Diane Downs

Elizabeth Diane Downs ( Frederickson; born August 7, 1955) is an American woman who murdered her daughter and attempted to murder her other two children near Springfield, Oregon, on May 19, 1983.

Following the crimes, she made claims to police that a man had attempted to carjack her and had shot the children.

Diane Downs was born on August 7, 1955, in Phoenix, Arizona, to Danish and English American parents Wesley Linden Frederickson (October 12, 1930 – September 30, 2017) and Willadene Frederickson ( Engle) who were married on April 11, 1954.

In adulthood, Diane spoke extremely negatively of her father, criticizing his lecturing, disciplinarianism, and the power he had over her mother.

"He spent way too much time with my mom, and my mom spent no time with me," Downs later said.

She has testified that her father sexually abused her when she was a child, although she later recanted the allegations, and both of her parents denied that any incident took place.

Diane came from a family with strict conservative values and her parents forbade her to wear fashionable clothes or makeup which made her the subject of frequent bullying.

However, after the age of 14, she became more rebellious and she graduated from Moon Valley High School in Phoenix, where she met her future husband Steve Downs.

Despite her parents' disapproval, Downs continued the relationship.

After high school, she enrolled at Pacific Coast Baptist Bible College in Orange, California, but was expelled after one year for promiscuous behavior and returned to her parents' home in Arizona.

On November 13, 1973, Diane married Downs (who had enlisted in the U.S. Navy) after running away from home.

"I did not marry Steve for love," Diane later said at her trial.

"I married Steve to get out of the family."

Their first child, Christie Ann, was born in 1974; Cheryl followed in 1976.

She ended her next pregnancy with an abortion, but after witnessing pictures of fetuses at an anti-abortion booth in a local fair, she regretted her decision.

"I felt the need to do something to make amends for what I had done wrong," she testified.

"When I had the abortion, I was led to believe that a six-week fetus is nothing more than mucus."

Diane later testified that Steve had had a vasectomy, so she seduced a male friend, Mark Sager, who became the father of her third child, Stephen Daniel, who was born in 1979.

Diane and Steve regularly argued about financial issues and fought over alleged infidelities, which resulted in their divorce in 1980 when it was discovered that Daniel was the result of an extramarital affair by Diane.

On May 8, 1982, Diane gave birth to a girl named Jennifer while acting as a surrogate mother, despite failing her psychiatric tests twice due to their indicating signs of psychosis.

Prior to her arrest, Downs was employed by the United States Postal Service, assigned to the mail routes in the city of Cottage Grove, Oregon.

According to Steve, Diane treated her children like "crap" and lacked any maternal instincts.

Steve later elaborated; "Diane forbade everything to her children. If Danny demanded a little attention, she rejected him... but the worst was when one day I caught Cheryl jumping on her bed, I told her that it was not allowed. I made her sit down and think about what she had done. Cheryl remained calm while looking up and asked, 'Is there a gun here?' I replied that no and the reason for this question to which she told me: 'I want to kill me. My mom says I'm bad.'"

On May 19, 1983, Downs shot her three children, and drove them in a blood-spattered car to McKenzie-Willamette Hospital in Springfield, Oregon.

Upon arrival, Danny, aged 3, was paralyzed from the waist down, Christie, 8, had suffered a disabling stroke and Cheryl Lynn Downs, 7, was dead.

Downs herself had been shot in the left forearm.

She claimed that she was carjacked on a rural road near Springfield, Oregon, by a strange man who shot her and the children.

However, investigators and hospital workers became suspicious because they decided that Downs' manner was too calm for a person who had just experienced such a traumatic event.

She also made a number of statements that both police and hospital workers considered highly inappropriate.

Downs claimed that on a drive home from a friends house, she decided to take a scenic route home.

All her children were asleep and Downs claimed that during this drive home, at around 10 p.m., she saw a strange man standing in the road flagging her down.

She said she pulled over and got out to talk to the man.

She described him as a "bushy haired stranger".

He then immediately demanded that she give him her car keys; Downs claimed she refused and they got into a physical altercation that resulted in his shooting her in the left arm.

He then opened the driver's side door and shot all three of her children.

Downs then said she pretended to throw her car keys in a bush and the man went to go look for them.

While he was looking for the keys, she jumped back in the car and sped off to the nearest hospital.

She was convicted in 1984 and sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 25 years.

She briefly escaped in 1987, but was quickly recaptured.

Downs has been repeatedly denied parole and psychiatrists have diagnosed her with narcissistic, histrionic, and antisocial personality disorders, with one labelling her as a "deviant sociopath".