Some crimes are so heartbreaking or shocking that they change laws, change society, or even

earn the label, Crime of the Century.

But the stories that made headlines in decades past aren't necessarily remembered today.

I'm Amber Hunt, a journalist, an author, and in each episode of this show,

I'll examine a case that's maybe lesser known today, but was huge when it happened.

This is Crimes of the Centuries.

Thank you. This is Crimes at the Centuries. The story that Diane Downs told on the night of May 19, 1983, never varied much in the years to come.

There'd be a detail or two that she would change,

but she would blame that on meds, fatigue, dreams, or other people's misunderstandings. But one key thing never changed. Every time she spoke of the sequence of events that took place on a dark, rural Oregon road that late spring evening,

she always gave herself first billing in the starring role of victim.

And she would talk and talk and talk and talk.

One detective called it verbal vomit about what happened while remaining

unemotional and behaviorally speaking, a bit peculiar, even a little self-amused, smiling at the

wrong times. That would arouse suspicion about her story almost from the get-go. The cops saw it, the doctors and nurses

saw it, and soon enough, when her family called a press conference to tell her side of what happened,

almost everyone else saw it too. She was a woman who had, she said, been approached by a stranger

when she stopped her car in unfamiliar surroundings.

That man, he had bushy hair but no discernible accent, had for no clear reason,

proceeded to shoot her and her three children. One child died almost instantly. The other two

would be grievously injured while their brave mother sustained a single gunshot wound to her left forearm.

She had struggled with a man, she said. He had wanted her car.

But she pretended to throw the keys into the woods, thus ensuring her own ability to get back into the car and drive away.

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