Speaker 1: Well, they were just catastrophic injuries, and it's really amazing
Speaker 1: that all three didn't die that night. One sure, as
Speaker 1: far as we know, was dead on arrival at Mackenzue
Speaker 1: Alamat Hospital. The staff there was clearly not expecting this.
Speaker 1: They hear a car honking, and somebody runs out and
Speaker 1: there's a mom or a woman standing by a car saying,
Speaker 1: somebody shot my kids. So the doctors are dispatched out
Speaker 1: there and the nurses and sort of horrified to find one, two,
Speaker 1: and then a third kid, and they had been shot
Speaker 1: in the chest. And the doctor would tell you that
Speaker 1: there's just a few more catastrophic injuries essocially for a
Speaker 1: young child than two have gunshots to the chest. And
Speaker 1: I remember dying at one of her news conferences saying,
Speaker 1: if I had shot my kids, would I had not
Speaker 1: have done a good job of it. And I remember
Speaker 1: thinking not too long after that, you did a tremendous job.
Speaker 1: If that was what you wanted to do, you did
Speaker 1: a great job.
Speaker 2: The story of the crime begins on the evening of
Speaker 2: May nineteenth, nineteen eighty three. Diane Downs and her three
Speaker 2: children are riding along Mohawk Road. Dana Tims was a
Speaker 2: reporter for The Orgonian at the time a correspondent for
Speaker 2: Eugene County. He describes the area around the shooting.
Speaker 1: It's a really pretty area. It's kind of a gateway
Speaker 1: to a couple of different river valleys. The Mackenzie River
Speaker 1: is really the defining water feature that comes down through there,
Speaker 1: with a couple of other branches going off of it.
Speaker 1: A lot of farming activity and ranches up there, some cattle,
Speaker 1: a lot of grass, very green, very emerald. It's very pretty.
Speaker 1: There were probably homes spaced out or maybe every half
Speaker 1: mile or so, sort of the way that you would
Speaker 1: have anticipated homesteaders in fifty years before that, everyone having
Speaker 1: enough land to do what if they wanted to do.
Speaker 2: Diane was on the road at ten pm on a
Speaker 2: school night with her three young children. According to Diane,
Speaker 2: her kids liked to sight see and they would just
Speaker 2: drive for enjoyment. She stands by her story even now
Speaker 2: after several decades in jail. She claims she saw a
Speaker 2: stranger in the road who flagged her down and she
Speaker 2: stopped to help.
Speaker 1: She was portraying herself as a good Samaritan. But even
Speaker 1: if you're going to do that, my sense would be
Speaker 1: maybe you just stay on the road and you roll
Speaker 1: your windo down a little bit and say what's the problem.
Speaker 1: But she pulled off the road, turned off the car,
Speaker 1: how the keys in her head, and gets out of
Speaker 1: the car to go talk to this guy. It just
Speaker 1: seemed like an a natural thing to do.
Speaker 2: According to Diane. The man then attacked her and her
Speaker 2: family in an attempt to steal a car, a quote
Speaker 2: unquote carjacking gone wrong.
Speaker 1: In her telling, this guy wants the car, so what
Speaker 1: does he do. It's dark out, the headlights are shining forward.
Speaker 1: He walks up to the car, leans in and fires
Speaker 1: five to seven bullets at sleeping kids.
Speaker 2: The man then apparently fled, and Diane, having sustained a
Speaker 2: gunshot wound to her forearm, wrapped the arm in a
Speaker 2: towel and drove to a nearby hospital. But according to
Speaker 2: a witness, she wasn't exactly driving with a sense of urgency.
Speaker 1: One thing that has struck me then has always struck me.
Speaker 1: It was the testimony of somebody who was driving behind
Speaker 1: her on Old Mohawk Road as she was heading toward
Speaker 1: the hospital, and she claimed she had driven as fast
Speaker 1: as she could and yet her arm was wrapped in
Speaker 1: a towel, in a perfectly folded towel that had been
Speaker 1: placed obviously in her car for some reason. So she
Speaker 1: was as a clinical narcissist, which is one of the
Speaker 1: three personality disorders that was diagnosed for her. The driver
Speaker 1: of that car said, we were going five to seven
Speaker 1: miles an hour. I would have passed, but there was
Speaker 1: a double yellow line and it was just pretty dark
Speaker 1: and curvy out there, so he didn't feel safe doing that.
