Did anyone watch the HBO documentary 'There's something wrong with Aunt Diane'?

[DisneyLoverUSA]

I found it very telling that when the SIL was looking over the wife's prescription list and she saw where there was Ambien on the list and she asked the husband if he knew of wife's sleeping problems and he said NO. So obviously she took Ambien and he didn't even know. He knew she smoked pot and he probably knew she had a drinking problem.
It was a sad story. I remember when this happened and I remember seeing some show about it. Either 20/20 or 48 Hours or something but it wasn't as detailed as this whole documentary. Nobody will ever really know what happened now. It's over and done with. A lot of ppl's lives were destroyed.
I got very angry when the SIL stated that husband had said he didn't even want kids. Like he is mad that he is now having to take care of his son when he told the wife he didn't want kids to start with. It seems he thinks he would have been better off if EVERYBODY in that van had died.

 

[Aisling]

One thing that surprised me was that they showed her dead body in the documentary.

I didn't see the documentary. Did they show her body in the wreck or at the morgue????

 

[msjprincess]

I didn't see the documentary. Did they show her body in the wreck or at the morgue????

At the accident scene

 

[AlexWyattMommy]

I didn't see the documentary. Did they show her body in the wreck or at the morgue????

At the crash site.

 

[Anjelica]

I didn't see the documentary. Did they show her body in the wreck or at the morgue????

Aisling - they showed it at the scene of the crash where they took close ups after she must have been pulled from the car. It was surreal if you have never seen a dead body with the eyes still "opened". Not alot of blood but the body did look a bit mangled as one of her arms was clearly broken/dislocated, etc.

 

[mefordis]

Yes, exactly. I"m sorry if I'm being too graphic here, but her face was really really swollen. She must have died of head injuries. Or who knows, the van was just so smashed in like an accordion.

I can't get the image or the entire incident out of my head. The documentary only seemed to interview people who denied she could have had a drinking problem. However, it is quite evident that she did with the equivalent of 10 drinks in her.

Aisling - they showed it at the scene of the crash where they took close ups after she must have been pulled from the car. It was surreal if you have never seen a dead body with the eyes still "opened". Not alot of blood but the body did look a bit mangled as one of her arms was clearly broken/dislocated, etc.

 

[NikitaZee]

Can toxicology results really be incorrect? I thought they were supposed to be reliable. The blood alcohol level definitely explains why it happened! Why would anyone other than the family and close friends be in denial of that?

The toothache/pain theory is ridiculous. It would take a lot of pain to make one drive for 2 mins on the wrong side of a busy freeway, without realizing (she didn't swerve or anything). My mom once had half of her face swollen from an absess and she drove herself to the dentist, no problem.

She must have been swigging that vodka bottle in the front seat with the kids in the back. She must have been a closet alcoholic. I don't know how she got to the point she was at without blacking out first.

One thing that surprised me was that they showed her dead body in the documentary. Wow. I am so glad they didn't show the kids, though.

So heartbreaking. It really makes me even more skeptical to allow my girls to ride in a car with anyone. I am glad we don't have that third row of seats (we have an SUV not a minivan) so we have a good excuse not to carpool with anyone! I'll drive my own kids around, thank you. You never know who may be popping pain meds or whatever and while driving kids around.

My husband and I had those same thoughts after watching this.

I found it very telling that when the SIL was looking over the wife's prescription list and she saw where there was Ambien on the list and she asked the husband if he knew of wife's sleeping problems and he said NO. So obviously she took Ambien and he didn't even know. He knew she smoked pot and he probably knew she had a drinking problem.
It was a sad story. I remember when this happened and I remember seeing some show about it. Either 20/20 or 48 Hours or something but it wasn't as detailed as this whole documentary. Nobody will ever really know what happened now. It's over and done with. A lot of ppl's lives were destroyed.
I got very angry when the SIL stated that husband had said he didn't even want kids. Like he is mad that he is now having to take care of his son when he told the wife he didn't want kids to start with. It seems he thinks he would have been better off if EVERYBODY in that van had died.

