MY MOTHER WAS A CHILD KILLER ! - FULL DOCUMENTARY - PT 1 OF 2

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through forests mountains and desert it takes hours to reach Bend Oregon a beautiful but isolated community if you want to keep a secret one so haunting so unthinkable this is a good place to do it we came here to find this woman Rebecca Babcock whose secret almost destroyed her tonight she speaks for the first time about her mother who she calls Diane I wish that I could just forget Diane completely that I could just wash her from my body she came into this world in the most dark and sordid way borne some say the seed of a monster to understand why it has taken 26 years for Becky to come to terms with her frightening past you must go back to the beginning Susan Smith has been arrested long before the shocking unimaginable crimes of child killers Susan Smith and Andrea Yates the nation was gripped by the story of Diane downs the year is 1983 griller tops the charts Ronald Reagan is president Vanessa Williams becomes the first African American crowned Miss America Dallas is the number one TV show and in Springfield Oregon on May 19th at 10:48 p.m. Dianne Downs drives into the emergency wind drop-off her car is soaked in blood and inside are her three small children eight-year-old Kristie seven-year-old Cheryl and three-year-old Danny all shot at close range Cheryl is dead on arrival Kristie and Danny just barely alive as doctors worked frantically to save them police are called to the hospital or detective Doug Welsh it is his first homicide investigation it was a hectic people were in crisis mode struggling to save these these kids reporter and Jagger hears about the shootings on the radio what was the reaction in the community this kind of thing didn't happen then Springfield you know it's a it's a family place you live there because you love the surroundings and you feel safe and that was all blown apart crime author and rule will spend months in Springfield writing what will later become a best-seller small sacrifices when there's a murder is something the neighbors always say something like that doesn't happen here but of course it does while Danny had been shot in the back and Christie twice in the chest their mother is in good condition with a minor gunshot wound to her left forearm the 27 year old single mother a divorced postal worker tells police that night and later the press a terrifying story she told us that she and the kids had been visiting a friend earlier that evening after a Greek dart they decided to head home we were just out I guess sightseeing I guess you'd say and the kids got tired they fell asleep in the car so I decided to just head on home but I saw road I hadn't been on before we like to take back roads and just went down that road it was on this dark and desolate country road listening to the song hungry like the wolf on the cars tape player when she says she saw a bushy-haired stranger on the road there was a guy standing in the road flagging me down so I stopped she said she turned the ignition off and she asked what's the problem he said I want your car she replied you've got to be kidding and it was at that time that he pushed her aside and then reached in and shocked the three sleeping kids everything was done in a matter of five or ten seconds she said she had her keys in her hand and she faked throwing the keys out into this field he swung himself around and fired twice one cop Minyard the other one I went off somewhere she pushed him away jumped in the car and raced off to the hospital so that was her version Danny cried the whole way I could hear him softly just moaning and Christie was dying God all the blood all the pain emotionally she was flat I kept trying to tell her touched rail over so she wouldn't choke on the blend it didn't dawn on me at the time that the blood was coming from her lung her behavior was not anything that you would expect for a mother who'd gone through this not one tear the entire night Sheriff's Department search and rescue team throughout the scene early this morning probing for any clue terror gripped the town of Springfield in the face of such unthinkable violence this afternoon the Sheriff's Department released this composite drawing of the suspect who was said to be in his late 20s with shoulder-length hair and a scraggly beard it was such a shocking story mothers didn't go out in the evening is a sure didn't take their children while police look for a mysterious gunman divers try to find the missing murder weapon a 22 caliber handgun but even as they search police are immediately suspicious of downs a story just four days after her seven-year-old daughter was killed downs is filmed reenacting the attack sitting in the car is Elizabeth Diane downs one of the victims of this murder attempted murder I'm still on the keys okay I'm throwing the keys simulating yeah I just hit my kids start at the coming and left the car door shut itself come down seems light-hearted giggling even fixing her makeup you can tell she's thoroughly enjoying herself that's evident when you look at the reenactment she loves the limelight loves to be on stage within a month her story starts to not add up right people would see little soundbites of her talking on television what happened to me what happened and I think they started getting the feeling that there's something really wrong with this person and then he swung around towards me she couldn't keep her mouth shut she talked all the time talked too much in a sense Diane was her worst enemy I don't care when this man shot my daughter my first reaction was to snap back to my childhood to the pain that had happened to me back then my marriage my entrapment by society this man was bigger than me he was stronger down cz's demeanor is especially startling when you consider the condition of her two remaining children three-year-old Danny is paralyzed from the chest down and eight year old Christy the only other witness to the crime has suffered a stroke and is unable to speak the police have no murder weapon no witnesses and no motive but many begin asking questions about Diane downs why would a mother with little kids take him out for a drive in the dark on a school night why does she stop for a stranger on a dark country road boy I'm a mother and no mother does that why on earth would anyone shoot three sleeping children this was a whole