Speaker 1: But identified the Arizona plate that hadn't been changed yet,
Speaker 1: and again, you know that's not enough on his own,
Speaker 1: but it was just a very very telling point to
Speaker 1: me in terms of just the logic of the situation.
Speaker 1: It's not that far from where the shooting occurred to
Speaker 1: Mackenzie Lambat hospital where she ended up with the kids.
Speaker 2: What is the distance from the location of the shooting
Speaker 2: to the hospital.
Speaker 1: Oh, I'm sure it's less than two miles, and a
Speaker 1: lot of that's rural, so you can you can move
Speaker 1: along at a pretty good clip if you need to
Speaker 1: get there.
Speaker 2: Diane's brother, James maintains that Diane had an excuse for
Speaker 2: driving slowly and that she still made it as quickly
Speaker 2: as possible. When I spoke to him about it, he
Speaker 2: was quick to point out that the witness who saw
Speaker 2: her driving wasn't behind her the entire way to the hospital.
Speaker 3: So one question I did have is why was she
Speaker 3: driving her vehicle very slowly on the way to the
Speaker 3: hospital after the incident? Real hard to describe that one. Basically,
Speaker 3: I think Enman was his name, said he was following
Speaker 3: her on Old Mohawk Road. The following period took place
Speaker 3: for about two maybe three miles, right, so the shooting
Speaker 3: was two miles away from where and he followed her
Speaker 3: on Curby Roads for two miles. We must remember, really
Speaker 3: truly must remember. She was just shot. She just had
Speaker 3: her child in the back seat, was gurgling with blood
Speaker 3: because she got shot alung right, Her lung had collapsed
Speaker 3: and she couldn't breathe, and she had to maybe tend
Speaker 3: with the child in the back seat, getting her to
Speaker 3: roll over so she would stopped gurgling. Her other boy
Speaker 3: in the back seat had been shot in the chest
Speaker 3: and he was also in the midst of dying. She
Speaker 3: was maybe reaching over to the child that was laying
Speaker 3: on the floor and saying Cheryl, Cheryl, Cheryl Cheryl, I
Speaker 3: wasn't there, right, But I mean it's like I maybe
Speaker 3: she was obviously wrapping her arm with a towel. You know,
Speaker 3: I don't know. I can't really talk about the towel.
Speaker 3: I don't have any idea, But I don't know why
Speaker 3: she was driving slow. But if you can imagine, put
Speaker 3: yourself in that situation being shot. And he only followed
Speaker 3: her for about I don't really know, be honest with
Speaker 3: that two or three miles, but I know it wasn't
Speaker 3: a long waist. And yes, indeed she was going slow,
Speaker 3: and she almost drove off the road and things like that.
Speaker 3: But then what's important from my point of view is
Speaker 3: that when she got to that stop sign where she
Speaker 3: went right and he went left, that it's a fifteen
Speaker 3: minute drive to the hospital from that point, right, she
Speaker 3: did it in ten minutes. So yes, on the wine
Speaker 3: he rode, she was driving slow, right, tending to her
Speaker 3: childs that have just been murdered and shot. Right. And
Speaker 3: but once she got to the open road and where
Speaker 3: all the kids were, I'm going to use the word
Speaker 3: stabilize in her mind, then she went to the right
Speaker 3: and she drove to the hospital and she got there
Speaker 3: and fast than the police could get there.
Speaker 1: The next day, I think she was saying it took
Speaker 1: something like twenty minutes and her telling to get there.
Speaker 1: It just wouldn't have taken that long, especially if you
Speaker 1: were hurrying along with your shot kids.
Speaker 2: No matter which version you believe. In the end, when
Speaker 2: Diane arrived at the hospital, the injuries to her children
Speaker 2: were catastrophic. Cheryl, her seven year old daughter, was dead
Speaker 2: on arrival, Danny three was paralyzed, and Christy Ate had
Speaker 2: suffered a stroke due to massive blood loss and was
Speaker 2: unable to speak. James recalls the moment he heard about
Speaker 2: the shootings. Let's go back to the night of the shooting.