Yes, I thought that was telling also. If I was taking a sleep aid like Ambien, with little kids in my care, I'd definitely tell my husband about it. Unless he was being deliberately vague about things he knew to be true, that might make it more suggestive that she had a problem. I can't figure him out.

 

[mefordis]

Maybe the insurance won't pay out if she was drinking. I'm sure they won't. Maybe that is why he fought it so hard (the idea she had been drinking and the toxicology report).

My husband and I had those same thoughts after watching this.



Yes, I thought that was telling also. If I was taking a sleep aid like Ambien, with little kids in my care, I'd definitely tell my husband about it. Unless he was being deliberately vague about things he knew to be true, that might make it more suggestive that she had a problem. I can't figure him out.

 

[Halloweenqueen]

I watched this last night. It brought back memories of when I was a nanny on Long Island many years ago. I occasionally watched the neighbor's special needs daughter. She was their only child. She loved wrestling and hair bands and her parents would pay me to take her to the shows, since they owned a restaurant and worked nights.

The father would ask me to drop him off at the restaurant on own way to the event. Along the way he would ask me to stop so he could make a quick errand, usually the post office.

I took her out once or twice every week. Then they stopped asking me. It was approaching winter time so I thought they didn't want her out in the cold.

The neighbor's wife calls me several months later and asks me to come to the house. She tells me her husband is in rehab after a dui. She says she had no idea he was drinking. She tells me she noticed on a credit card statement that he was making purchases at a liquor store months before and confronted him. He told her he was buying the alcohol for me.

I guess he must have been going to the liquor store behind the post office.

He calls me a month later and asks me to stop by. I didn't want anything to do with him at that point and made some excuse. He then told me over the phone that as part of his rehab he need to apologize to people he lied to because he had been hiding his drug/alcohol abuse for many, many years!


This case is so heartbreaking. I assume the kids might have fallen asleep. I hope so. I don't know if people even had time to honk or respond as she flew by. I do lean towards this being intentional. I think something set her off. I think that's why her husband is so vocal...he must have some part in this.

I feel very saddened about her son. He needs a loving parent who will guide him on a path of healing. His Dad's anger seems consuming. I wish he would find a relative better suited to parent his son. The last scene where the boy wouldn't take his father's hand is so telling.

 

[mefordis]

Wow, what a story. Thanks for sharing.

I'm sorry to say the kids were not asleep. They were making calls with their aunt's cellphone to their dad up until the aunt pulled over and made a phone call, then she left her cellphone on some bridge (probably in her drunken stupor). I don't think she tried to kill herself. I don't think she is the type who would take 5 kids with her, I really don't. I think she was just a stupid, selfish, drunk of a mom. That's all.

I watched this last night. It brought back memories of when I was a nanny on Long Island many years ago. I occasionally watched the neighbor's special needs daughter. She was their only child. She loved wrestling and hair bands and her parents would pay me to take her to the shows, since they owned a restaurant and worked nights.

The father would ask me to drop him off at the restaurant on own way to the event. Along the way he would ask me to stop so he could make a quick errand, usually the post office.

I took her out once or twice every week. Then they stopped asking me. It was approaching winter time so I thought they didn't want her out in the cold.

The neighbor's wife calls me several months later and asks me to come to the house. She tells me her husband is in rehab after a dui. She says she had no idea he was drinking. She tells me she noticed on a credit card statement that he was making purchases at a liquor store months before and confronted him. He told her he was buying the alcohol for me.

I guess he must have been going to the liquor store behind the post office.

He calls me a month later and asks me to stop by. I didn't want anything to do with him at that point and made some excuse. He then told me over the phone that as part of his rehab he need to apologize to people he lied to because he had been hiding his drug/alcohol abuse for many, many years!


This case is so heartbreaking. I assume the kids might have fallen asleep. I hope so. I don't know if people even had time to honk or respond as she flew by. I do lean towards this being intentional. I think something set her off. I think that's why her husband is so vocal...he must have some part in this.