different kind of monster that we were not familiar with on this dark country road 26 years ago Diane Downes claims her car was stopped by a mysterious stranger who then opened fire on her three small children and then he swung around towards downs tells anyone who will listen in the town of Springfield Oregon a horrific tale and then the gun kept firing and firing and hiring again and again downs a single mother and a postal worker adamantly denies any involvement why would I have taken my kids to the hospital wouldn't I have made sure they were dead and then cried crocodile tears that's insane that I would do such a thing and then bring the witnesses in against myself that's crazy but police discover parts of her story don't add up detective Doug Welsh is one of the lead investigators sight seen after dark with three sleeping children stopping for a stranger who Flags her down that made little sense downs repeatedly tells police and the press that after the kids were shot she raced to the hospital but police say another driver on the road that night saw something else we found a witness a gentleman who came up behind her Diane was travelling so slow that this witness's speedometer wouldn't move off the pig it's my belief that she was waiting for the kids to die and reporters covering the story wondered about the towel that was neatly wrapped around Downs as injured left arm that night where she claims she was shot by the gunman none of the kids had any first aid of any kind that would be my first mission as a mother to make sure they didn't bleed to death she has a towel wrapped around her arm but most jarring is downs his own behavior her seven-year-old daughter Cheryl is dead her three-year-old son Danny paralyzed an eight-year-old Christie has lost so much blood she suffers a stroke and is unable to speak so why is down smiling as she describes the most gruesome of tragedies she was showing up everywhere on every news station and I think she thought that if she could explain long enough she could talk to you long enough you would see it her way and Jagger conducted an in-depth interview with Downs for local station Kezi and discovered the longer downs talked the guilty er she seemed everybody says you sure were lucky well I don't feel very lucky I couldn't tie my damn shoes for about two months the scar is going to be there forever I'm gonna remember that night for the rest of my life whether I want to or not I don't think I was very lucky I think my kids were lucky if I had been shot the way they were we all would have died she seemed to be missing the compassion the empathy I mean it was all about her it's all about me do you think there was any regret any remorse and all the time you spent with her no I served her no but at night when I close my eyes I can see Christie reaching her hand out to me while I'm driving and the blood just keep coming out of her mouth and that maybe it'll fade too with time but I don't think so that haunts me the most so what did you think is that interview unraveled the hair stand up on the back of your neck you know that you are in the room with a woman who shot her three children there it was it wasn't like a movie when I was telling them I was telling them what happened but inappropriate behavior and a story full of holes is not evidence of murder police still can't find a murder weapon or a motive that is until they discover downs a secret diary in it pages and pages of passion and desire for a man named Nick a married man and a former coworker at the post office she wrote everyday to Nick about Nick he was the love of her life she was desperate to get his attention he didn't want to be a dad to the kids police see a motive she saw the kids as a burden they were in the way and he wasn't going to join her as long as she had the kids the quickest simplest way was to eliminate the children if Downs wanted her children dead she failed even while shooting them at point-blank range Danny and Christy are alive and once out of the hospital are placed with a foster family Danny is too young to tell what happened and Christy severely traumatized and partially paralyzed can't speak therapists spend months easing her toward recovery and a chance to tell the truth we knew that Christy would be a key witness in this trial but she needed to be healthy enough physically and emotionally to be able to take the stand in February 1984 nearly nine months after the shooting downs is finally arrested she's been charged with one count of murder two counts of attempted murder and two counts of assault in the first degree Downes pleads not guilty but as she arrives in court that day she has her own bombshell downs the mother accused of shooting her kids is pregnant again I got pregnant because I miss Christy and I miss Danny and I miss Shirl so much I'm never going to see Sheryl on earth again and I just you can't replace children but you can replace the effect that they give you and they give me love they give me satisfaction to give me stability they give me a reason to live and a reason to be happy and and that's gone they took it from me but children are so easy to conceive didn't have babies so she could love them she had babies so they could love her was it common knowledge who the father was people still don't know who it was but author and rule claims she has spoken to the real father and promised to never reveal his identity for she was carrying mail she picked one of her men on her route and she showed up at his door one evening with whiskey and some marijuana he let her in and she soon took off

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Channel: Missing Kids Rescued Kids 2

Views: 4,761,645

Rating: 4.6868358 out of 5

Keywords: diane downs, becky babcock, my mother was a child killer, missing kids rescued kids, missing kids, small sacrifices, child murder, child homicide, child endagerment, attempted homicide, attempted murder, family violence, family murder, crime, documentary, abducted, abduction, child abducted, family abduction, kidnapped, child kidnapping, family kidnapping, stranger danger, kidnapping kids, diane downs murderer, attempted child murder, child predator, child killer, child abuse

Id: xYQWfHzLGeQ

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Length: 15min 0sec (900 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 26 2016

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