There’s something wrong with Aunt Diane

[NightsOfCabiria]

Has anyone seen this documentary on the Sky Crime Channel?

I found it quite upsetting and disturbing and I’m a seasoned crime series viewer.

The pictures at the end are haunting.There’s no prior warning (apart from right at the start).

[Dazedandconfused10]

I'm planning to watch it when it's on at 9pm.

[Furrybootsyecomfy]

I have seen this but it was a few years ago. The whole story is just very strange and sad.

[NightsOfCabiria]

@Furrybootsyecomfy it is isnt it and the husband was so ... odd.

[IHaveBrilloHair]

I wonder if she was a regular heavy drinker and he knew all along.

[Dazedandconfused10]

I feel like the husband wasn't 100% honest

[breakfastpizza]

The husband was a terrible partner and father. He dumped all the parenting on her. He worked the late shift so he didn't get home until after midnight, despite her asking him to be around more. He left her at the campsite with 5 kids, and drove home alone with the dog. If she'd posted about him on Mumsnet, it would have been 100% LTB.

She was the main breadwinner and main parent, without any support system (her mom ran off when she was a kid).

I don't think she did it on purpose/for revenge. I think something she was taking to cope with the stress backfired. Alcohol? Weed? Ambien? Her fault - yes. But his, too.

[NightsOfCabiria]

Breakfastpiza, yes, quite. The fact that the husband had hidden the fact that he knew the results of the 2nd pathology test was quite telling. Trying to keep the truth hidden. Did you notice at the end, where the little boy snatched his hand away when his father tried to hold it? I wonder if he was abusive?

[movingdilemma1234]

I felt so sorry for the little boy who had lost his sister, cousins and mother at such an impressionable age. He appears slightly unattached to his father and it's so heartbreaking that the father's grief is getting in the way of meeting the little boy's emotional needs.
My hypothesis is that Diane had a chronic dental abscess and realised that a swig of alcohol could help her through the journey home. I think she consciously took the vodka into the van with her, probably meaning to just have one swig but then had more. Anyone who has had a chronic dental abscess will know that you will do anything to stop the pain. Shame on her husband for not seeming to know what was going on for his wife

[NightsOfCabiria]

Ive had two dental abscesses (terrible teeth) but not once did i consider having a shot of vodka, let alone ten. Plus marijuana. In the morning. Before driving children home. You pull over and ask someone to come and get you or call 911 if it’s intolerable. It wasn't as if there was a rush. It wasn't dark/raining/remote.

[Acunningruse]

I watched this last night and cannot stop thinking about it. Absolutely harrowing viewing. Like previous posters I think it's very telling that Daniel told Jay not to contact the PI, and likely that Daniel knew all along that the autopsy results were the same.

If you google there's a very interesting, and it seems to me, plausible theory on Reddit about her self medicating for the tooth abscess, then (due to her control/perfectionist issues) panicked that she was going to be found DUI and wanted to get home as soon as possible-but went the wrong way on the highway. Tragic.

[Acunningruse]

https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/8ayy3j/acoupleethoughtsonndiane_schuler/ link for anyone interested...spent their entire day going down the Reddit rabbit hole.

[RubaiyatOfAnyone]

I watched this on the recommendation of a friend and was deeply confused (disclaimer - i don’t normally watch true crime-type programmes, so am not sure if this one is typical of the genre).

I kept waiting for a big twist which made sense of/explained the discrepancies or confusion of her family. Instead, at the end you just got “yep, the autopsy was right in the first place, she just hid her alcoholism better than most people”. In which case, what was the point of making a film? Surely there are many tragic horrible deaths caused by addicts?

[CSIblonde]

I saw this a while ago. I feel she was a closet drinker then the weed smoked on holiday on top of self medicating for tooth pain led to an adverse reaction that affected her. She was seen buying over the counter meds halfway into the journey & also throwing up by the roadside, where she left her mobile behind. The child who rang a relative while she was driving said she was acting odd & saying she couldn't see & she was seen staring straight ahead while speeding. The husband seemed in denial but if he had admitted her drink prob, he'd probably be culpable legally for letting her drive the children. She didn't have any brain haemorrhage etc.

[MummyOfBoyAndGirl]

So incredibly sad. So many lives lost

[Furrybootsyecomfy]

Fell down the Reddit rabbit hole while reading this thread, and came across a short story by Stephen King, “Herman Wouk Is Still Alive”, that was inspired by these horrible events.
I can’t do clicky links, but the story is available to read on The Atlantic website. I don’t think the events in the story reflect what happened, I am more inclined to believe the tooth abscess/ self medication then rushing to get home theory, but it is an absorbing read for anybody interested in the case and King’s work.
RIP to those who lost their lives.

[Furrybootsyecomfy]

Sorry, and should also mention quite an upsetting and harrowing read, with some quite graphic imagery.

