There's Something Wrong with Aunt Diane

[heatherchandler]

13 hours ago, BuyMoreAndSave said:

Ok so I actually ended up watching the documentary again since I haven't seen it in years, and I actually don't think this is what happened after watching it again. Here's the timeline:

around 9:30 AM -- They leave the campground and the campground owner saw no signs of intoxication.

9:56 AM -- They go to the McDonalds in Liberty. The staff saw no signs of intoxication. Google Maps says it takes about 17 minutes to get there from the campground, although that is without traffic, plus the 9:30 time of leaving the campground was only an estimate. She gets an orange juice there which some speculate she used as a mixer with the vodka from the car.

10:46 AM -- They go to the Sunoco station in Liberty which is very close to the McDonalds. The time is about consistent with five kids eating breakfast, playing in the McDonalds playground, etc. The store clerk saw no signs of intoxication. Some people on Youtube think she was driving aggressively as she drove away from the pumps and onto the road, which could be from intoxication or just the local cultural tradition of driving like an asshole (I live in NJ and people who suck at driving are everywhere and only some of them are drunk...also statements by some of her friends indicate she was an aggressive driver). In any case if she was intoxicated it was only mildly at this point.

11:37 AM -- She calls Jackie Hance and has a seemingly normal conversation and says they are delayed due to traffic. Remember though this was 2009 and most people had flip phones and upstate the signal can be not great, so even if she was slurring her words or something they may not have been able to hear it due to subpar reception.

around 11:45 AM -- Witnesses see her on the side of Route 17 looking like she is vomiting, I believe this was Francis and Jean Bagley but not sure where this was (https://nypost.com/2009/11/09/taconic-ma-twice-car-sick/).

around 12 PM -- Gerald Salerno Esq. sees her driving erratically and aggressively on I-87, around Harriman. He says that she was "gripping onto the steering wheel, appearing to concentrate on driving" but also that her aggressive driving "appeared to be done with some level of precision."  It is most likely that she started drinking between 10:46 AM and 12 PM. It takes about 30 minutes to feel the effects of alcohol after drinking it.

12:13 PM -- She goes through the Harriman toll plaza on I-87. Depending on where she was, without traffic it should have taken her around 50 minutes to get to this point from Liberty according to Google Maps, and it took her about an hour and a half. But if there was traffic or if she stopped somewhere else to get the Advil, the kids stopped for the bathroom, etc. it could have taken longer. I haven't seen any reports on whether there actually was traffic but I do know in the summer there can often be a good deal of traffic from upstate to NYC as people come back from weekend trips.

around 12:30 PM -- Francis and Jean Bagley see her (again?) driving aggressively on I-87 to the point of almost causing an accident. She drives into the truck area of the Ramapo Travel Plaza. She gets out and looks like she is vomiting again. According to Google Maps it should take about 12 minutes without traffic to get here from the Harriman toll plaza and it took her about 17 minutes.

sometime between 12:35-1:35 PM -- She consumes the marijuana according to toxicology reports. Although if it was an edible, which I suspect it was for a variety of reasons (no paraphernalia found in the car, the kids would have noticed and maybe said something if she smoked it, the effects are 100% consistent with my experience of edibles, and it is VERY common with edibles to accidentally consume way too much without realizing since they are often stronger than people realize), maybe it was consumed long before that (from what I remember they take an hour or more to fully kick in and then you are hit with the effects suddenly).

12:55 PM -- Wrong number dialed from her phone, no information on how long the call lasted, if anyone picked up, or whether it was her or one of the kids dialing. Clearly this was not the precipitating event of what happened, since she was most likely already intoxicated for up to two hours before that.

12:58ish-1:02ish PM -- She calls Jackie Hance and sounds disoriented, call lasts for about 2 1/2 minutes and ends abruptly at 1:01 PM. Warren Hance calls back. He says she didn't sound like herself and even called him by her husband's name at one point. I believe this is consistent with confusion caused by overconsumption of marijuana in combination with alcohol. The kids were crying in the background of the call and said that Diane couldn't see, which again is consistent with marijuana intoxication.

1:02 PM -- She goes through the Tappan Zee Bridge tollbooth which was on the Westchester side of the bridge (ie. the tollbooths happen after one has already crossed the bridge). According to Google Maps it should take about 24 minutes without traffic to get here from the Ramapo Travel Plaza and it took her about 34 minutes, although this is not 100% accurate since they tore down the Tappan Zee bridge and built a replacement bridge in almost the same location, plus we don't know the exact time she left the Ramapo service area. During this time she is still on the phone with Warren Hance and then pulls over to the right of the road immediately after the toll plaza. One of Warren Hance's daughters says that she sees a sign for Tarrytown and the image shown in the documentary is of the Tarrytown sign hanging from an overpass, which I believe is the overpass for Route 9.

1:10 PM -- Three wrong numbers are dialed from her phone, which could be her or one of the kids.

1:15 PM -- Warren Hance tries to call Diane as he is driving up to Tarrytown to find her (whyyyy did he not call the police?!) and it goes to voicemail. Her phone was later found on the concrete divider just past the tollbooths, so she must have been sitting there in the car from 1:02 PM to sometime between 1:10 and 1:15 PM.

1:15-1:33 PM -- She is driving on an unknown route between where her phone was left and 41°08′34″N 73°48′51″W (listed on Wikipedia as where she got onto the Taconic State Parkway). Varying routes here take 10-15 minutes.

1:35 PM -- Crash happens. She is described as looking straight ahead and seemingly totally unconcerned with and oblivious to the fact that she is driving on the wrong side of the road.

So one of the biggest things is that the timeline is not really that inconsistent with how long it would take to drive normally with all the stops that were mentioned. In the documentary one of her family members claimed that the trip took four hours when it should have taken under an hour and that is completely untrue. There aren't really any big chunks of missing time especially if there really was traffic, which as I mentioned there most likely was. Everything she consumed was most likely in the car while driving.

I don't think this was a murder suicide. People who commit murder suicide usually have a past history of abuse and/or mental illness and she didn't as far as we know. Her family, including the Hances, and most importantly her friends described her as a person with flaws and demons, but not an abuser or an unstable person. I also don't think there was any affair coverup or anything.

I think she was a closet alcoholic and an addict. She intended to drink just a little (most likely vodka from the bottle in the car mixed with orange juice from the McDonalds...but her definition of "a little" could objectively be a lot if her tolerance was high) and consume a small amount of marijuana (most likely in the form of an edible) to get through the stressful drive with five kids and maybe her tooth abscess. She had probably done this many times before with no problems, as a number of people do. However the edible turned out to be way more powerful than she had realized. I believe the full effects may have hit her between 11:40 and 11:45 AM causing her to go from having a normal conversation to vomiting and driving erratically. Overconsumption of edibles alone can definitely cause vomiting, in combination with alcohol even more so. She lost contact with reality, went into a blackout and/or a state of dissociation, and continued to consume more alcohol than she intended, continued to drive when she was in no state to drive, and had no conscious realization of the fact she was driving on the wrong side of the road. I believe that this is the most likely explanation.

This is some good research!  You may be on to something about the edible being strong but still , I have never known anyone to act like this with pot, but maybe the alcohol got to her.  I have been high and drunk more than a few times in my life and I have never felt out of control.  Of course I don't drive that way.. but I have never lost my sense of reality.  If she was on other drugs, maybe.  But I believe it was just pot and vodka in her system.

I am still holding strong that she was having an affair.  It may or may not have anything to do with the "wrong number" call/calls but it makes "sense" to me that she was miserable with Danny, and she finally found happiness in some other guy.  I am guessing he broke up with her or something happened and that was what made her snap.  Murder suicide with kids is actually not a huge stretch when that happens - it has happened before - the lady who drove her kids into the lake.  She meant to stay in the car but got out at the last second.  

But unless some guy comes out and says that he had an affair with her, I guess we will never know.

[BuyMoreAndSave]

1 hour ago, heatherchandler said:

This is some good research!  You may be on to something about the edible being strong but still , I have never known anyone to act like this with pot, but maybe the alcohol got to her.  I have been high and drunk more than a few times in my life and I have never felt out of control.  Of course I don't drive that way.. but I have never lost my sense of reality.  If she was on other drugs, maybe.  But I believe it was just pot and vodka in her system.

I am still holding strong that she was having an affair.  It may or may not have anything to do with the "wrong number" call/calls but it makes "sense" to me that she was miserable with Danny, and she finally found happiness in some other guy.  I am guessing he broke up with her or something happened and that was what made her snap.  Murder suicide with kids is actually not a huge stretch when that happens - it has happened before - the lady who drove her kids into the lake.  She meant to stay in the car but got out at the last second.  

But unless some guy comes out and says that he had an affair with her, I guess we will never know.

Another thing, I checked out the routes from the Tappan Zee bridge tollbooths to where she got on the Taconic State Parkway and one route makes sense.

She knew that Warren Hance was coming to get her and that he might possibly send police or an ambulance to her location for her "medical emergency," and she couldn't risk being found out that she was driving drunk and high with kids in the car. It would shatter her perfect supermom image, possibly cause her to lose her job, and nobody would ever trust her again. That's why she left her phone, so that it would be harder to find her. I don't know if she was necessarily in a total blackout but possibly she was in and out of a blackout, a "rolling blackout" if you will (that happened to me when I had edibles plus one or two drinks, so with ten drinks but a higher tolerance it would definitely be possible).

I think that possibly she intended to just drive around on random back roads for a while until she sobered up more and then she would come home and claim a medical emergency. I believe she got on the Saw Mill River Parkway going north and drove up a few exits, then got off at the Bedford Road exit. Warren Hance already knew she was in Tarrytown so she had to get away from there. From there she made a left turn onto Pleasantville Road, a two-lane road, and it was only a short distance to the Taconic Parkway off-ramp where she got on. If you look at the off-ramp on Google Maps, besides the "Wrong Way" and "Do not Enter" signs, you can't really tell it's a highway off-ramp, like you can't see the highway until you're actually on it, and it just looks like a random country road. There is no signage for the Taconic Parkway near the off-ramp either.

If she was experiencing rolling blackouts it's very possible she didn't even realize anything was wrong while she was getting on the off-ramp and even driving on the highway. It may sound weird but intoxicated drivers drive the wrong way on the highway all the time and most of them have no idea until they crash.

At first I thought she got on the Saw Mill River Parkway going north when she intended to go south to Long Island, then realized her mistake and got off and drove to the Taconic Parkway to go back south but just got on the wrong way. But the reason why I don't think this is as likely an explanation is because there was no signage on Pleasantville Road or on the Saw Mill River Parkway indicating that this was a route to the Taconic Parkway. Unless she was familiar with the area or just assumed she would reach a highway going south if she continued driving, it doesn't make any sense that she would know this road went to the Taconic Parkway. There was no indication she was using GPS in the car.

