Adopted girl finds out mother is murderer

27 years ago this week, Diane Downs said a bushy-haired stranger shot her and her three kids, killing one of them. The shooting occurred about 90 minutes from here, and I still remember the terror that swept the state. Such a horror. I also remember looking at the composite drawing and thinking about the words "bushy-haired stranger" and feeling a little bit of doubt.

She was ultimately charged with the shootings. The motive was thought to be a new boyfriend who didn't want kids. At the trial, Christie Ann Downs, who was 8 at the time of the shooting, and who suffered injuries that affected one arm and her speech, testified that her mother shot her and her siblings. Cheryl Lynn Downs, 7, was killed. Three-year-old Stephen Downs was paralyzed from the waist down. In an odd twist, Christie Ann and Stephen were adopted by the prosecutor.

Ann Rule wrote a book about it called Small Sacrifices: A True Story of Passion and Murder (Signet).

Downs was pregnant at the time of her sentencing, and gave birth to a girl a few days later. Now Glamour magazine has the story of the girl Downs was pregnant with - Rebecca Babcock. "Rebecca Babcock always knew she was adopted, but at 16 she was rocked by the discovery that her birth mother, Diane Downs, was a murderer, convicted of shooting her own children."

The story is co-written by Eric Mason. The article says he is now a PI, but used to be a TV reporter. Eric interviewed me - twice! - about my books. It's a small world.

Read more about Rebecca here. While she is seeking a co-writer for her life story, I think it would be a great starting point for a novel.

Look what I found!

This past week, I have seen the strangest assortment of stuff while I've been running:
- a dead mole
- 2 dead rats (I'm starting to worry about bubonic plague)
- 2 pairs of women's panties (in different locations)
- in someone's garage, a Christmas stocking hanging next to a (presumably model) human skull
- amazingly beautiful flowers
- and this! an actual library checkout card! (for May Bird Among the Stars: Book Two)



I didn't know they still used library checkout cards. For me, they bring back so many memories. When I was a kid, you could only check out six books at one time, but the librarian wisely decided the rule didn't apply to me. And my first job was at a library, where I often typed out new cards, as well as filed them when books were checked out.

Making new cards was probably a kind of penance for another memory I have of library checkout cards, which used to be made of a thicker card stock than the one I found. When I was a kid, we were pretty poor.

How poor, you ask?

So poor that we got one pair of shoes per school year and knew we needed to make them last. Seeing as how we bought our shoes at Leeds or Kinneys (cheap chains that probably have long since bit the dust), they didn't. I would get holes in the sole of my shoes. And library checkout cards were the perfect thing to put in the bottom.

A commercial for Kinney Shoes: