SALEM – The state Court of Appeals rejected a request for an early parole hearing Wednesday from Elizabeth Diane Downs, who fatally shot one of her children and wounded two others in 1983 in one of Oregon’s most infamous crimes.

The court without comment turned aside Downs’ appeal that claimed she had been wrongly denied a tentative parole release date and a hearing. The state Parole Board says Downs isn’t eligible for a hearing until 2009.

Downs, 48, has made several losing appeals on various grounds since she was convicted of murdering 7-year-old Cheryl and attempting to murder 8-year-old Christie and 3-year-old Danny.

Danny was left paralyzed from the waist down and Christie testified against her mother at the trial.

The children were later adopted by Fred Hugi, the chief Lane County prosecutor in the case, and both have graduated from college and are employed.

Downs insisted she was innocent of the shootings on a rural road outside Springfield and claimed a shaggy-haired man had approached her and fired into her car when she wouldn’t give it up.

She received a life term plus 50 years and is in a women’s prison in Chowchilla, Calif. Her minimum sentence was 25-years in prison.

Downs was sent out of state after she escaped from the Oregon Women’s Correctional Center in Salem in 1987. She was caught 10 days later and given a five-year sentence for the escape.

The case won national notoriety when Seattle crime author Ann Rule published a book about the subject, “Small Sacrifices.”