August 18, 2020 • 21 mins
In 1984, Diane Downs was convicted for the murder of her daughter and attempted murder of her other son and daughter. Shortly before her admission to prison, she gave birth to a girl. Now that daughter, Becky Babcock, begins the journey to accept the connection to who her biological mother is, and what that means for her life going forward.
Melissa G. Moore: IG @melissag.moore; Tik Tok @melissa.g.moore
Lauren Bright Pacheco: www.LaurenBrightPacheco.com
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
At first it was what does she look like? And
then it was more of where is she that that
person not love me, you know, and so that was
kind of where that was coming from, was the why.
So when I started pestering my mom about, you know,
how she looked, and then where she was and you know,
kind of why she didn't want me, And that's how
that opened up to she's done some bad things. She's
(00:24):
in jail. I can't tell you more that kind of thing.
She's like, when you're older, i'll tell you more. A
few years later, when I was about eleven, I asked
one last time, and my mom told me that I'll
never be old enough to know and that it's something
that I shouldn't have to deal with, so she was
never going to tell me. So I was eleven and
still needed a babysitter. It was the same babysitter that
(00:46):
I'd had since I was very very young. I can
remember the moment like it was yesterday, which is so weird.
I can't remember exactly what was said, but I remember
standing at the top of the stairs. I was in
the doorway of my bed room, she was in the hallway,
and I just thought, I'm going to ask, I'm going
to find the answers that I want. I'm just not
(01:08):
going to stop until I know who my biological mother was.
And so I talked to the babysitter and made it
sound like I already knew. She had said, oh, so
you know Diane Downs. And that was at that point
how I had a name.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Do you want the trees? I'm willing to tell you.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Silly, this will.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Work, not wanting to harm me.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
Well, we lost control.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Hello, listeners. My name is Melissa Moore. When I was
a teenager, my father was a rush. His name is
Keith Hunter Jesperson, a serial murderer also known as a
Happy Face killer. The revelation came during an already challenging
time in my life, and for years I buried the
truth and didn't speak about it publicly. And then one
(02:17):
day I gained the courage to confront the past. I
had a profound healing experience when I met my father's
last victim, Julie Winningham's son Don Finley, which you followed
along with me on the Happy Face Podcast. In that meeting,
Don gave me his support, which gave me the confidence
to continue on my mission to help other relatives and
murderers find meaning and step out of the shadow of
(02:38):
their parents' crimes. I met Becky Babcock ten years ago
while filming a documentary. Becky's mother is Diane Downs, a
woman who sits in jail for the murder of one
of her daughters and the attempted murderer of another son
and daughter during a shooting of the night of May nineteenth,
nineteen eighty three. For years, Becky has wrestled with the
(02:58):
idea of her own identity, and Becky has struggled not
only with the idea of who her mother is, but
also who her father could be. In this series, i'llccompany
Becky as she confronts the effect her biological mother has
had on her life and choices, as well as seek
out the identity of her biological father, who may or
may not even know she exists.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
My name is Dana Tims. I was a longtime writer
for the Oregonian newspaper and I still continue to write
for Oregon Publications.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Dana was a new reporter, just starting his career in
journalism and Cottage Grove not much had ever made national news.
Speaker 4 (04:07):
The Timber Wars are going on back then, so battles
over old growth. There were protesters up in the Wilamta
National Forest doing sit ins and trees, a lot of
police coverage, a lot of discovernment coverage, also city council
meetings and whatever would come along.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
And then one day came the Diane Downs case.
Speaker 4 (04:27):
I remember that that very well. It was on my birthday,
as a matter of fact, and I had spent the
previous twenty four hours following a small circus. I went
to The Oregonian's main headquarters and I was just kind
of debriefing my editors on the circus story, and somebody
then said, hey, there was a shooting in Springfield last night.
(04:49):
I said, yeah, apparently Moham was shot and her kids
were shot. One of them might be dead. So I
traveled back to Jene that day and got involved in
the story. Later in that.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
Afternoon, Dana was covered new ground. At the time, this
was a very unusual type of story. These sorts of
things didn't happen in Springfield.
