Diane Downs Biography
Diane Downs (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.
Diane told the police that a stranger had attempted to carjack her and had shot the children. In 1984, she was convicted and sentenced to life in prison plus fifty years.
In 1987, she briefly escaped but was recaptured. Diane is the subject of a book by Ann Rule and a made-for-TV movie based upon it, both called Small Sacrifices. In December 2008 and in December 2010, she was denied parole.
Diane Downs Age
Diane is 63 years old as of 2018. She was born on August 7, 1955.
Diane Downs Children
Diane has four children but all have been adopted except for one who died during the shooting. They are; Christie Ann who was born in 1974, Cheryl Lynn born in 1976, Stephen Daniel born in 1979 and a girl who she made Amy Elizabeth but was renamed Rebecca by her adoptive parents.
Diane got pregnant with the fourth child prior to her arrest and trial.
Diane, on May 19, 1983, shot her three children and drove them in a blood-spattered car to McKenzie-Willamette Hospital. On arrival, Cheryl Lynn was already dead. Daniel was paralyzed from the waist down, and Christie had suffered a disabling stroke. Diane herself had been shot in the left forearm and she claimed she was carjacked on a rural road near Springfield, Oregon, by a strange man who shot her and the children. The investigators, however, together with hospital workers became suspicious because they decided her manner was too calm for a person who had experienced such a traumatic event. Diane also made a number of statements that both police and hospital workers considered highly inappropriate.
Suspicions grew intense when Diane, upon arrival at the hospital to visit her children, phoned Robert Knickerbocker, a married man and former coworker in Arizona with whom she had been having an extramarital affair. Also, forensic evidence did not match her story. There was no blood spatter on the driver’s side of the car, nor was there any gunpowder residue on the driver’s door or on the interior door panel.
Robert Knickerbocker also reported that Diane had stalked him and seemed willing to kill his wife if it meant that she could have him to herself and Robert said that he was relieved that she had left for Oregon and that he was able to reconcile with his wife.
Diane did not disclose to the police that she owned a .22 caliber handgun, but both Steve and Knickerbocker informed them that she did and investigators later discovered that Diane had bought the handgun in Arizona. Although they were unable to find the actual weapon, they found unfired casings in her home with extractor markings from the same gun that shot her children.
Witnesses also saw her car being driven very slowly toward the hospital at an estimated speed of five to seven mph and this contradicted her claim that she drove to the hospital at a high speed after the shooting. Based on this and additional evidence, Diane was arrested on February 28, 1984, nine months after the shooting. She was charged with one count of murder and two counts each of attempted murder and criminal assault.
Diane Downs Parents | Diane Downs Father
Diane’s parents are Wes Frederickson and Willadene Frederickson.
Diane Downs Interview
Diane Downs Parole Hearing
Diane’s sentence, she could not be eligible for parole until 2009 and under Oregon law of the time, as a dangerous offender, Diane would have been eligible for a parole hearing every two years until she is released or dies in prison.
In 2008, Diane applied for parole and she reaffirmed her innocence saying, “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.”
Her first parole hearing was on December 9, 2008, and Lane County District Attorney Douglas Harcleroad wrote to the parole board, “Downs continues to fail to demonstrate any honest insight into her criminal behavior…even after her convictions, she continues to fabricate new versions of events under which the crimes occurred.” He also wrote that “she alternately refers to her assailants as a bushy-haired stranger, two men wearing ski masks or drug dealers and corrupt law enforcement officials.”
Diane Participated in the hearing from the Valley State Prison for Women, she was not permitted a statement but answered questions from the parole board and after three hours of interviews and thirty minutes of deliberation, she was denied parole.
She later faced her second parole hearing on December 10, 2010 and this time too, she was denied parole and under a new law, she wpuld not be eligible for parole for another ten years.
Diane’s next hearing before the Oregon Board of Parole and Post-Prison Supervision is set for March of 2021.