She is known as the main subject of the Taconic State Parkway crash back in 2009. Thats my theory as to why the brother wont talk about their conversation. On July 26, 2009, 36-year-old Diane Schuler drove the wrong way down the Taconic State Parkway in New York. Full Review So sad. Daniel cried but once during a press conference that drained onlookers emotions. Five young children were in the car as well: her son, her daughter and three nieces. Depression and mental health can cause a person to do insane things. But so many who knew Schuler described her as the perfect wife and mother, and so the desperate hunt for answers began. Like most rest areas it is laid out to be as obviously one-way as possible but he still managed to get back on the highway the wrong way. There are signs, EVERYONE IGNORED THESE SIGNS? The film follows Diane's husband and sister-in-law, who believe that Diane may have had a medical emergency that precipitated the crash, and who hire a lawyer and PI to investigate that . If we accept the case that she is an alcoholic (I think the alcoholism is moot at this point), then you're trying to tell me that a seasoned alcoholic who has presumably been drinking heavily for years, gets this messed up after some vodka and weed? Her blood alcohol level was 0.19, more than twice the legal limit of 0.08. Were the smaller children strapped into car seats? R65 that's no way to describe Datalounge Danny! This documentary explores the depth behind the case of a woman whose vehicle collision killed numerous people, including herself. R76, I agree with you. Thanks for taking the time to write this up. This was curious, because the Schulers said they left upstate early, around 9:30 a.m. on July 26. Actually I do think Diane's husband was simple minded. Its actually pretty common. Maybe one of them could have interceded and prevented the accident. I was surprised she wouldnt have a car seat at least. They want to see how depressed he is, added my source. They stalked and harassed her for months leading up to it. With her were five young children: her son, her daughter, and three nieces. , a documentary on HBO, reveals previously unknown information about that day, and sheds light on the unknown side of Schuler. IN THE minutes before Diane Schuler drunkenly smashed her vehicle while traveling in the wrong direction on the Taconic Parkway murdering seven innocents and herself her little niece cried, terrified, into a cellphone to her dad: Theres something wrong with Aunt Diane!. Jesus Christ! I just hope her son grows up relatively okay. Just as eyewitnesses reported Schuler seemed to have her faculties at the time of the crash, two witnesses from the campgrounds later maintained there was nothing out of the ordinary when Schuler and the family left. If this is true, Dumb Danny From Long Guyland is a real asshole for suing the families of the little girls! But did she leave it there on purpose, or was she so fucked up she set it down and forgot it? [R40] is on the nose, too. The woman took her girls away. The "last hurrah " at McDonalds theory is just chilling if that was her intention.Jesus. This is apparently why she took the girls with her. In 2011, Liz Garbus directed the film There's Something Wrong With Aunt Diane for HBO, a film that features interviews with Schuler's husband Daniel and her sister-in-law, Jay, who insist that she was not a drinker and couldn't or wouldn't have deliberately put the children in danger. Maintaining cookie cutters lives is not worth the price. She was supposedly texting and the police ruled out the kids as being a distraction. Some features on this site require registration. WTF? How many people went with the 'she was drunk and it was an accident' narrative vs 'she knew what she was doing, the drink was help, not cause/murder-suicide' narrative? Nearly two years after the accident, Theres Something Wrong With Aunt Diane, a documentary on HBO, reveals previously unknown information about that day, and sheds light on the unknown side of Schuler. She purposely killed the kids and herself because she was an angry control freak. Did he just refuse to say what was said, or was he cagey or obviously lying or what? She's going really fast because she just wants to get home and go to bed. I'm watching this now (for the 4th or 5th time) -- where do you see that she was "full of rage? Four hours later, she drove the wrong way on the Taconic State Parkway for nearly two miles eventually crashing into an oncoming SUV, killing herself and seven others. Schulers fatal crash contributed to the passing of the Child Passenger Protection Act. That's always seemed obvious to me r79, she was clearly an undercover alchie. I'm skeptical as a result of her BAC, the control of the car she seemed to be demonstrating while on the highway, her actions leading up the crash that morning (i.e., everyone who ran into her made it seem like she was sober), the time of day (i.e., broad daylight with tons of oncoming traffic), and the fact that she had 6 children in the car screaming in terror and pleading for her to stop. She was angry at her mother for leaving her family. It would be very interesting to know the content of the phone conversation Aunt Diane had with her brother before the accident. Schuler, a manager in Cablevisions accounting department, would suck down screwdrivers at a Long Island saloon, where she was a regular the past few years and usually came by herself, her pal said, adding: I wouldnt say she was an alcoholic, but she liked her drinks. Someone suggested that she wasn't looking for pain meds in there but for alcohol. In the aftermath, Diane Schuler was portrayed as a reckless drunk and a mother