Speaker 4 (05:07):
Clearly, this was such an out of the ordinary circumstance,
it truly just did not happen. The report was that
one child was dead and police were still looking for
an assailant. Clearly, you couldn't have any more of a
hot button situation than that going on. The entire area
was very freaked out.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
During the first twenty four hours after the shooting, Dana
and other reporters had few sources for information. This was
nineteen eighty three, before the widespread existence of global Internet
and quick access to information.
Speaker 4 (05:38):
We were really relying on police agencies to be giving
us information and updates. The kids were at Springfield or
mackendi Willlammett Hospital in Springfield. Clearly pressed did not have
access to those places. As important as the story was,
it was a little tough sledding to really get a
toe hold to figure out how to go ahead and
report this except for what we were getting from the police,
(06:00):
which is really not much. For instance, we had learned
that the mom had been shot also, so we were
trying to figure out what are her injuries. It would
still take a few more days before anyone got to
really even have a chance at interviewing the mom, who
we found out was Diane Downes.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Dana and his colleagues slowly began to piece together information
about the case. At the time, it was believed that
whomever shot Diane and her kids was still out there.
Speaker 4 (06:29):
It was Elizabeth Diane Downes. That was the order that
we were referring to her, And it wasn't just Diane yet,
But we didn't know much. We knew that she was
a letter carrier, had been working in Cottage Grove. The
collective media effort had uncovered that much. People were then
going down to the Cottage Grove Post Office and trying
to do interviews. They weren't very cooperative. I think they
were all stunned what was going on. Meantime, this notion
(06:56):
that there was an assailant on the loose had people
very rattled in nerved in Springfield.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
In particular, especially somebody who can shoot children, because that's
a different type of predator.
Speaker 4 (07:07):
That just didn't happen kids getting shot.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
The primary source of information turned out to be Diane herself,
who seemed more than eager to talk to the press.
Speaker 4 (07:22):
I first saw Diane when I walked into a house
where she was living with her parents Springfield. She had
called a news conference, so there were TV people there.
Liked she talked at length and would address any question,
didn't seem to shy away from anything, smiled and laughed
a lot and even the first time I saw her,
it struck me that there are inappropriate responses. Diane, from
(07:44):
the very first time that I sat in that news
conference struck me as somebody who just didn't respond the
way that you might think somebody would. It raised questions
right off the bat, like what's going on with her?
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Diane presented herself like someone very ready to be interviewed publicly.
Speaker 4 (08:05):
She was probably five five five six, longish hair, nicely styled.
She cared about her appearance. I recall her wearing a
dress and looking nice and confident and ready to take
all the questions.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Most of the reporters wanted to know what happened, so
Diane walked them through her account of the events.
Speaker 4 (08:25):
That night, she was driving late at night with her kids.
There was a school night, so that seemed a little
bit odd. She said, they liked to sight see and again,
that area is very pretty, but it was about ten
o'clock at night, so you wouldn't be seeing anything except
your car lights. She claimed that a guy was in
the road flagged her down, and she stopped immediately and said,
what's wrong. And again, my first reaction, I think my
(08:47):
colleagues in the press have the same feeling of there's
no way on earth that I would stop in that
situation if I had young kids in the car, dark,
late at night, rural outpost area.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Diane painted herself as someone who was just being a
good person by stopping to help someone.
Speaker 4 (09:03):
She pulled off the road, turn off the car, how
the keys in her hand, and gets out of the
car to go talk to this guy. It just seemed
like an unnatural thing to do. She claimed that when
she got out of her car, this guy said, I
want your car, and she said, and she's consistent as
far as I know to this day in saying, you
got to be kidding me. In her telling, this guy
(09:26):
wants the car, So what does he do. It's dark out,
headlights are shining forward. He walks up to the car,
leans in and fires five to seven bullets at sleeping kids.