I feel very saddened about her son. He needs a loving parent who will guide him on a path of healing. His Dad's anger seems consuming. I wish he would find a relative better suited to parent his son. The last scene where the boy wouldn't take his father's hand is so telling.

 

[johnsontrio]

Regarding the photo of the body, I have ben an RN for many years and worked extensively in a neuro-trauma unit. While I do empathize with how traumatic that photo must be for a lay person to view, her visible injuries were minimal. The first responders at the scene stated that she fell out of the van when they finally got the door open and I believe they said the passenger side door. The children that were ejected probably did not fare so well. From the information presented, I expected much, much worse and would say that as far as obvious trauma, that photo would be about a 2 on a scale of 1- 10, with 10 being the worst. Most emergency personnel will tell you that the drunks usually fare better than the sober people they hit in terms of damage sustained in an accident. I have also taken care of many brain dead patients who have sustained a traumatic injury, for example falling out of the bed of a pickup truck, without a scratch on their body. Many with horrendous severe visible injuries survive.

Dh said he thought after watching this that something must have set her off that morning. He said maybe they discussed divorce, or as someone suggested, maybe a lover broke it off with her. I had forgotten about the Ambien comment. Especially for someone who would have been alone with the children in the home at night while the husband worked. Her children were young and probably were still getting up at night from time to time. I know I never took anything like that when my DH worked nights and I was home with DD alone. I worried about a medical emergency or the need to evacuate for fire or severe weather and not being able to respond appropriately. Also curious was the SIL's comment that no one ever discussed Diane's pot smoking with her but she just knew about it. ESP or what? Denial or lying, whatever you want to call it, the story is so clouded now, the truth will never come out.

 

[Halloweenqueen]

I thought the neice made the call hours before the accident. I'll have to rewatch that section of the doc.

Is it on HBO Go?

 

[mefordis]

The first responders (witnesses who took Diane out of the vehicle) said they got the kids out of the car. No one was ejected. They were wearing seat belts I imagine but they were not ejected. The witnesses and helpers had to get the kids out of the back seat.

In my opinion, Diane's face/head was extremely swollen (probably due to brain swelling?) She had a few lacerations and one eye was swollen shut. It was pretty gruesome but I am not in the medical field. You probably see horrible things as an RN.

I agree with you about the Ambien. I would NEVER take that stuff even while my husband is home because I do have a 2 yr old who will get up about 5 nights out of 7. I need to be able to hear her and respond. I don't like drugs anyway. Except for the occasional drink.

The thing I cannot let go of is just trying to picture when/where she had those drinks of vodka and the pot, too. I'm sure she wasn't smoking a doob while driving the kids around. She would have feared they would tell on her, I'm sure. And she must have guzzled that vodka to have had 10 drinks.

Maybe she was really hung over from the night before and had some hair of the dog? She could have had alcohol in her system from the night before then had the vodka in the morning on top of all that. I know a bad hangover can mess up your thinking big time. That would explain her looking for Advil at the gas station.

As a mom I just cannot wrap my brain around this. She wasn't that far from home. She could have waited and gotten tanked in the safety of her own home and everyone would have been safe! Why couldn't she have waited!?

Regarding the photo of the body, I have ben an RN for many years and worked extensively in a neuro-trauma unit. While I do empathize with how traumatic that photo must be for a lay person to view, her visible injuries were minimal. The first responders at the scene stated that she fell out of the van when they finally got the door open and I believe they said the passenger side door. The children that were ejected probably did not fare so well. From the information presented, I expected much, much worse and would say that as far as obvious trauma, that photo would be about a 2 on a scale of 1- 10, with 10 being the worst. Most emergency personnel will tell you that the drunks usually fare better than the sober people they hit in terms of damage sustained in an accident. I have also taken care of many brain dead patients who have sustained a traumatic injury, for example falling out of the bed of a pickup truck, without a scratch on their body. Many with horrendous severe visible injuries survive.

