The Taconic State Parkway Crash: What's wrong with Aunty Diane?

guys it's bella welcome back to my channel and if you're new here welcome to my channel i hope you're all having an amazing day today so today we're going to be talking about just a really tragic case that happened back in 2009 in new york and it's really weird and confusing so i'm definitely looking forward to hearing your thoughts in the comments down below before we do get into it i just quickly want to thank today's sponsor switchcraft for making this video possible so switchcraft is a graphic novel style mobile game which has tb worthy writing and it basically follows the story of modern day witches you play as this witch bailey who is a freshman at witchcraft academy and her best friend disappeared so basically you have to help her get to the bottom of the mystery of what happened to our friend it's a choose your own adventure story and there are thousands of magical match three levels with switchcraft and the story features a diverse range of over 85 characters and it has these beautiful detailed hand-painted visuals it's super fun and relaxing i love to play it after i finish work to just help switch my mind off from work mode because you know you get really into it you get lost in it and you've got to make all these different decisions so it's really fun and you guys know i'm a fan of true crime obviously and i'm sure you are too if you're here watching a mystery monday and the adventure is a real mystery and it really helps to keep the mind gently active so i like to play even when i'm just taking a break from cleaning or working or whatever so i'm not completely switched off and it helps me not to get in a slump after having a break so if you guys are interested in checking it out i definitely recommend it because it's super fun you can download it for free so i will leave the link for that in the description down below for you to check out and let's go ahead and get into today's case so today we're going to be talking about the taconic state parkway crash basically on the 26th of july in 2009 36 year old diane schuler drove the wrong way down the taconic state parkway in new york and this caused a collision that killed eight people including herself the circumstances behind it are definitely very weird and confusing and there's a lot of different theories behind it so let's talk about it so diane was born on the 13th of november in 1972 in floral park new york to warren hands senior and eileen macau she had four older brothers and when she was nine years old her mum just up and left them it was really hard on her and her family of course but she didn't let it weigh her down she didn't dwell on it she didn't talk about it she didn't even talk about it to her husband her sister-in-law jay said that she didn't speak about it but it did make her want to be there for her own kids and never leave them so she had two kids a daughter named erin and a son named brian and she was married to a man named daniel schuler daniel described her as a perfect wife an outstanding mother she was a hard worker a reliable person and she was trustworthy everyone who knew her said she was you know she wore the pants she was in charge around the house she set the rules and she was very organized and well planned and just always on top of things her kids were well taken care of and she just adored them she loved being a mum and she was a very hands-on mother too she was on the pta she was always signing up for things which all of this her being such a good mom and organized person it's important to the story and it's kind of why this case is such a huge deal so diane and daniel lived in west babylon on long island in new york diane worked in the day as the director of billing and collections at cablevision and daniel worked at night as a security officer for the parks department so they really didn't get to see a lot of each other during the week and diane was the one who took care of the kids the house and everything and so they decided to get away go on a little camping trip where they could bond and unwind and they took their kids erin who was two at the time and brian who was five and they also took their nieces so diane's brother were enhanced they were his kids they had nine-year-old emma seven-year-old alison and five-year-old katie and they took them to the hunter lake campground which is in parksville in new york diane's brother warren and his wife jackie let the girls go on the trip without them because they had gone the previous year they had a great time and jackie she was a great mom she was super protective of her daughters because they were her whole world but as i mentioned they went the previous year i was fine she trusted her in-laws especially considering you know diane was so trustworthy so daniel took their dog and he went up to the campground early so that he could set everything up and diane took aaron and brian to her brother warren's house so that she could pick up her three nieces and also so she could pick up his minivan it was a 2003 ford windstar minivan and warren was just letting her borrow it for the weekend and they all headed up to the campground they had a great weekend you know hiking swimming toasting marshmallows playing on the playground and then on the 26th of july it was time for them to come home and it started off you know just like pretty much any normal day daniel woke up first at around 6 a.m and he started going around cleaning up you know getting ready to go and he worked diane up at around 7am so that they could beat the traffic and they