The Secret

Hey, what's up, y'all? This is Eric Andre.

I made a podcast called Bombing about absolutely tanking on stage. I tell gnarly stories, and I talk to friends about their worst moments of bombing in all sorts of ways.
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I see a little boy. He is in a happy place.
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Listen to Cautionary Tales on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In the early hours of December 4th, 2024, CEO Brian Thompson stepped out onto the streets of Midtown Manhattan.
This assailant pulls out a weapon and starts firing at him. We're talking about the CEO of the biggest private health insurance corporation in the world.
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Became one of the most divisive figures in modern criminal history.

I was targeted, premeditated, and meant to sow terror.

I'm Jesse Weber, host of Luigi, produced by Law and Crime and Twist. This is more than a true crime investigation.
We explore a uniquely American moment that could change the country forever. He's awoken the people to a true issue.
Finally, maybe this would lead rich and powerful people to acknowledge the barbaric nature of our health care system.

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She was patient. She was caring.
She was affectionate, physically affectionate with the girls, which both Chris and Jackie were like that, but she was definitely very maternal. And even with me, I mean, gosh, I can't even tell you how many times

I would go to her and cry about something. I went to her for advice all the time.
I absolutely

looked up to her and she was so nurturing in everything that she did. The voice you heard belongs to Alina, a woman who babysat Becky and her sister for many years.
Now 34 years old, Becky lives a normal life like everyone else, but what's unusual about her story is that her biological mother is convicted killer Diane Downs. Diane was ordered by the state to place Becky, then Amy, up for adoption.
She went to live a peaceful life with her adoptive parents, Jackie and Chris, in Bend, Oregon. Becky had a great home life and her parents provided her with a good home environment and treated her well.

They were amazing. I mean, we had 80 acres.

We did 4-H and had horses and all the animals you could think of.

We lived on the river.

It was ideal to be a place to raise children.

And so my sister was adopted first, and then four years later, my parents adopted me.

Alina is the very same babysitter whom Becky tricked into revealing her biological mother's identity. Alina remembers the interaction.
From there, I went to the bookstore, and I had to have my parents take me, obviously, because I was a kid. And I found the book by Ann Rule, and I thumbed through the pages and went straight to the pictures.
That was like the moment reality set that this woman is actually my biological mom. And more so, the reality set that my parents weren't my real parents.
I always knew they were not my real parents, but it was the fact that now there was this third person. Now there was reality of who my biological mother was.
I think it had been three years of asking that it just, I didn't think I'd ever know. And at that point, I wish I hadn't known.
It was really scary. Becky was able to mostly forget about Diane for a few years.
It was that answer to the question, you know, and so I was able to let that go. And it was more of just the needing to know.
And now that I knew, I didn't want to know. So I just kind of buried it deep.
It stayed buried for a while until Becky decided to share her secret. When I was 16, I had told a boyfriend who Diane Downs was, and it was just during that get to know you phase.
You know, he had asked if I had anything that I never told anybody before, you know, a secret. And that was the biggest secret I had.
So I told him one day he said, you know, let's watch a movie. Come on over to my house.
I remember sitting on his futon and he popped the tape in and then he left the room to go make snacks or something and

and that's when it started playing and you know you see the small sacrifices.

It was difficult to watch Farrah Fawcett as Diane Downs and to let that story unfold in front of me.

You can't look away but I did not want to watch it, but I couldn't stop watching it. At the bookstore, Becky saw the pictures of her mom in the book, but didn't read it.
So watching this was the first time she'd heard the entire story. I don't even know the words to explain how it felt.
It killed a little part of my innocence, in a sense, just to know that that's really where I'm biologically from. And I felt so stupid looking back wanting to know for so long, and I understand why my mom didn't want to tell me.
Becky finally understood where she had come from and the woman who had given birth to her.

