Princess Diana was loved by the world, the subject of our story today is said to have resembled this embattled icon, but in the end the world did not love Diane Downs, they viewed her as one of the worst monsters to ever walk this earth.
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Princess Diana was loved by the world, the subject of our story today is said to have resembled this embattled icon, but in the end the world did not love Diane Downs, they viewed her as one of the worst monsters to ever walk this earth.
We are looking for hometown True Crime stories for future episodes. Please send your stories to us at: TheSecretSitsPodcast@gmail.com
Follow us on our social media at:
https://drum.io/thesecretsits
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwnfvpNBYTo9BP1sVuFsfGQ
TheSecretSitsPodcast (@secretsitspod) / Twitter
https://www.instagram.com/thesecretsitspodcast/
https://www.facebook.com/TheSecretSitsPodcast
https://www.tiktok.com/@thesecretsitspodcast?lang=en
Support the show
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/TheSecretSits
#DianeDowns #PrincessDiana #SteveDowns #USPS #Springfield #Ohio #DickTracy #Arizona #FredHugi #Adoption #Adopt #TrueCrime #AnnRule #History #podcast #ApplePodcast #Spotify #YouTube #SSDGM
Princess Diana was loved by the world, the subject of our story today is said to have resembled this embattled icon, but in the end the world did not love Diane Downs, they viewed her as one of the worst monsters to ever walk this earth.
Welcome to The Secret Sits, I’m your host John Dodson. Join us every Thursday as we uncover the Secrets behind the world’s most fascinating true crime cases. You can find all episodes of The Secret Sits for free on Apple Podcast, Spotify or where ever you get your podcasts. And if you like what you are hearing, reach out to us on Instagram and Facebook @The Secret Sits Podcast or on Twitter @SecretSitsPod. Now, on with our story.
Diane Downs’ life started just like anyone else’s, she was born on August 7th 1955 in Phoenix, Arizona to Willadene and Wes Frederickson. Willadene and Wes had been married as young teenagers and they were still in their teen years when their baby Diane was born. Teenagers raising babies is a difficult thing, I know because my parents did so and not all young parents have the capabilities to cope with this. This was the case for Diane’s parents, the home was just not the bright and loving home, everyone wishes they could have as a young child.
As Diane grew into adolescence, she turned out to be quite bright, but she was far from popular. Diane’s parents did not allow her to wear trendy cloths, or to follow the latest fads, their Baptist life style and believes did not allow for it. Diane’s father Wes is said to have molested the girl when she was 11-years-old, Diane claimed that her father never went all the way, but he fondled the girl, which is bad enough. Diane also claimed that her father would take her for rides out in the desert and once they were isolated out in the wild, he would make her remove her top and her bra while he watched.
After quite a few of these incidents, Diane said that they just stopped and Wes Frederickson made the transition back to a stereotypical father. Diane enrolled in a charm school when she was fourteen, and this charm school is when a new Diane began to emerge. She had her hair cut in a new stylish way and she, for the first time in her life, got new trendy cloths, with this new turn, the local boys began to notice Diane, for the first time in her young life. Diane, now fourteen and raging with hormones developed herself into the girl those same boys would want to gravitate to, she had a twinkle in her eyes when it came to boys and she purposely swayed her hips from side to side as she walked, her laugh developed into a suppressed and sensual giggle that begged the boys to come closer.
One of the boys attracted to this newly minted version of Diane was Steven Downs. He attended Moon Valley High with Diane and he was falling inexplicable head over hills for Diane, especially now that her body had begun to develop into a more womanly shape, if you get my drift. The two began dating and the young couple were inseparable, they went everywhere together, linked arm in arm everywhere they went. As high school came to an end for these two and life decisions had to be made, Steven decided to join the US Navy and Diane left to attend the Pacific Coast Baptist Bible College in California. The two wrote letters back and forth regularly and Diane professed that she was saving her self for Steven, but her resolve weakened and she was expelled from her religious school after one year due to promiscuity.
Steve returned home from the Navy and he and Diane got married on November 13th, 1973. The couple’s marriage was rocky right from the start. Steve worked a lot and he was not home enough to give Diane the amount of attention and unadulterated love she craved. She felt Steve was overbearing and domineering, he reminded her too much of her father, and she did not want to be married to her father.
Eventually Diane became pregnant with the couple’s first child, and this pregnancy did something to Diane, she loved being pregnant, it was the first time anything in this world was completely reliant on her and the love she could provide. It was a feeling of power Diane had never possessed. Christie Downs was born in October of 1974, at this time Diane was working part time in a thrift store and she felt like her life was one of the things in this thrift store, something already used and then put on a shelf for someone else to take possession of. Diane felt that once Christie was born, she was back to the same unfulfilled life she led before she was pregnant and everyone doted on her. So, to remedy this she got pregnant again and she lived her ideal, yet pregnant life for another nine months, until January 1976, when Cheryl Lynn was born.
During the years of 1976 and 1977, Diane absconded with the kids several time, but she would always return. Steve would go looking for her at their many relatives’ homes until she was finally back home. The marriage was not happy, for anyone involved. Steve was not happy, neither was Diane and because of this, the children lived in an unhappy home, but life marched on. Diane was just waiting for something different, something new to happen. She was hostile and passive all in the same breath, she was bored with life but angry about life at the same time. Diane felt that life was just passing her by and none of the things she wanted out of life had come to fruition.
Diane went back to the only thing in life which had made her happy, being pregnant, but this time she did not get pregnant by her husband Steve. By this time in 1978 the family was living in Mesa, Arizona and Steve and Diane both worked at the same mobile home manufacturer. Diane worked on the assembly line where she met a man, a man Diane decided she wanted to sire her third baby. As her stomach began to swell over months, Diane was back in her happy place of being pregnant and doted over. Danny was born just four days after the Christmas of 1979.
Steve knew that this new baby was not his own, but he accepted the baby and cared for it as his own. But a year later, the Downs’ marriage had reached its conclusion and the couple divorced. Diane moved in with the man who had gotten her pregnant with her newest baby Danny and after this change in her life, Diane also began to change. Diane was now out of the marriage that she no longer enjoyed and she was also far away from her deeply Baptist family and friends who she had felt controlled her, her entire life. Diane, who loved being pregnant, did not revel in being a mother. The almost drug like intoxication she acquired while pregnant, faded away and Diane preferred to always be at work or at least not at home and she hired babysitters to take care of her kids as often as possible.
One of Diane’s frequent babysitters said that she put everything else in her life before her children. If Danny went to his mother for attention, she would simply push him away and ignore the small boy. This babysitter also said they had a strange incident with Cheryl at one point. They had caught Cheryl jumping on her bed, which she knew she was not allowed to do, so the babysitter made her go sit in a chair to think about what she had done wrong. As Cheryl sat quietly in the chair, she looked up at the babysitter and asked a question, “Do you have a gun here?” she asked. “Of course not, why?” the babysitter responded, “I want to shoot myself. My mom says I’m bad.” Cheryl responded. The babysitter just stood there in shock.
Diane obtained a full-time job with the United States Post Office in 1981 and she was stationed in Chandler, while there she met Lew Lewiston and fell in love. Lew liked Diane, but he was already married, though separated at the time. But after some time, Lew decided to call it quits with Diane and he up and left. You see, Lew did not want children. Diane ran home to Oregon, depressed because she did not get things her way.
Then on May 8, 1982, Diane Downs gave birth to a daughter she was having as a surrogate. She named the child Jennifer before turning her over to her intended parents.
[Strong Transition]
The sun had set a long time ago in Springfield, Oregon, it was now Thursday, May 19th, 1983 and even though the sun had gone down hours ago, it was still as hot as lunch time. The evening had a quiet stillness to it, the kind of calm which sometimes signaled an oncoming storm. The employees on the evening shift at McKenzie-Willamette Hospital were use to these types of nights, they had fought through them time and gain, they were trained professionals who held their work in its highest regard.