Speaker 2: How did you hear the news. You're in California. I
Speaker 2: want to know your experience. What happened that night?
Speaker 3: I was sleeping. My dad called me at two thirty
Speaker 3: in the morning and said, your sister has been attached.
Speaker 3: She's been shot.
Speaker 2: I wondered whether or not James believed her ex husband
Speaker 2: had anything to do with it. Even when talking about this,
Speaker 2: James can't resist starting to put the pieces into place
Speaker 2: to demonstrate his sister's innocence. What did your mind go to?
Speaker 2: Did you think, Steve, what did you think?
Speaker 3: I didn't think any of that. I really just I
Speaker 3: stayed in the moment, and I said what my dad said, Yeah,
Speaker 3: your sister has been shot. No, I didn't think anybody
Speaker 3: the state actually thought. Steve, that's a really valid question.
Speaker 3: And Diane says that the state, Doug Welch, actually came
Speaker 3: to her and he said that we don't we know
Speaker 3: you didn't do this. And Steve has given us three alibis,
Speaker 3: and none of those three alibis turned out to be
Speaker 3: any good. So we really want to look at him,
Speaker 3: but we need you to testify against him. We need
Speaker 3: you to say it was him, so we can do that.
Speaker 3: And she says it wasn't him. You know, if it
Speaker 3: was him, I would be telling you that it wasn't him.
Speaker 3: I mean if it was two thirty in the morning
Speaker 3: and somebody just attacked my sister. And so it's like
Speaker 3: I just started thinking about getting up there to be
Speaker 3: with family, and that's about all. That's all my mind was, just,
Speaker 3: you know, I need to go. I need to leave.
Speaker 2: James also states that Diane was tested for gunpowder residue
Speaker 2: and none was found, which he also attempts to explain.
Speaker 2: James has spent years trying to prove Diane's innocence and
Speaker 2: has a counter argument for nearly everything that might potentially
Speaker 2: point to Diane's guilt.
Speaker 3: The shooter that killed Cheryl, shooter that wounded Christy and
Speaker 3: wounded Danny and shot my sister. When he was killing
Speaker 3: the family, he got in her car. The inside of
Speaker 3: that car was covered with blood spatter. The inside of
Speaker 3: that car had gunpowder residue, and my sister didn't have
Speaker 3: any on her. The driver's seat was clear or void
Speaker 3: of any gunpowder residue, and blood spotner where the shooter
Speaker 3: would have been sitting or kneeling when he shot them.
Speaker 3: And so you come back and you put it all together,
Speaker 3: it's like, well, she didn't really have the gun, so
Speaker 3: somebody else did. She didn't have any gunpowder residue on her,
Speaker 3: somebody else did. She didn't have any blood spatter on her,
Speaker 3: even though it was all over the car, so somebody
Speaker 3: else did.
Speaker 2: It's worth noting that while Diane hast to negative for
Speaker 2: gunshot residue or GSR, the bullets were from a twenty
Speaker 2: two caliber gun. We spoke to forensic scientist Jim Pex,
Speaker 2: who worked on the Dian Down's case. He explains more
Speaker 2: about the residue test.
Speaker 4: It's my understanding that the deputy who was took the
Speaker 4: initial report at the hospital swabbed her for GSR, and
Speaker 4: at the time we would send those to a consulting
Speaker 4: laboratory for analysis. But in this case, you have to
Speaker 4: keep in mind that when we talk about swabbing person's
Speaker 4: hands for GSR, which you're looking for are two rare
Speaker 4: earth elements that are not common in nature. One is
Speaker 4: burium and one is animony. These are intentionally placed in
Speaker 4: the primers of center fire cartridges. A twenty two is
Speaker 4: a rim fire. There is no barium in animony in
Speaker 4: a rimfire cartridge, so there is nothing to find.
Speaker 2: Diane also sustained an injury at close range, so testing
Speaker 2: her for lead would have been somewhat inconclusive because she
Speaker 2: was and what's referred to as the LUOD cloud. Hex explains, No.
