Devin White In 1983, American criminal Elizabeth Diane Downs killed her daughter

Devin White In 1983, American criminal Elizabeth Diane Downs killed her daughter and claimed a man stole her car. She then stated that she and her kids were shot by a man she knew didn’t want kids. She wanted her kids to be freed so that she could continue her affair with Mr. Knickerbocker. Her surviving daughter, who was nine years old at the time of the incident, testified that her mother shot her siblings as they sat in their car. Diane Downs is charged with committing Filicide, a crime parents commit when they kill their children. The case against the defendant revolved around her daughter, Christie, who was nine years old during the incident. She said that, during the incident, her mother shot her siblings as they sat in the car. According to experts, Downs has various personality disorders, and she was referred to as a “deviant sociopath” due to these conditions. Multiple factors, such as accidental maltreatment, psychosis, and altruism, can cause Filicide. It’s believed that killing a child is a way to relieve their suffering. A mother’s behavior toward her child is often linked to suicide, and it can be caused by a suicidal mother’s refusal to raise her child in a hostile environment. On the other hand, an acutely psychotic individual may kill their kid due to their lack of knowledge about the reason behind their actions. Neglect or Munchausen syndrome is one of the most common causes of fatal maltreating. In cases of revenge spouse filicide, the victim is forced to suffer. After experiencing both psychotic and altruistic killings, the tension eventually subsides. The expulsion of energy from the body helps parents kill themselves. However, some people who didn’t intend to do so may still attempt suicide. It has been reported that many cases of Filicide are linked to suicide. It’s also believed that fathers may kill their kids due to the fear of suicide, as men are more prone to killing themselves. In the US, the homicide rate for children below five years old has been higher than that of Canada, and despite the increasing number of parents being killed by their kids, the number of victims has remained relatively low. On the flip side, which is a stretch, there is the argument that Diane Down felt the children were in a better place after their deaths, though she did not win; she was the attacker. Given Diane Downs’s childhood past of surviving abuse, perhaps the imagined attacker did her children a favor. In 1997, Buss and Shackelford noted that the evolution of aggression may have been due to the attempt to prevent an affair from happening. This could help minimize the impact of unrelated offspring on the household’s resources. According to Daly and Wilson, children living in homes with a stepfather are up to a hundred times more likely to be injured or killed by their stepfather. The concept of the Cinderella effect is a psychological phenomenon originating from the fairy tale “Cinderella.” It states that stepparents are more likely to abuse their children than their biological parents. In short, because Diane was a divorced parent, the addition of Mr. Knickerboxer, though he had not shown any aggressive behavior toward the children in addition to no request of the kids or him, may have contributed to the added confusion of Diane. The need for affirmation and the delusion of the incident of murder and harm to her children. Cylc, L. (n.d.). View of Classifications and Descriptions of Parents who Commit Filicide. Retrieved March 1, 2023, from https://jche.journals.villanova.edu/index.php/concept/article/view/256/220Links to an external site. DeLisi, M., Schwartz, S., & Klein, E. (2020). Criminal psychology (2nd ed.). Zovio.