****

Anyway on the subject of edibles...unfortunately I have had two bad experiences with edibles, not realizing how strong they were. I had intermittent blackouts as I described, out of body experiences, paranoia, I felt like reality wasn't real anymore (dissociation) and my consciousness was "resetting" itself every few seconds, time slowed down a ridiculous amount (a minute seemed to take five minutes), vomiting, trouble speaking (I thought I was speaking normally but nobody could hear what I was saying), trouble seeing, and trouble understanding what was going on. Other people had to direct me where to go, and the first time I had to use process of elimination to figure out which corner my boyfriend's building was located on based on the amount of lights on each corner because I couldn't see properly. Both times I was in an unfamiliar place where I had never been before, and the first time there were also unfamiliar people around, which added to the terror of the experience.

Both times when I had bad experiences it was due to the people who gave me the edibles being unclear about the dosage. Both times I assumed that one edible was the intended unit for getting high. It later turned out that the intended dosage was like 1/4 or less of what I took, which I was not informed of. I later learned that this is pretty common. If Diane had the same issue, she could have ended up in the same state as me. The other thing is that this high lasts for a long time. For me it lasted until I went to sleep, which was about 12 hours later the second time, and there were still after-effects the next day.

As I said before, wrong-way crashes on the highway with intoxicated drivers happen fairly often. Even if I knew how to drive I would have realized during my bad edible experiences that I was in no state to operate a vehicle. But I also have always been one of those "any amount of alcohol = no driving" people because that's what I was always taught growing up. If Diane got drunk and high in the first place, she probably got drunk and high while driving all the time. Perhaps she had even been very intoxicated while driving before. People are shocked that she would drive intoxicated but it happens. People drive drunk all the time, and many of them do it with kids in the car, and many of them aren't the people you would expect to do it (as I said if she was poor or non-white society wouldn't think this story was odd because of society's preconceived notions and prejudices). She isn't the first and she isn't the last to do it, or to kill innocent people because of it. I think people think it's a murder-suicide because they don't realize how common this is. There was even a news story ABC did (it's on Youtube) about one of those "wine moms" who became an alcoholic and she admitted to driving drunk with her kids.

Also Diane had control issues and so in her mind, she had to keep driving so she wouldn't be found out. First to try to get the kids home and keep the facade going, and then once it became clear that something was wrong, to hide from her brother and the police/ambulance so that she wouldn't lose everything. Weed causes paranoia too so she would have been too paranoid to just park somewhere and wait it out, especially if she thought people were looking for her. She was likely trying to go to an unfamiliar area on purpose, possibly out of Westchester County, so that it would take them hours to find her and she would be sobered up by then.

Ultimately the main reason that rules out murder-suicide is that there is no motive for her to kill her nieces. Jackie Hance was one of her closest friends. If there had been any animosity between her and her brother, the nieces would never have gone upstate with her in the first place. Also, murder-suicides don't just come out of nowhere. There is generally escalating abuse leading up to it, and in this case there was no evidence of abuse at all.

Edited February 20, 2019 by BuyMoreAndSave

[Enero]

On 2/17/2019 at 6:57 PM, BuyMoreAndSave said:

I also think there's something a bit classist about the whole thing of people being shocked that a middle-class career woman and mother would drive drunk. If Diane worked as a cashier at Walmart getting food stamps and living in Section 8 housing, even if she had no known history of criminal behavior, the conversation would be very different and they definitely wouldn't have made a documentary about her.

Oh absolutely. And with that disbelief a litany of excuses as to why she drove drunk with children in the car i.e. a toothache or a medical emergency etc., I even read speculation that the drugs and alcohol found in her system might not have been drugs or alcohol and that a condition or prescribed drug she'd taken was giving the result of alcohol and marijuana in her system when tested. SMH.

No matter the reasoning, whether toothache or headache, which I don't believe, she was completely wasted and decided to drive drunk with a car full of kids. She killed them and herself and three other people. There's no other way to slice it. 

[BuyMoreAndSave]

5 hours ago, Enero said:

Oh absolutely. And with that disbelief a litany of excuses as to why she drove drunk with children in the car i.e. a toothache or a medical emergency etc., I even read speculation that the drugs and alcohol found in her system might not have been drugs or alcohol and that a condition or prescribed drug she'd taken was giving the result of alcohol and marijuana in her system when tested. SMH.

No matter the reasoning, whether toothache or headache, which I don't believe, she was completely wasted and decided to drive drunk with a car full of kids. She killed them and herself and three other people. There's no other way to slice it. 

I even heard theories that she had a systemic candida infection which can cause a high BAC when no alcohol was consumed. I'm sure yeast also produces THC 🙄

She wanted to drive buzzed and "misunderestimated" (as the saying goes) the amounts. Simple as that. It happens all the time. It happened the other day in New Orleans.

[SimonSeymour]

I stumbled into this topic after searching for the recent Michael Jackson doc, so it’s been a few years since I’ve watched this VERY tragic, sad, and disturbing story. 

But something I will never forget was when the aunt who just could not believe that Diane either drank or used marijuana, because she (the aunt) never personally saw Diane do either and there was no way that she (the aunt) wouldn’t know that either were happening with Diane, went to see yet another forensic pathologist for his opinion on what happened:  she (the aunt) was smoking outside after meeting with the pathologist and said to the camera something like, “great, no one knows that I smoke, it’s a secret. I guess not anymore.”

My immediate thought was, “lady, I could tell by your voice and your skin within five seconds of you being on camera that you’re a long time smoker. Yet you don’t think Diane could have secretly been an excessive drinker?” Her lack of self-awareness was just astounding to me. 

[iwasish]

I do think she did it on purpose. I think she was fed up with her life. She was trapped with an overgrown child for a husband who did nothing to help, he goes home from the camping trip WITH THE FAMILY DOG... leaving her again to deal with all the kids. The tooth abscess is an excuse the family glommed onto, it wasn’t even proven she had one. I think she did a slow burn, while the kids were in McDonalds. She was angry and trapped, she can’t leave (that would make her  just like her hated mother!!!) cause she knew Danny didn’t want the kids. Something happened in that call with her brother, maybe he accused her of drinking (I don’t think her drinking was all that much of a secret, it just wasn’t ever talked about) or being high, and she snapped. I think it was possible she had been angry with/resentful  of  the brother because he had remained in touch with their mother, but like other things, she never talked about it. That is why she left the phone there, so he couldn’t call her back. I  don’t know if she wanted to kill her nieces or if they were just collateral damage, but I do think she wanted to kill herself and her kids, she couldn’t leave them ( her own mommy issues/and Danny being useless as a dad.  

[BookWoman56]

On 3/4/2019 at 6:34 PM, BuyMoreAndSave said:

I even heard theories that she had a systemic candida infection which can cause a high BAC when no alcohol was consumed.

Back when I first saw this documentary, I knew nothing of the case and so for the first 20 minutes or so, I was thinking that as a result of all the investigation the family was doing, they were going to find some weird-ass physiological thing going on and that she wasn't really drunk. However, it quickly became clear that the family was in denial. At this point, I really think it's 50/50 that she was driving while intoxicated and high, and experienced blackouts that caused her to be unaware of where she was going, or that she did finally snap as a result of problems with her marriage and drove around for a while getting drunk and working herself up into killing herself and the kids, and her nieces were just collateral damage. Either way, her actions caused not only her death but the deaths of several other innocent people, and I can't find any excuse for that. I believe people have a right to end their own lives on their own terms, but none of the victims in this accident wanted to die that day. 

[BuyMoreAndSave]

13 hours ago, BookWoman56 said:

Back when I first saw this documentary, I knew nothing of the case and so for the first 20 minutes or so, I was thinking that as a result of all the investigation the family was doing, they were going to find some weird-ass physiological thing going on and that she wasn't really drunk. However, it quickly became clear that the family was in denial. At this point, I really think it's 50/50 that she was driving while intoxicated and high, and experienced blackouts that caused her to be unaware of where she was going, or that she did finally snap as a result of problems with her marriage and drove around for a while getting drunk and working herself up into killing herself and the kids, and her nieces were just collateral damage. Either way, her actions caused not only her death but the deaths of several other innocent people, and I can't find any excuse for that. I believe people have a right to end their own lives on their own terms, but none of the victims in this accident wanted to die that day. 

Yeah I first saw it in a bar and it was halfway through when I first started watching it, and I thought it was going to be some weird medical thing too.

People always act like driving while intoxicated is some unthinkable thing and yet it happens every day and at least 10,000 people a year die from it.

[funky-rat]

35 minutes ago, BuyMoreAndSave said:

People always act like driving while intoxicated is some unthinkable thing and yet it happens every day and at least 10,000 people a year die from it.

I think most people think that sainted mothers of the year (like Diane was purported to be by her family) know better and don't do such things.  Being married to someone in recovery, I've heard stories that have kept me up at night from people that most would think "know better", so I don't bat an eye at that.  I don't even think I'd be hung up on it if someone would man up and stop trying to blame anyone but Diane for what happened.  I find the family so incredibly unlikeable that I have this hope that the truth will come out (whatever it may be) and someone can be all "IN YOUR FACE!" to them.  And I also hope someone would go rescue Bryan from Danny.

Edited March 26, 2019 by funky-rat

[BuyMoreAndSave]

1 minute ago, funky-rat said:

I think most people think that sainted mothers of the year (like Diane was purported to be by her family) know better and don't do such things.  Being married to someone in recovery, I've heard stories that have kept me up at night from people that most would think "know better", so I don't bat an eye at that.  I don't even think I'd be hung up on it if someone would man up and stop trying to blame anyone but Diane for what happened.  I find the family so incredibly unlikeable that I have this hope that the truth will come out (whatever it may be) and someone can be all "IN YOUR FACE!" to them.  And I also hope someone would go rescue Bryan from Danny.

Honestly she sounded like a bit of an asshole even sober from how I've seen her described by friends and family. She was probably just as unlikeable as the rest of them in life.

[DangerousMinds]

This movie and the story haunt me.

[funky-rat]

22 hours ago, BuyMoreAndSave said:

Honestly she sounded like a bit of an asshole even sober from how I've seen her described by friends and family. She was probably just as unlikeable as the rest of them in life.

Oh, no doubt.  Her high school friends were at least honest about her - that once she managed to lose some weight and snag a man, she had no time for them (even though they all seemed to have time for her) and dropped them like a hot potato.  I found her fairly unlikeable from what I heard on the doc about her, but did have some sympathy for her.

17 hours ago, DangerousMinds said:

This movie and the story haunt me.

You're not alone.  I think that's why so many people are still talking about it.

[ChicksDigScars]

I recently read an article that reviewed a book written by the family of the victims of the other car, the Bastardi's, which is understandably bitter and even places blame on Warren and Jackie Hance for the loss of their father and brother.  Now, I understand their lingering anger toward Daniel Schuler, and obviously Diane, but HOW in God's name do you drag Warren and Jackie, who suffered as much as they did in losing THREE young children? And Warren also lost a sister, even though she is the one that caused all this death and destruction. 

I want to feel sorry for, and sympathetic towards these people, but their blame and bitterness seems misplaced. They don't have to share kumbaya hugs with the Hance's, but Jesus Christ. It's like they think that they knowingly and willingly let a drunk woman drive their little girls around. 

