Child Killer Denied Parole for Fourth Time |
In December 2025, a parole board denied Diane Downs's release from prison for the fourth time. Downs, a single parent convicted in 1984 in Eugene, Oregon, killed her 7-year-old daughter and attempted to kill her two other children in May 1983. Downs, then a U.S. Postal worker, was sentenced to life in prison and had previously been denied parole in 2020, 2010, and 2008.
Her case is considered an atypical child killer by FBI profilers and criminal justice experts, primarily because of the calculated nature of her crimes, her lack of remorse, and her specific personality disorders. The case is often cited as a prominent example of filicide. Retired FBI agent and criminal profiler Candice DeLong has examined the case and highlighted what drove Downs to commit such a horrible crime. Downs was not motivated by typical factors such as acute psychosis or the desire to end her children's suffering, DeLong wrote, but rather by a combination of narcissism and a desire to be with a man who did not want children.
The Downs case has frequently been analyzed in criminological studies as a classic example of filicide, specifically a mother killing her children for her own romantic or personal gain. Her case has also been used in academic settings and in true-crime media for broader psychological analyses of topics such as maternal filicide, female psychopathy, and the behavior of deceptive individuals.
Downs shot her children to remove obstacles to her relationship with a married man, who told her he was not interested in being a father. This calculated and self-serving motive, essentially viewing her children as disposable, deviates from some more common profiles of maternal filicide often linked to mental illness or