Posted on 12/03/2008 5:48:01 PM PST by Baladas
SALEM, Ore. — Twenty-five years later, Diane Downs still insists that she is innocent of shooting her children, one fatally, in a crime that riveted Oregonians and was recounted in an Ann Rule book and a TV movie starring Farrah Fawcett.
Next Tuesday, she comes up for a parole hearing. Anticipating a crowd of reporters and others, the parole board has moved its hearing to a community college studio.
Downs, now 53, was convicted in 1984. Suspicion turned to her shortly after she arrived at a Springfield hospital, her three children wounded and a bullet in her left arm, shouting, “Somebody just shot my kids!”
The prosecution said Downs shot them because she hoped to free herself to rekindle a romance with a married Arizona man.
Key testimony came from her oldest daughter, Christie Ann, who was 8 when shot. A 7-year-old daughter, Cheryl, died from her wounds and Downs’ 3-year-old son, Daniel, was paralyzed.
Sobbing at times, Christie Ann testified that her mother took a gun out of the trunk of the parked car and opened fire.
Oregonians were shocked and captivated by the horrific story through a six-week trial, at which Downs claimed that a man shot the children.
“Over the years, I have told you and the rest of the world that a man shot me and my children. I have never changed my story,” she wrote in her parole application.
Prosecutors scoff and point to her varying stories: A “bushy-haired stranger” flagged down her car and shot her and the children. Or the shootings were done by two men wearing ski masks. Or the shootings were the doings of drug dealers and corrupt law enforcement officials.
(Excerpt) Read more at tdn.com ...
Oregon should REALLY have the death penalty.
Technally we do...the DAs just use it to obtain a plea deal.
After capturing her, Oregon officials sent her out of state.
“I don’t run drugs or brew hooch,” she wrote the parole board. “... In 25 years behind these steel bars, I have NOT cracked one of these ’ladies’ in the head and if you had lived inside this place you might understand what an accomplishment that is.”
I remember this story very well. I am currently reading Ann Rule’s latest true crime compilation. This is beyond contempt. I agree with you on death penalty.
In the redneck dictionary Technally=Technically.
Obama’s head of Child Services!
Her chief prosecutor at the time, Fred Hugi, is now retired. He adopted the surviving children, who are reported to have productive adult lives.
...Danny remains paralyzed from the chest down and “will be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. Christie has permanent partial paralysis on one side of her body.”
I think it was Washington at Purdy where she escaped ... then sent to Oregon.
i hope they aren’t stupid enough to let this b***c out. she should have been given life without parole to begin with! she is one sick person and there are enough of those out wandering around as it is. thanks for posting this. i had forgotten all about this waste of skin.
No, it was definitely the state pen in Salem.
She has as much chance of making parole as Manson and his girls do...somewhere between slim and none.
This will be a formality that we have to suffer through every 2 years from now on.
Obama’s looking for a new CIA Director — this “lady” could be better than anyone he’ll actually nominate.
This scummer never should be allowed out of jail IMHO.
Sorta like here in Texas, where it's just used to obtain dead criminals...
I thought she was Scheduled to be euthanized. The mutt!
OK - must have been someone else ....
If she was on Oregon health care and had cancer, they would only pay for euthanasia.
I was just reading that her daughter went to college and works with children, and her son is a champion swimmer.
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