[funky-rat]

33 minutes ago, ChicksDigScars said:

I recently read an article that reviewed a book written by the family of the victims of the other car, the Bastardi's, which is understandably bitter and even places blame on Warren and Jackie Hance for the loss of their father and brother.  Now, I understand their lingering anger toward Daniel Schuler, and obviously Diane, but HOW in God's name do you drag Warren and Jackie, who suffered as much as they did in losing THREE young children? And Warren also lost a sister, even though she is the one that caused all this death and destruction. 

I want to feel sorry for, and sympathetic towards these people, but their blame and bitterness seems misplaced. They don't have to share kumbaya hugs with the Hance's, but Jesus Christ. It's like they think that they knowingly and willingly let a drunk woman drive their little girls around. 

IIRC, there was an allegation that at least Warren Hance knew that his sister was an alcoholic by the Bastardi family.  Also IIRC, I believe they were upset that no one from either family reached out to them, and they were upset at the lawsuits that were filed after the accident by at least the Schulers (can't recall if the Hances filed any) alleging that the Bastartdis were driving too fast, etc.  There was a suit by the Schulers to the Hances saying their vehicle was unsafe (or something similar), but that was likely filed by the insurance company (as could be with the one alleging the Bastardis were driving too fast).  Not arguing that it's misplaced grief, but the barrage of lawsuits after the fact really complicated things.

Edited April 5, 2019 by funky-rat

[BookWoman56]

On 4/5/2019 at 9:11 AM, funky-rat said:

IIRC, there was an allegation that at least Warren Hance knew that his sister was an alcoholic by the Bastardi family. 

My guess would be that the Bastardi family suspects that Diane's problems with alcohol were an open secret within the family, and that while Warren Hance may not have known specifically that Diane would be driving drunk and high that day, there was an overall pattern among the family of covering up for her or dismissing her behavior as driving while slightly impaired but not so intoxicated as to be extremely dangerous. Maybe Warren assumed that while Diane might drink too much at home, surely she wouldn't drink excessively while transporting her own kids and her nieces. It's that sort of assumption that contributes to this kind of tragedy, when family members know that a person has alcoholic tendencies but foolishly believe, oh, my parent/sibling/spouse would never go to that extreme.  

I rarely believe in something like this that the family had no idea of her alcohol abuse. It reminds me a little of a situation I encountered a long time ago, when a group of friends had become aware that one of the people in our group was having serious drinking problems. After a party we had all attended, this friend and her BF left after drinking too much, drove home, and discovered the next morning that the front of the car was dented in where they had evidently hit something on the way home. Neither of them had the slightest recollection of hitting anything, and she called a few of us in a panic because she was concerned that she might have hit another car or even a pedestrian. We monitored the news and accident reports very carefully for the next couple of days, but whatever they had hit, it wasn't anything that made the news. But that was the point at which we decided to do an intervention, which resulted primarily in her getting very pissed off. There was a major disconnect going on there; on the one hand, she'd admitted to an alcoholic blackout so bad she and her BF had no idea of what the hell they had hit on their way home, but on the other, she was accusing us of overreacting to her having had "a little too much to drink." In the condition she and her BF were in, they could easily have driven the wrong way on the interstate or just a regular road and caused an accident that would have killed several people. It was this incident, combined with a few other things, that led to our group of friends ultimately dropping her as a friend, because we realized she was not going to accept any responsibility for her actions and was in major denial about her alcoholism. 

Now, I still go back and forth on whether Diane simply overindulged without malicious intent and caused this horrific accident, or if she decided she was ready to die, didn't want to leave her kids to her husband to neglect, and regarded her nieces and anybody else that might get hurt as collateral damage. But there's no way I'm going to believe that among her husband and family, that none of them had any idea that she occasionally drank excessively. Again, I'm not saying they knew she would drink an insane amount plus be high, and drive around with several kids in the car. I think they knew that she was prone to drinking too much, but mistakenly assumed she had certain boundaries she wouldn't cross. 

I think one of the things that haunts me about this case is that I can't get past the fear and possibly terror that her nieces must have experienced before the crash. They were already aware that something was wrong with Diane, and they probably realized she was driving the wrong way on the road but had no way to make her stop. This situation is one of those that makes me wish auto manufacturers would speed up a bit on the technology to disable the starter if a driver can't pass an breathalyzer test attached to the steering wheel. As much as it would annoy me to have a car test me every time I need to drive, it would really not be much worse than having to buckle your seat belt every time you drive, and would potentially prevent a lot of accidents from occurring. 

[funky-rat]

18 hours ago, BookWoman56 said:

I think one of the things that haunts me about this case is that I can't get past the fear and possibly terror that her nieces must have experienced before the crash. They were already aware that something was wrong with Diane, and they probably realized she was driving the wrong way on the road but had no way to make her stop. This situation is one of those that makes me wish auto manufacturers would speed up a bit on the technology to disable the starter if a driver can't pass an breathalyzer test attached to the steering wheel. As much as it would annoy me to have a car test me every time I need to drive, it would really not be much worse than having to buckle your seat belt every time you drive, and would potentially prevent a lot of accidents from occurring. 

Agreed the older girls would have known something was wrong (not sure about her daughter - she was really young, and Bryan doesn't seem to remember anything...yet) and my heart breaks for them.  Something I read referenced hearing the girls crying on one of the phone calls.  Stuff of nightmares.

There is already technology that exists that can measure things like excessive speed, excessive breaking (my OnStar used to send reports to me that I hit the brakes hard a few times, and when my husband was a salesman, they had stuff on the trucks that would trigger if he went above a certain speed, or hit the brakes - it would also trigger the dashcam - it would send reports to his boss), and that could also be used to disable a car if it seemed to be that the driver was impaired or having a legit medical emergency.

[BookWoman56]

7 hours ago, funky-rat said:

There is already technology that exists that can measure things like excessive speed, excessive breaking (my OnStar used to send reports to me that I hit the brakes hard a few times, and when my husband was a salesman, they had stuff on the trucks that would trigger if he went above a certain speed, or hit the brakes - it would also trigger the dashcam - it would send reports to his boss), and that could also be used to disable a car if it seemed to be that the driver was impaired or having a legit medical emergency.

Yes, I'm just unsure how effective those kinds of things would be in this kind of case. I can't remember if she was speeding much, or braking too much. I'd be tempted to say that there should be something similar that disables the car if someone is driving the wrong way, but I've personally experienced several times when because of new construction, GPS kept telling me I was driving the wrong way on a road, when in fact I wasn't. It just failed to recognize that there was now a parallel road, going the other direction. That's why I think a built-in breathalyzer would be useful; if you register as over the limit, then the car won't start at all, rather than allowing someone to drive while impaired long enough for the monitoring system to pick up on high speeds, excessive braking, or other erratic driving. 

However, it's a moot point in this case, as the damage has already been done to those families. It's been long enough since I saw this that I may need to watch it again to refresh my memory on a few points. I just have zero sympathy for drunk drivers who kill people; I don't really care what kind of personal or marital problems are occurring, it's not expecting too much of any licensed driver to refrain from driving while intoxicated. 

[kathe5133]

I was fascinated by this saga a few years ago for several months.  Watched the doc quite a few times.  I have no interest in watching it now, but I am curious where everyone is today.  Her little boy must be a teenager now.  I wonder how the husband is doing, etc.  Every time I see a post here I'm hoping it's from someone who has some current info.  I've googled, but there's just nothing. 

[funky-rat]

12 minutes ago, kathe5133 said:

I was fascinated by this saga a few years ago for several months.  Watched the doc quite a few times.  I have no interest in watching it now, but I am curious where everyone is today.  Her little boy must be a teenager now.  I wonder how the husband is doing, etc.  Every time I see a post here I'm hoping it's from someone who has some current info.  I've googled, but there's just nothing. 

I've wondered too, but like you, found nothing out there.

[heatherchandler]

21 hours ago, kathe5133 said:

I was fascinated by this saga a few years ago for several months.  Watched the doc quite a few times.  I have no interest in watching it now, but I am curious where everyone is today.  Her little boy must be a teenager now.  I wonder how the husband is doing, etc.  Every time I see a post here I'm hoping it's from someone who has some current info.  I've googled, but there's just nothing. 

I wonder about the little boy too.  

I read the book by Jackie Hance, ("See you again" I think it was called), she was the mom of the three girls and it was so good, but so heart wrenching.  She and her husband, Diane's brother decided to have another baby a few years after the tragedy and there were pictures of her pregnant and smiling while walking near her house and people were strangely upset by that.  

[BookWoman56]

I decided to rewatch to refresh my memory, and a few things stood out to me this time around. First, Danny knew from day one that Diane was driving drunk when the crash happened. There is just something about his face and voice that conveys the entire time that he knows perfectly well that Diane was drunk, but he's going to put whatever spin on it he has to in order to create the impression that it's just unthinkable that Diane would have been both drunk and high while driving around with 5 kids in the car. My guess is that there is some financial aspect to this; whether he's trying to prevent her life insurance from refusing to pay out, or if there's some idea that he might be considered culpable if he admits he knows she was prone to drinking and driving, etc. His story does change; as someone noted earlier, he goes from essentially claiming that Diane didn't drink at all to talking about keeping a bottle of vodka at the camp or whatever. So, somebody who doesn't drink at all or drinks very rarely is going to transport a bottle of vodka on a camping trip, rather than maybe go out and get a couple of wine coolers for the evening? I don't think so. He resents being left with his son to raise; every time he interacts with his son, there might as well be a thought bubble over his head stating that he'd rather have just had the life insurance payout and no surviving kids. 

Jay struck me as initially hoping that a new autopsy or labs would reveal some kind of medical explanation that would allow Bryan to grow up without hearing all the negative comments about his mother. But as time went on, she went from grasping at straws to just going through the motions of trying to find some theory, no matter how ridiculous, that would offer a different interpretation of what caused the crash. By the end of the documentary, though, she's clearly disillusioned with Danny and disgusted by his lack of interest in being a parent to his son. Her exasperation is quite evident.

The bottom line for me is when Danny and Jay are talking to the elderly specialist, who keeps pointing out that there's zero evidence of any kind of medical event such as a stroke, but even if there were, there's no way to get around the BAC levels. I can't remember exactly what the specialist said, but there was a remark where he more or less said that they were looking for some sort of story to tell themselves. IMO, Danny was never looking for the truth of what happened; he was hoping there might some physiological finding that would muddy the waters.

From the interviews with Diane's childhood friends, colleagues, and adult friend, she obviously compartmentalized her life. She ditched her childhood friends when she got involved with Danny; my guess would be because they knew her during the period when she was having to take on the mother role for her brothers after her own  mother left, and she regarded her relationship and subsequent marriage to Danny as remaking her life to be what she wanted it to be rather than what reality had been when she was younger. She seemed to be a control freak in all aspects of her life. It weirded me out when her MIL described how Danny was like Diane's oldest son; WTF kind of relationship is that? 