[Sagradafamiliar]

Watched this and couldn't get my head around it. At first I thought it sounded fairly straightforward but then small details were odd. Like if she was a habitual drinker, she'd have been fairly used to driving relatively safely. If she was blind drunk or having a weed induced crisis, then surely she'd have been all over the place? Whereas all the witness said she was fixed straight ahead and not reacting. I wondered whether she was already dead at this point and therefore continued careering onwards until colliding with another car?
I think she was affected my drink/drugs** and had some kind of medical occurrence. The family were so set on the alcohol blood results that the chance of the autopsy missing a vital trauma like a stroke or heart attack wasn't touched upon.
Awful, awful for the families. (And yes, I was not prepared for the photos at the end and wondered why the family had chosen for them to be shown).

[Sallycinnamum]

I watched this last night and can't stop thinking about it. It's absolutely harrowing.

But as someone echoed above no matter how much pain I'm in I'd never treat it with vodka driving a car with children in it.

[HollyGoLoudly1]

I've seen this too. There should definitely be some kind of warning about those pictures, very out of the blue and also very unnecessary imo. The story is just heartbreaking and still such a mystery.

I feel like there's still part of the explanation missing, some sort of mental health crisis maybe. I'd hazard a guess that there's a whole backstory with the husband that could explain a lot. Or possibly what the family claim; that there was some coincidental medical event that unfortunately with her drinking/smoking sent her into some sort of delerium. The drink/drugs don't explain everything. Either she was:

1. An addict. In which case she wouldn't have been incapacitated to the extent that she would drive around for hours, taking wrong turns, making weird phone calls and ultimately doing what she did.
   
2. Not an addict. In which case she would have been really quite drunk/stoned if she wasn't used to that amount of alcohol, have been weaving in and out of traffic etc. Not driving precisely but aggressively as many witnesses claim.
   
   The tooth abcess I feel is a bit of a red herring. No person in their right mind goes from trying to buy Tylenol (which is just paracetamol I think?) and thinking 'well this vodka and joint will do instead while I'm driving young children' when you can't buy any. I can only imagine that she wasn't in her right mind.

[PloptheBarnOwl]

"I'd hazard a guess that there's a whole backstory with the husband that could explain a lot"

I agree Holly. The husband does not come across as a very nice man. My suspicion is that it was not a happy marriage.

[bottlenose301]

I watched this last night. Those poor kids (and the other car's occupants)

My theory is (as others have also mentioned) that she was in severe pain and drank/smoked weed to numb the pain and got carried away. The combination of that and pain caused her the reaction.

I've had such bad toothache where not even pain relief is helping and I have had a swig of a spirit because weirdly I found it helped temporarily. But I wasn't driving of course and stopped at 1-2 shots.

But who knows. The husband doesn't seem to want to entertain the possibility that she was drunk/high end of.

[user2314]

Who was the card written to at the end "Evan"?

[Bootsuit]

Think the tooth abscess theory (in that she made a misjudgement in how much she could handle drinking) is for people that want to believe that a person isn't capable of doing such an awful act.

As horrific as it is, I think that she got tanked up on purpose and all the driving around, leaving her phone behind was all her psyching herself up into purposely getting on the highway the wrong way with the intention of murdering them all.

The husband is in complete denial that the way he treated her resulted in her doing that to herself, their family and the people in the other car. Looking for a more 'harmless' reason - her self medicating for a tooth abcess and getting carried away sits on your conscience better than your wife choosing to end her life and others in such a brutal way.

[PloptheBarnOwl]

Bootsuit, I listened to a podcast on this that came to the same conclusion- she wasn't swerving all over the road like someone off their face- she was driving deliberately, with the kids screaming in the back and other drivers honking their horns. There is no way she didn't know what she was doing. The podcast (Generation Why, it was called) pointed out that anger is an effective buzzkill- if you are angry enough, you don't feel the effects of drink, especially if you are habituated to drinking large amounts anyway. Not sure how stopping to look for painkillers fits in to this though. The poor poor kids- they were already distressed at the time of the last phone call, and that was an hour or so before the crash. I wonder about the boy who survived too- wonder how being brought up by his dad has been.

[Lipz]

Just watched this now. Very sad. Those poor children. God they must have been so scared and.....oh just can't let my brain think about their last moments.

The dad/husband Danny does seem off, like he's hiding something. Maybe it's the grief ? I didn't like the way he said he never wanted children, she did, it was all her domain. Now this is his life. Christ, you'd be a bit upset?

It was strange that everyone said she'd didn't do drink or drugs and then half way through the programme it was revealed she smoked weed every night.

Why were school friends interviewed? They all had lost contact . The best friend.... right, so I get some people don't like discussing personal info with everyone, but if you were as good friends as she claimed they were, surely something was discussed? You'd have to have a rant with your friend about your lazy dh ? Or maybe diane didn't and tried to create a fake perfect life to the outside world and maybe this was the reason for smoking weed every night.

I don't understand why the family, husband and sil are adamant that there was no alcohol in her system ? 2 tests proved there was.

Did it say why the parents of the 3 children who died didn't interview? I don't know if it was either Diane's sister or brother who is the parent ? Do they know more ? Surely if they were aware of drinking and drug issues they wouldn't have trusted her to drive their kids.

Its just all very sad.