We were just kind of running through our mind saying, well,
how would he even be able to see that there
was anyone in the car.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
The stories began to release in the media about Diane
and the shooting, with Diane herself insisting that the perpetrator
she described was still at large.
Speaker 4 (10:06):
There had been a sketch released by the police that
Diane had helped prepare of a guy with long hair
and sort of angry looking eyes. Right off the bat.
People were kind of smirking, thinking, Oh, it's the old,
bushy haired stranger, which is kind of the oldest trope
and law enforcement.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
Despite this sketch and description, there were very few real
leads in the case.
Speaker 4 (10:26):
There weren't solid leads. I know that the police got
a lot of contacts. They were tracking these leaves down
going and talked to the people who phoned 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
be involved in this.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
The press began to realize that the police saw Diane
as a potential aspect from the beginning parts of what
she said. Didn't it make sense.
Speaker 4 (11:04):
I think that the press got the impression after about
four or five days that the police were the ones
who were perhaps looking at Diane. There hadn't been any
other suspects.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
All eyes were on Diane at the funeral.
Speaker 4 (11:18):
Yeah, all eyes were on Diane. For anyone who supported her,
They were thinking, this, poor griving mom, how is she
dealing with this, and for those who were skeptical, and
maybe by the time the funeral happened, which was not
that long after the shooting, there may not still have
been widespread skepticism. So I think people were still feeling
sorry for this mom and wondering how they would feel
in that situation if they had to go through it.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
More details about the children were released, and the details
of their injuries were horrifying.
Speaker 4 (11:46):
We learned in subsequent press conferences with medical personnel and
the police that the kids had been basically shot in
the chest, not in the head, but in the chest.
Close groupings of shots, it appeared to be that the
gun was just in which is from their bodies when
the figure was pulled. They were just catastrophic injuries. And
it's really amazing that all three didn't die that night.
(12:08):
One sure, as far as we know, was dead. On
arrival at Mackenzie Alama Hospital. The doctors are dispatched out
there in the nurses and horrified to find one, two,
and then a third kid and they had been shot
in the chest. I remember dying at one of her
news conferences saying, if I had shot my kids, would
I had not have done a good job of it.
(12:29):
I remember thinking not too long after that you did
a tremendous job. If that was what you wanted to do,
you did a great job.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Finally, Diane was arrested for the murder.
Speaker 4 (12:47):
Yeah, it was a big deal. It was a huge
deal Diane's been arrested. I think among most people that
there was just no good will left for Diane. With
no other suspect ever having come close to being charged
or arrested or identified, she was in the spotlight. She
was the one.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
After the arrest, Diane was no longer the well composed
woman she had been at the time of the murderer.
Speaker 4 (13:10):
She was looking tired, bedraggled. 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, kind
of beaten down by a circumstance when they finally took
her into custody.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
It turns out there was a reason she looked that way.
Speaker 4 (13:29):
Diane had gotten pregnant again during her first appearance in court,
and I was there for that. I don't think anyone
in the press knew that yet. If it was anyway,
somebody was going to try to take control of the situation,
That's what they would do. I was a real Diane
skeptic from early on, not that I would know whether
she was having an ongoing serious relationship with anyone. I
(13:51):
wasn't aware that she did. But when they said she's pregnant,
I just thought, of course she is.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
Eric Mason was a local reporter who followed the Diane
Downs case alongside the Grand Dam true crime writer and rule.
During the trial, they attended daily sitting in the press section,
watching every milestone moment happen in real time. After the
end of the trial, they had stayed in communication and
often shared how they wondered, whatever happened to that baby
(14:35):
that Diane given birth to. Did that baby grow up
to know her mom was infamous? Was the child doing well?
What became of her life.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
I'm just starting work as a private I doing criminal
defense cases. I go to the Ben Film Festival, and
after the Ben Film Festival, there's a weekly discussion about
scriptwriting over there, and I meet up with somebody and
we were talking about my life life as a reporter,
and she goes, oh, I remember you at the CBS
station in Portland, and so what are you doing now?