This time around, I came down much more on the side of thinking it was a suicide/murder on her part. Even if she had an abscessed tooth or migraine, I don't see any way that someone accidentally ingests the equivalent of 10 drinks in a short time. I've had an abscessed tooth and used to have migraines pretty frequently; yes, you want something to kill the pain, but the normal reaction would be to pull over and call a spouse or sibling, explain that you can't drive because of this debilitating pain, and wait for one of them to come get the kids. She made a few stops where she could have just decided to stay put and wait for help rather than get back on the road. Even if she was afraid that her brother might send the cops and she'd get busted for drinking, she could also have probably just bluffed her way out of it by sitting tight in a rest area and claiming that she'd taken some pain pills or migraine meds or something that made her woozy. There didn't seem to be any actual medical evidence of a recent abscessed tooth, anyway, other than comments that she was rubbing her jaw, which could be from a variety of causes. 

I'm not sure what was going on with the phone calls to supposedly wrong numbers, but I wish the documentary had provided a little more discussion of those. Who made the determination that they were wrong numbers? My own theory is that something happened that morning to set her off. It wouldn't surprise me if Danny were having an affair and picked that morning to tell her, just prior to leaving her to deal with cleaning up the campsite while he takes off with the dog. Maybe she was having an affair and that was the morning it fell apart. Or maybe she just hit that wall where she realized that her existence with Danny was as good as it was ever going to get, and it was so far short of what she wanted because he was a child in a man's body, that she decided to end her life and take the kids with her, rather than repeat her mother's actions and walk out on the family. That's not logical thinking, but it could make sense to someone in a depressed state or alcohol-fueled rage. The various witnesses on the road who were able to get out of her way were all consistent in describing her as driving straight, not weaving, and being very focused looking straight ahead. One of them even said that she thought the driver was intent on killing herself. While obviously there could have been circumstances in which she drank much more than she usually did and ingested some pot as well, to me it makes much more sense that she burned out on being the perfect wife and mother, felt betrayed, and lashed out to make Danny suffer and feel guilt. And so my final thought is that much of the reason Danny did those ridiculous private investigations is to deflect any focus on his own behavior. That is, if everyone had simply accepted that Diane got extremely drunk and high, the question might have been raised of what was so bad about her life that she would need that kind of self-medication. Instead, Danny has sought to cast doubt on her being drunk and make it sound like there was no reason for her to drink, etc., because then nobody is asking inconvenient questions about the state of their marriage. Now, I wouldn't put it past him to slip her an Ambien or something similar if there were a foolproof way he could bring about her death and the death of both of his kids, leaving him with a life insurance payout and no responsibilities. But I don't think he'd take the risk that she and the kids might survive with serious injuries that would require him to be a caregiver. 

ETA: I think I understand why the documentary makers chose to show the photos of Diane's body. There's such a contrast between the photos of her that they kept showing from her wedding and so forth with her kids and others; it's like they're underlining that those photos show a fantasy, but the reality is this bloodied and bruised corpse who destroyed several innocent lives. There are no more fancy dresses, posed shots, and smiling faces; there's just a body that's about to be hauled away.

Edited April 12, 2019 by BookWoman56

[DangerousMinds]

I could buy that she wanted to kill herself and maybe even take her own kids with her, but I just can never get past that she also killed her 3 young nieces.

[BookWoman56]

7 hours ago, DangerousMinds said:

I could buy that she wanted to kill herself and maybe even take her own kids with her, but I just can never get past that she also killed her 3 young nieces.

I understand your point, but I’d think that if someone has worked himself/herself into that mindset, any consideration for other potential victims would be minimal to nonexistent, just as there appears to be no consideration given to other people on the road. Even if we assume that she accidentally got drunk because of trying to numb physical pain, she evidently didn’t give much consideration to the possible consequences of her actions on her own kids, her nieces, and other drivers and passengers, or else she would have rejected the idea of self-medicating herself and then driving. If she got drunk because she was an alcoholic, then again she demonstrated zero consideration for anybody else, perhaps thinking she wasn’t that drunk and could drive okay. Either way, though, there’s a point at which she is sober, before she consumes any alcohol that morning, but she chooses to drink anyway, knowing she is supposed to drive 5 kids, including her own, back home. So I don’t see the presence of her nieces as a major obstacle to her possibly deciding to end her own life and that of her passengers. 

[heatherchandler]

On ‎4‎/‎11‎/‎2019 at 11:13 PM, BookWoman56 said:

I'm not sure what was going on with the phone calls to supposedly wrong numbers, but I wish the documentary had provided a little more discussion of those. Who made the determination that they were wrong numbers? My own theory is that something happened that morning to set her off. It wouldn't surprise me if Danny were having an affair and picked that morning to tell her, just prior to leaving her to deal with cleaning up the campsite while he takes off with the dog. Maybe she was having an affair and that was the morning it fell apart. 

YES!  That has been my theory all along.  Did they just ask the people at the "wrong number" if they knew her, and if they said no, did they take that as fact?  The home of the "wrong number" is very near her work.  

Since the "wrong number" happens right before she kind of snaps, I just have a feeling she was having an affair, called the boyfriend and he dismissed her, or something and she then decided to kill herself.  She was drunk and high, and if she was then upset by something, it makes more sense.  She is unhappy in her marriage, she sees an out... then trapped again. 

[ChicksDigScars]

On 4/12/2019 at 12:13 AM, BookWoman56 said:

ETA: I think I understand why the documentary makers chose to show the photos of Diane's body. There's such a contrast between the photos of her that they kept showing from her wedding and so forth with her kids and others; it's like they're underlining that those photos show a fantasy, but the reality is this bloodied and bruised corpse who destroyed several innocent lives. There are no more fancy dresses, posed shots, and smiling faces; there's just a body that's about to be hauled away.

THIS. 

I can understand why some would be bothered by those shots of Diane's body in the documentary. Shots of the kids would have bothered me, obviously. They were innocent. Diane was the reason for this tragic situation (I'm not sure calling it an accident is accurate anymore). It's almost as if they were showing us that this is what happens when you drink and drive. This is what you are reduced to. It was literally a pound of flesh for the viewers, and maybe a reality check for those who may have had a shred of sympathy left for her. 

[kathe5133]

14 minutes ago, ChicksDigScars said:

THIS. 

I can understand why some would be bothered by those shots of Diane's body in the documentary. Shots of the kids would have bothered me, obviously. They were innocent. Diane was the reason for this tragic situation (I'm not sure calling it an accident is accurate anymore). It's almost as if they were showing us that this is what happens when you drink and drive. This is what you are reduced to. It was literally a pound of flesh for the viewers, and maybe a reality check for those who may have had a shred of sympathy left for her. 

I would not have wanted to see photos of the kids.  Usually, I don't really long to see photos of anyone dead, but, it gave me great satisfaction to see her photo.  After all the death and destruction she caused, I guess it made me feel better to know her end was not peaceful.  Still doesn't mean the entire thing wasn't horribly sad,.......... 

[funky-rat]

Any time when someone innocent meets their end thanks to the careless actions of others (let alone 7 innocents, and one who will be damaged forever who survived), it is incredibly sad.  I don't like to see photos of dead people either (despite my liking true crime stories), but I think it was necessary in this case to drive home the point.

[ChicksDigScars]

This July will be the 10th anniversary of the crash. Bryan should be about 15-16 years old, now?  I wonder if he has memories that come back in small flashes. Poor kid. I hope he's worked through the physical injuries, at least. 

[Annber03]

Just rewatched this documentary last night. I'd seen it a number of years back, but I came across it when poking around on YouTube and was curious to give it another look. 

I love the variety of discussion in this thread, and I think there's a lot of great points and arguments being made here. Regarding the idea that an affair could've been the catalyst, I could possibly see that, given all the weird stuff with the phone (and I too really want to know more about those calls).

But I also wonder if Danny had told her that morning that he wanted a divorce, or to separate. Yeah, all looked well at the campground that weekend, but the lady who worked there is obviously only going to go off of whatever glimpses of them she saw, and as the documentary showed, there were lots of happy photos and images of the family throughout, but the statements from the family and friends clearly indicate that there was trouble lurking under the surface. Maybe Danny and Diane were putting on a good, happy front for the kids that weekend, or at least, Diane, perhaps, may have thought things were all right-not great, but typical, and then the morning they were leaving, something happened, some conversation or something, that may have made Danny finally say, "I think I'm done."

And Diane, with her zeal to be the perfect mom and have the perfect family, would obviously not have reacted well to that. Maybe those wrong numbers later on were her trying to call Danny to either chew him out or plead for another chance, but because she was all messed up by that point, she wound up misdialing (this might also explain why she called Warren "Danny"-maybe she thought it was him trying to call her back). 

I fully agree with the general sentiments about Danny. He rubbed me the wrong way, too. The fact that Jay, one of the people who was backing him up on this whole "it wasn't her fault" stuff, eventually got frustrated with him just seems to be further proof that he's got some issues of his own. The way Diane's friends talked about the abrupt end of their friendship...to me it sounded like Danny might've kinda isolated her a bit. He clearly liked her running everything and taking care of and paying attention to him (that "he was like her oldest child" comment-eeeeeeesh), and I could see him getting annoyed if her attention was ever focused anywhere else. I don't know how controlling he might've been, because she clearly had quite a few control issues of her own, and I think it would've been hard for him to really keep her in line completely. But since she wanted to have the perfect family, if he ever made her feel guilty about focusing her time elsewhere, or something to that effect, then that would explain her distancing herself from others over time. Plus, if she was depressed, struggling with her weight after a while, things of that sort, that would be enough reason for her to kinda withdraw as well.

I love the point made in this thread about how this story would be told if it wasn't some suburban middle-class mom. For me, it's not surprising that somebody like her could do something so awful, probably because I've watched more than enough true crime shows, to  the point where I know that the whole "perfect family/perfect suburban life/supermom" mindset is clearly nothing more than a giant facade at best, total bullshit at worst. Not to say that people can't be in awe of their moms and their hard work and whatnot, of course-they certainly can (I admire my mom for all she's done for me and others, after all). But some people definitely REALLY overdo it with the whole "they're the perfect mother!" schtick. Yet I can also agree that if this were somebody with the kind of lower-class life my family had, the story would absolutely be reported very differently. 

Regarding the toothache theory, I guess my questions to that would be:

a) if she didn't find any pain medication at that one store, wouldn't it have made more sense for her to simply try a couple other stores here and there along the way first, instead of immediately grab a bottle of alcohol? It's certainly not like she wouldn't have run across a few more local convenience stores or a Wal-Mart (which would definitely have that kind of medication in stock) or something of that sort during the drive, after all.

b) are there any examples out there of somebody having a really bad toothache, to the point where it disorients them and fucks up their driving? Maybe there is a real life instance of that sort out there somewhere, but I just don't think that would be a likely enough occurrence to where they could treat that as a valid theory. 

On 4/7/2019 at 3:26 PM, BookWoman56 said:

I think one of the things that haunts me about this case is that I can't get past the fear and possibly terror that her nieces must have experienced before the crash. They were already aware that something was wrong with Diane, and they probably realized she was driving the wrong way on the road but had no way to make her stop. 

I was thinking about that, too. They said that Emma was the one who'd made the call, and looking at the police report shared elsewhere in this thread that listed the kids' ages, she was the oldest kid in the car. It makes sense she'd make the call, of course, since most of the rest of the kids were too young to really think or be able to make calls.

