Like "To Catch A Killer" (about John Gacy) and "Karla" (about Karla Homolka), this lengthy television film was not made to simply entertain. Farrah Fawcett's film and television career was largely celluloid trash, but here she turns in a stellar performance alongside her real life lover Ryan O'Neal as the mother who quite cynically murdered one of her young daughters and came within an inch of murdering both the other one and her son.
This eponymous film is based on the book by Ann Rule, a friend and colleague of serial killer Ted Bundy who turned to writing non-fiction crime books after she realised the shocking truth about "The Stranger Beside Me". This book is based in turn on Diane Downs who committed her shocking crimes one dark night in May 1983 and attempted to palm them off on a mysterious stranger. Not mentioned here due to chronology is the testimony of Dan Newby who claimed the real killer was a man named Jim Haynes. Nor the fact that the father of Elizabeth Diane Downs who was accused in court of sexually abusing her as a child, remained a passionate believer in his daughter's innocence. Downs would later recant, but that accusation and her other behaviour reveal her as a clever and quite cynical manipulator of especially men.
A Change Dot Org petition several years ago calling for the release of Downs attracted only 25 supporters, and her appeals have led nowhere. No one but the gullible need have any doubts about her guilt, especially in view of the competent living witness, and that's before we mention the forensic evidence, which was also mentioned in the film, including a mock up of the murder scene that was used in the actual courtroom.
Downs has been compared with Susan Smith, who a decade later murdered her two young sons from a similar motive, but the none-too-bright Smith is not in the same league as this sensuous, highly intelligent sociopath.
This eponymous film is based on the book by Ann Rule, a friend and colleague of serial killer Ted Bundy who turned to writing non-fiction crime books after she realised the shocking truth about "The Stranger Beside Me". This book is based in turn on Diane Downs who committed her shocking crimes one dark night in May 1983 and attempted to palm them off on a mysterious stranger. Not mentioned here due to chronology is the testimony of Dan Newby who claimed the real killer was a man named Jim Haynes. Nor the fact that the father of Elizabeth Diane Downs who was accused in court of sexually abusing her as a child, remained a passionate believer in his daughter's innocence. Downs would later recant, but that accusation and her other behaviour reveal her as a clever and quite cynical manipulator of especially men.
A Change Dot Org petition several years ago calling for the release of Downs attracted only 25 supporters, and her appeals have led nowhere. No one but the gullible need have any doubts about her guilt, especially in view of the competent living witness, and that's before we mention the forensic evidence, which was also mentioned in the film, including a mock up of the murder scene that was used in the actual courtroom.
Downs has been compared with Susan Smith, who a decade later murdered her two young sons from a similar motive, but the none-too-bright Smith is not in the same league as this sensuous, highly intelligent sociopath.