Читать книгу Parents Who Kill - Shocking True Stories of The World's Most Evil Parents - Carol Anne Davis - Страница 46

Meanwhile, nurses noted that Christie exhibited severe anxiety when she was visited by her mother, her heart rate accelerating from 104 to 147. She appeared terrified of Diane.

Detectives were also concerned. The children, curled up in the backseat – and, in Cheryl’s case, sleeping under a sweater on the floor beside the front passenger seat – hadn’t been visible from the passenger window, so how had the stranger noticed them? Why hadn’t Diane mentioned that she had access to a .22 Ruger, the murder weapon? Why had that weapon, which her husband confirmed she had borrowed, suddenly disappeared?

They were also aware that Diane’s wound could easily have been self-inflicted, and noticed that she had yet to shed a tear for her dead child and critically injured children. As one detective put it: ‘Mother’s attitude totally fucked.’ She told the authorities that ‘Cheryl was in heaven’ and ‘was probably an angel.’ They were convinced that Christie could name the killer, but the little girl couldn’t speak and was still too weak to write.

Increasingly convinced that Diane Downs had shot all three of her children, and that Christie would ultimately be able to identify her as the killer, the police made sure that Christie always had an armed guard and was never left alone with her mother. Meanwhile she and her brother Danny, who would never walk again, were transferred into the care of the local authorities.

Police tried to gently question Danny about the shootings, but his eyes filled with tears and he whispered that he wasn’t allowed to talk about it. Later, he told nurses ‘I can’t stand up – my mummy ran over me with the car.’

Meanwhile, Christie was slowly opening up to the authorities, admitting that her mother had often slapped her and Cheryl across the face and had spanked Danny. Asked who had shot them, she stammered ‘I think… I think Mom.’ She had frequent nightmares, still had great difficulty in speaking and never asked to see her mother. Yet, asked to write down the names of people she loved, Diane topped the list.