Elizabeth Diane Frederickson Downs is an American woman convicted of the May 1983 murder of her daughter and the attempted murders of her other two children. Following the crimes, she told police a stranger had attempted to carjack her and had shot the children. She was convicted in 1984 and sentenced to life in prison plus fifty years. In 1987, she escaped and was recaptured. She is the subject of a book by Ann Rule and a made for TV movie based up it both called Small Sacrifices. She was denied parole in December 2008 and December 2010.
Diane Downs shot her three children and drove them in the blood-spattered car to Mckenzie-Willamette Hospital on May 19, 1983. Cheryl was already dead, Danny was paralyzed from the waist down, and Christie had suffered a disabling stroke. She claimed she was carjacked on a rural road near Springfield, Oregon, by a strange man who shot her and the children. She did not disclose to police, she owned a .22 caliber handgun, but both Steve Downs and Knickerbocker informed them that she did. Investigators were unable to find the actual weapon, they found unfired casings in her home with extractor markings form the same gun that shot her children. In 1984, She was arrested, nine months after the shooting, and charged with one count of murder an two counts each of attempted murder and criminal assault.
Diane Downs was born on August 7, 1955, in Phoenix, Arizona. She holds American nationality. She graduated from Moon Valley High School in Phoneix. After high school, she enrolled at Pacific Coast Baptist Bible College in Orange, California. She was expelled after only one year for promiscuous behavior and soon returned to her parents home in Arizona.
Diane Downs was born to Danish and English American parents Wesley Linden and Willadene Frederickson.
She was denied parole and under a new law, will not be eligible for parole for another ten years. she will have to wait to apply for parole until 2020 when she will be 65 years old.
Diane Downs is a married woman. She married Steve Downs. She met her husband when she graduated from Monn Valley High School. On November 13, 1979, she married her boyfriend Steve Downs after running away from home. They have three children, Christie Ann, Cheryl Lynn, and Stephen Daniel. The couple divorced in 1980 because she thought Stephen Daniel known as Danny, was the result of an affair Diane had.