My Mom, Diane Downs’ VIP Wedding Guest - MFM Minisode
A little bonus post just to tide you over. The number of murderinos following me has jumped since I posted this on Instagram and I’ve been planning to get it up here for a while now, so here goes!
My hometown murder (not really my story, more my mom’s) was featured on the My Favorite Murder minisode #123. Listen HERE
“My Mom, Diane Downs’ VIP wedding guest”
If you came to my house and took a look at our bookshelves, they’d probably seem pretty ordinary. On closer inspection, however, you’d notice that dotted about are a number of Ann Rule books, part of my mum’s extensive collection. When I was a kid, I thought it kind of strange that we owned all these books about murder. Little did I know that in a few short years, I would catch the bug and become a die hard fan of a podcast named ‘My Favourite Murder’. Such is life.
In the mid-80s, my mum was living in Oregon and working as a judge’s law clerk. Therefore she was involved in one of the most notorious trials in the state’s history, that of Diane Downs. It was an extremely stressful situation for everyone involved; hearing the prosecution describe how Diane shot her children in cold blood was a harrowing experience. Listening to Christie, Diane’s surviving daughter, testify against her mother after a year spent recovering physically from being shot and suffering a stroke as a result and healing emotionally from the trauma was an experience my mum will never forget. In fact, she describes the trial to this day as an event that really shook her foundations and shaped her as a person.
My mum also went to interview Diane a couple times in prison to gather more information about her relationship with her children. But Diane didn’t want to talk about them - oh no, she was much more focussed on her upcoming fantasy wedding with her pen pal, Randall Woodfield, aka the I-5 Killer - a match made in heaven, no? In Diane’s eyes, my mum had become such a good friend during those few visits that she just HAD to come to the wedding - which in case you didn’t know, didn’t happen (much to my disappointment; can you imagine the stories?!)
I just want to say a little thanks to my mum, who does listen to the podcast, for carefully nurturing my love for many things, but most importantly, true crime. Without that encouragement and possibly even a genetic predisposition for an interest in murder, I probably wouldn’t have come across your podcast, and then I don’t know where I’d be!
Stay sexy and never turn down an invite to a prison wedding.
* Diane Downs is currently imprisoned in Chowchilla, California. She was denied parole in 2010 and will be eligible again in 2020.
Diane, Danny, Christie and Cheryl (source: metro.co.uk)