(15:07):
And I said, well, I'm working on this script. And
so each week we would come with our scripts. And
after one of the meetings over there in ben she said,
you know, I think I've met the long lost child
of Diane Downs. And I said, really, how do you know? Well,
she's connected to this church I go to, and we've
(15:28):
been out to pizza and she's had several conversations with me,
and I thought, oh, man, I'd love to meet her.
I mean, and at that point I didn't even know
what I would do with it. I had no idea
where to go with that kind of a story since
I no longer worked in television. When I met her,
It's almost like I'm across the table from Diane Downs.
(15:52):
I mean, it's a different age, it's a different demeanor,
but there are some similarities that are clearly there. And
there is a way that Diane Downs would toss her
head back with her hair and Becky would do the
same thing. And I'm not sure that Becky really even
(16:12):
watched a lot of video of Diane, and the only
portrayal of Diane was Farah Fawcett, but Farah Fawcet got
some of the mannerisms right.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
Eric is referring to the nineteen eighty nine made for
TV movie Small Sacrifices, in which Farah Fawcett played the
part of Diane Downs.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
And so I wondered if this was sort of a
genetic tick. So I just wanted to make sure that
it was done with as much well as little glare
and fascination, but more understanding of what it's like to
wake up one day and to watch a movie on
television and say that's my life being played out, and
(16:55):
I would like to say something about it. I would like,
for the first time to be able to say something
about my life. And I think that's the sense I
got from her. And so when I called and Rule
in Seattle.
Speaker 5 (17:08):
I just said, you know, I think I've met Diane
Down's child that once you gave birth through during the trial,
because oh, I would definitely get a DNA test, because
I've been approached by all kinds of people who say
they were the.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
Baby of Diane Downs. And I said, oh man, this
is the right person. I don't need a DNA test.
I can see it. I've talked to her.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
Up until this point, Becky had really kept her existence
pretty quiet as far as the media goes. Becky's family
kept her bile mother's identity a secret, as I feared
it would be harmful information to a child who was
developing her own identity. They vowed to give her the
best life, and part of that promise was to protect
(18:02):
her from the media circus they had previously witnessed around
her birth.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
I think people, the people who were from the state
of Oregon that set everything up, realized someone was going
to have to have some means to be able to
find a place that was off the beaten track and
that she could hide kind of in plain sight, and
that it was up to her then to decide what
(18:28):
to do.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Becky's adoptive parents arrived during Diane's trial. They had done
the research themselves and set it up in a very
short amount of time.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
I think there was this idea that they went on
a waiting list of parents to get high risk kids.
They were also expressing interest knowing that that story was
going on. Probably not that many want a high profile
adoption of somebody who is going to come from a
(19:00):
very difficult situation and then have a lifetime of real
big challenges probably on their hands. Not many people would
probably take that on. And here are these really well
to do, highly intelligent, successful folks in the pharmaceutical world
who are willing to do it. And so I think
sort of like both sides understood what the deal was.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
The Babcocks provided well for Becky and her sister, who
was also adopted. They lived on a large piece of
land in Bend, organ in idyllic surroundings. It was better
than anything her biological mother could have possibly provided. For
the first decade of her life, everything was perfect. Her
(19:47):
parents did their best to keep her from the truth.
And then one day, after trying multiple times to get
the information from her mom and being denied, being told
she would never be old enough to know, and interaction
and with the family babysitter changed everything. Next time on
Happy Face presents two face.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
The fact that now there was this third person, Now
there was reality of who my biological mother was. I
think it had been three years of asking that. It
just I didn't think I'd ever know, and at that
point I wish I hadn't known. It was really scary.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
Our executive producer is Ben Bolan. Melissa More is our
co executive producer. Maya Cole is our primary producer and
Paul Dekant is our supervising producer. Our story editor is
Matt Riddle. Research assistance from Sam Teagarden. Featured music by
dream Tent Happy Face Presents to Face is a production
of iHeartMedia.