The part that really got me was when Diane was holding that baby that was a representation of

who I am and it became real. It's like that's me in a sense and the fact that she held me and

it was uncomfortable and really difficult to watch. After the discovery of who her biological mom was, Becky's behavior shifted towards rebellion.
Looking back now as an adult, I can see that it affects me greatly because it was the beginning of my rebellious years. And perhaps that information and not dealing with it appropriately and emotionally that it caused me to go off the rails a little bit.
Becky came to resent the secrecy and the hidden facts about where she came from. She also saw part of her identity in Diane, not being prepared emotionally to the jarring physical resemblance to Diane, causing her to question who she was.
After I saw the video and really got the full idea of who Diane Downs was, I just kind of stopped caring. I shut down inside somehow and I had already been pretty rebellious,

but at that age, it was more destructive rebellion, self-destruction, partying, sleeping around,

drugs, running away. You know, I wasn't living at home at that point.
It was scary, I guess.

Looking back now, I'm amazed I'm still alive by some of the situations I put myself in. At 17 is when I decided that I'm going nowhere in life and I'm just a disappointment to everybody so I needed to do something and I joined the army.
And the day that I shipped out for boot camp, they told me I was pregnant. Before being shipped off to boot camp, recruits are subject to a battery of tests.
And for women, this includes a last minute pregnancy test. As I walked by, they said, okay, everybody's clear.
And as I walked by, I looked down at them, and there was one positive. And I was like, excuse me.
You know, it's like, is that mine? And they're like, oh, my gosh, sit right here. And they made me wait for hours.
They didn't tell me anything. They did call my dad, though, because I was 17.
And they called and told him, and that was awful. They told him before you? Yeah.
And I begged them. I said, please don't tell my dad.
You know, he can't. Let me at least tell him that I'm pregnant.
Becky's parents were supportive to an extent. But for the most part, she was on her own.
After finding out that I was pregnant, I stayed in Portland for a while and continued to hang out with some of the same people that weren't very healthy for me. I wasn't doing any drugs.
I quit smoking. And I talked with my dad and I tried to come home.
But they said, you know, we raised our children. This is something you need to do on your own.
They paid for me to have a house so I could raise my child. And my dad said that every parent needs to be home

for at least the first two years of a child's life.

So they helped me for the first two years,

even though I couldn't live with them

and they wouldn't like really help me raise him.

They were there the whole time

and they made it possible that I could have my child

and that I could take care of them

and be that hands-on parent.

With Christian, Becky discovered that she loved being a mom. In the beginning when Christian was little, I didn't have time to think.
You know, sleep deprived and always caring for a little baby. I loved being a mom.
I never really worried about my genes transferring to him. He was perfect in my eyes.
Maybe it's how my mom felt when she

looked at me, you know, and accepted me into their family, is I just didn't see any negative things

or anything bad. I just saw this perfect little child.
And so I didn't worry who he was going to

