stranger his words, not hers. The search for the shaggy
head stranger is not a priority on our list. But
anytime she goes and talks to him, we're looking for him.
(23:23):
We're looking for him.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
Months after the shooting, the police had produced no additional
suspects beyond Diane herself. They had no leads, and only
the Frederickson's themselves seemed to be providing contacts of potential
witnesses and suspects to the police.
Speaker 5 (23:49):
There didn't seem to be any elits. And this was
coming from Diane's camp to say we have somebody had
phoned us and indicated there was there was some guy
who had shown up at the Springfield country Club, or
she was advising police be on the lookout for some
dinged up yellow car that was in the area. There
weren't solidly so I know that the police got a
(24:11):
lot of contacts, and as far as I know, they
and this was one of the stories we were trying
to keep up on. They were tracking these leaves down,
going and talk to the people who phone them in,
but as far as we could tell, that never really
got a solid start. There was nothing that felt like
a breakthrough in terms of finding somebody else who might
(24:32):
be involved in this.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
Diane would talk and tell her story to anyone who
would listen. She seemed to love talking to the press.
Speaker 5 (24:40):
I do remember very clearly, and Diane would even in
news conferences talk about dreams that she had had, and
she would call me, and I'm sure she called other
reporters on a fairly regular basis, just too because she
needed to talk. And she was one day talking about
having driven down to her letter carrying route in Cottage
Grover that morning. She said it was kind of foggy,
(25:02):
and I five and she could see Cheryl coming out
of the mist, kind of holding her hand toward her,
and Diane said, and there we were the four Musketeers again.
I think that's how she referred to them, at least
for the police sake, because it did come out that
I think it had have been a terrible place to
be raised in her house, because they got hit, they
(25:25):
got slapped, they were treated very, very poorly.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
The police struggled to make sense of the events that
night based on the story Diane had provided. They asked
her to recreate everything that happened that night, step by
step and a reenactment.
Speaker 8 (25:40):
And I think for the detectives and the officers who
were working on it, that was the moment that things
shifted a little bit. And to go back to Detective
Welch and some of the first folks on the scene,
their radar was going off I think before that. But
at first, certainly the stories were all about who is
(26:01):
this shaggy haired stranger, what was the motive of this
person to shoot kids? And was even that you know
the highway back there near Mohawk, Was that folks danger
back there living out in the rural part of Lane
County And the more I think Diane spoke the more
(26:23):
there were questions about what it is that the motive
was all about, and about who the.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
Shooter might be.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
The reenactment was strange, to say the least. Diana seemed
to be a mother who was struggling to explain the
murder and an attempted murder of her children by a stranger.
She came across like an actress playing a part and
catering to the audience.
Speaker 6 (26:44):
I think that when they videotaped her and they wanted
her to say, Hey, this is where I was standing,
this is where the shaggy haired stranger is standing, this
was the song playing on the radio, this is how
I reacted. This is what I did when I threw
the car keys into the bushes. The police saw something
(27:07):
there that didn't quite add up, and that was what
the children ended up seeing from inside the car and
what it is she was saying, and that was a contradiction.
There was an immediate contradiction when they viewed what she
did with the video re enactment in the car, and
(27:27):
they got a lot of things right down to the
detail about the car and other things so that they
could understand what happened.
Speaker 4 (27:38):
And so.
Speaker 6 (27:40):
I think the detectives right off the bat thought, wow,
this is not right. There's something here that's not right,
and you could see it, I think in the way
Diane even acted in the video. This wasn't a mom
who was shell shocked. She was a actress playing out
(28:02):
a scene in a movie that we hadn't seen yet.
Speaker 3 (28:06):
Tell me about her behavior in the video.
Speaker 6 (28:08):
Re enactment, mm hmm. Well, it was almost as if,
I mean, as from what I can remember of the
details and then showing it. It was almost as if
she had to think about what it was that was
the right answer that they wanted as opposed to this
is exactly what happened, and instead of it being something
(28:30):
that was ingrained in a part of her sailor understanding
of that shooting from this stranger, she was thinking out loud,
almost about what it is that they would buy as
a story. And you could see that, you could.
Speaker 3 (28:46):
I'm throwing the keys.
Speaker 4 (28:47):
Okay, I'm throwing the keys.
Speaker 3 (28:49):
Yes, but I didn't let go.