Speaker 4 (21:00):
A schools pages in Games
Speaker 3 (21:05):
Schools
At first it was what does she look like? And
then it was more of where is she that that
person not love me, you know, and so that was
kind of where that was coming from, was the why.
So when I started pestering my mom about, you know,
how she looked, and then where she was and you know,
kind of why she didn't want me, And that's how
that opened up to she's done some bad things. She's
(00:24):
in jail. I can't tell you more that kind of thing.
She's like, when you're older, i'll tell you more. A
few years later, when I was about eleven, I asked
one last time, and my mom told me that I'll
never be old enough to know and that it's something
that I shouldn't have to deal with, so she was
never going to tell me. So I was eleven and
still needed a babysitter. It was the same babysitter that
(00:46):
I'd had since I was very very young. I can
remember the moment like it was yesterday, which is so weird.
I can't remember exactly what was said, but I remember
standing at the top of the stairs. I was in
the doorway of my bed room, she was in the hallway,
and I just thought, I'm going to ask, I'm going
to find the answers that I want. I'm just not
(01:08):
going to stop until I know who my biological mother was.
And so I talked to the babysitter and made it
sound like I already knew. She had said, oh, so
you know Diane Downs. And that was at that point
how I had a name.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Do you want the trees? I'm willing to tell you.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Silly, this will.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Work, not wanting to harm me.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
Well, we lost control.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Hello, listeners. My name is Melissa Moore. When I was
a teenager, my father was a rush. His name is
Keith Hunter Jesperson, a serial murderer also known as a
Happy Face killer. The revelation came during an already challenging
time in my life, and for years I buried the
truth and didn't speak about it publicly. And then one
(02:17):
day I gained the courage to confront the past. I
had a profound healing experience when I met my father's
last victim, Julie Winningham's son Don Finley, which you followed
along with me on the Happy Face Podcast. In that meeting,
Don gave me his support, which gave me the confidence
to continue on my mission to help other relatives and
murderers find meaning and step out of the shadow of
(02:38):
their parents' crimes. I met Becky Babcock ten years ago
while filming a documentary. Becky's mother is Diane Downs, a
woman who sits in jail for the murder of one
of her daughters and the attempted murderer of another son
and daughter during a shooting of the night of May nineteenth,
nineteen eighty three. For years, Becky has wrestled with the
(02:58):
idea of her own identity, and Becky has struggled not
only with the idea of who her mother is, but
also who her father could be. In this series, i'llccompany
Becky as she confronts the effect her biological mother has
had on her life and choices, as well as seek
out the identity of her biological father, who may or
may not even know she exists.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
My name is Dana Tims. I was a longtime writer
for the Oregonian newspaper and I still continue to write
for Oregon Publications.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Dana was a new reporter, just starting his career in
journalism and Cottage Grove not much had ever made national news.
Speaker 4 (04:07):
The Timber Wars are going on back then, so battles
over old growth. There were protesters up in the Wilamta
National Forest doing sit ins and trees, a lot of
police coverage, a lot of discovernment coverage, also city council
meetings and whatever would come along.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
And then one day came the Diane Downs case.
Speaker 4 (04:27):
I remember that that very well. It was on my birthday,
as a matter of fact, and I had spent the
previous twenty four hours following a small circus. I went
to The Oregonian's main headquarters and I was just kind
of debriefing my editors on the circus story, and somebody
then said, hey, there was a shooting in Springfield last night.
(04:49):
I said, yeah, apparently Moham was shot and her kids
were shot. One of them might be dead. So I
traveled back to Jene that day and got involved in
the story. Later in that.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
Afternoon, Dana was covered new ground. At the time, this
was a very unusual type of story. These sorts of
things didn't happen in Springfield.