Speaker 4: That's a when a weapon is discharged and the bullet
Speaker 4: exits the barrel, there is a cloud of vaporized gases
Speaker 4: that contain these trace elements and a little bit of
Speaker 4: trace element lead, and in center fire casings, he would
Speaker 4: find your burium and animony he posited from this cloud
Speaker 4: and the fact that she was shot herself, you would
Speaker 4: have found lead on her hands anyway.
Speaker 2: Despite this, James stands by his theory that Diane was
Speaker 2: not the shooter that night.
Speaker 3: Actually, it's a funny thing. There was a picture of
Speaker 3: Dian at the hospital when she was sitting there, and
Speaker 3: you notice that it's been destroyed at this point. Actually
Speaker 3: they destroyed it, and you can notice that her fingers
Speaker 3: are not full of dirt where she might have buried something,
Speaker 3: her hands are not clean, or she might have washed
Speaker 3: her hands, because there's been a lot of theories out
Speaker 3: there that while she did this and that she washed up. Well,
Speaker 3: my sister was shot in the left arm. The common
Speaker 3: theory out there is that when you get wounded in
Speaker 3: the left arm, it must be self inflicted. If if
Speaker 3: you self inflict your wound, you have stippling around where
Speaker 3: the gun was next to your arm. There was no
Speaker 3: stippling on her arm. And more importantly, when you talk
Speaker 3: about her left arm being broken, it didn't have a
Speaker 3: hole in it. She had one inch of bone that
Speaker 3: was removed from her arm where it shattered her bone.
Speaker 3: And so if you say, well, she didn't have any
Speaker 3: gunpowdered residue on her because she washed her hands. She
Speaker 3: didn't have any blood spot around her because she washed up. Well,
Speaker 3: it's impossible. If you've ever broken your arm, you would
Speaker 3: know it would be impossible to move your arm. It's
Speaker 3: impossible to lift anything with your arm. It's possible to
Speaker 3: do anything with your arm, especially when you have a
Speaker 3: one inch bone shattering. It was not a flesh mound,
Speaker 3: it was a traumatic, traumatic injury to her arm.
Speaker 2: Not long after Diane and her children's arrival at the hospital,
Speaker 2: she became the main suspect. However, no arrest or charges
Speaker 2: were brought against Diane right away.
Speaker 1: I think that the press got the impression after about
Speaker 1: four or five days that the police were the ones
Speaker 1: who were perhaps looking at Diane. There hadn't been any
Speaker 1: other suspects.
Speaker 2: Police began to gather evidence to build their case. Officers
Speaker 2: were dispatched to search Diane's Springfield home and look for
Speaker 2: any potential clues or evidence, and found some not so
Speaker 2: subtle clues that might point to Diane.
Speaker 1: They did get a break a little bit when they
Speaker 1: searched Diane's apartment in Springfield and found bullets that appeared
Speaker 1: to have very similar markings on them from the extractor
Speaker 1: mechanism in a gun that moves bullets through the chamber.
Speaker 1: The rifle they found in her apartment was the twenty
Speaker 1: two caliber rifle, but so the bullets were also twenty
Speaker 1: two caliber that they would also fit into a handgun.
Speaker 2: After examination, the rifle was determined not to be the
Speaker 2: same weapon that fired the bullets at the crime scene.
Speaker 2: The bullets and the rifle, however, had markings as if
Speaker 2: they had been ejected from another weapon, possibly a pistol,
Speaker 2: and then loaded into the rifle. Jim Pecks explains, we.
Speaker 4: Looked under the bed and there was a rifle, twenty
Speaker 4: two rifle under the bed. First thought was, oh, is
Speaker 4: this a possible murder weapon, and so we seized the
Speaker 4: rifle and I took it back to the laboratory after
Speaker 4: we finished processing, and the rifle had cartridges in the
Speaker 4: tubular magazine and there were nine of them. That's a
Speaker 4: significant number because a lot of twenty two caliber semi
Speaker 4: automatic pistols have nine cartridges in the magazine, and it's
Speaker 4: not uncommon for people when they're through shooting and they
Speaker 4: still have ammunition in the weapon. To take it out
Speaker 4: and maybe use it in another weapon, which appeared to
Speaker 4: be the case here, because there weren't any markings on
Speaker 4: these cartridges that they had worked through the action of
Speaker 4: the twenty two rifle. There were only markings from some
Speaker 4: other weapon.