Just then in the middle of this calm evening, outside, in the emergency drop-off area, their serene evening came crashing down. The clock read 10:48PM as a late-model red Nissan careened into the drop-off area, its horn blaring as it came screeching to a halt. Dr. John Mackey was the doctor in charge, he and two nurses, Rose Martin and Shelby Day all looked up at the sound of the noise and their adrenaline began pumping, getting them ready for whatever this car was there to bring them.
The door of the car swung open and a blond woman in her late twenties emerged from the car, the woman looked at the stunned people inside of the glass double doors which led to the ER and she began frantically pointing to the interior of her car, and then she opened her mouth and shouted, “Somebody just shot my kids!” At the sound of these words, this dedicated staff went to work. The receptionist, Mrs. Patterson, who had stopped working on her boring insurance paperwork as the car had appeared, did what she did anytime she heard descriptions of violent crimes in the ER and she dialed the police.
The two nurses ran outside to the car and as they peered into the backseat and front passengers’ seat, both were taken aback, the scene in front of the two women was almost more than even they could handle. The side panels on the inside of the car were covered in blood and laying in that blood were three small children. One was in the front passengers’ seat and the other two were in the back seat. Nurses Marin and Day could tell that these had been almost point-blank gun shots. The girl in the front had blond hair and she looked to be around 7 or 8 years old, the children in the back were a boy and a girl, this girl appeared a couple of years older than the girl in the front seat and the boy was a very small toddler.
The nurses turned pail, but continued to do their jobs as a team of personnel in white coats descended on the car around them. The children were moved onto gurneys and swept away, into the hospital. As chief trauma surgeon, Fred Wilhite hurriedly entered the doors with the children he told his waiting team all they needed to know by shouting two words. “Chest wounds!” Two of the small children were still breathing, clinging on to life, the small boy was gasping for air. The child recovered from the front seat was briefly worked on in the emergency room, but she had not made it, she was dead before ever arriving at the hospital.
The hospital staff worked on the two remaining victims with dedication, they could not lose another one of these children tonight. They performed tracheotomies on both children, making sure they would not sub come to a loss of oxygen. Machines were used to make their little hearts pump, helping to keep their other vital organs alive as well. The children were in really bad shape, but through the hard work of this talented hospital staff, both of these children were kept alive.
But the hospital staff had one question that remained answered, who on earth would aim a gun at these three small children and pull the trigger?
The children’s mother, Diane Downs, was telling the hospital receptionist, Mrs. Patterson what had happened. Diane said that she had been visiting a friend who lived nearby, after wrapping up their visit she and her three children were driving home in her car, it was late but she wanted to take the scenic route home, because the kids liked it. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a man with bushy-hair began waving her down, while they were on a somewhat desolate stretch of highway. She thought that maybe the man needed help or that he was stranded, so she pulled over to help. Then the man pulled out a gun and began waving it around, at this point Diane is very emotional and her eyes are welled up with tears and then she says that the man reaches in through her car window and he began emptying his gun into her babies.
The Springfield and Lane County Police departments responded to the hospital, when they arrived, Diane told the police the same story she had told Mrs. Patterson in reception. Both of these police departments issued a BOLO for this madman who had just shot three innocent children. Police in both districts began to search for this man and they went to the location Diane had given them, as the point of the attack. The attack had taken place around Marcola and Old Mohawk Road, this was a desolate and dark stretch or road.
Due to some jurisdictional issues the Lane County Sheriff’s Office became the principal investigation team on this crime. Sergeant Robin Rutherford was the first officer to speak to Diane Downs at the hospital. As he arrived the nurses had just finished bandaging up Diane’s arm, she had some small, superficial wounds, which she had obtained attempting to ward off the gunman’s shots. Sargent Rutherford could tell that Diane seemed very calm, she did not seem out of sorts at all, so he asked her to accompany him so she could show him the exact spot this shooting had taken place.