grow up to be. Becky started dating a co-worker and fell in love.
And then by choice, Becky got pregnant a second time. At that point, things started to go wrong.
Before we got pregnant, we drank a lot. We were still partying quite a bit.
And I had to sober up and do things right because I was pregnant. We just realized we didn't really like each other anymore, and we didn't know who each other was without the alcohol and staying up all night partying and that sort of stuff.
And then things got worse. Without warning, the father of a child just left.
I was just destroyed. I was heartbroken.
I was pregnant with my second child. I couldn't afford where I was living because I couldn't work.
It was a high-risk pregnancy. I was bedridden for most of it.
I didn't want to give up on our family, so I ended up staying in a homeless shelter because I couldn't work. After speaking to her parents, Becky decided the best option would be to put the second child up for adoption.
They said that if I would think about adoption and do what's best for both the children, that I could stay with them until the baby was born. And they were right.
I was homeless. I was a single mom.
I couldn't raise two children, even though I really wanted to. I didn't want to give my son away, but it was what's best for both of them.
The birth of Becky's second child was emotionally and physically challenging. So then it gets to the point where it's time to be induced, because it was a high-risk pregnancy.
They wanted to just kind of, you know, move things along. I was there by myself because my family was too hard on them.
It broke their heart to let him go as well. It hurt in so many ways, you know, emotionally and physically and everything just hurt.
And then he was born and he was perfect. They told me, that I could spend as much time with him as I wanted and, you know, just hold him.
But I knew that if I didn't let him go, that I would never let him go. They just had to take him because I couldn't let go.
I was devastated and I didn't know who to talk to. I didn't know anybody else that had put their child up for adoption and had that loss.
For some reason, I thought about contacting Diane. I understand how she felt.
I, too, did a similar thing. I had reached out to my father in a letter to his prison as a teen, telling him about my abortion, thinking I'd find a soft place to share, that he couldn't be judgmental as he was serving multiple life sentences.
It doesn't make sense logically, but in the moment of desperation and a need for connection, he was the only person I thought would be in a place to listen and to care. One night I was especially sad and I just wondered if Diane ever felt what I felt in that moment.
I just needed somebody that I could relate to. I didn't need a mother.
I had one, but I needed somebody that had been through it and she went through it with me. There was that connection.
It was my biological mom who held me and who let me go. And for that brief moment, I just wanted to know that she was human.
Becky reached out with a fairly ordinary letter, just describing herself. And Diane responded.
She responds fairly normal. The first letter, actually, it was telling me what she looked like and where she was born and just general, really nice things.
I got the letter and I was almost like, okay, this isn't so bad. Maybe I didn't make a mistake in writing her because after I put that letter in the mailbox, my heart sank.
I was just, what did I do? Why did I do that? Ever since the day that I sent that first letter, I was terrified of what the letter coming back would be, but it was excited, terrified. The correspondence with Diane didn't last long.
I think there was only like six letters in total exchanged. I wrote her my first letter about a week and a half later.
So she had to have written me that day that she received a letter and sent it back because it was a very quick turnaround. And so then I responded a few days after receiving her letter.
And I think that in this second letter, I asked about my biological father. and I asked who he was and if I could know him and where he was.
Diane was a clinical narcissist and couldn't stand the idea that the focus was no longer on her. She just got angry and said she was never going to tell me and why would I ask those questions and I don't need to know and just avoided it in every way possible.
After writing to Diane for a while, she begins to see

the parallels between their lives and behavior. Becky begins to wonder if she's a psychopath just

like Diane. At Fairfield Subaru, we believe that cars are not just about safe transportation, We'll see you next time.
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Harry Houdini could make elephants disappear, walk through walls and escape the Chinese water torture cell.

But he was also on a mission against mediums.

I have never seen one genuine medium.

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It takes a flimflammer to catch a flimflammer.

Houdini wanted the world to see reason in an age of spiritualism. He went undercover to seances, exposed fakes and charlatans, and even tried to convince Washington lawmakers to ban mediums for good, a campaign that cost him friends and made him many enemies.
They're going to kill me. Listen to Cautionary Tales on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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This going how you hoped? Happy Face, new series now streaming exclusively on Paramount+. So I'm talking with her and I said, you know what? If at some point you would like to tell your story, I could help you get your story told somewhere.
After Eric's first meeting with Becky, he began to explore the idea that he could be the person to help tell her story. To finally give her a chance to let the world know about her from her own point of view.
I think there was this sort of this Diane-shaped void inside of her that she's always trying to bring the drugs and the men and everything to. I mean, she would talk about really sort of crying out to God and saying, please help me.
I don't know who I really am. Am I just the daughter of this crazy killer? Or am I this person who's going to have my own life and my own identity? And I don't want to be known as the daughter of Diane Downs anymore.
By going to the media, this was a way for Becky to take back control of her identity. It was this thirst and this quenched for identity.
but also in addition to identity, it was also how much do I want Diane to be a part of my future going forward?

How far do I let Diane in?