But I also keep thinking about how she likely felt she had to be all take-charge and try and get help, since the actual adult in the car, the one they were supposed to trust, was clearly not behaving responsibly. And on top of that, I can imagine her trying to remain brave and calm her sisters and cousins as the trip got more and more scary. That is a hell of a lot of stress to put on a child, especially in a moment when she's already terrified about what's happening, and she's at an age where she would be aware that this is probably not going to end well. 

I also kept thinking about the kids when they were going through the timeline up to the crash. I'm looking at the time stamps of 11:37, 12:15, 1:00, and all I could think each time was, "These kids only have a couple short hours/minutes left to live and they don't know it." That really hit home for me. 

I don't want to think Diane could've done this intentionally, because dear god, what a ghastly thought. But I mean, there was that case in...Oregon, wasn't it, from within the past year of that couple intentionally driving their car off a cliff with their kids inside? Granted, that case featured a history of abuse, so the idea that abusive parents would kill their kids like that is sadly not surprising. 

But the fact remains that there are stories of parents intentionally causing accidents and killing their kids. So I can't rule out that happening here, too. Especially given all the descriptions of how "focused and precise" she was while driving. If it'd just been the result of her being drunk and high, wouldn't her car have been veering all over the place the entire ride? Granted, I'm not really much of a drinker, nor have I ever done drugs, so I don't know how likely it is for somebody to drive completely straight while drunk or high. Maybe there are people out there who've done that? Just that so often, when I've heard about drunk driving accidents, the person was always swerving the entire time, not just part of it. Diane's determination and focus doesn't seem like the result of her going into some kind of stupor/zoning out. It sounds like she was aware, on some level, of what she was doing. 

I tend to agree with the theory that if this was intentional, her nieces just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It doesn't seem like this was something she'd been planning for days beforehand or anything like that, after all-it sounds like something set her off that particular morning, and if that's the case, then there wasn't much opportunity for her nieces to get away from her, and the brief moment they did have (when she'd pulled over)...I mean, where exactly were they gonna go while they waited for their parents? Walking away was probably easier said than done. 

On 4/11/2019 at 11:13 PM, BookWoman56 said:

ETA: I think I understand why the documentary makers chose to show the photos of Diane's body. There's such a contrast between the photos of her that they kept showing from her wedding and so forth with her kids and others; it's like they're underlining that those photos show a fantasy, but the reality is this bloodied and bruised corpse who destroyed several innocent lives. There are no more fancy dresses, posed shots, and smiling faces; there's just a body that's about to be hauled away.

I think this is a spot on explanation. Seeing the photos of her body, and the car (and dear god, that car...it's a miracle there was a survivor at all), it reminded me of an anti-drunk driving PSA I saw a number of years back that highlighted the deaths of three children. No pictures of their bodies, thank god (and I'm grateful we didn't see the kids here, too*), but they showed pictures of each of them, followed by text with their names and ages, and then showed a photo of the damaged car they'd been in when they were killed. I remember getting chills when I saw that ad, and it haunts me to this day. These scenes from the documentary will be the same way. Especially the images of Diane's body. 

*That poor guy who tried to help get all the people out of that car. I can't begin to imagine the images they're left with, the nightmares they no doubt had. I hope he can at least take some comfort in knowing that he was able to be there to try and tend to the kids in their final moments, and was able to help save one life. 

I don't blame anyone for their anger at Diane-I'm wanting to ask her "Why?! Why did you do this?!", too. But I still can't help but feel a little sorry for her, too. She was clearly struggling with a lot of things, and while that's obviously no excuse or justification for what she did, I just think it's beyond sad that she seemed to feel or believe, rightly or wrongly, like she couldn't find some better way to deal with these problems. I feel like she was trying to cry out for help at various points, and way too many people around her didn't listen and tried to bury everything. 

Yeah. I dunno. It's just such a bizarre, horrifying story. I too wonder if the anniversary will make people give this a second look or something, or if we'll ever learn more with time. Whatever happens, though, I do hope all who are left behind can find whatever peace and closure they're able to get. 

And this post is long as hell, so congrats to anyone who actually reads all of it, heh!

[funky-rat]

2 hours ago, Annber03 said:

And this post is long as hell, so congrats to anyone who actually reads all of it, heh!

I read it all, and co-sign a lot of what you said.

I do have some shreds of sympathy for Diane, but I find it hard to have a lot of sympathy for her.  I know what it's like to feel like everything around you is falling apart, and you can't hold it together, but at some point in time, you need to reach out for help.  Living in a large metro area like she does, it's easy to go a few towns away for help if you feel like you're too embarrassed to do it locally (I've done that, and I live in a rural area).  I also would have more sympathy if she just took herself out, but for her to take so many innocents with her.....

I've often thought that whatever sent her over the edge had at least some to do with her mother.  There's so much more to that story.

And like so many, this one will forever haunt me - at least until the truth finally comes out, and that will likely never happen.

[Annber03]

19 hours ago, funky-rat said:

I read it all, and co-sign a lot of what you said.

Appreciated :)!

Quote

I do have some shreds of sympathy for Diane, but I find it hard to have a lot of sympathy for her.  I know what it's like to feel like everything around you is falling apart, and you can't hold it together, but at some point in time, you need to reach out for help.  Living in a large metro area like she does, it's easy to go a few towns away for help if you feel like you're too embarrassed to do it locally (I've done that, and I live in a rural area).  I also would have more sympathy if she just took herself out, but for her to take so many innocents with her.....

No argument there. It honestly surprises me that the family of the men in the other car who were killed managed to find any level of forgiveness for Diane, but I can also understand it on some level, too. I don't know if this was their reasoning, but I suspect that for some people, it's the whole thing of, since she did pay the ultimate price for putting so many innocent people in harm's way, that seems like punishment enough. And in the family's case, I'm not even sure their forgiveness is for Diane's sake. I think it's for theirs. They've got enough living people to be angry with, holding anger towards a dead person would just feel like too much after a while. 

You make a great point, though, about how she could've secretly found help away from where she lived, too. Even if she talked to somebody or found a support group online or something, maybe that could've helped (yeah, that might've been easier to track, but she could always find a way to keep it private or something). Hell, while watching the documentary I also kept thinking about what would've happened if Danny had taken the kids instead, or picked them up halfway through the ride (on that note, they never said that Emma tried to get in touch with Danny, did they? I find that kind of interesting. I get why she would immediately think, "I should call my dad", but she knew her uncle was traveling home alongside them. I'd need to look back at the route and roads they were taking and whatnot, but wouldn't it have been quicker for him to get to where they'd pulled over than it would've for her dad?). 

It seems like that family in general has a real problem with letting their pride get in the way of letting people help them, or allowing them to open up to anyone about their struggles (Jay hides that she smokes, Danny's walling himself and his son off and held off for so long on getting his son into therapy, the issues between Diane and her mom were never resolved, etc...). I'd like to think, since this documentary aired, that this tragedy and its aftermath has forced them to wake up and realize the risks of trying to hold in everything. But I wouldn't be at all surprised if they remained in denial for years afterward, perhaps even now. 

Quote

I've often thought that whatever sent her over the edge had at least some to do with her mother.  There's so much more to that story.

Agreed. She was close with her sons, but not her daughter, and that is a long time for Diane to hold this grudge against her mom. She's entirely right to feel hurt if her mom did run off and leave the family, of course, especially given how old she was at the time. And I think she definitely resented having to be the "mother" of the family in some ways, too. That's a lot of responsibility to put on a kid's shoulders, at a time when they should be out having fun and, as they get older, dating and hanging out with friends and focusing on school and whatnot. It'd be very hard to move past that. 

But yeah, I could also see her being bothered if, say, her brothers didn't distance themselves from their mom the way she did. Either that, or maybe she secretly wished she could resume her relationship with her mom, but for whatever reason, wasn't able to/couldn't allow herself to, and resented her brothers for having what she wanted. Or maybe there's some whole other reason besides or alongside her mom running off that she's angry about. I can understand her friends being wary to spill secrets, feeling it's not their story to tell (especially if all they know are rumors or just whatever bits and pieces Diane might've shared), but still, yeah, it's hard not to wonder.

It's really eerie to think that issues from Diane's childhood would eventually be the catalyst for such a tragedy. Not surprising, mind, as there's many instances of that out there, but it's just weird to see how that stuff can follow and impact other parts of your life like that. 

[ChicksDigScars]

On 3/26/2019 at 12:54 PM, BuyMoreAndSave said:

Honestly she sounded like a bit of an asshole even sober from how I've seen her described by friends and family. She was probably just as unlikeable as the rest of them in life.

THIS. She seemed like a total narcissist.  I'm not a psychology expert, but that is the one thing that keeps me off the "she did it intentionally" train. 

[funky-rat]

On 5/23/2019 at 7:09 AM, Annber03 said:

Hell, while watching the documentary I also kept thinking about what would've happened if Danny had taken the kids instead, or picked them up halfway through the ride (on that note, they never said that Emma tried to get in touch with Danny, did they? I find that kind of interesting. I get why she would immediately think, "I should call my dad", but she knew her uncle was traveling home alongside them. I'd need to look back at the route and roads they were taking and whatnot, but wouldn't it have been quicker for him to get to where they'd pulled over than it would've for her dad?). 

Danny was in the pick-up truck.  He took the dog, and the laundry.  Diane had all of the kids in the Hance's mini van that she borrowed, and some supplies from the trip (including the big bottle of booze).  They pulled out at the same time, but she took the kids to McDonald's, and he headed home.  They weren't travelling together, unfortunately.

I do wish Emma's dad would have told her to get her sisters and get out of the car.  And refuse to get back in.

[outofbounds]

I have always thought and still think to this day that Warren knew she was an alcoholic. That is the only plausible explanation for why he didn’t call the cops when he got the call from her. He knew she’d be arrested if he called 911 and the cops got to her. Her entire fake life would crumble and she’d have blamed him for calling the cops. 

Mark my words...he knew. 

[funky-rat]

1 hour ago, outofbounds said:

I have always thought and still think to this day that Warren knew she was an alcoholic. That is the only plausible explanation for why he didn’t call the cops when he got the call from her. He knew she’d be arrested if he called 911 and the cops got to her. Her entire fake life would crumble and she’d have blamed him for calling the cops. 

Mark my words...he knew. 

I would believe that.  Another dirty little secret in that family

[kgg]

On 6/3/2019 at 11:44 PM, funky-rat said:

I would believe that.  Another dirty little secret in that family

But why be okay with her driving his kids if he knew she was an alcoholic?  

I only recently saw this doc and this is my theory:  I really do think something happened to set her off and she was determined to commit suicide, and - given how she grew up without her mother - she was going to take her kids with her.  Given the fact that so many of her acquaintances describe her as as very concerned with appearances and fairly controlling, I believe something happened that threatened to fracture that, and it was unacceptable to her, so she made the decision to smoke weed and down vodka in a very short period of time to basically numb herself so she could commit suicide.

I think she went to the gas station for Tylenol (and apparently Tylenol specifically - not ibuprofen) because a Tylenol overdose is deadly.  If she were in pain - toothache, migraine - ibuprofen tends to be the better pain reliever.  I think she wanted that to be part of her cocktail to help give her the courage to commit suicide.

