I have been a fan of Farrah Fawcett ever since I first saw her performance in "The Burning Bed." She no doubt plays just as good in this film. I was sad when she died.I'm going to read the book that this movie is based on. Diane Downs was an eccentric, enigmatic, cold-hearted selfish person who would stop at nothing to get what she wanted. She even went to the extreme of killing her one daughter and trying to kill her other daughter and her son just so she could be with a man. Scummy bitch.Of course when she is questioned by the authorities she gives them this bogus story that when her and her kids were driving down a dark road some bushy haired guy flagged them down claiming to need help. She also tells them that he then brandished a gun and fired at them. How ridiculous is that? Nobody would stop on a dark street in the middle of nowhere and let a total stranger get near them like she claimed.Diane got away with it for awhile but she finally got caught, thank God. Also, I'm glad she was sentenced to two life terms plus some other additional time. She deserves it. I'm also happy that the DA in that case adopted her two surviving children. They deserve loving and caring parents, not a scumbag like her.

This is a film based on a story that defies belief that someone, especially a mother, could be so cruel. Based on a true story that occurred in 1983, a wounded Diane Downs claims that she and her children were attacked by an armed man leaving her eight-year-old daughter in a coma, her three-year-old son paralysed and her five-year-old daughter dead. But DA Frank Joziak and Detective Doug Welch aren't convince and build evidence that proves the person who shot the children was Diane herself.The actors in this film all give great effort in bringing this shocking story to life. Farrah Fawcett is excellent as the pathological liar that is Diane Downs, portraying the role as a woman almost bored with motherhood. John Shea's Joziak was nicely depicted with a sense of warmth, determination and anger for what he knows Downs did while a young Emily Perkins gives a strong performance as the deeply traumatised Karen Downs, the eight-year-old who awakens from a coma with the knowledge of what her mother did.This film is fascinating on a level that will shock and disgust the viewers as it is reveals just how insidious and self-obsessed Diane Downs is, how she tries to lie her way out of the court case and the reasons for why a mother would commit a monstrous crime upon her own small children. The story is sickening but it is one that should be told, if only to emphasis to people why Downs should never be allowed to be free.

After playing TV-movie victims for years, Farrah Fawcett is terrifically good (almost surprisingly so) cast as real-life child-killer Diane Downs, who tried to convince the police she and her kids were victims one night of a car-jacker with a gun. One is tempted to go on and on about Fawcett's multi-layered portrayal of a sociopath, yet this is a long movie--four hours with commercials--and Farrah has the burden of it resting on her performance (she carries it off with gusto). Ryan O'Neal is very strong, too, playing the lover who doesn't return her affections. A sad, violent story, but told with an intense, focused energy which makes it completely absorbing and ultimately moving. Farrah does Emmy-worthy work.

Here's TV doing true crime the way it should be done--slowly unfolding plot through character, threading the cops and perps stories together, good courtroom drama--it's spellbinding. Farrah Fawcett is exceptional as Diane Downs, the woman who manages to kill one out of three kids. The two surviving kids are also stand-outs, especially the small daughter who must choose whether or not to testify against the monstrously narcissistic Downs. John Shea is also good as the D.A. A must-see for crime buffs.