Parents Who Kill--Shocking True Stories of the World's Most Evil Parents by Carol Anne Davis Page B

for them to die. Eventually another vehicle went past and she realised that she’d have to drive on or it would look suspicious. Driving slowly to the local hospital, she parked and screamed for thenurses, telling them that a bushy-haired stranger had carjacked her, shot her in the arm, shot the children then fled.
    Medics found that Daniel, the toddler, had been shot once, the near-contact wound creating holes in his chest and back. He was crying weakly. Christie, who was close to death, had been shot twice in the chest and once through the right thumb, presumably as she put up her hands to defend herself. She died on the operating table but surgeons managed to revive her. Shortly afterwards, she had a stroke which left her paralysed. Cheryl, who had been shot twice in the back at point blank range, was dead on arrival and couldn’t be revived. Medics were surprised to find that the wounds had clotted, suggesting that the shootings had occurred much earlier than the children’s mother was suggesting and negating her claim that she’d driven swiftly to the hospital. Her own wound, to her left forearm, had broken the limb, but she’d been able to drive with her right hand.
    Detectives arrived, by which time Diane had been told that one of the children (Cheryl) was dying. She told them not to revive Christie if she too died in case she’d sustained brain damage. She agreed to go with them to show exactly where the carjacking took place. As they passed her vehicle – a red Nissan Pulsar MX which she’d bought three months before – she said that she hoped it was okay, that it didn’t have bullet holes in it. She remained equally impassive as she showed them where the shootings had taken place. Meanwhile, back at Springfield hospital, her father was equally unemotional as he identified his dead granddaughter, though several of the nurses were in tears.
    Diane told detectives that the stranger had stood in the centre of the lane and that she’d stopped the car to help him. He’d leaned in and shot all four of them, after which she’d pretended to throw her car keys into the lane and he’dstumbled after them. When his back was turned, she’d driven off at speed.
    She phoned Dave the following day and told him what had happened and said that she loved him. He expressed his sympathy for the tragedy but warned her to stay away.
REALITY CHECK
    Meanwhile, nurses noted that Christie exhibited severe anxiety when she was visited by her mother, her heart rate accelerating from 104 to 147. She appeared terrified of Diane.
    Detectives were also concerned. The children, curled up in the backseat – and, in Cheryl’s case, sleeping under a sweater on the floor beside the front passenger seat – hadn’t been visible from the passenger window, so how had the stranger noticed them? Why hadn’t Diane mentioned that she had access to a .22 Ruger, the murder weapon? Why had that weapon, which her husband confirmed she had borrowed, suddenly disappeared?
    They were also aware that Diane’s wound could easily have been self-inflicted, and noticed that she had yet to shed a tear for her dead child and critically injured children. As one detective put it: ‘Mother’s attitude totally fucked.’ She told the authorities that ‘Cheryl was in heaven’ and ‘was probably an angel.’ They were convinced that Christie could name the killer, but the little girl couldn’t speak and was still too weak to write.
    Increasingly convinced that Diane Downs had shot all three of her children, and that Christie would ultimately be able to identify her as the killer, the police made sure that Christie always had an armed guard and was never left alone with her mother. Meanwhile she and her brother Danny, who would never walk again, were transferred into the care of the local authorities.
    Police tried to gently question Danny about the shootings,but his eyes filled with tears and he whispered that he wasn’t allowed to talk about it. Later,