Diane Downs: Hungry Like the Wolf
By: Delani R. Bartlette
Tags: True Crime, Crime, Murder, 80s, History

Meanwhile, investigators digging into Downs’ background revealed some troubling patterns. She was born Elizabeth Diane Frederickson on Aug. 7, 1955, in Phoenix, Arizona. As a teenager, she rebelled against her parents’ conservative Baptist upbringing and began going by her middle name, Diane. At 14, against her parents’ wishes, she got into a relationship with 16-year-old Steven Downs, who lived across the street.

After high school, Steven joined the Navy and Diane attended Pacific Coast Baptist Bible College. After only one year, she was expelled for promiscuity and went back to live with her parents. Nonetheless, the two continued their long-distance relationship until November 1973, when Steven came home from the Navy. Diane ran away from home and the two were married.

The marriage was rocky from the start. They fought about money and Steven’s suspicions that Diane was cheating on him. Diane often left Steven and went back to her parents, but they would always reconcile.

In 1974, despite the problems in their marriage, they had their first child, Christie. Diane stated that she didn’t consult Steven about getting pregnant, she just did it. A year later, she gave birth to their second child, Cheryl. According to Steven, she was “the only woman I know who gets pregnant to cheer herself up.” But as much as she enjoyed pregnancy, she didn’t seem to enjoy actually raising children. “She treated the kids like crap,” he said.

At this point, Steven decided he didn’t want any more children, and, probably feeling he couldn’t trust Diane to continue using birth control, he had a vasectomy. Diane got pregnant again anyway, but terminated it.

In 1978 they moved to Mesa, Arizona. There, Diane engaged in multiple affairs with her coworkers and became pregnant yet again. This time she carried the child to term, and in December 1979, Stephen Daniel (“Danny”) was born. Steven accepted Danny, even though he knew he was not his father.

But less than a year later, Steven and Diane divorced.

Diane spent the next few years bouncing from man to man, moving in with one after another, and occasionally trying to reconcile with Steven.

In order to support herself, she tried to become a surrogate mother but failed two separate psychiatric exams — one of which indicated that she was psychotic. She found this extremely funny and would often brag to friends about it.

In 1981, she finally got a full-time job as a postal carrier in Arizona. While she was at work, she would usually send the children to stay with various family members. But the neighbors voiced their concerns about the kids’ well-being when they were with their mother. They said the children were often hungry and would beg for food; in cold weather, they wouldn’t have coats or appropriate shoes. They said if Diane couldn’t find a sitter, she would leave 6-year-old Christie alone in charge of the children. One neighbor said that Cheryl had told her that she was afraid of her mother.

Despite this, later that year, she was finally accepted into a surrogate program where she earned $10,000 for carrying a child and surrendering it to adoptive parents.

It was also during this time that Diane met and fell in love with her coworker Robert (“Nick”) Knickerbocker.