started waking the kids up you know cleaning out the camper van packing their bags and they were ready to go by 9 30 a.m daniel was gonna take their dog home because he had a pickup truck and he was gonna go straight home and diane was also gonna go straight home but she was taking the five kids with her in the minivan that she borrowed from warren on the way back to west babylon diane stopped in liberty at a mcdonald's there at 9 56 a.m and there's security footage of you know the kids eating and playing in the area diane got herself an orange juice and even the worker at mcdonald's said she was behaving totally normally she was having a full conversation with the worker and she just seemed you know completely fine they stayed at macca's until 10 33 am and then they left and then they stopped at a gas station at 10 46 a.m and apparently diane was there asking if they had any pain pills which they didn't have any there's video footage of her there too and again she just seems to be acting completely normally the staff said she was acting just just regular so she leaves the gas station at 10 58 am and she heads south on interstate 86 toward long island and by this point daniel's already home in bed asleep because he's got work that night and this is when things start to get weird so after diane leaves the gas station and she's driving along interstate 86 and 87 police start getting these calls from motorists saying look there's someone in a red minivan who's driving really crazy they're swerving in and out of lanes they're tailgating people they're beeping and flashing people really aggressively then at 11 37 a.m diane's brother warren gets a call from diane's phone but it's from his daughter emma and she basically just says that they're running a little late and he speaks to diane too who confirms what emma said she says there's a little traffic we're running a little late and that was the whole phone call and warren said nothing seemed to miss diane seemed totally fine on the phone and then at 11 45 am a witness said they saw the red minivan pulled over on the side of the road and diane was kind of out of the side of the car she had her hands on her knees she was bent over like she was vomiting and just a few minutes later that same witness said that they saw her again in the red minivan on the interstate driving really erratically at 1208 pm warren's wife jackie called diane and she was basically just asking how many tickets she would need for emma's school show that was coming up soon and they spoke for about two minutes nothing seemed to miss diane was fine everything was fine and then just a little while after this between 12 15 and 12 45 pm diane was seen pulled over to rest stop and she was you know killed over again like she was vomiting and i find this really interesting that people were concerned enough to report this but not concerned enough to go and make sure she was okay and that she was right to be driving the children so then at 12 58 pm diane calls jackie and the call lasts about two and a half minutes before diane either hangs up or the call just drops out whatever it is and jackie said that diane seemed really out of it on this phone call and warren just happened to walk in right as the phone call was ending and he called diane back and the call lasted about eight minutes nobody knows exactly what happened on this call or what was happening in the car at the time but whatever was going on the kids were very clearly upset and frightened for whatever reason it's believed that diane pulled over for this phone call and that she and her niece emma who is also warren's daughter obviously spoke to warren emma was very clearly upset but she kept saying it's okay i'm okay but something is wrong with auntie diane she can't see properly she can't speak properly and emma also told her dad that she could see the signs for sleepy hollow and tarrytown emma then put diane on the phone and diane was telling him that she was feeling really disoriented she couldn't see properly and she was also like not making a lot of sense she kept calling him by her husband's name she kept saying oh we're just having fun we're just playing and he could hear the children crying in the background of the phone call warren told diana stay put and that he was going to come and get her but then diane abruptly hung up the phone and warren tried to call her back multiple times after this but never got an answer because turns out she had actually left her phone on the side of the highway and driven away so warren rushed out of the house and as he did jackie and some of their friends were calling 9-1-1 because at this point they believed that diane was having some sort of medical emergency and then just after 1 30 p.m diane made a right turn from pleasantville road onto the exit ramp for the taconic state parkway and at the end of this exit ramp there were you know big signs that said do not enter in one way i'm sure you've seen them if you've ever seen an exit ramp of a highway so it should have been super obvious that she was going the wrong way but for whatever reason she kept going and she drove south into northbound traffic at 75 miles per hour which is like 120 kilometers an hour the wrong way into other cars that are also going you know like a hundred kilometers an hour within a minute of this happening there were four nine one one calls placed from the highway saying that there was somebody coming towards them going the wrong way on the taconic state parkway she wasn't surviving in or out or anything she was just driving pin straight at 75 miles an