The Arizona Republic
wed, november 3, 1999
'Then I offered her to GOD'
Insane mother's confession in murder of child
Just before Barbara Downey shot her daughter in a twisted sacrifice to God, she placed the 6-year-old face down on a baby blanket in the desert and asked if she wanted to go to heaven.
"Mommy, I want to go to heaven," she recalled the girl as saying, "but don't kill me."
"I said, 'OK, I love you, baby.' She said, 'I love you,' and I shot her," Downey said in a statement to investigators made a day after the May 12, 1998, slaying near Apache Junction.
A videotape of the hourlong interview was released Tuesday as a judge prepared to send Downey to an indefinite stay in the state mental hospital.
Downey has pleaded "guilty except insane" in the slaying of Jessica Helms and will be sentenced Thursday in Maricopa County Superior Court.
Prosecutors initially sought the death penalty, but changed their minds when psychiatrists found Downey insane. She will remain in custody until doctors deem her of sound mind.
On the videotape, Downey, wearing a white sweat shirt and wrapped in a blanket, continuously fidgeted with a Bible - opening it, clutching it to her chest, holding it in her lap,
At times, Downey nervously rocked back and forth or ran her fingers through her hair. But during others, she smiled and joked with the detective.
The 26-year-old former amphetamine addict expressed no remorse when she described shooting her "Jessie" twice in the head, wrapping her body in a tarp and going home.
When asked to describe her feelings, Downey replied simply, "Thankful that she was in heaven."
Downey said she had undergone a religious transformation six months before the slaying. And though she had not attended church services in years, she read her Bible daily and addressed her boyfriend, David Ladd, as God.
During restless nights leading up to the killing, Downey said she awoke to messages from God that the world was coming to an end and that she should tell people to repent. Finally, she decided to sacrifice her daughter.
"Jessie was born out of wedlock, and it's like ... I know it was my fault," she said. I should have been married, and I was not. And the only way for her to get into heaven was if I offered her."
Downey picked Jessica up at school on the day of the slaying, telling school officials she was going to take her four- wheeling.
She stopped the truck in the desert and discussed God with her daughter.
"We sat there and prayed and read the Bible," she said. "Then we got out and and we walked, and then I offered her to God."
Downey told police that she was committed to a psychiatric hospital when she was 13 and spent time at a Christian home in Mississippi.
She later attended Gilbert and Red Mountain high schools but dropped out before graduating.
She held jobs in a doctor's office, an auto parts store and in a church working with children.
A year before the killing, "I was on speed really, really bad. That's what made me lose everything. That's what turned my life upside down.
Downey told police that she considered counseling but turned to God, instead. "I started reading the Bible, and it's helped," she said.