Speaker 4 (05:07):
Clearly, this was such an out of the ordinary circumstance,
it truly just did not happen. The report was that
one child was dead and police were still looking for
an assailant. Clearly, you couldn't have any more of a
hot button situation than that going on. The entire area
was very freaked out.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
During the first twenty four hours after the shooting, Dana
and other reporters had few sources for information. This was
nineteen eighty three, before the widespread existence of global Internet
and quick access to information.
Speaker 4 (05:38):
We were really relying on police agencies to be giving
us information and updates. The kids were at Springfield or
mackendi Willlammett Hospital in Springfield. Clearly pressed did not have
access to those places. As important as the story was,
it was a little tough sledding to really get a
toe hold to figure out how to go ahead and
report this except for what we were getting from the police,
(06:00):
which is really not much. For instance, we had learned
that the mom had been shot also, so we were
trying to figure out what are her injuries. It would
still take a few more days before anyone got to
really even have a chance at interviewing the mom, who
we found out was Diane Downes.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Dana and his colleagues slowly began to piece together information
about the case. At the time, it was believed that
whomever shot Diane and her kids was still out there.
Speaker 4 (06:29):
It was Elizabeth Diane Downes. That was the order that
we were referring to her, And it wasn't just Diane yet,
But we didn't know much. We knew that she was
a letter carrier, had been working in Cottage Grove. The
collective media effort had uncovered that much. People were then
going down to the Cottage Grove Post Office and trying
to do interviews. They weren't very cooperative. I think they
were all stunned what was going on. Meantime, this notion
(06:56):
that there was an assailant on the loose had people
very rattled in nerved in Springfield.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
In particular, especially somebody who can shoot children, because that's
a different type of predator.
Speaker 4 (07:07):
That just didn't happen kids getting shot.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
The primary source of information turned out to be Diane herself,
who seemed more than eager to talk to the press.
Speaker 4 (07:22):
I first saw Diane when I walked into a house
where she was living with her parents Springfield. She had
called a news conference, so there were TV people there.
Liked she talked at length and would address any question,
didn't seem to shy away from anything, smiled and laughed
a lot and even the first time I saw her,
it struck me that there are inappropriate responses. Diane, from
(07:44):
the very first time that I sat in that news
conference struck me as somebody who just didn't respond the
way that you might think somebody would. It raised questions
right off the bat, like what's going on with her?
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Diane presented herself like someone very ready to be interviewed publicly.
Speaker 4 (08:05):
She was probably five five five six, longish hair, nicely styled.
She cared about her appearance. I recall her wearing a
dress and looking nice and confident and ready to take
all the questions.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Most of the reporters wanted to know what happened, so
Diane walked them through her account of the events.
Speaker 4 (08:25):
That night, she was driving late at night with her kids.
There was a school night, so that seemed a little
bit odd. She said, they liked to sight see and again,
that area is very pretty, but it was about ten
o'clock at night, so you wouldn't be seeing anything except
your car lights. She claimed that a guy was in
the road flagged her down, and she stopped immediately and said,
what's wrong. And again, my first reaction, I think my
(08:47):
colleagues in the press have the same feeling of there's
no way on earth that I would stop in that
situation if I had young kids in the car, dark,
late at night, rural outpost area.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Diane painted herself as someone who was just being a
good person by stopping to help someone.
Speaker 4 (09:03):
She pulled off the road, turn off the car, how
the keys in her hand, and gets out of the
car to go talk to this guy. It just seemed
like an unnatural thing to do. She claimed that when
she got out of her car, this guy said, I
want your car, and she said, and she's consistent as
far as I know to this day in saying, you
got to be kidding me. In her telling, this guy
(09:26):
wants the car, So what does he do. It's dark out,
headlights are shining forward. He walks up to the car,
leans in and fires five to seven bullets at sleeping kids.
We were just kind of running through our mind saying, well,
how would he even be able to see that there
was anyone in the car.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
The stories began to release in the media about Diane
and the shooting, with Diane herself insisting that the perpetrator
she described was still at large.