hour and apparently she looked totally normal while she was doing this like she had this calm serene look on her face she had her hands at 10 and 2 and she was just driving as if she didn't even recognize that she was on the wrong side of the road but she kept going like this just speeding straight down the wrong way of the highway at between 75 and 85 miles per hour for 1.7 miles until she finally got in a crash at 1 35 pm at the time of the crash diane was driving 85 miles per hour which is almost 140 kilometers an hour and she crashed head on into a 2004 chevrolet trailblazer and the trailblazer then hit another car which was a 2002 chevrolet tracker it was a huge crash like it was really brutal and tragic the cars were totally mangled and it was actually described as westchester county's deadliest crash in 75 years after impact the minivan rolled over and went down an embankment and it landed in the grass on the median strip and actually set fire and there were a ton of witnesses who rushed to try and pull diane and the kids out of the car and it didn't even seem like any of the kids had been wearing seat belts or anything because they were all kind of piled on top of each other 36 year old diane her two-year-old daughter erin and her three nieces nine-year-old emma seven-year-old ellison and a five-year-old katie all died in the crash one of her nieces didn't die immediately she was taken to the hospital and actually died later that day five-year-old brian actually wasn't found straight away because he was found trapped under the bodies of the other four children he was immediately rushed to the hospital and he did end up surviving but he suffered two broken legs a broken arm severe head trauma and he also developed ocular motor nerve palsy which affects the movements of his right eye and he had to stay in the hospital for a few months until october and daniel also put an eye patch over his eye to try and help strengthen it so it was really really lucky that he survived in the trailblazer that diane drove headfirst into three men died 81 year old michael bastardi his 49 year old son guy bastardi their 74 year old friend daniel longo the three of them were on their way to a family member's house for a pasta dinner but unfortunately they never made it luckily though the two people in the chevy trucker survived with only minor injuries obviously the families of everyone involved were just devastated it was a really really tragic accident and so many lives were lost so quickly the memorial for diane and the four children was held on the 30th of july and so many people attended warren spoke super highly of his sister and said she was an amazing mom an incredible aunt and a wonderful wife and a great sister and everyone there just spoke really highly of her but a lot of people in the public and the media were speculating that diane might have been drunk or on drugs or something because who just randomly speeds 80 miles an hour down the wrong way of a highway i mean a lot of the time in these cases that is exactly what happened and that's where a lot of people's minds go to and then when investigators searched the car they actually found a broken bottle of vodka on the driver's side floor and then on the 4th of august the toxicology report came back and turns out she had a blood alcohol level of 0.19 and for reference the new york legal limit is 0.08 so she was more than twice the legal limit she had more than 10 drinks worth of alcohol in her system and more alcohol in her stomach that hadn't even been digested yet and she also had high amounts of thc in her system which indicated that she had smoked weed 15 minutes to an hour before the crash took place four days after this came out on the 8th of august daniel and his attorney did a press conference and they basically denied that diane drank or did any drugs that weekend and then he ended up changing his story and basically said that she never drank to access and she definitely hadn't drank the day that she was driving people speculated that maybe she was a bit of a drinker and her husband just didn't know about it but daniel was like look i've been with her 13 years there's just no way and he was very firm about the fact that she wasn't drunk and i mean to be fair it was 9 30 a.m so it would be so bizarre for this like pta mum of the year to smoke a joint and get [ __ ] up on like 10 drinks before driving five kids home and she left the campground before daniel like he followed her out of the campground so i don't even know how she would have snuck in a sneaky 10 shots without him noticing and the people at the campground said that they spoke to her that morning she seemed normal she seemed sober the person at mcdonald's said they had like a full conversation with her and she seemed normal she seemed sober and same with the gas station workers i mean unless she did it like at the gas station or while driving or something just like there wasn't any time for her to have done it without someone noticing but daniel was convinced there was another explanation and he was getting really upset because he didn't like that the media and the public were kind of betraying her to be maybe an alcoholic maybe not such a great mum and he really just didn't want her name to be tarnished he did interviews on larry king and oprah and when larry king asked him about the broken vodka bottle he was like oh you know we normally keep some vodka in the camper so that when we go camping we can sit by the fire and just have a drink or two but he was surprised about the fact that it was just out there on the