Dh said he thought after watching this that something must have set her off that morning. He said maybe they discussed divorce, or as someone suggested, maybe a lover broke it off with her. I had forgotten about the Ambien comment. Especially for someone who would have been alone with the children in the home at night while the husband worked. Her children were young and probably were still getting up at night from time to time. I know I never took anything like that when my DH worked nights and I was home with DD alone. I worried about a medical emergency or the need to evacuate for fire or severe weather and not being able to respond appropriately. Also curious was the SIL's comment that no one ever discussed Diane's pot smoking with her but she just knew about it. ESP or what? Denial or lying, whatever you want to call it, the story is so clouded now, the truth will never come out.

 

[msjprincess]

I thought the neice made the call hours before the accident. I'll have to rewatch that section of the doc.

Is it on HBO Go?

The call was about half an hour before the accident http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=8350259

 

[mefordis]

Yes, it is on HBO Go!

It looks like the last call from the niece was about 25 mins before the crash.

I got this timeline from ABC News site:

At 11:37 a.m., Schuler's niece Emma, 8, called her father, Warren Hance, Schuler's brother, to tell him they were running late. At 12:08 p.m. the Hances called back and had what has been described as a "normal" conversation with Schuler. But over the next 48 minutes, something went terribly wrong.

"What did Emma say to her dad?" Ruskin said. "She's expressing ... something is wrong with Diane. Diane is incoherent, she is confused and they are lost."

The call dropped out and Schuler's cell phone was later found on top of a wall by a bridge near the highway. "It means 99.9 percent sure she got out of the car," Ruskin later said.

Schuler's brother called the police to ask them to issue an Amber alert. But by then, it was likely too late, according to Ruskin.

The Taconic and the Toxicology Report

Twenty-five minutes after that final phone call, Schuler had already made the fatal wrong turn that would kill her and her 3-year-old daughter, her three nieces, and Guy *******i, his father Michael *******i and their friend Daniel Longo, who were riding in an oncoming SUV.

At 12:56 p.m., Emma called her father back in a panic.

I thought the neice made the call hours before the accident. I'll have to rewatch that section of the doc.

Is it on HBO Go?

 

[mefordis]

The call was about half an hour before the accident http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=8350259

Thank you! That was the same story I tried to quote.

 

[mefordis]

Also, what a way to die. To have taken so many lives with you and to have just destroyed so many people. We would all like to leave some sort of nice legacy before we go. Look what she has left - the kind of memory she has left behind. So horrible. Not sure about the after life but what sort of peace can one have who had done such a thing?

 

[NikitaZee]

The first responders (witnesses who took Diane out of the vehicle) said they got the kids out of the car. No one was ejected. They were wearing seat belts I imagine but they were not ejected. The witnesses and helpers had to get the kids out of the back seat.

In my opinion, Diane's face/head was extremely swollen (probably due to brain swelling?) She had a few lacerations and one eye was swollen shut. It was pretty gruesome but I am not in the medical field. You probably see horrible things as an RN.

I agree with you about the Ambien. I would NEVER take that stuff even while my husband is home because I do have a 2 yr old who will get up about 5 nights out of 7. I need to be able to hear her and respond. I don't like drugs anyway. Except for the occasional drink.

The thing I cannot let go of is just trying to picture when/where she had those drinks of vodka and the pot, too. I'm sure she wasn't smoking a doob while driving the kids around. She would have feared they would tell on her, I'm sure. And she must have guzzled that vodka to have had 10 drinks.

Maybe she was really hung over from the night before and had some hair of the dog? She could have had alcohol in her system from the night before then had the vodka in the morning on top of all that. I know a bad hangover can mess up your thinking big time. That would explain her looking for Advil at the gas station.

As a mom I just cannot wrap my brain around this. She wasn't that far from home. She could have waited and gotten tanked in the safety of her own home and everyone would have been safe! Why couldn't she have waited!?

