Small Sacrifices (69 page)

For the moment.

Diane predicts that the day will come when she will be reunited *' with her living children. She plans to put an ad in the paper when

Christie is eighteen, urging her to come home. She expects to be out of prison by then. She laments that the presents, poems, pictures, and letters she sends the children are returned unopened.

Diane's announcement that she intends to collaborate on a book to tell "the real story" has sparked a special bill in the Oregon legislature to prevent Diane (and other convicted felons) from profiting by writing about her crimes.

Above everything else, Diane yearns to be pregnant again. Her worst fear is that "female problems" may force her to have a hysterectomy. There is a deeper sense of urgency in her drive to conceive. Aware of her propensity for seeking out and seducing genetically superior males, prison authorities keep a close eye on Diane.

She considers herself "married" to a prisoner named Frank, although the prison "marriage" is hampered because Diane cannot actually be with her "husband," and because she was sent to the "hole" (isolation) for three months.

H Diane wrote to another male prisoner, asking him to correspond with a female prisoner who Diane considered a rival for

Frank's affection:

... it's obvious this girl is either bored, or has a death wish--and since I sorta wanta stay outta seg, I'll choose to believe she's bored. I can't think of any other reason she wants to hit on my "husband" ... I am asking if you would like a pen pal that specializes in the filthiest smut around? Of course you would. You're a healthy, red-blooded American convict . . . Please don't ever tell Frank I wrote to you and H turned you on to this 'lil morsel, cuz he'd be mad at me for s "manipulating" this whole thing--when, in fact--I have no

desire to manipulate anything . . .

... I love Frank with all I have . . . this man really has my heart . . .

Diane has acclimated.

I

Still, if she could only have a fetus growing in her womb again, her spirits would soar. Children represent an almost mythic--and elusive--goal to Diane. "Kids are neat--innocent, young, pure. Grown-ups are tainted somehow."

Locked away in prison, perhaps forever, Diane is still seeking pure love, long after she destroyed the purest love she ever had.

* * *

484 ANN RULE

The children Diane sought to destroy found themselves, at long last, surrounded by love. In September, 1985, all legal connections between Danny and Christie and their "natural mother" were severed. They would spend three healing years in the Slavens'

home.

Evelyn Slaven had taped all of Diane's appearances on television, and she showed Christie selected segments long after the trial was over. Christie watched, becoming more and more indignant.

"She's lying," Christie cried. "She's telling great big lies. Are people going to believe her instead of me?"

Evelyn, pleased that Christie finally felt free to express anger, assured her, "You're the one they believed, Christie." As much as she trusts Evelyn, Christie never called her

"Mother." "I doubt that Christie will ever again want to call anyone 'Mom,' 'Mommy,' or 'Mother,' " Evelyn Slaven says.

"Those, sadly, are bad words, frightening words to her. 'Moms'

hurt you."

Christie moved up to middle-school, starting seventh grade in the fall of 1986. Her right arm is still partially paralyzed; since she is left-handed, she doesn't exercise it enough. She works very hard to do as well in school as she did before her stroke. She once got straight A's; she is back up to B pluses. The keen intelligence is there, but she must move through an "extra loop" before she answers questions. If she feels secure, she will say nothing until the answer comes. If she feels pressured, she may give a wrong answer first--to buy time. But she always knows the answers. Danny remains paralyzed from the chest down. He usually

crawls using his hands, his palms turned outward, his legs dragging behind. He can navigate upright in a rig called a "podium" which holds him rigid below the waist. By wriggling his shoulders, he moves with amazing speed.

On a trampoline or in a pool, Danny seems the bubbly, fully coordinated child he was once. Among the pictures the children sent to Judge Gregory Foote the Halloween after the trial, there are several of Danny laughing on a trampoline.

Ray Slaven had "a really good feeling the first year that there was a possibility he might be able to recoup some of his losses. t. He was so determined--but it didn't happen. He doesn't really concentrate anymore on things he can't do; he works on what he can do. Like turning on a light. When he got to that point, that was a big deal! He's real spirited."

For Christie and Danny, Diane became, gradually, only someone they knew once. Evelyn Slaven noted that they continued to feel responsible for Diane for a long time.

K,' "I told them that she was OK. That she was up in prison, and probably she'd get to go to school soon--that they didn't have to worry about her any longer--because she had her own life. They were relieved. It took Christie, of course, the longest to let go.

"Finally, they didn't ask about her anymore at all." I ;

Christie and Danny were quickly "mainstreamed" at school. Danny lasted only three days in kindergarten before it was clear he was beyond it. He was skipped into the grades. He loves to study, and is especially fascinated with calculators, computers--anything having to do with numbers. At six, he cannot yet understand all the ramifications of what has happened to him.