floor of the minivan but he was sure like he was absolutely certain and so sad that she was not drunk and she wouldn't have drank before driving the kids both daniel and his lawyer suggested that diane may have had a stroke or diabetes or that a stroke caused her to think that the bottle of vodka was actually water and that's why she drank it i mean that's just crazy to me that level of denial i completely understand not wanting to believe something like that about your wife but why would she take a bag out of the camper take the vodka out of the bag and specifically put it by itself on the floor of her minivan if she didn't plan on drinking it they also suggested that diane could have had some sort of mouth abscess or tooth abscess that turned into a brain infection as we know diane did go to the gas station looking for painkillers but they didn't have any and it was speculated that maybe these painkillers were for some sort of toothache one of diane's best friends actually said that she would always rub this one spot on like her cheek or her jaw and she did this especially in the week leading up to the crash and diane also hated having dental work done like she was afraid of the dentist and having dental work done and she had gone to the dentist a couple of times in the years leading up to her death and in her dental records there was actually one time when she was meant to have an extraction but she decided not to go ahead with the procedure i mean it's super rare for a tooth abscess or a mouth abscess to turn into a brain infection and her autopsy also didn't show any tooth abscess or anything to do with her brain that was similar to that so you know there's that but the autopsy also found that there was no damage to like any of her organs or her liver or anything like that which is something that you would expect to see if she was like a raging alcoholic like everyone was speculating that she was and they also didn't find anything to suggest that she had had a stroke or an aneurysm like daniel and his attorney were trying to suggest everyone in her family including her husband daniel were very adamant about the fact that she wasn't a drinker she very rarely drank alcohol she didn't do any drugs although daniel did come out and say that she occasionally smoked weed and then one of her sister-in-laws came out and said that she actually smoked weed every single night to help with insomnia and like joint pain and that sort of thing i mean i have to say though i watched the hbo documentary on this case right and there's this one part in the documentary where one of diane's family members is smoking a cigarette and she says nobody in my family knows that i smoke and then right after that she says there's no way that diane could be a drinker while she literally just smoked and said that nobody in her family knows that she smokes and on top of that daniel worked nights diane worked during the day so there was a lot of time that they weren't together where she could have been drinking and he wouldn't have known i also read that daniel's mother referred to him as diane's third child which isn't that just what every woman wants in a relationship no but seriously it's pretty lame she had to look after her kids look after the house she had to work at her job and she also had to look after her husband and on top of that her sister-in-law jay said that daniel actually never wanted kids and that diane was supposed to do all of that kind of stuff and even after diane passed and daniel had to look after their son brian i guess diane's sister-in-law jay was helping out and even after a couple of weeks she was super overwhelmed by him and how little he actually does i mean maybe she drank because she was just super overwhelmed by it all having to look after her kids and her third kid daniel having a look after the house having a work being super mum pta mum of the year or i mean maybe she drank because of her chronic toothache and she was trying to self-medicate or maybe she didn't really drink maybe because they didn't have the painkillers she did decide to have a drink to try and self-medicate the toothache as i mentioned earlier she did get an orange juice from mcdonald's which i don't know about you guys but i've definitely had a few vodka oranges in my day so i mean not at 9 30 a.m but i have had a mimosa which is orange juice and champagne point is that vodka and orange juice is a very popular you know drink mix and not to mention functioning alcoholics are a thing i've read so many stories of people who would just get smashed all day long but they would still go to work they would still look after their kids and nobody knew and daniel got a lot of backlash for his denial friends family and the public they were all pissed and people who were directly affected by the accident just wanted closure and they felt like they couldn't get that while daniel was still going on and airing out his excuses he and diane's sister-in-law jay actually went as far as to hire a private investigator for 30 000 us dollars because they wanted to find some other reason that this could have happened and they even wanted to exhume her body to test her hair because your hair is what holds signs of drug use the longest so they were going to exhume her body and hbo was going to pay daniel a ton of money to be able to film the process like a hundred thousand dollars u.s dollars that was gonna go into a trust for brian but for whatever reason that didn't end up happening in june of 2010 the new york state police released their final report on the incident after 11 months of