[chris]

Elizabeth Diane Downs was convicted in June 1984 in Lane County of murder in Cheryl Lynn's death and of attempted murder and assault in the wounding of Christie Ann and Danny, receiving life in prison plus 50 years.

Downs was 27 in the spring of 1983 and worked as a postal worker in Springfield, Oregon, east of Eugene. Divorced from Steve Downs, she was raising Christie, 8, Cheryl, 7, and Danny, 3. She had been involved with a married man in Arizona who did not want a relationship that included her children.

On the night of May 19, 1983, Downs drove to McKenzie-Willamette Hospital in Springfield with all three children shot inside her car. Cheryl was dead, while Christie and Danny were critically wounded. Downs had a non-life-threatening gunshot wound to her left forearm. She told Lane County Sheriff's Office deputies that a bushy-haired stranger had flagged her down on Old Mohawk Road, a dark rural road she said she had taken to go sightseeing, demanded her car and shot the children. Christie suffered a stroke that caused a speech impairment and partial paralysis. Danny was left unable to walk.

Detective Doug Welch interviewed Downs at the hospital that night and later said her account did not hold together. He questioned why she was sightseeing on a pitch dark road, why she stopped for a stranger with three sleeping children in the car, and why the right-handed Downs was shot in the left forearm while the children were shot fatally or near fatally. Deputies recovered spent .22 caliber casings but never found the gun. Her ex-husband told investigators she had owned a .22 caliber rifle, and investigators found diaries describing her relationship with the married man.

A taped follow-up interview was conducted May 21, 1983, in room 319 at McKenzie-Willamette Medical Center, where Downs was being treated for a shattered radius in her left arm. A Lane County detective identified himself as Detective Tracy, noted that Detective Welch was present, logged the time as 1404 hours and gave the case number as 83-3268. He asked Downs for her name and date of birth, and she said she went by Diane. After he explained that the first notes were taken in the emergency room and that taping was easier, she replied that she had an aversion to tape recorders. Asked to begin with May 19, she recounted the day from waking at 5:15 a.m. through the evening drive.

After months of care and therapy, Christie identified her mother as the shooter. Downs was arrested on February 28, 1984, nine months after the shooting. Her trial began in May 1984, with deputy district attorney Fred Hugi prosecuting. Asked at trial who shot her, Christie answered, "My mom." Hugi and his wife adopted Christie and Danny in 1986. On July 11, 1987, Downs escaped from the Oregon Women's Correctional Center by going over the fence. She was recaptured 10 days later at a house near the prison and drew another five years. She has since been held out of state at the Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla.

Downs has never admitted shooting the children. The Oregon Board of Parole and Post-Prison Supervision denied her release on December 9, 2008, and December 10, 2010, when it deferred her next hearing by 10 years, and again in 2020. At a virtual hearing in October 2025, she again denied shooting the children while saying she had endangered them. In a decision reported on December 16, 2025, the board denied parole again, finding that she has a mental or emotional condition predisposing her to commit crime and remains a danger to others. She is 70 and cannot petition again until 2031.

The video contains about 32 minutes of the police interview recorded at Downs' hospital bedside. It is the interview itself, without narration or a presenter, and carries the first portion rather than the whole interview.