I think at the end it was, you know what, I'm satisfied with that and now I'm going to move on and I'm going to decide what I want to do with my life in terms of what I'm going to do to help people and be a person who's kind to other people. Eric teamed up with a reporter from the Oregonian, Lisa Grace Ledneiser, and they began to shop the story around.
And at the time, I had really no idea what I would do or how I would do it. But Lisa and I approached several magazines and all of them were like, wow, we'd love that story.
After some wrestling with their own ideals about how they wanted to present the story, Eric and Lisa finally decided to work with Glamour magazine. Well, I mean, there was that debate like, am I just, you know, a conduit in another tawdry story about a killer?

Or is this somebody who is a microcosm of what you find out when you find out your family secrets?

And is this a bigger story about family secrets and what to do with them once you find out about them?

And so when we sort of came from that angle and then Glamour said,

we'll take care of a sidebar about what happens when you find out, you know, that you're related to this over here. Then it seemed to take on more of a, a little bit more of a public service story in terms of that everybody has this dark side of a family, the pedophile, the murderer, the person who did something and ended up in prison and how to handle that.
Becky didn't make telling the story easy. She would be cooperative at times and not at others.
Well, it was torturous at times. I mean, someday she was really up and ready to tell her story.
And Lisa, Lisa and I had gone over and rented a condo for three or four days and she would come and talk at length about it. And then she'd drop off the face of the earth for a couple of weeks and you wouldn't hear from her.
Becky's parents didn't respond well to her sudden interest in outing herself in the media, and her diminishing relationship with them at the time made the experience even more difficult, not only for Becky, but for Eric and Lisa as well. I think that they sort of made a decision to step back from helping her.
And so it was up and it was down and it was God and the devil and light and dark and all these things. And that she was influenced by sometimes very small things.
And those very small things became big things. And so sometimes the article was really on and really going.
And then other times it looked like it was going to blow up. So part of the debate was, are we writing an article about something or are we being taken on a ride that's never going to be an article anywhere for anyone and that we're just going along on this ride and we're going to end up at the bottom of a ravine in the rocks.
And we wanted to be responsible with somebody's life who was about to share their biggest secret ever. The article was published June 2010, and Becky's story is officially out there in the world.
This led to many more media opportunities for Becky. I'm not sure quite what the timing of this, but Oprah is finally winding down her show.
And Oprah says, would you like to be on with me? And she comes up very well on Oprah. Did you, have you seen? No, I didn't watch her tape yet.
Oh, okay. Yeah.
During the Oprah appearance, Oprah replays a clip from a 1988 interview with Diane, where Oprah tries to find out the identity of Becky's father, but is only given what Diane claimed was the date of

conception, which at the time was the only clue into her biological father's identity that Becky had. There was only one other person who supposedly knew the identity of Becky's father, Anne Rule.
Becky met with her on the 2020 piece when the show did a two-hour feature on Becky in the case and took her to meet Anne. When Becky asked Anne Rule who her father was, she refused to give out his name.
Yeah, I think Anne had made, like a journalist, deals to get the story and be able to keep the anonymity. And we all understand that.
And I figured, well, I mean, to be able to get that story, you've got to promise whatever the person wants to do. I get the sense that he's right underneath our nose, that he's right in the area.
I get the sense that he also knows that she exists. Well, and I think the reason that you're probably right is because Anne was able to have what appears to be a conversation.
And that I think it's based also on the fact that She a best-selling author and people would come to her with details. It's like people would stumble over themselves to get her the story.
Anne Rule passed away in 2015, and thus the mystery of Becky's father remains. She's wondered who he is almost as long as she's known about her mother.

I mean, it would answer a lot of questions. She was talking about that since the day she walked into the pizza parlor.

That's what she wanted.

And that's what she hopes for.

And she believes it's just right around the corner.