who cracked. No fucking mystery, she was completely impaired, sick from too my alcohol and angry. Revisiting the accident that occurred on July 26, 2009, when Diane Schuler drove the wrong way on New York's Taconic State Parkway and collided with . This case has also fascinated me for years. Its a gripping and terrifying account, making use of video footage, cellphone conversations and testimony from investigators and a number of witnesses. The Bastardi and Longo families pushed for prosecutors to convene a grand jury, but it never happened. They made a big deal out of her asking for pain meds at the convenience store: "something must have been bothering her." Here is a link to a pretty decent article written on the 10th anniversary of the crash that has a really detailed/comprehensive timeline of the whole day and even shows the exact place that Diane left the phone on the side of the road after a wrong number had been dialed three times. The dad hastily exited a she wasnt drunk press conference yesterday to be grilled by Nassau County child welfare workers, whom he met at the Westchester hospital where his son, Bryan, 5, was recovering from his injuries. I think she was drinking/smoking for liquid courage and was resolved to murder-suicide that day. She struck me as someone who worked hard & played hardprobably had a personality disorder or something. The film profiles Diane Schuler, who caused the fatal car accident, through interviews with her family members and friends, and attempts to piece together Schuler's actions on the day of the accident, in order to determine why the accident took place. For example, when her husband's mother freely admits that Diane's husband acted more like her "oldest child" than a husband; when Jay lets it slip that the Diane's husband didn't really want to have kids and that he resents having to be a single parent now; when Diane's friends talk about her perfectionism; and when her own mother in law admits she doesn't understand how Diane found the time to work full time and take care of the children and household chores (because your son--Diane's husband--was useless, duh). This seems highly unlikely to me. She definitely could have been. He hopes they will eventually be willing to sit down. Does anyone else see it that way? She probably wanted med for a tension headache, but ended up resorting to vodka and pot. Mumia Abu-Jamal: A Case For Reasonable Doubt? Get the freshest reviews, news, and more delivered right to your inbox! One thing is clear child welfare authorities are having trouble accepting that Daniel Schuler was clueless that his wife was drinking and drugging while driving. She had a lot of pent up rage. I can understand her being consumed with grief but it feels like she's holding back and it makes it more tragic. And her husband was a lazy prick. Privacy Policy They could be the smartest people in the world but that accent makes them sound like dumbasses. If she did it to excess or was actually an alcoholic it would have been easy to hide it from that clueless family. Replies analysing and speculating over the mystery and possible explanations are encouraged. I think it started to sink in to Jay Schuler toward the end, when the investigator hired by Dominic Barbara (sic?) Take a look at The lawsuits against the estate of Diane Schuler, 36, claimed she was negligent when she drove a minivan south in the northbound lanes of the parkway on July 26, 2009. IMO, the most logical explanation is that she was hungover and stopped at McDonalds to get OJ for the vodka we know was in the car, to take the edge off her hangover. Edit: Some people have pointed out other instances of drunk drivers driving on the wrong side of the highway, which is fair. To make matters worse, her son that survived is now taken care of by his dad/ Diane's husband, who is kinda abusive to the son. Okay, guys, if we believe this 2009 NY POST article, Diane was a secret alcoholic who drank basically every day at a bar for at least two years and in the last few months of her life was miserable in her marriage and felt trapped in it. At least two of the calls were to her brother, Warren Hance, the father of three girls who lost their lives. Well, there are a lot of theories, so I don't subscribe 100% to any of them. After watching, I poked around Reddit and was shocked to see that the general consensus seems to be that she over-medicated and went into an incoherent state leading to the crash. I drive by the spot where they were killed every day. A subreddit dedicated to the unresolved mysteries of the world. Or maybe one of them said something to her which set her off, because she saw that the pattern was repeating. -, Press J to jump to the feed. Interesting. She calls her brother. And she tried to hide all this anger by smoking pot and drinking in secret. About a week after her deadly crash, Shulerss toxicology report revealed she had a blood-alcohol content of .19%. She could have been black-out drunk. Only slightly off topic, there was a great Law & Order episode based on this during its final season. The child calls her parents and is crying because Diane is screaming at the kids to shut the hell up. https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/000281.htm. An exploration of the mystery surrounding the tragic 2009 wrong-way crash that killed a mother and seven others on NY's Taconic Parkway. When he found out she was driving a van with children he desperately tried calling both her and 911 but it was too late. Diane was found to have an insane amount of alcohol and weed in her system at the time of the crash, and her family somehow doesn't believe her findings. Personal experience and the