Speaker 4 (28:51):
He thinks I threw them, but I did not throw them.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
Again.
Speaker 4 (28:55):
He swings around at the same time, watching the keys
and swings around his shoot, which he shot me in
the stumm, I like that, Kesan, I just hit my kids,
started the car and.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
Left the car door shut itself.
Speaker 4 (29:14):
Okay, this is the person.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
The police weren't the only ones who found Diane's behavior
and explanation strange. The press also saw the video, and
for many it confirmed their suspicions that Diane was the
most likely suspect in the shooting.
Speaker 5 (29:33):
She did a reenactant with the police that was shown
later that kind of verified this feeling that that a
lot of us had gotten from the start the story
just didn't really add up. She claimed, for instance, that
when she got out of her car, this guy said
I want your car, and she said, and she's she's
consistent as far as I know to this day in
(29:54):
saying you gotta be kidding me. That's about the only
part of her story that has remained consistent.
Speaker 6 (30:00):
Her affect is not one of somebody who's trying to
protect their kids. It was almost as if she'd never
done these things before, and she was saying, well, what
are you asking me to do? And they say, no,
just do it just like it happened, and that was
their question. It didn't seem she was operating from memory
(30:20):
it was almost like, how would you want me to be?
And so that sort of raised alarm bells as they
went through her reenacting.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
What it was like to have a stranger outside her car.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
After the re enactment video, Diane's increasingly casual attitude and interviews,
and the lack of any real evidence pointing to a
shooter on the loose, everyone began to accept that Diane
was most likely guilty.
Speaker 6 (30:45):
So at the beginning, I think all of us wanted
to believe that it made sense that this stranger was
out there and that all the police had to do
was just find this person and track them down and
the things would be over. But over time, and you
really didn't want to believe it at first that Diane
(31:07):
had some of these strange characteristics about her. They didn't
make sense.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
Eventually police felt like they had gathered enough evidence. On
February twenty eighth, nineteen eighty four, Diane Downs was arrested.
Speaker 5 (31:24):
It was a huge deal. Diane's been arrested again. She'd
been out in the community for months saying what if
she wanted to disparaging the police, which that's okay. People
are unfairly charged and it's certainly fair to push back
on that, but I think among most people that there
was just no goodwill left for Diane. With no other
suspect ever having come close to being charged or arrested
(31:50):
or identified. She was in the spotlight, she was the one,
and it was a big deal, and she was arrested.
She was looking tired, be draggled. The emotional strain I
think had taken a toll on her. She was still
kind of prone to smirk and smile a lot, whether
she should be or not, but she was I think
(32:11):
kind of beaten down by a circumstance when they finally
took her into custody. At that point, we all knew that, well,
we're going to be going to trial in about three months.
I think Lane County had a stipulation of that point
that once you were charged with that kind of serious crime,
just to a speedy process, we'll have you start your
trial within three months.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
It wasn't just the reenactment, her strange behavior and the
inconsistent story that led police to arrest Diane. During the
nine months between the shooting and the arrest, a key
witness was at last able to provide the final piece
of the puzzle needed to charge Diane.
Speaker 5 (32:47):
Diane was ultimately charged because Christy could talk, Christie felt
safe enough emotionally to share her thoughts. She'd been going
through lots of therapy. As part of these sessions, her therapist,
a guy named Carl Peterson, would ask her eventually, just
(33:08):
in talking about this, do you know who shot you?
And Christy would nod and he would say, do you
want to write that down? And I'll put this in
an envelope and we'll just burn it when it's done,
so no harm, no foul. So she did that for
quite a while, and I think there was probably one
day in particular where she felt okay about sharing that
(33:29):
with him, what she had written on the paper and
what did she say, said my mom.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
On the next episode of Happy Face Presents Two Face,
we received a bizarre letter from Diane Down's in prison
that included her surprising claims of her relation to Becky.
This leads us to enlist the help from DNA detective
Michel Leonard to help us solve the answer of who
are the biological parents of Becky. Ben Bolan is our
(34:02):
executive producer. Melissa Moore is our co executive producer. Maya
Cole is our primary producer, Paul Dekant is our supervising producer,
Sam T. Garnan is our researcher, and Matt Riddle is
our story editor. Featured music by dream Tent Happy Face
Presents to Phase is a production of iHeartRadio
Happy Face News
Hosts And Creators
Melissa Moore
Lauren Bright Pacheco
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