By Gary C. King
Avid true crime readers, as well as those who simply follow the news, will recall the horrific story of Elizabeth Diane Frederickson Downs, a mother of three who was convicted on June 17, 1984 of shooting her three children a little more than a year earlier, on May 19, 1983, purportedly so that she could be free of the children. With the children out of the way, the prosecution contended, she would be free to continue an affair she was having with an Arizona man. The man, according to prosecutors, did not want to be saddled with any children. Cheryl Lynn Downs, 7, died from the shooting, but the other two children, Stephen Daniel Downs, 3, and Christie Ann Downs, 8, survived their injuries, but suffered from paralysis due to having been shot by their mother.
During the intensive investigation, Downs repeatedly told the police that she had been driving on a rural road near Springfield, Oregon, when she was car-jacked by a man, a "bushy-haired stranger," who, she said, had shot her three children as well as Downs herself. Details of her story, however, just did not add up. Police became suspicious of her because of her calm demeanor at the hospital later that night, and witnesses claimed to have seen Downs' car moving at a slow rate of speed as it approached the hospital. The investigators' suspicions intensified when Downs first visited Christie at the hospital — fear was noted in the young girl's eyes, and her heart rate increased dramatically.
Other aspects of Downs' story also did not fit. For example, forensic evidence failed to show the presence of blood on the driver's side of the car where Downs' had supposedly been sitting when she was shot. Evidence of gunpowder residue was also absent from that area of the vehicle. She also lied to the police when she told them that she did not own a .22-caliber handgun, the type used in the shooting. Although the gun was never found, Downs' ex-husband as well as a former boyfriend told police that she did, in fact, own such a weapon. Investigators later learned that she had purchased that type of gun in Arizona.