Speaker 2: This wasn't enough to charge Diane with a crime. There
Speaker 2: was also something else strange about Diane's apartment. It was
Speaker 2: nearly empty.
Speaker 1: She had just moved there, but it was very spare,
Speaker 1: very spartan inside beds for the kids. But when police
Speaker 1: who went there as soon as they could, looks at
Speaker 1: the refrigerator, there was nothing there, nothing to eat, a
Speaker 1: real shortage of comfortable and warm, suitable clothes for the kids.
Speaker 1: I think Diane's closet was probably the best stocked thing
Speaker 1: in the house, and besides that, no books, nowhere to
Speaker 1: really sit. There was a TV because she liked to
Speaker 1: watch TV, so she was taking care of her her
Speaker 1: own needs there, but apparently nobody else's being thought about.
Speaker 2: Diane's brother, James, offers his own explanation. He believes the
Speaker 2: lack of possessions was a product of circumstance and not
Speaker 2: a sign of a bad mother.
Speaker 3: My mom and dad drove to Arizona with a pickup truck.
Speaker 3: That's sort of you know, as part of the state's
Speaker 3: theory is that her house was she was a bad mother.
Speaker 3: She had a house in Oregon and there was no
Speaker 3: furniture in it. There was no food in the refrigerator
Speaker 3: or dad lived about, you know, four blocks away, and
Speaker 3: the kids were always over there because my sister was
Speaker 3: always working. There was no furniture because they just got
Speaker 3: there six weeks previous with a pickup truck. They didn't
Speaker 3: her house just burned down four months before that.
Speaker 2: Can you remember what she packed up in that pickup?
Speaker 3: Just personal items. I was not there. My mom and
Speaker 3: dad drove down there and did that. I was in
Speaker 3: California working, But yeah, I did not. I was not there.
Speaker 3: I just thought it was just a pick up, so
Speaker 3: you can't have too much, But yeah, there was. Her
Speaker 3: house was very sparse.
Speaker 2: They did, however, find Diane's journals and letters to a
Speaker 2: lover in Arizona, which helped paint a picture of who
Speaker 2: she was and what investigators would later argue could serve
Speaker 2: as a motive.
Speaker 1: One thing she had kind of pointed them out, like, hey,
Speaker 1: I've got all these diaries. The writings in the first
Speaker 1: diary were all about this guy thin Arizona, long poems
Speaker 1: she wrote voluminously.
Speaker 2: The guy in Arizona was Robert Nick Nickerbocker.
Speaker 3: I did not know Nick existed until the state went
Speaker 3: to her house the night of the shooting and collected
Speaker 3: her diary letters. She gave them permission to go to
Speaker 3: her apartment and get the letters or get I'm sorry,
Speaker 3: to go get evidence that might help. I don't know
Speaker 3: why they'd want to go to her house and get evidence,
Speaker 3: but they went to her house to get evidence, and
Speaker 3: some of that evidence was I'll call them diary letters.
Speaker 3: They weren't really in a diary. They were just handwritten letters.
Speaker 2: The letters were unmailed, James claims, but there were, according
Speaker 2: to law enforcement accounts, tons of journals where Diane had
Speaker 2: written nearly every day about Nick.
Speaker 3: Basically told Nick, you know, it's like, you know, I
Speaker 3: wish that you were here. I wish that I was
Speaker 3: with you. I wish things were different. I want you,
Speaker 3: you know, I you know, I never read the letters.
Speaker 3: But there were just love letters, you know. I mean,
Speaker 3: there's no doubt which they were loved letters, and that
Speaker 3: was their motive.
Speaker 2: James theory is that the letters were just a way
Speaker 2: for Diane to vent privately, and the fact that they
Speaker 2: were never mailed, he believed, shows that they weren't an
Speaker 2: act of a woman obsessed with a man, despite the
Speaker 2: claims to the contrary.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, it's really just a think about it situation.