description below from St. John's University would suggest that she would be coherent enough to know what she was doing, even if a bit drunk. So 'apparently' Danny (the husband of Diane) was having an affair with Jackie Hance (the sister in-law who lost 3 daughters). I mean would that have been so hard? I can see her being irritable, having a headache, wishing she could drink,, maybe having a few sips of vodka with OJ to "take the edge off".but get black out drunk in that setting?! But it really was simple. Much of the material Ms. Garbus presents has been on the record already, most prominently in an article by Steve Fishman in New York magazine in November 2009. Theres Something Wrong With Aunt Diane reveals a complex and complicated case as opposed to one solved by simple or reductive analysis. In the state of New York, it is now a felony to drive intoxicated with a child in the car. The decisions she made ended eight lives, four of them children. All Critics. At least his sleazy lawyer's been disbarred and pretty much lost everything. So no basic car safety was used for any of the 5 kidseven the 2 year old? No mystery! The autopsy showed no.traces of Ambien in her system. In sharp contrast to the toxicology report, Schuler had no known history of substance abuse or psychological problems and was generally known as a loving and stable wife and mother. It had to be murder-suicide. I just assumed anecdotally that it was pretty rare. Michael Bastardi Jr., who wrote a book about the experience, remains convinced that the Schuler and Hance families can provide some details to shed light on the events of that day. It was strange that they featured her four high school friends and one person who seemed just a neighbor on the documentary but no real intimates or who knew her in her daily life. Little crosses and flowers are in the medians where the two cars ended up. [quote] I'm a parent, and can understand how a person could drive in that condition. No, they're all still dead, as far as we know. The World Is Ending: Amazon Rainforest, dying? Please complete the process by verifying your email address. Meanwhile, his lawyer, Dominic Barbara, backed away from a report that he would seek another autopsy on Dianes body, now saying hed not decided what to do.. Worth the watch. He knows she's drunk and gets pissed and tells her to stay put because he's on his way to get his kids. I don't think this was the 1st time Diane had driven drunk with children in the car. I totally agree. Thats insane. Columbia School of Journalism. Plus, as the documentary unfolds, we're given more and more insights into the personal problems that may have led her to Diane's final destructive act. I'm watching it. Not one person who has a cousin who is married to someone who used to work with diane schuler? That is a big jump for someone who drinks too heavily but generally keeps good outward appearances. From all the various testimonials about her (like her friends that she cut off because apparently they didn't like Danny), you just see that that woman was a loving mom, but also full of so much rage. Yet Schuler offered himself up, grim-faced, to the press, insisting his wife had an occasional glass of wine and tossed the rest of the bottle away. Since this aired I have read comments saying that it could have been that Diane blacked out after taking Ambien. She's seen becoming visibly ill. She gets shitfaced to work up the courage and to offer a reason for the crash as an accident vs a simple suicide. Oh, I'm sure she was bothered; bothered by being left holding the bag while her dipshit husband went on his merry way. Now not only is she drunk and high but she's really really mad. There's Something Wrong with Aunt Diane is a 2011 documentary television film directed by Liz Garbus about the 2009 Taconic State Parkway crash. The hot air makes her feel worse. She drank and smoked to give herself courage/numb the pain, and she 100% got on the highway on the wrong side intentionally to kill herself and her kids. When Emma made that final call to her father, she also said how her aunt was having trouble seeing and talking funny [] slurring. Investigators later recovered a vodka bottle from the TrailBlazer. Four lawsuits have been settled from a 2009 crash that killed eight after a drunk and high West Babylon woman drove the wrong way on the Taconic State Parkway, according to court documents and attorneys handling two of the cases. "July 25, 2011: HBO releases "There's Something Wrong with Aunt Diane," with the cooperation of Daniel Schuler and his sister-in-law Jay. and the Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts. Five years after a violent wrong-way collision on the Taconic State Parkway killed eight people including four young children a flurry of civil lawsuits stemming from the crash have been dropped or quietly settled, with the terms sealed by a state judge. Thanks, R21. Schuler's son, Bryan, who was 5 at the time, was the only survivor. I guess it's over. Before this call, Schuler made three, increasingly frantic calls from her cell not the one, calm conversation thats been previously reported. Diane Schuler was portrayed by the news as a reckless drunk and a mother who carelessly put her own children in danger. There are signs, EVERYONE IGNORED THESE SIGNS? Evidence is mounting that someone had to have known Diane was a danger. No doubt she was pissed and irritated. This mysterious and shattering tragedy draws the public in, feeling a need to find out what really happened to Aunt Diane. It makes me wonder at what point is that day she decided she was going to just kill all of them?

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