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Here is an old story back in the news.

Diane Downs case changed lives of many in Oregon
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PORTLAND - Twenty years ago Monday,

Elizabeth Diane Downs drove up to a

hospital in Springfield with her three
dying children in her car, the start

of a case that riveted Oregonians and

changed the lives of a doctor, a

detective, a judge, a writer, a lawyer
and Downs herself.

Emergency room Dr. John Mackey

remembers the horn blaring outside the
ER door of McKenzie-Willamette

Hospital in Springfield and the woman

with a bullet wound in her left

forearm exclaiming, "Somebody just

shot my kids."

The woman was Downs, a 27-year-old

Postal Service worker and divorcee who
had moved to Oregon from Arizona only

a couple of months before. In the car

were her 7-year-old daughter, Cheryl;

her 8-year-old daughter, Christie; and
her 3-year-old son, Danny.

"To see these three kids moribund in a
car that pulls up outside your door .

. . ," Mackey begins. "Initially we

didn't know how many there were. I was
just horrified - there's another one -

it was just too horrifying."

Nothing could be done for Cheryl, shot
twice in the back. Surgeon Steven

Wilhite stopped the internal bleeding

and miraculously saved Christie, shot

twice in the left chest. Danny, shot

near the spinal cord survived, but is

paralyzed from mid-chest down.

It was the first homicide case Lane

County detective Doug Welch had ever

faced. His task that night was to

interview Downs, who told her story in
clipped fashion.

She and the children had visited a

friend in the Marcola area, northeast

of Springfield. On the way back, she

said, a shaggy-haired man appeared out
of the darkness. She stopped and got

out of her car, keys in hand, to see

if he needed help. He demanded her car
and opened fire on her children, then

on her, when she refused.

The detectives pressed for

information; if a desperate killer was
on the loose in the rural countryside,
they needed all the details they could
get.

"It was probably an hour, maybe a

little more, into the interview . . .

when I began to have some serious

doubts about her story," Welch said.

"Her demeanor was really odd. She was

not nearly as interested in talking

about the suspect, than in talking

about her boyfriend in Arizona and

what a great lover he was, and how she
missed him."

Welch and detectives Kurt Wuest and

Richard Tracy took on the

investigation. They established a

motive: Downs wanted her children out

of the way to reunite with the Arizona
boyfriend, who didn't want kids.

At first they had only their

suspicions. They had no murder weapon,
and the only known witnesses were

badly injured children.

Two months after the shootings, Welch

and Wuest met with Downs for what came
to be known as the "hardball

interview," when Downs' story changed.
Now she claimed that the shaggy-haired
man knew her, called her by name.

Downs became increasingly hostile as

the detectives challenged the

inconsistencies.

When the case finally came to trial,

in front of Judge Gregory Foote and

using then-revolutionary forensic

evidence, emotions were high.

Downs faced a count of murder, two

counts of attempted murder and two

counts of first-degree assault.

The case began in May 1984 and lasted

six weeks, with 500 pieces of

evidence.

Christie Downs, by then 9, was the

state's key witness. She had spent

much of the past year meeting with a

psychologist, Carl Peterson. At his

suggestion, she wrote the name of the

person who shot her and Cheryl and

sealed them in envelopes.

On the witness stand, Peterson opened

the envelopes. "My mom," the notes

inside said.

Finally, a jury convicted Downs of all
charges. She was sentenced to life in

prison plus 50 years.

Author Ann Rule attended much of the

trial, then wrote a book about the

Downs case called "Small Sacrifices."

Rule, who lives in Seattle, is now a

true-crime institution with 20 books

to her name and three in the works.

"That book sold enough so that since

then I've never had to really worry

about bills," Rule says. "It was my

crossover book from hanging on by my

fingernails."

Downs also kept herself in the news.

In 1987, Downs scaled the razor-wire

fence at the Oregon Women's

Correctional Center in Salem and

escaped. She was caught 10 days later;
she'd been in a house a half mile from
the prison, sleeping with one of the

men who lived there.

She is now at the Valley State Prison

for Women in Chowchilla, Calif. It's a
maximum-security prison, with an

electric fence around the perimeter.

California law prohibits the release

of much information, such as her work

assignments, behavior or visitors.

Her two children were adopted by

Joanne and Fred Hugi, the prosecutor

who put their mother away.

Christie and Danny, who now goes by

Dan, are 28 and 23, respectively. Both
graduated from college and are

employed. Last year, Christie married

the son of a former police officer.

Rule says the Hugis adopted Christie

and Dan for the most basic reason:

They loved them.

"I think they bonded with those kids

from the first night," she says. "They
never particularly planned to have

children. They saw those kids, and

that was it."