Speaker 4 (10:06):
There had been a sketch released by the police that
Diane had helped prepare of a guy with long hair
and sort of angry looking eyes. Right off the bat.
People were kind of smirking, thinking, Oh, it's the old,
bushy haired stranger, which is kind of the oldest trope
and law enforcement.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
Despite this sketch and description, there were very few real
leads in the case.
Speaker 4 (10:26):
There weren't solid leads. I know that the police got
a lot of contacts. They were tracking these leaves down
going and talked to the people who phoned 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
be involved in this.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
The press began to realize that the police saw Diane
as a potential aspect from the beginning parts of what
she said. Didn't it make sense.
Speaker 4 (11:04):
I think that the press got the impression after about
four or five days that the police were the ones
who were perhaps looking at Diane. There hadn't been any
other suspects.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
All eyes were on Diane at the funeral.
Speaker 4 (11:18):
Yeah, all eyes were on Diane. For anyone who supported her,
They were thinking, this, poor griving mom, how is she
dealing with this, and for those who were skeptical, and
maybe by the time the funeral happened, which was not
that long after the shooting, there may not still have
been widespread skepticism. So I think people were still feeling
sorry for this mom and wondering how they would feel
in that situation if they had to go through it.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
More details about the children were released, and the details
of their injuries were horrifying.
Speaker 4 (11:46):
We learned in subsequent press conferences with medical personnel and
the police that the kids had been basically shot in
the chest, not in the head, but in the chest.
Close groupings of shots, it appeared to be that the
gun was just in which is from their bodies when
the figure was pulled. They were just catastrophic injuries. And
it's really amazing that all three didn't die that night.
(12:08):
One sure, as far as we know, was dead. On
arrival at Mackenzie Alama Hospital. The doctors are dispatched out
there in the nurses and horrified to find one, two,
and then a third kid and they had been shot
in the chest. I remember dying at one of her
news conferences saying, if I had shot my kids, would
I had not have done a good job of it.
(12:29):
I remember thinking not too long after that you did
a tremendous job. If that was what you wanted to do,
you did a great job.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Finally, Diane was arrested for the murder.
Speaker 4 (12:47):
Yeah, it was a big deal. It was a huge
deal Diane's been arrested. I think among most people that
there was just no good will left for Diane. With
no other suspect ever having come close to being charged
or arrested or identified, she was in the spotlight. She
was the one.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
After the arrest, Diane was no longer the well composed
woman she had been at the time of the murderer.
Speaker 4 (13:10):
She was looking tired, bedraggled. 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, kind
of beaten down by a circumstance when they finally took
her into custody.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
It turns out there was a reason she looked that way.
Speaker 4 (13:29):
Diane had gotten pregnant again during her first appearance in court,
and I was there for that. I don't think anyone
in the press knew that yet. If it was anyway,
somebody was going to try to take control of the situation,
That's what they would do. I was a real Diane
skeptic from early on, not that I would know whether
she was having an ongoing serious relationship with anyone. I
(13:51):
wasn't aware that she did. But when they said she's pregnant,
I just thought, of course she is.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
Eric Mason was a local reporter who followed the Diane
Downs case alongside the Grand Dam true crime writer and rule.
During the trial, they attended daily sitting in the press section,
watching every milestone moment happen in real time. After the
end of the trial, they had stayed in communication and
often shared how they wondered, whatever happened to that baby
(14:35):
that Diane given birth to. Did that baby grow up
to know her mom was infamous? Was the child doing well?
What became of her life.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
I'm just starting work as a private I doing criminal
defense cases. I go to the Ben Film Festival, and
after the Ben Film Festival, there's a weekly discussion about
scriptwriting over there, and I meet up with somebody and
we were talking about my life life as a reporter,
and she goes, oh, I remember you at the CBS
station in Portland, and so what are you doing now?