Speaker 3: It had been six weeks since she left Arizona. She
Speaker 3: hadn't called him, she hadn't emailed him. There was no emails.
Speaker 3: She hadn't written him. You know, there was letters written
Speaker 3: to him but never mailed.
Speaker 2: It also came out that Nick may have half heartedly
Speaker 2: proposed to her at some point.
Speaker 1: It seemed to go back and forth a little bit.
Speaker 1: He did, I think I proposed, but maybe in a
Speaker 1: kind of a backhanded kind of way, and like, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: sure that might be interesting, but nothing that would last
Speaker 1: for more than a day perhaps. But when Diane heard that,
Speaker 1: she was just convinced that, well, he wants to be
Speaker 1: with me. If I just kind of hang in there,
Speaker 1: I think I can make this work.
Speaker 2: As for the question of why the relationship with Nick ended,
Speaker 2: a person she clearly cared for, the belief is that
Speaker 2: Diane's promiscuity led to her contracting an STD that she
Speaker 2: later gave to Nick, who subsequently gave it to his wife.
Speaker 1: He basically had to tell her, I think that I
Speaker 1: have this and you probably have it. Now you better
Speaker 1: get tested, and here's where I got it. And so
Speaker 1: he had to sort of admit that, and I think
Speaker 1: his wife ultimately forgave him, and I think that was
Speaker 1: kind of a turning point where it's not that he
Speaker 1: never saw Diane again, her wasn't physical with her again, perhaps,
Speaker 1: but it did seem to mark something of a break
Speaker 1: in their relationship.
Speaker 2: Even with Diane supposedly over the relationship with Nick, the
Speaker 2: police still believed he was a motive behind the killing,
Speaker 2: and would eventually push that narrative during Diane's trial. A
Speaker 2: phone call that apparently took place between Nick and the
Speaker 2: police didn't help to dissuade them the motive.
Speaker 3: Yes, I read a police report, and on the police
Speaker 3: report it shows a conversation between when the police called
Speaker 3: him to tell him what had happened Nick. They says,
Speaker 3: you know, basically, Diane and the kids have been shot,
Speaker 3: and his first words were, I cannot believe she did
Speaker 3: this for me. I cannot believe she did this for me.
Speaker 2: While Diane's children were hospitalized for their injuries. Diane herself
Speaker 2: was also undergoing surgery for the injuries to her arm.
Speaker 2: It was during this time that full custody of Diane's
Speaker 2: children was taken away.
Speaker 1: So she was initially hospitalized. Herself released really soon after that,
Speaker 1: but she still had visitation right. She was still the
Speaker 1: mom with one right to go see her kids. But
Speaker 1: we learned at some point that Christie's heart rate was
Speaker 1: just spiking on the monitor when her mom came into
Speaker 1: the room. Again, some of this is hindsight, but you
Speaker 1: now know that she sees the person who killed her
Speaker 1: sister and shot her and her brother is right in
Speaker 1: the room with her little scary. Also, the county authorities
Speaker 1: moved to limit Diane's access to the kids after hospital
Speaker 1: staff were reporting that Christie appeared to be very traumatized
Speaker 1: when her mom was in the room. And I think
Speaker 1: that within four or five days the police not have
Speaker 1: any any solid leads on any other suspects. Were feeling
Speaker 1: that we need to limit access that Diane had to
Speaker 1: her kids for their safety, for their mental stability, and
Speaker 1: all kinds of things, so they did and file orders
Speaker 1: that were approved. Bilin County judge barring Diane from having
Speaker 1: access to her kids.
Speaker 2: According to James, there's a more complicated story behind why
Speaker 2: Diane's custody was taken away.
Speaker 3: I know that they had police sitting outside the hospital
Speaker 3: room whenever we went to visit. It's like, you know,
Speaker 3: we were turned away, and so I don't know why.
Speaker 3: Well I do know why, because it's real obvious why,
Speaker 3: and it's because they had an agenda that they had defend.