I'm thinking she mixed the vodka with the OJ she got at MacDonalds. As far as the pot - the accident happened 4 hrs after she left the campground. Even stopping for breakfast, she should have been home in half that time. I'm thinking she stopped again along the way, let the kids out to play, and smoked a joint.

 

[mefordis]

Okay, I'm reading the comments from http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/comments?type=story&id=8350259 and they are making a very compelling argument that it was a suicide! Wow! If so, why couldn't she have spared the kids and just left them at mcdonalds ?!? Why take them with her?!?!

 

[sbtrfly74]

Regarding the photo of the body, I have ben an RN for many years and worked extensively in a neuro-trauma unit. While I do empathize with how traumatic that photo must be for a lay person to view, her visible injuries were minimal. The first responders at the scene stated that she fell out of the van when they finally got the door open and I believe they said the passenger side door. The children that were ejected probably did not fare so well. From the information presented, I expected much, much worse and would say that as far as obvious trauma, that photo would be about a 2 on a scale of 1- 10, with 10 being the worst. Most emergency personnel will tell you that the drunks usually fare better than the sober people they hit in terms of damage sustained in an accident. I have also taken care of many brain dead patients who have sustained a traumatic injury, for example falling out of the bed of a pickup truck, without a scratch on their body. Many with horrendous severe visible injuries survive.

Dh said he thought after watching this that something must have set her off that morning. He said maybe they discussed divorce, or as someone suggested, maybe a lover broke it off with her. I had forgotten about the Ambien comment. Especially for someone who would have been alone with the children in the home at night while the husband worked. Her children were young and probably were still getting up at night from time to time. I know I never took anything like that when my DH worked nights and I was home with DD alone. I worried about a medical emergency or the need to evacuate for fire or severe weather and not being able to respond appropriately. Also curious was the SIL's comment that no one ever discussed Diane's pot smoking with her but she just knew about it. ESP or what? Denial or lying, whatever you want to call it, the story is so clouded now, the truth will never come out.

I agree, as a nurse this photo was not as bad as it could have been, and the swelling of her face I account to smoke inhalation and fluid overload. I take the documentary wanted to put a scare into ppl with the picture as to what can happen, as I would have expected it to be much worse.

The first responders (witnesses who took Diane out of the vehicle) said they got the kids out of the car. No one was ejected. They were wearing seat belts I imagine but they were not ejected. The witnesses and helpers had to get the kids out of the back seat.

In my opinion, Diane's face/head was extremely swollen (probably due to brain swelling?) She had a few lacerations and one eye was swollen shut. It was pretty gruesome but I am not in the medical field. You probably see horrible things as an RN.

I agree with you about the Ambien. I would NEVER take that stuff even while my husband is home because I do have a 2 yr old who will get up about 5 nights out of 7. I need to be able to hear her and respond. I don't like drugs anyway. Except for the occasional drink.

The thing I cannot let go of is just trying to picture when/where she had those drinks of vodka and the pot, too. I'm sure she wasn't smoking a doob while driving the kids around. She would have feared they would tell on her, I'm sure. And she must have guzzled that vodka to have had 10 drinks.

Maybe she was really hung over from the night before and had some hair of the dog? She could have had alcohol in her system from the night before then had the vodka in the morning on top of all that. I know a bad hangover can mess up your thinking big time. That would explain her looking for Advil at the gas station.

As a mom I just cannot wrap my brain around this. She wasn't that far from home. She could have waited and gotten tanked in the safety of her own home and everyone would have been safe! Why couldn't she have waited!?

When I saw the doc I also heard that the children were not ejected from the car and the son that survived was at the bottom and was pulled out of the car. I was confused though that when the father or SIL spoke of him remembering the incident he talked about "flying like superman", which made me think he possibly may have been ejected.

I rewatched some of the doc today and found it amazing what was suppose to be a 35min car ride took 4 hours. I'm also starting to lean towards it being on purpose. I still think when she got out of the car at the bridge where she left her cell phone is where she smoked the pot. It would have be not around the children (ok in her mind) and the blood tests showed she smoked within 15mins to 1 hour of her dying.