Farrah Fawcett plays Diane Downs, a postal worker who delivered mail to the school where my mother worked.
Downs' story was that she was that she had recently moved to Oregon. She was driving with her three children on a country road at night, "sightseeing" in the dark. A shaggy haired stranger waved her down. She naturally stopped and got out of the car. He demanded the keys. She refused so he leaned into the car and shot the three children. She still refused so he shot her in the arm. So she pretended to throw the keys away and having thus distracted him, she jumped in the car and drove away.
Downs claims to have driven as fast as she could to the hospital. Other
drivers said she was blocking traffic, going around ten miles per hour.
When they reached the hospital, her seven-year-old daughter was dead. Her 3-year-old son was left paraplegic and her 8-year-old daughter suffered a stroke.
Downs had been stalking a married man played by Ryan O'Neal. She offered to murder his wife so they could be together. He didn't want to be a father to her children which was her reason for trying to murder them.
I found the scenes of the children in the emergency room and later the daughter testifying in court difficult to watch.
There were scenes of Diane Downs at home with her parents. The scenes added nothing and had no basis in fact.
A friend and I attended the trial one morning. I saw some of the testimony that was dramatized in the miniseries. The defense attorney asked a detective if he had planted any of the evidence. The detective was indignant but the actor in the mini-series overplayed it. Downs' father later self-published a book his daughter wrote in prison. She characterized the detective's response very differently, that he hung his head in shame and mumbled his denial.
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