Speaker 1: There were armed police outside the room because if there
Speaker 1: was a shooter on the loose who had tried to
Speaker 1: shoot them once, perhaps that could happen again. So they
Speaker 1: still had to take precautions. It wasn't a situation where
Speaker 1: they were dismissing any possibility that there was anybody else
Speaker 1: out there who could have intended this.
Speaker 3: I mean, you have a little eight year old girl
Speaker 3: who was just brutally attacked, she had a stroke, her
Speaker 3: sister's death, and her brother is not even in the
Speaker 3: same hospital. There's two hospitals in the Springfield area, and
Speaker 3: her brother's at a different hospital.
Speaker 2: Dan was apparently upset that the siblings were separated and
Speaker 2: felt that they should be in the same hospital.
Speaker 3: And that was one of Diane's major contentions is to
Speaker 3: put them together so they can be a family together.
Speaker 2: One of the doctors had been given temporary guardianship over
Speaker 2: the children, and according to James, believed that Diane's custody
Speaker 2: should be taken away because she was trying to take
Speaker 2: Christie out of the hospital.
Speaker 3: And she was trying to take Christie out of the hospital.
Speaker 3: She was trying to get her to the other hospital
Speaker 3: or vice versa, get Danny to come to Christie's hospital
Speaker 3: so they could be in the same room and they
Speaker 3: could get better together. And that is that's what I
Speaker 3: was trying to get at, is the fact that they
Speaker 3: they said that she's trying to get take Christie out
Speaker 3: of the hospital before it's time. She was trying to
Speaker 3: take Christie out of the hospital to get her with
Speaker 3: her brother. So it was the day when she was
Speaker 3: due to have surgery that they ended up taking her
Speaker 3: rights away because she can't be court on that day.
Speaker 3: As her feelings to defend herself basically, and if you're
Speaker 3: not there to defend yourself, then you lose.
Speaker 2: But one has to wonder what the real motivation was
Speaker 2: behind keeping the children protected from Diane, especially Christie. Christie
Speaker 2: suffered a stroke from blood loss and was unable to
Speaker 2: speak for months following the shooting. But aside from Diane herself,
Speaker 2: Christy was the only other probable witness to whoever actually
Speaker 2: did the shooting.
Speaker 1: It took a long time for charges to finally be
Speaker 1: leveled against Diane, and I think that everyone knew that
Speaker 1: her older daughter, Christie, who had survived her I think
Speaker 1: Christy was eight when she was shot, her younger sister Cheryl,
Speaker 1: who died with seven, and their brother Danny was three.
Speaker 1: The police were very clear in saying, we haven't found
Speaker 1: a murder weapon yet, So the search went on for that,
Speaker 1: and they spent one hundreds of hours with divers deployed
Speaker 1: in the local rivers where Diane said that the shooting
Speaker 1: had occurred. She had pulled over right next to the
Speaker 1: Little Mohawk River, and so the assumption was well, she
Speaker 1: tossed the gun in there. Nothing was ever found. So
Speaker 1: it became really clear that if anything was going to develop,
Speaker 1: it's probably going to be short of any other kind
Speaker 1: of physical evidence, it's going to be on Christy getting
Speaker 1: well enough that she could tell what happened that night.
Speaker 2: On the next episode of Happy Face Presents Two Face.
Speaker 2: Diane sticks to her story that a bushy hair stranger
Speaker 2: is the shooter, going as far as to record a
Speaker 2: play by play reenactment video for police, but a surprise
Speaker 2: past encounter with her ex husband before the shooting could
Speaker 2: hold the evidence detectives need to charge Diane. Meanwhile, month
Speaker 2: by month, Christy survivor, daughter of Diane, it's getting stronger
Speaker 2: to share in court what really happened the night of
Speaker 2: May nineteenth, nineteen eighty three. Our executive producer is Ben Boleen.
Speaker 2: Melissa More is our co executive producer, Maya Cole is
Speaker 2: our primary producer, and Paul Dekint is our supervising producer.
Speaker 2: Our story editor is Matt Riddle. Research assistance from Sam Teagarden.
Speaker 2: Featured music by a dream Tent. Happy Vace Presents To
Speaker 2: Face is a production of iHeartMedia