Christie volunteered to be manager of the volleyball team, and, last spring, of softball. She is still a bit uncoordinated to i actually play, but with supportive peers, her shyness is thawing.

e She finished the last school year as "first chair" in the school band, playing the French horn.

H Christie and Danny spent many, many weekends with Joanne j and Fred Hugi--quiet pleasant times, according to Hugi, "doing things that are fun." Christie and Danny had become a part of Fred Hugi's very private life; the bonds formed on the morning of May ^ 20, 1983, were irrevocable. Together with the Slavens, Fred and

; Joanne Hugi are responsible for helping Christie and Danny un|

derstand what it is like to be loved, to be children.

Christie and Danny see no one they had known before May

19, 1983. They have literally stepped into a new, kinder world. After the verdict, returning with Sue Staffel from a visit with the children at the Slavens, his car window open, Hugi recalls tensing when he heard the raucous strains of "Hungry Like the Wolf

| coming from a tape deck in another car. His jaw set and his * stomach roiled . . . and then he relaxed and smiled at Staffel:

"They're playing our song."

The "she-wolf' was locked up. The kids were safe. The song no longer represented tragedy to Hugi; it represented justice. Even so, Fred Hugi remembers that Diane came within a hair's breadth of being acquitted. If all the children had died, and if Diane had not had the rifle on her closet shelf with the identical cartridges in it, he believes she would have walked away . . . free. 486 ANN RULE

* * *

Amy Elizabeth has been adopted.

Steve Downs still lives in Chandler. He regrets that the State of Oregon's recently restored death penalty is not retroactive.

"There are not too many people who have done worse than she has. I'm no angel, but she really needs to be eliminated from off this earth."

He does not see or write to his children.

Doug Welch and Kurt Wuest are still with the Lane County Sheriffs Office, again as detectives. Their career fortunes remain dependent on the voters' yeas or nays on budget levies.

Dick Tracy has retired and is now a private investigator. Paul Alton has retired.

Louis Hince has retired.

Gregory Foote retains his judgeship.

District Attorney Pat Horton is now in private law practice. Ray Broderick continues to work as an investigator for the Lane County District Attorney's Office. Across his office from the wall that holds his ever-changing collection of cartoons, there is his poignant sketch of Cheryl Downs, and next to it—a frame containing twelve scraps of lined yellow paper, smoothed out where they were crumpled. The jurors' final twelve "Guilties." Pierce Brooks spent almost a year at FBI headquarters in Quantico, Virginia, as Project Director for VI-CAP where he set up the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program to track and trap serial murderers—the realization for Brooks of a longtime dream. Paula Krogdahl passed the Oregon Bar Exam; she is married, working as an Assistant District Attorney in Salem, Oregon; she is a new mother.

Lew Lewiston continues to carry the mail in Chandler; he is happily married to Nora. Together, they burned all of Diane's letters, pictures, cards, and poems. They have bought a new home. Lew no longer drinks or smokes.

Willadene Frederickson visits her daughter in prison, faithfully each week. Wes Frederickson is still the Postmaster of Springfield, Oregon.

On a time continuum, Diane's case is about halfway through the t. court system. Fred Hugi will not completely relax until the Oregon Supreme Court affirms her sentence. His estimated date for that is probably 1989 or 1990.

* * *

On Palomino Street in Chandler, nobody remembers Diane Downs's name. Her charred trailer has been repaired and cleaned up; the new owners cut away the bougainvillea she planted and put in stone-cast burros. In Oregon, the Little Mohawk is clear and cold still, the white painted stripes across the road have worn away, the fields of white flowers are back. It has all healed over. Only Cheryl is gone forever.

"I'm just a person," Diane Downs once said fervently to Dana Tims of The Oregonian. "Just a little girl. I'm not different from anybody else. People think the system has a lot of flaws as far as letting people out too soon. They don't. They lock these people away for a long, long time--especially if they are in for murder.

"Chances are you will never get out ..."

Christie remembers Diane telling her in the hospital that she must not tell. But, when it was all over, when her mother had been kept away from her for such a long time that she finally began to feel a little bit safe, Christie asked a question about something she couldn't understand. One question she needed an answer for. H She asked it often.

"Why didn't anybody hear us screaming? We were screaming and screaming. Why didn't anybody hear us--?"

Someone did. The cycle is over.

Christie and Danny share a home today with two people who love them and are committed to giving them a serene and happy future. Since the summer of 1986, they have lived with Joanne and Fred Hugi.