The whole alcoholic thing - I'm honestly torn.  I think her blood alcohol level was around double the legal limit, plus there was quite a bit of undigested alcohol sitting in her stomach.  I remember reading somewhere on Reddit that if she were a true alcoholic, twice the legal limit BAL wouldn't disorient her as much as it was someone who was a more social drinker.  Maybe she did have a problem with alcohol, but I don't think this was her typical.  If she was an alcoholic, she clearly didn't want anyone to know and took great strides to hide things.  She downed a lot of alcohol in a short period of time - and then she died.  This seems so deliberate.

[funky-rat]

1 hour ago, kgg said:

But why be okay with her driving his kids if he knew she was an alcoholic?  

I only recently saw this doc and this is my theory:  I really do think something happened to set her off and she was determined to commit suicide, and - given how she grew up without her mother - she was going to take her kids with her.  Given the fact that so many of her acquaintances describe her as as very concerned with appearances and fairly controlling, I believe something happened that threatened to fracture that, and it was unacceptable to her, so she made the decision to smoke weed and down vodka in a very short period of time to basically numb herself so she could commit suicide.

I think she went to the gas station for Tylenol (and apparently Tylenol specifically - not ibuprofen) because a Tylenol overdose is deadly.  If she were in pain - toothache, migraine - ibuprofen tends to be the better pain reliever.  I think she wanted that to be part of her cocktail to help give her the courage to commit suicide.

The whole alcoholic thing - I'm honestly torn.  I think her blood alcohol level was around double the legal limit, plus there was quite a bit of undigested alcohol sitting in her stomach.  I remember reading somewhere on Reddit that if she were a true alcoholic, twice the legal limit BAL wouldn't disorient her as much as it was someone who was a more social drinker.  Maybe she did have a problem with alcohol, but I don't think this was her typical.  If she was an alcoholic, she clearly didn't want anyone to know and took great strides to hide things.  She downed a lot of alcohol in a short period of time - and then she died.  This seems so deliberate.

There are so many reasons he could possibly look the other way.  She could have assured him she stopped.  He thought there was no way she'd do it with kids in the car.  He figured having kids and her husband around all weekend would keep her straight.  He assumed they'd be following each other home, instead of Danny going one way, and Diane another.  Then he finds out - far too late - that she's past the point when she calls.  I just wish he'd have told his girls to get out of the car, and take their cousins with them if possible, and refuse to get back in.  Wave their hands, scream, yell, flag someone down and ask them to call police.  Anything but get back in the car.  When I was younger, my mom told me to do just that if I was with a friend, and in a car with them and their parents or an older sibling, and something seemed wrong - get out (at a place with people if at all possible), and refuse to get back in.  

But I agree 100% that this all just seems so danged deliberate.  I know people are split over that, but it's always been my thought.  The veneer had been cracking for some time, and something pushed her over the edge that weekend.  I think someone knows, but no one will admit it.  They don't owe me or any of us an explanation, but they owe it to the families of the innocents that died.

[kgg]

1 hour ago, funky-rat said:

There are so many reasons he could possibly look the other way.  She could have assured him she stopped.  He thought there was no way she'd do it with kids in the car.  He figured having kids and her husband around all weekend would keep her straight. 

I understand what you're saying, but if he had even an inkling that she was an alcoholic, wouldn't he then be more likely to call 911 right away?  I honestly think Diane put up such a good front and she fooled so many people.  

[funky-rat]

56 minutes ago, kgg said:

I understand what you're saying, but if he had even an inkling that she was an alcoholic, wouldn't he then be more likely to call 911 right away?  I honestly think Diane put up such a good front and she fooled so many people.  

Sadly, we will never know.

[outofbounds]

On 6/13/2019 at 12:13 PM, kgg said:

I understand what you're saying, but if he had even an inkling that she was an alcoholic, wouldn't he then be more likely to call 911 right away?  I honestly think Diane put up such a good front and she fooled so many people.  

Because he told her to sit there and wait until he got there. He didn’t think she was gonna say “fuck it” and get back into the car. Only when he called back and got no answer did the police get involved. Upon watching the documentary again, somewhere around the beginning he’s at the police station giving them information about where she is and what she’s driving. He’s heard in the background.  Danny was there too. I guess they could’ve been at his house or a deputy could’ve been sent there but IIRC the dispatcher says he’s there in front of her.  Even if it was at his house, the fact remains there is no 911 call from Warren or Jackie stating their kids are in danger with their aunt and are possibly in a car. 

How far away from the station did he live?  How long did Diane have from when she hung up and when he made it to the station?  And he seemingly only stopped there when he couldn’t get ahold of her again. Why didn’t he call 911 the MINUTE his wife got off the phone with his daughter? Why didn’t he call 911 when he hung up with Diane after telling her to stay put?  Because if he had and the cops had found her, with how drunk she was, at a minimum she would’ve been thrown in the drink tank and possibly charged with endangering the lives of minors if she had done what he said and stayed put. However, had she been driving she would’ve been arrested. 

 I’m not blaming him. His loss is terrible and I think he was trying to protect his sister and didn’t realize it would be at the expense of his kids. 

I think he knew but never imagined she’d ever put his kids in danger. The entire documentary, Jay and others repeatedly state how responsible she was as a mother. Her kids never had a hair out of place. They were well behaved. Warren and Jackie would have had no reason to expect she would’ve gotten blasted on the way home from a camping trip and put his kids in danger. 

But he knew she was an alcoholic. And with many family’s, their chosen forms of dealing with addicts is to contain them. Just let her drink! She’s not hurting anyone! She only does it at night! Never around the kids! She’s fine. We have 3 kids and a life of our own to deal with. She’s Danny’s problem. Let him put her into rehab. 

And then they do something to endanger someone else....and THEN it’s an issue. THEN they get involved. THEN she’s denied access to her nieces.

So...AFAIC...Warren knew. Or had a suspicion. 

[Enero]

19 hours ago, outofbounds said:

Because he told her to sit there and wait until he got there. He didn’t think she was gonna say “fuck it” and get back into the car. 

I agree. I just can’t believe that the brother would knowingly put his sister’s reputation above the safety of his kids. I believe as you said he thought that she’d stay put and wait for his arrival. The fact that she had called to tell him she was ill (did he know or suspect she was drunk at that point? Or did he just think she was severely ill?) likely made him believe that she would remain where she was and wouldn’t get back in the car. Even when he called her back and she didn’t answer he likely thought she was too ill to come to the phone hence he got the police involved. 

I do wonder how the son is doing who survived. Next month will be ten years since that horrific accident. I hope he is a healthy and thriving teenager. But I  wonder, considering the issues within the family not to mention his angry and indifferent father, if he was able to somehow rise above the horror of what happened and it’s aftermath and be okay. I hope so.

[iwasish]

On 6/14/2019 at 4:26 PM, outofbounds said:

Because he told her to sit there and wait until he got there. He didn’t think she was gonna say “fuck it” and get back into the car. Only when he called back and got no answer did the police get involved. Upon watching the documentary again, somewhere around the beginning he’s at the police station giving them information about where she is and what she’s driving. He’s heard in the background.  Danny was there too. I guess they could’ve been at his house or a deputy could’ve been sent there but IIRC the dispatcher says he’s there in front of her.  Even if it was at his house, the fact remains there is no 911 call from Warren or Jackie stating their kids are in danger with their aunt and are possibly in a car. 

How far away from the station did he live?  How long did Diane have from when she hung up and when he made it to the station?  And he seemingly only stopped there when he couldn’t get ahold of her again. Why didn’t he call 911 the MINUTE his wife got off the phone with his daughter? Why didn’t he call 911 when he hung up with Diane after telling her to stay put?  Because if he had and the cops had found her, with how drunk she was, at a minimum she would’ve been thrown in the drink tank and possibly charged with endangering the lives of minors if she had done what he said and stayed put. However, had she been driving she would’ve been arrested. 

 I’m not blaming him. His loss is terrible and I think he was trying to protect his sister and didn’t realize it would be at the expense of his kids. 

I think he knew but never imagined she’d ever put his kids in danger. The entire documentary, Jay and others repeatedly state how responsible she was as a mother. Her kids never had a hair out of place. They were well behaved. Warren and Jackie would have had no reason to expect she would’ve gotten blasted on the way home from a camping trip and put his kids in danger. 

But he knew she was an alcoholic. And with many family’s, their chosen forms of dealing with addicts is to contain them. Just let her drink! She’s not hurting anyone! She only does it at night! Never around the kids! She’s fine. We have 3 kids and a life of our own to deal with. She’s Danny’s problem. Let him put her into rehab. 

And then they do something to endanger someone else....and THEN it’s an issue. THEN they get involved. THEN she’s denied access to her nieces.

So...AFAIC...Warren knew. Or had a suspicion. 

The kids were well taken care of, never a hair out of place.  That comment reminds me of the mother in Texas who drowned her five kids in the bathtub. She was the perfect mother too. She homeschooled and kept her kids immaculate. But she killed them.

Another interesting observation. The old guy they had review autopsy report, I forget his name, but he was a famous medical examiner and later on in his career (if I recall correctly) he became a hired gun who would take high profile cases for the defense and come up with far fetched conclusions to debunk the prosecutions case as to the defendants guilt. 

I thought he might have given credence to the bad tooth story, but he pretty much agreed with the conclusion in the original autopsy. All the excuses her sister in law and husband came up with,,( bad tooth, accidentally consumed too much booze trying to kill the pain..) he couldn’t find anything that would support or make sense. The result was that she was drunk and high. Why? only she knows. He kind of told them there was nothing to do, they had to accept it.,

The whole thing with the PI they hired and whether or not he sent the report and did they or didn’t they get it? Deflection on part of the family away from the main point, she was drunk.  I think several things could have set her off that day or it could have just been one thing, that, piled on top of many things that built up over years. Whatever, it was enough to trigger her behavior.

[RayonSpan]

Hello - I remember well the Taconic accident and the aftermath, I live in the general area and have spent countless hours on I-87, the old Tappan Zee and Rt 17, but I didn’t see the documentary until this week, thinking it would answer the mystery of why it happened.

Of course, no answers. Thanks to all the posters for the discussion here especially funky-rat for your personal insights. I’m also married to someone in AA but am not an addict myself and really understood your POV.

I agree with the point that Diane’s phone calls near the Tappan Zee, with Warren and Jackie and the missed numbers, seem to be the fatal trigger for Diane.

Until those calls she was driving home and still following the plan for the day, even if she was drinking or using. After those calls, she leaves her phone and she changes her route to the opposite direction, and then the accident happens within 30 minutes.

Warren was so disturbed by the calls, he immediately drove off to find Diane, instructing Jackie to call 911 according I think to the New York magazine article. So if that’s true the family wasn’t trying to hide Diane’s troubles or her drinking/using from the police. 

I haven’t seen this discussed but weren’t there some weird undercurrents with Diane’s relationship with the Hances? Notice how in the documentary Jay says of Jackie Hance: she was a stay at home mom, her daughters were her JOB. Really emphasizing that. Meanwhile we know Diane was the breadwinner and had to work long hours away from her kids. Even if Diane and Jackie were friends, the dynamic in the families seemed to accept Jackie as the most devoted mom. 