(15:07):
And I said, well, I'm working on this script. And
so each week we would come with our scripts. And
after one of the meetings over there in ben she said,
you know, I think I've met the long lost child
of Diane Downs. And I said, really, how do you know? Well,
she's connected to this church I go to, and we've
(15:28):
been out to pizza and she's had several conversations with me,
and I thought, oh, man, I'd love to meet her.
I mean, and at that point I didn't even know
what I would do with it. I had no idea
where to go with that kind of a story since
I no longer worked in television. When I met her,
It's almost like I'm across the table from Diane Downs.
(15:52):
I mean, it's a different age, it's a different demeanor,
but there are some similarities that are clearly there. And
there is a way that Diane Downs would toss her
head back with her hair and Becky would do the
same thing. And I'm not sure that Becky really even
(16:12):
watched a lot of video of Diane, and the only
portrayal of Diane was Farah Fawcett, but Farah Fawcet got
some of the mannerisms right.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
Eric is referring to the nineteen eighty nine made for
TV movie Small Sacrifices, in which Farah Fawcett played the
part of Diane Downs.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
And so I wondered if this was sort of a
genetic tick. So I just wanted to make sure that
it was done with as much well as little glare
and fascination, but more understanding of what it's like to
wake up one day and to watch a movie on
television and say that's my life being played out, and
(16:55):
I would like to say something about it. I would like,
for the first time to be able to say something
about my life. And I think that's the sense I
got from her. And so when I called and Rule
in Seattle.
Speaker 5 (17:08):
I just said, you know, I think I've met Diane
Down's child that once you gave birth through during the trial,
because oh, I would definitely get a DNA test, because
I've been approached by all kinds of people who say
they were the.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
Baby of Diane Downs. And I said, oh man, this
is the right person. I don't need a DNA test.
I can see it. I've talked to her.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
Up until this point, Becky had really kept her existence
pretty quiet as far as the media goes. Becky's family
kept her bile mother's identity a secret, as I feared
it would be harmful information to a child who was
developing her own identity. They vowed to give her the
best life, and part of that promise was to protect
(18:02):
her from the media circus they had previously witnessed around
her birth.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
I think people, the people who were from the state
of Oregon that set everything up, realized someone was going
to have to have some means to be able to
find a place that was off the beaten track and
that she could hide kind of in plain sight, and
that it was up to her then to decide what
(18:28):
to do.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Becky's adoptive parents arrived during Diane's trial. They had done
the research themselves and set it up in a very
short amount of time.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
I think there was this idea that they went on
a waiting list of parents to get high risk kids.
They were also expressing interest knowing that that story was
going on. Probably not that many want a high profile
adoption of somebody who is going to come from a
(19:00):
very difficult situation and then have a lifetime of real
big challenges probably on their hands. Not many people would
probably take that on. And here are these really well
to do, highly intelligent, successful folks in the pharmaceutical world
who are willing to do it. And so I think
sort of like both sides understood what the deal was.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
The Babcocks provided well for Becky and her sister, who
was also adopted. They lived on a large piece of
land in Bend, organ in idyllic surroundings. It was better
than anything her biological mother could have possibly provided. For
the first decade of her life, everything was perfect. Her
(19:47):
parents did their best to keep her from the truth.
And then one day, after trying multiple times to get
the information from her mom and being denied, being told
she would never be old enough to know, and interaction
and with the family babysitter changed everything. Next time on
Happy Face presents two face.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
The fact that now there was this third person, Now
there was reality of who my biological mother was. I
think it had been three years of asking that. It
just I didn't think I'd ever know, and at that
point I wish I hadn't known. It was really scary.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
Our executive producer is Ben Bolan. Melissa More is our
co executive producer. Maya Cole is our primary producer and
Paul Dekant is our supervising producer. Our story editor is
Matt Riddle. Research assistance from Sam Teagarden. Featured music by
dream Tent Happy Face Presents to Face is a production
of iHeartMedia.
Speaker 4 (21:00):
A schools pages in Games
Speaker 3 (21:05):
Schools
Happy Face News
Hosts And Creators
Melissa Moore
Lauren Bright Pacheco
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