Diane Downs - The Mother Who Shot Her Own Children

She arrived at the emergency room too calmly. A little blood on her arm, a story about a bushy-haired stranger on a dark Oregon road, and three shot children in the back seat. One of them — 7-year-old Cheryl — was already gone. The other twowould survive scarred: 8-year-old Christie fighting back from a stroke, 3-year-old Danny paralyzed for life.

There was no stranger.

Diane Downs shot her own children in May 1983 to clear the path to a man who'd told her he didn't want kids. Her motive wasn't madness or mercy — it was arithmetic. Herchildren were obstacles, and she decided to remove them. This episode traces how her story fell apart, how her own daughter relearned how to speak just to testify against her, and how, forty-two years and four parole denials later,Diane Downs still refuses to admit what she did.

Some killers don't look like killers. That's exactly what they're counting on.

Intent doesn't lie. People do.

Next week, we're heading to Australia — to a quiet country town, an empty bank, and the worst series of killings the country has ever seen. The men who did it believed, all the way down, that they were the good guys.

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