And - looking at Diane’s husband and Schuler in-laws in the documentary, no offense to Jay who seems a nice person, the Schulers are not the most classy or sophisticated family. I sense the Hances were above them a bit, and Diane knew she had married down and into an unhappy marriage, vs Warren and Jackie who by all accounts are a loving even dare we say perfect couple. Yet Diane is the one who has this compulsive need to be perfect. It’s not an appealing aspect of Diane that she could have been somewhat jealous of them vs happy for their nice life, but it fits her pattern and life story where she desperately wanted her own perfect family to make up for her mom leaving.

Did this dynamic play into the accident? Specifically Jackie wanting the girls home at a certain time for play practice and Diane running late, for McDonalds and what she maybe thought at the time was minor self-medicating.

Even though Jackie said their discussion of the play practice on the phone that morning was friendly, Diane was a compulsively prompt person, never late. And now here she’s perhaps under duress thinking she will be late, and maybe now unintentionally drunk and stoned by overmedicating - she’s going to be finally, dramatically exposed as the bad addicted working mom who can’t get the Hance girls home on time. 

Was that enough for her to completely panic and decide to annihilate rather than be exposed as less perfect than the Hances - which would understandably have been an ongoing theme and fear in her life?

(and I have another guess theory that Diane was indeed having an affair and had an obsessive love, and a rejection in that relationship set her off into insane irrational violence just like the pattern in other famous cases like Jodi Arias, astronaut Lisa, Susan Smith, Sylvia Plath etc etc...)

One other thought - what about the public silence from her two other brothers? It’s troubling but probably understandable given the antics from Danny. Still the family says that Diane did everything for her brothers growing up. Are there any statements from her other brothers on the record about Diane? 

Edited September 5, 2019 by RayonSpan
Fixed typos!

[heatherchandler]

17 hours ago, RayonSpan said:

I agree with the point that Diane’s phone calls near the Tappan Zee, with Warren and Jackie and the missed numbers, seem to be the fatal trigger for Diane.

Until those calls she was driving home and still following the plan for the day, even if she was drinking or using. After those calls, she leaves her phone and she changes her route to the opposite direction, and then the accident happens within 30 minutes.

(snip)

And - looking at Diane’s husband and Schuler in-laws in the documentary, no offense to Jay who seems a nice person, the Schulers are not the most classy or sophisticated family. I sense the Hances were above them a bit, and Diane knew she had married down and into an unhappy marriage, vs Warren and Jackie who by all accounts are a loving even dare we say perfect couple. Yet Diane is the one who has this compulsive need to be perfect. It’s not an appealing aspect of Diane that she could have been somewhat jealous of them vs happy for their nice life, but it fits her pattern and life story where she desperately wanted her own perfect family to make up for her mom leaving.

17 hours ago, RayonSpan said:

(snip)

(and I have another guess theory that Diane was indeed having an affair and had an obsessive love, and a rejection in that relationship set her off into insane irrational violence just like the pattern in other famous cases like Jodi Arias, astronaut Lisa, Susan Smith, Sylvia Plath etc etc...)

I really believe that she was having an affair, and I have a feeling that the "wrong" numbers were somehow related.  I also think that we will never know because that guy (or girl?) she was having the affair with will never speak of it.  No one just snaps, it just doesn't happen, there is always something to trigger.  By all accounts her marriage was awful, and she probably finally found some happiness with someone else.  I imagine she never meant to hurt the kids but they were collateral damage. 

I cannot believe it has been 10 years since this happened - I still think about it sometimes.  I read Jackie Hance's book and it is really sad and of course my heart breaks for Jackie and Warren, but from reading that I agree with you about the way they saw themselves and the way they saw Diane and her husband - Jackie seems to look down her nose at Danny and Diane.  Although Jackie said that Diane was the perfect mom, she really thought Danny was a loser and a weirdo.  

[funky-rat]

15 minutes ago, heatherchandler said:

I cannot believe it has been 10 years since this happened - I still think about it sometimes.  I read Jackie Hance's book and it is really sad and of course my heart breaks for Jackie and Warren, but from reading that I agree with you about the way they saw themselves and the way they saw Diane and her husband - Jackie seems to look down her nose at Danny and Diane.  Although Jackie said that Diane was the perfect mom, she really thought Danny was a loser and a weirdo.  

I've been on the fence about reading it. 

But I can assure you she's not the only one who thinks Danny is a loser and weirdo.  His whole family is....off.  It also shows the danger of settling for the first guy who pays you any attention.

Jealousy is an ugly thing, and perhaps Diane was inded jealous/resentful.  My husband was the main breadwinner, and he lost his good paying job after 12 years.  He's struggled to stay employed since (knocking wood until my knucles are bloody that this current job he has is the one), and all the responsibility has, at times, shifted to me, and I find myself really hating him at times.  He didn't ask to be mentally ill, but there's nowhere else to channel my negative energy at times.  I've been looking for a job that will pay me enough that we can both survive on should I need to (but again, sending positive thoughts in to the universe), but that's a struggle because he's making much less money than he used to, so I can't afford to take a pay cut, and most jobs here start out at much less than what I make now.  I feel so trapped sometimes.  Maybe Diane did too.  We'll never know....

[heatherchandler]

15 minutes ago, funky-rat said:

I've been on the fence about reading it. 

But I can assure you she's not the only one who thinks Danny is a loser and weirdo.  His whole family is....off.  It also shows the danger of settling for the first guy who pays you any attention.

Jealousy is an ugly thing, and perhaps Diane was inded jealous/resentful.  My husband was the main breadwinner, and he lost his good paying job after 12 years.  He's struggled to stay employed since (knocking wood until my knucles are bloody that this current job he has is the one), and all the responsibility has, at times, shifted to me, and I find myself really hating him at times.  He didn't ask to be mentally ill, but there's nowhere else to channel my negative energy at times.  I've been looking for a job that will pay me enough that we can both survive on should I need to (but again, sending positive thoughts in to the universe), but that's a struggle because he's making much less money than he used to, so I can't afford to take a pay cut, and most jobs here start out at much less than what I make now.  I feel so trapped sometimes.  Maybe Diane did too.  We'll never know....

It was good, I recommend it, but get the tissues ready!  I don't know why I am drawn to stories like this, or books like this but I guess I like sad stories?

Oh yes I think many people think Danny is a weirdo, and a loser.  He's also an idiot, in total denial about his wife.  I remember when I initially read an article after the accident first happened and Danny was like, "Diane never drank, never smoked pot, etc." and I was like, well that must be the truth, he husband is saying this!  Of course, after seeing him and hearing his delusional nonsense, I realize he was lying (to himself too!).

I feel for you, I know how you feel and it is a struggle.  I know that feeling of being trapped, too, and it is really awful.

[funky-rat]

I got in line to borrow Jackie's book from openlibrary.  I just got notice that it was available, so I started reading after work, as I only have 2 weeks.  I am just about halfway through.  It has given me a little bit of info so far that I had wondered about.

1) The camping trip was NOT a regular thing for the girls.  They had gone once before, a year prior.  Jackie and Warren did not enjoy camping (Warren said it was the only thing they could afford to do when he was younger and he wasn't doing it again as an adult, and had a choice). But the girls had enjoyed the prior trip.

2)  Jackie was NOT in the habit of letting the girls go places without her or Warren.  She struggled with letting all 3 go, but they were excited and she wanted them to have good experiences.

3)  Warren and Diane's dad was supposed to go on the trip, as he had the prior time, but canceled at the last minute.  Jackie was concerned about Diane's ability to handle all of the kids, but Diane promised an adult friend would come along.  None did.  Everyone was busy.

4)  Diane showed up late to pick the girls up.  She told them to pee now because she wasn't stopping once they got on the road.

5)  I was under the impression that one of the girls had a phone, but none did.  Emma's calls came from Diane's phone.

6)  They got the burial plot in the only cemetery that could accommodate a lot of people at once.  When they bought them, the didn't have the toxicology report.  Now her kids rest with the woman who killed them.

7)  Only Diane looked like she had been in an accident at the funeral home.  The kids all had some bruising but that was it.  Caskets were closed after the family viewed them.

8 )They were on the phone with police frequently and multiple people were also at the house trying to get police involved, but the police were not helpful, and several times had them hang up and call other agencies.  Warren was looking for Diane with his father.  Danny had gone home, and gone to sleep.  He was not helpful at first (surprise), and Jackie was surprised that he was home.  Danny had told Jackie they would be travelling together before the girls left on the trip, which had helped put Jackie at ease.

9)  There had been strong rumors before the toxicology came out that Diane and Danny had a fight that morning and HE asked for a divorce.  Jackie and Warren were livid that Danny hired a sleazy lawyer immediately after the toxicology came out and was plastered all over TV and print.  Jackie liked Jay, and found her to be kind and well spoken, but she would call Jackie and talk for hours about wild conspiracy theories, including that the McDonalds had a drug bust prior, and Diane's insistance on chicken for Bryan pissed someone off enough to slip her drugs. (Yeesh...this family...)

10) As I have long suspected, Jackie said the girls were aware of drinking and driving, and had they seen Diane drinking, they WOULD have said something.  Jackie and Warren had a weekly date night, and hired a car service to drive them.  The girls knew about it, and why they did it.  The girls would ask if the car service was taking them when they would go out.

11) Contrary to some reports, Warren (who incidentally was a twin) did not have much of a relationship with his mother, and would tell the girls that she no longer wanted to be a mommy if they asked about her.

12) Warren and Jackie lived in the family home.  When the divorce happened (Warren was 15), an agreement was made that the house stayed with the husband until Diane turned 21.  At that time, the house was to be sold and the profits split.  But that time came and went, and Diane and her father were still in the home, so Warren bought out their mother, and moved in for a time while he and Jackie were engaged.   When they got married, Diane and their father moved out, and Jackie moved in.

13) When Emma made the "something is wrong" call, Diane took the phone from her and said the kids were playing, which confirmed something I had read but wasn't sure if it was accurate, and then she hung up (she was slurring at that time).  The kids were crying on that call.  They were not when Warren talked to them a little later, but sounded scared. Jackie immediately called Warren, and started to try to get help.

14) Diane was running so late on the way home that Jackie called the church to say that Emma would miss play practice.  When she talked to Diane about the play, she only wanted one ticket, because she could hold Erin - Danny wouldn't come, and he could keep Bryan.

15) Jackie found it telling that Danny said at his first press conference that he would NOT address the pot issue.  She said that she knew Danny battled strong anxiety, and doctors put him on meds, but he had a "severe" reaction, and she often wondered if he smoked to calm down, but didn't have proof.  Plus she generally trusted Diane.

16) Diane WAS in the habit of taking the bottle of booze back and forth.  She told Jackie at some point prior that there were teenage parties at the campground, and she didn't want teens breaking in, and she didn't want to be responsible for what drunk teens would do.

I have more to go, but wanted to get that written down while it was fresh.  She hasn't talked much yet about Diane, other than her hatred for her at this point in the story, and how she would see her when she looked at Warren, his dad, and his brothers.  Jackie's guilt and fear of the judgement of others is palpable, and sad.  The part where she feels it's karma because she fibbed to someone that Emma broke her leg to get out of doing something just broke my heart. 😥

Edited September 21, 2019 by funky-rat

[Annber03]

3 hours ago, funky-rat said:

6)  They got the burial plot in the only cemetery that could accommodate a lot of people at once.  When they bought them, the didn't have the toxicology report.  Now her kids rest with the woman who killed them.

