Elizabeth Diane Downs

Elizabeth Diane Frederickson Downs is an American convicted murderer. Diane Downs shot her three children, killing one, and then told police a stranger had attempted to carjack her and shot the children. After her conviction in 1984, she was sentenced to life in prison.

Downs briefly escaped in 1987 and was re-captured. She is the subject of a book by Ann Rule and a made for TV movie under the same name, called Small Sacrifices. She was denied parole in December 2008.

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The trial captured the imagination of the American public who had always wondered what had happened to the child she was carrying at the time of her trial.

When Downs was brought to trial, in 1984, she was pregnant with another child, and gave birth to a baby girl 10 days before her sentencing.The girl, Rebecca Babcock, was adopted. She found out at age 16, according to ABC, that Downs was her birth mother.

Rebecca Babcock  grew up with her adopted parents just 100 miles away from her biological mother. Her story became public just days before on ABC. Babcock always knew that she had been adopted, but was shocked to learn that she was the daughter of a convicted murderer.