Diane directed the policeman to a spot on a dark rural road, here, the river flowed by on one side of the road and on the other side lay an open field, and this was defiantly not the spot for a young mother of three to stop in the middle of the night to talk to a stranger. As Diane and the police Sargent returned to the hospital, Diane was informed that her daughter Cheryl, her second born child, was dead. She was also given an update on her other two children and she took all of this news with stride, hardly reacting to the news at all. Her attitude shocked the hospital staff who had worked so diligently to save her small family. And when the doctor told her that Danny was going to survive, Diane looked at the doctor and said, “Do you mean the bullet missed his heart? Gee whiz!”
Detectives moved Diane to a private room in the hospital to speak to her about the crime. One of the investigators, was named Dick Tracy, no I am not kidding, his name is Dick Tracy, and, I mean, did he have any other choice for a career? I think not. Well, Dick Tracy found Diane to be different from any other woman he had ever encountered after a tragedy like this. He described Diane as very rational, considering what she had undergone. He and his partner also found Diane extremely stoic for a mother whose entire brood of children had just been viciously shot. The officers began conducting an interview with Diane to get background information about her and her children, they also began building a chronology of events leading up to the shooting.
Police had determined that the bullets used to shoot the children came from a .22 caliber gun, they suspected it was a handgun and not a rifle. Powder burns on the children’s skin indicated that the weapon was fired at an extremely close range, this was especially true on Cheryl who had passed away from her injuries. Blood sprayed across the car’s doors, seats, and windows indicated that the discharge from the gun was from the left, or the driver’s side of the car, this matched up with Diane’s story of an intruder reaching through the car window.
The detectives learn that Diane Downs is 27-years-old and that she worked as a mail woman for the U.S. Postal Service, she currently serves out of the Cottage Grove division. She was previously a letter carrier at the Chandler, Arizona division until she got divorced from a man named Steve Downs. She had transferred to Oregon to be closer to her parents, Willa and Wes. Wes Frederickson also worked for the post office. Diane laid out a quick timeline of the evening’s events. She and her children had eaten a quick dinner at home and then left their home at 1352 Q Street in Springfield, on their way to Diane’s friend and co-worker’s house on Sunderman Road. This friend Heather Plourd, had told Diane a few days prior that she was thinking about buying a horse, when Diane saw an ad in the paper for horse rentals, she though Heather would love to see it. Diane did not have Heather’s home number so she decided to drive to her house so she could personally give her the advertisement. The drive was also good for the kids, Diane said, it allowed them time outside of the house for a few hours.
After a brief chat with Heather and her husband, Diane and the kids began to make their way home. During the trip home, Diane thought she would cut through Old Mohawk Road to get to the main highway. She also thought it would be fun for the kids to go sightseeing, the kids liked watching the bright moon from the car windows while out in the countryside with no street lights. But it was here, after turning onto Old Mohawk Road that the bushy-haired man appeared on the road.
The man was standing in the center of the gravel road and he was waving his arms back and forth, as if he needed help. Diane said this man was, white, in his late 20s, about 5 foot 9, around 150-170lbs with dark bushy hair. She also said the man had a stubble beard and wore a Levi’s jacket and an off-colored shirt.
Diane said she braked and got out of the car, as she stepped out from the car the man produced a pistol, which had been hidden under his jacket, he demanded that she turn her keys over to him, but she refused. This was when, in retaliation for Diane not giving up her car keys, the man pushed past her and leaned into her car, opening fire on her children. After shooting, he once again made an attempt for the keys, but Diane out foxed him and jumped back into the driver seat, the man shot one more time, striking her slightly in the forearm, but she slammed down the gas pedal and her red Nissan, peeled out of the gravel road and she sped away into the night. Diane knew her children were hurt, so she could only think one thing, get to the hospital as quickly as possible.