Man, if that doesn't show just how enormous this tragedy was. 

Quote

9)  There had been strong rumors before the toxicology came out that Diane and Danny had a fight that morning and HE asked for a divorce. 

Wow, so my suspicion about what might've set Diane off may possibly have some merit, then. Hm. 

Quote

Jackie liked Jay, and found her to be kind and well spoken, but she would call Jackie and talk for hours about wild conspiracy theories, including that the McDonalds had a drug bust prior, and Diane's insistance on chicken for Bryan pissed someone off enough to slip her drugs. (Yeesh...this family...)

...wow... "Yeesh", indeed. 

Quote

11) Contrary to some reports, Warren (who incidentally was a twin) did not have much of a relationship with his mother

That's interesting, too, considering all the talk about Diane not having a good relationship with her mom. 

The fact that Jackie was hesitant to let her daughters go on the camping trip, and the knowledge that they'd tried to see to it that another relative or friend could accompany them, makes this all the more heartbreaking. I can't even begin to imagine how that affected her in the aftermath. My heart goes out to her. 

Thanks for sharing those bits of information. I'll be interested to hear your thoughts on the remainder of the book as well. Hopefully it can help further clarify any other mysteries and questions. 

Edited September 21, 2019 by Annber03

[funky-rat]

I finished it.  Took just a few hours total.  A good read, but I am glad I don't have siblings or kids, because if I did, I would probably be a basket case by now.  As such, I sympathize with her immensely, but can't relate directly.

Most of the rest of the book deals with her suicide plans, and then her pregnancy.  She dreamed she met the girls at the gates of Heaven.  It was vivid.  She said God told her she couldn't enter because she was being offered a gift (frozen embryos) and it was a sin to waste it.  The fertility doctor, who worked with celebrities, gave the services for free, but she didn't want to go through with it.  Before that, she wanted to kill herself.  When priests told her she would go to hell, she wanted Warren to kill her.  When he says no, she wanted to kill him.  She didn't care about jail, and he could be with the girls to take care of them.

There were a few more tidbits to tie in with the movie:

1)  Donations came in fast and furious after the accident and they set up the Hance/Schuler foundation.  When the toxicology came out, it became The Hance Family Foundation.  It probably pissed Danny off, big time.

2)  Jackie and Warren paid for all of the plots (out of the girls college fund).  Including that of Diane and Erin.  They also covered associated expenses because Danny couldn't.  He never said Thank You.  When he wanted Diane exhumed, Jackie and Warren had to give permission because they owned the plots.  They gave it.

3)  They didn't want to participate in the doc, and were angry at Danny for taking money for it.  However, HBO sent $30,000 to Jackie for the foundation.  Warren insisted they hold the check.  When they found out the title, Jackie begged HBO to change it.  They did not.  She returned their check, and asked them to donate the money to any charity the foundation supported in the girls name.  They never did.

4)  After Jackie's baby shower, Warren's mother showed up.  He invited her to the shower, but she came to the house quietly instead.  When Jackie asked why, he said he was holding too many grudges.  Still, it doesn't sound like they had a close relationship in any form.

5)  Jackie eventually forgave Diane, after visiting the graves.  She walked to Diane's end, and said what she needed to say.  But she only forgave Diane.

6)  Jackie confirmed the endless cycle of lawsuits, some ludicrous, were required because of insurance, and they grew weary of it.  Plus Danny wanted what he could get.  She plead with the Bastardi family.  Jackie and Warren would waive claim to any money to just end the suits, but the Bastardi's wouldn't do it, mostly because of Danny.

7)  She pitied Danny because he didn't have a good support system.  He had few friends and no one, except for Jay, was working with him.  But she was still angry with him, and one evening, very pregnant and off of her psych meds because of the baby, she typed a text to Danny that she sent early one morning.  It was firm, but not horribly rude or full of profanities or anything.  She just wanted an apology.  She worked on it off and on before sending it.  His reply?  "OMG.  You are sick.  Get help."  She went off the deep end, and called Danny, where the situation got worse, and Warren woke up.  She showed him the text.  He went ballistic and stormed off, saying he was going to Danny's house, to kill him.  He never went, but he drove for hours.

The part that got to me was her and Warren's descent in to deep mental illness.  That hit home.  He was expected to hold it all together, and all of his energy went to Jackie, but it wasn't enough.  After 2 years, he was completely broken, and had nothing left to give.  He had been looking to Jackie to reassure him that he was taking care of her, and she couldn't.  She finally realized she had to now take care of him.  I have lived that, and it is gut wrenching.  Thankfully they had a fantastic and unwavering support system.  Danny does not, and while that is sad, I still can't stand that delusional jackass.

I may comment later.  I will be returning the book if anyone else wants to read it.  Openlibrary is free to join.  I don't read much anymore, but when I do, I generally get them from there.

Edited September 21, 2019 by funky-rat

[funky-rat]

OK - thoughts after reading the book.

I didn't really find one thing that would sway my opinion off of what it currently is (psychotic break, with probable suicide).  I know that's not the opinion of everyone here, but may I say that I really appreciate that people here of many opinions can be rational about it and agree to disagree without being a jerk - I gave up on other websites because people there couldn't handle that someone had a different opnion.

It did answer a few questions I had (the girls going with Diane and Danny for a weekend away was unusual, at least one of the girls would have piped up if they saw Diane do something she shouldn't be doing - which could have pushed her over the edge, Diane and Danny's marriage may have been in trouble, etc), but in the end, really doesn't give any "aha" moment that would make me say that I'd figured it out.

They really don't talk a whole lot about Diane or Danny in the book (and what's said about Danny just echoes what most of us have thought).  Jackie says that Diane was someone she trusted and she was a devoted mother, and that Warren loved her dearly (I believe Warren and his twin were the oldest, and Diane was the baby, and only girl) but I did get the impression - although it wasn't explicitly said - that Warren may have bailed her out from problems frequently, and had been doing so for some time.  I also got the impression that their father may have had some issues of his own.  Jackie speaks very well of their dad (she calls him "Mr. Hance") but there are times where Jackie tries to get him to come over to spend some time with Warren, thinking he really needed his dad at that time.  His response was "What do you want me to do?" or "What can I do about it?".  She mentions his Germanic upbringing, and that he's very stoic.  The only mention of the complicated divorce was that Warren's mom had an affair, and left the marriage.

People have brought up jealousy with Diane and Jackie, and I could see that.  I don't feel after reading the book that Jackie looked down her nose at Diane.  Jackie is a complicated person - one that looks perfect on the outside, but don't scratch the surface (just like most of us suspect Diane was).  Jackie is very honest about that in the book.  Her parents divorced, and while her parents remained cordial, her father struggled to keep his various businesses afloat (eventually losing them) and he later passed away with agressive cancer when she was pregnant with Emma.  She battled bulemia from a young age and still struggles from time to time.  She admits to over-compensating on the girls - especially Alyson, the middle child - because she didn't want them to go down the same path she did with eating disorders, etc.  Their lives were perfect and ordered, because if they weren't, she wouldn't have been able to hold it together with 3 kids and tons of activities, etc.  But she was also able to stay home and be with a supportive group of friends who were her age and also had children, while Diane worked hard in a high-stress job to support their family, and that's a key difference.  She also doesn't seem to have much of a supportive group of people around her, but some of that is her own fault, as she cut off long-time friends she had when she married Danny.  Warren owned his own business, and was able to come home at a moments notice if she needed help, and would.  We all know about Danny, and nothing further needs to be said there.

I got the impression more strongly after reading the book that Diane didn't make good choices in most aspects of her life.  I think her brothers (especially Warren) doted on her, and bailed her out of situations, which will definitely affect decision making.  There are no consequences when you know you'll be bailed out.  She wanted a husband so badly that she married Danny.  She wanted kids so badly that she agreed to having Danny be an essentially absentee father.  She wanted the appearance of the perfectl life so badly that she worked herself hard and stretched herself dangerously thin, so the familiy could stay afloat (as Danny himself said that his salary barely covers the mortgage, let alone anything else).  I sometims wonder if she cut off all of her old friends because they might have been trying to sway her away from maknig a mistake.  A while back, I floated away from the thought that she pre-meditated a suicide plan and landed more with something happening that day, or that morning, that sent her over the edge.  I think it had been building for a long time, and she just couldn't hold on any more.  I can have some sympathy for her, but can't rationalize away what she did.  I had some sympathy for Danny, because he's so used to being doted on himself that he suddenly found out that life is hard when your support is gone.  However, it seemed that he had people at the ready to help and support him - even after the toxicology came out - but he immediately lawyered up, made a spectacle of himself, and burned every bridge he had.  I think it would have been very different had he just stepped up, said "I don't know what happened that day, and I'm sorry for any pain she caused, but I had no idea she was keeping secrets".  Many would have understood.  I would have, and I don't think we'd still be talking about her all this time later.

My opinion was further bolstered by a few things in the book.  Diane, Miss Perfect according to so many, was late picking the girls up.  Late enough that Warren, who hadn't been home, arrived back and was surprised to find them there.  Jackie's reluctance to let the girls go when she found out that Mr Hance wasn't going might have been a knife to Diane.  And her concern when Diane arrived and told her no other adult was available to go along on the trip would have been another knife.  I could see Danny being annoyed at having 5 kids there under the age of 10, and he might actually have been expected to do something.  At some point, Danny did tell Jackie that he'd be heading up to the campsite early, but they'd be travelling home together.  That never happened.  He took the dog and the laundry, went home, and went to sleep.  When Jackie called Danny's cell phone after the first call with Diane where she was slurring, she was shocked that he sounded groggy, and he said something to the effect of "What do you mean she's not back yet?", and that's when she found out he drove away by himself.

I'm fairly confident that every time Diane went to see Jackie and Warren was another knife.  They lived in the family home (where they Diane and Warren grew up).  Warren loved the house and worked hard to hang on to it - Jackie often wanted to move to the next town over - some of her friends moved their kids there for a better school system.  The house was also small.  Emma and Alyson had to share a bedroom, and Katie's room was little more than a walk-in closet.  Warren wouldn't hear of it, and said that there were more kids in that house when he was growing up, and they did just fine.  But Diane and her dad living there well past when they were supposed to per the divorce decree, and Warren buying his mom out and moving back in (essentially bailing them out...again) could have caused some problems, or resentment - especially when Warren and Jackie got married, and they had to move out.  Jackie went to Boston College and was from/lived in New Jersey.  She met Warren when he came in to a bar her dad owned, and she worked at.  They clicked instantly, and in order to be closer to her, he paid for an apartment for her in Queens.  That could breed some jealousy too.

TL/DR - no clear answers, but some gaps filled in.  I still feel it was a psychotic break/suicide, YMMV.  It was worth the read, but if you can't handle reading about the loss of a child or struggles with deep mental illness and suicide talk, it might be wise to keep moving.