analysis and it basically just said the same thing as i've been saying that she was highly intoxicated and had trace amounts of thc in her system and the medical examiner on the case actually ruled the crash a homicide because he said diane's driving was reckless and there was no seat belts on any of the kids and that is ultimately what killed the victims i mean personally i don't think it was like a suicide mission or anything or a murder mission or anything but i do think that maybe she thought she could hold her alcohol and she just couldn't in august of 2010 the da came out and announced that they wouldn't be pressing charges against anyone because diane had passed and she was pretty much the only one that could be held responsible and the bastardi family were not happy about this because they just felt like there was no justice for the three men who had died and they felt like daniel was just not allowing them to move on this is what daniel longo's brother joseph said he said i want daniel schuler to know that he keeps inflicting more pain on all concerned once again by going to the media to try and paint a picture of a perfect wife and mother berstadi's daughter margaret nicotina also said it makes me angry that he keeps denying it every time he does he brings it back for us i just wish that he would admit that she was drunk maybe if he knows what happened that morning if they argued or anything that would be the truth he wants the truth so do we so they ended up filing a lawsuit against daniel and warren as well who also lost three of his children in this crash by this point daniel was obviously still refusing to accept that diane was drunk or high at the time of the crash so in july of 2011 jackie hance who lost her three daughters in the accident filed a lawsuit against her brother-in-law daniel and the suit claimed that her daughter suffered from terror fear of impending death extreme horror fright and mental anguish which completely agree i just feel like at this point if you want to believe to yourself that she didn't drink or she wasn't high that's fine but why do you need to keep going in the media bringing it back up for everyone you know it's just a shitty thing to do it just seems unnecessary and then on the 26th of july 2011 so on the second anniversary of the crash daniel went ahead and sued the state of new york for not keeping the road safe and he also sued warren hans his brother-in-law the person who lost three of his daughters in the crash because it was his minivan which is just a shitty thing to do obviously it was a really tense time for everybody but by july of 2014 all of the lawsuits had either been settled or dropped warren and jackie hands who lost all three of their daughters in this accident started the hands family foundation to honor the lives of their daughters emma allison and katie and the foundation runs self-esteem programs for young girls and also in some happier news for the family they welcomed another daughter on the 11th of october in 2011 named casey rose and warren said it gives you meaning again when you lose everything and then you get something to hold on to there's really no way to be able to describe it so that is everything i would love to hear your thoughts on the case what do you guys think i mean personally i think it's as simple as diane was drunk and high and for whatever reason her husband just does not want to believe it there are obviously the other theories like she had a tooth ache that created a brain injury she had a stroke or an aneurysm and there's also been some speculation that she might have had auto brewery syndrome which personally i already knew about because of grey's anatomy actually as i was researching this case that popped into my head before i even knew it was a theory basically people with auto brewery syndrome their bodies turn carbs into alcohol so people that have this syndrome register abnormally high blood alcohol levels even when they don't drink so maybe she had some carbs at macca's and it made her feel drunk i don't know i don't think that's likely though for like a bunch of reasons but two of which are one surely it would have happened before if she had that syndrome and two she had a bottle of vodka in her car so yeah i definitely think she drank i just think the real question is why did she and her husband daniel get into some sort of fight that morning or the night before and she was just drinking to take the edge off was she trying to self-medicate her toothache was it a suicide did she hate her husband and her brother i mean i did see a little bit of speculation about that online i can see her hating her husband but i don't see why that would transfer over to her brother was she simply just a functioning alcoholic i mean maybe she had enough of being this super mom pta mum who had to look after the house look after her kids look after her husband work a full-time job i don't know though because there was no damage to her organs or her liver which you would normally see with an alcoholic at least a little damage to the liver maybe it was just a new thing that she had started recently i don't know but like i said i would love to hear your thoughts in the comments down below i'm so interested to see what you guys think but that's all for me today i hope you guys have a wonderful rest of your day and hopefully i will see you in my next video bye guys

Channel: Bella Fiori

Views: 498,313

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Id: FcNoGCISwjU

Length: 27min 27sec (1647 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 09 2021