As Diane recounted her version of events to the detectives, Dick Tracy’s mind began to wander, it went back to her doctor’s report pertaining to her injury, it said, “a single bullet entered her left forearm, it split in two as it shattered the radius and then exited, leaving two smaller wounds.” Tracy could accept this, but he also thought about similar injuries he had seen which turned out to be people shooting themselves, while trying to make it appear they were attacked by someone else. However, Tracy knew that he needed evidence before he could make any assumptions. As the interview came to a close, Diane signed a search warrant for her own home. She told officers that she owned a .38 caliber pistol, which she used as protection on her delivery route and she also had a .22 caliber rifle used for home safety, but she had never used ether of them.
The investigative team had also now descended on the hospital. In the emergency driveway, crime scene techs prepared the red Nissan to be transported to the crime lab for analysis. Down in the morgue, Sergeant Jon Peckels was taking photographs of Cheryl as her body grew colder. In the ER, detective Ray Poole collected the blood-soaked clothing of the children in evidence bags. This team knew that they would spend this weekend pounding on doors and asking questions trying to solve this confusing, frustrating and heartbreaking murder mystery. Three helpless children’s bodies had been riddled with bullets from a heartless monster, so the police did not care about the mandatory overtime, they wanted to catch this guy now.
When Diane Downs was finally allowed into the ICU to see her first born child, Christie, several of the nurses, as well as an investigator were also by her bedside. These spectators, as they were, said that Diane squeezed Christie’s hand and said, “I love you”, but the phrase was completely devoid of warmth and emotion. The investigator’s keen eye also noticed something else, as Diane approached the small girl in the hospital bed, Christie’s eyes swelled with fear as she saw her mom crossing the room to her bed.
That Friday morning a policeman checked in with the Plourds to make sure that Diane’s story lined up about her visit with them, the visit was confirmed as well as the reason for the visit, she came to talk about a horse. State troopers searched Diane’s Springfield home and they removed several items including a diary, a Glenfield .22 caliber rifle and a box of standard .22 caliber shells, they were the same size shells taken from the children’s bodies. One item in this home interested Dick Tracy more than the rest, a photo of a young man with a beard, sitting on top of the television just mixed in with the rest of the photos of Diane. Tracy knew that Diane had telephoned a man back in Arizona from the hospital the night of the shooting, he was a former boyfriend. Before Diane had called her ex-husband about his children, before she even knew the state her children were in, Diane called this man. Tracy stared at the photo and wondered if he was looking at the man Diane had called that night.
The county’s District Attorney Pat Horton assigned Fred Hugi to prosecute the case. Fred could feel that something about this case was off, right from the start. Fred knew that this case would eventually lead to a murder trial, so he needed to follow the leads as they surfaced and he started with that black stretch of rural roadway in Lane County. But as new information began coming to light, the facts seemed to differ from those expounded on by Diane Downs.
Fred Hugi was a newer member of the DA’s investigation team, but he was not so new that he could not smell when something was a foot. As Fred stood in the hospital room containing Christie and Danny Downs, helpless children still strapped down to their beds, tubes and cords providing life support, sprung from everywhere on their little bodies, [Significant sound change] a tear silently rolled down Fred’s cheek. Paul Alton told Fred about Christie’s reaction when she saw her mother for the first time after the accident, he knew this was not normal, a child in so much pain and surrounded by so many foreign faces should have been overjoyed at seeing their mother, their one vestige of their real life.
Fred ordered an around-the-clock guard for the children’s room. He then hired a child psychologist to sit at Christie’s bedside during the day, this way they could spend time together, building trust, so maybe Christie would eventually be able to share what happened to her out on Mohawk Road.
Diane’s story is not sitting right with investigators, they can tell that something seems off, are they right, or did this mother truly experience this traumatic event, just as she said? Join us next week for our second and final episode in our coverage of the Diane Downs case.