I came to meet Becky Babcock 10 years ago while filming a documentary. We remained in contact through Facebook and discussed the backlash we'd sometimes received by coming forward in the media.
Some people, few, believing we saw attention or fame, others knowing our true intention, our desire to connect with others out there so that they don't feel alone, that there are other women and men just like them who are related to perpetrators. In Becky's case, she didn't know who her bio dad was.
I already knew my entire family background, which tremendously helped me to navigate my identity. So I wanted to help Becky get the answer she needed to know she isn't just like her mom.
That part of her is also rooted in another family, another story. I think it would be an interesting journey to go on.
I have a little bit of a disconnect from Diane Downs. I never refer to her as my mom.
And if anybody does, I quickly correct them and say biological. Because I was blessed to have great parents, which I talk about all the time.
Because I want them to know that even though I'm going on this journey, it has nothing to do with them not being good parents. It was 10 years ago now that I first came forward with my secret.
I had hidden the fact that my father was a serial killer because I was terrified of the public reaction and the potential fallout it would have on my kids and myself. So I know exactly the risk when it comes to answering the call to find the truth.
There is no control. Had I remained silent, I would have probably never have met Becky or the numerous others that have reached out to me that have a killer in their family.
So I had such a positive experience. And so I thought, I know that in my case, I had a lot of answers.
And in your case, you have so many questions. Right.
The other voice you're hearing is me. I had lost my voice on the day of this interview.

I do want to go on a journey to figure out who I am, where I came from, why I do the things that I do.

And in a sense, I want to know all that so I can leave it in the past.

I can stop all those questions.

I can shut down that chapter and move on.

And I think that that's really big for me right now is I want to know these things because they've been questions I've had for such a huge part of my life. It's funny, but my biggest fear is my parents being disappointed that I'm public with such deep stories because my parents don't want to be public.
It's interesting that even everything, the questions that I have... Violate their privacy.
It does, and it's very, very difficult to talk in public because it's what I need, but it's not what they want, and it hurts them. Even finding my biological father or going on this amazing quest, there's still in the back of my mind that they're going to be disappointed.
So there's parts of me that felt incredibly selfish and would shame myself for wanting this. But what I discovered, my advice to you, is that there's no shame in wanting to know what you want to know.
and that I have come to learn that I'm not a selfish person for wanting answers, that there's no shame in that. Do you think you would get a sense of by knowing who your biological father is, what would that do for you? I almost don't want to know because I have this side of me that is from a monster and this other side of me, the other half of me that I don't know.
At this point, I can think that it's good. You can fill in the blanks.
Right, I can decide who he is. And I can think that he's an amazing person.
Even if he's not, as long as he's a decent human being, I'd be happy. But I'm scared to go on this journey because what if he is, you know, deceased? What if he doesn't want me in his life? On this journey, we're going to go on.
What are your biggest questions that you would like answered? Oh my goodness. There's so many questions I have that I want to have answered throughout all this.
I want to find my biological father, even if he doesn't want to find me, you know, at least I know, and I can put that to rest. I want to find out medical history because I've gotten very sick as I've gotten older.
And I want to see if that's in my history. And if so, if there's

anything to do about it, to see if I have any relatives out there that maybe want a relationship. I have gone on this journey before in a similar fashion, not exactly in the footsteps you're going to walk, but I'd be honored to be your guide.
Yeah, I would love that. And to walk side by side with you.
And I will make every expert medical record, anything you want, I will try at my very best to provide that for you. If you're ready and committed to do this, I promise you on the other end, you will be a different person in so many cents of the word of that in a positive way.

I know that because it's not contingent on other people.

It's contingent on what you want and the fact that you're doing this for yourself.

I'm honored to have you as my guide.

Thank you so much.

My first step with Becky is to take her to meet with the people she's avoided, Diane's family.

I would have never expected how that meeting would unfold.

Next week, join us as Becky and James Fredrickson meet for the first time

in a surprising letter Diane Downs gave to James to read to her.

James, this is Becky. Hi.
Hi. Good to see you.
Yeah, how was your trip? It was good. Yeah? It was good.
Yeah. And how are you? Nervous? Getting through it.
Our executive producer is Ben Bolin. Melissa Moore is our co-executive producer.
Maya Cole is our primary producer is ben bolin melissa moore is our co-executive producer maya cole is our primary producer and paul deckant is our supervising producer

our story editor is matt riddle research assistance from sam teagarden featured music