I think you bring up an interesting point about her biding time until she was sober enough to not tip any suspicion around family. I do have a hard time believing she got behind the wheel with the intent to kill herself but maybe she did have an abscess, which, if she did, would be pretty damn painful (I've had abscesses and it's enough to drive you to drink - literally).
Maybe she smoked pot to dull the pain after not being able to get over the counter pain relief. Maybe driving a car of screaming kids, who may or may not be fighting and bickering, coupled with the incredible pain, led her to drinking the vodka. Maybe she dumped a can's worth of it into her drink from McDonald's and drank it as kind of a last resort because of everything that was going on and then maybe it hit hard, she got sick, pulled over and vomited a couple times before getting back on the road, still drunk.
I've looked at the entrance to the parkway that she turned on and I can see, to someone drunk, how it could be mistaken as an on-ramp. Who knows? It's crazy all around. There are so many weird questions that don't have answers.
What I find interesting, and unsettled:
1) Neither the employees at McDonald's or the gas station indicate Diane was drunk, or that anything was wrong with her. When she stopped at the gas station, she parked by the pumps but did not get gas. She only enters the gas station a brief moment before quickly leaving (reports indicate she asked if they sold Tylenol or something similar - which they had none of?) and then she, to me at least, aggressively leaves the gas station's parking lot. If you watch [video=youtube;Busc4RFtcgg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Busc4RFtcgg[/video], you can see another van, which is gray/white in color, departing at the same time as Diane. Diane's van (I think it was her brother's actually) rapidly does a U-turn and heads for the exit/entrance of the station. The other van takes a right on to Route 17, while Diane goes far-left, which would be used for cars entering the gas station, and does a quick turn south down Route 17 - tho, the video cuts out before she leaves the parking lot. Looking at
street view of the gas station, there is a shoulder between the entrance/exit and the highway, so, from the vantage point of the video camera it could appear she was pulling into the road with oncoming traffic but really pulling out into the shoulder to wait for traffic to clear. Again, because the video cuts out and a distance behind the road, it's hard to tell exactly how far the minivan was into the road prior to the turn. It's clear, though, at least from the video, that she quickly left the parking lot and took a left from the parking lot that would be typically reserved for cars entering the parking lot.
So, is this the first indication that maybe something isn't right?
2) Roughly 40 minutes after leaving the gas station, Diane speaks with her brother, after Emma, Warren's daughter, calls to say they're running late. Warren later says Diane sounded fine.
3) Around the time she spoke with her brother, however, witnesses say a van is seen driving aggressively on Route 17 in Orange County. Orange County is just south of Sullivan County, which is where Liberty (where Diane stopped at McDonald's and the Sunoco) is located. It should be pointed out that both the McDonald's and gas station are located on Old Route 17 - not the freeway that's adjacent to it. Moreover, it's important to point out at this point Diane was alert enough to NOT turn onto the off-ramp she would inevitably pass to get back on Route 17.
As you can see here, the off-ramp exit could easily be mistaken for an entrance to someone who is in a very inebriated state. She would have passed this exit, which is only a minute or so from the gas station, clearly knowing it was an exit, wrapping under an overpass and eventually
reaching the on-ramp. So, while there might be clues in the video from the gas station, she was still well enough to find her way back to Route 17 with apparent ease. 40 minutes later, tho, she's seen driving aggressively by other drivers and yet, seems fine enough when speaking with her brother around this time. Why the aggressive driving and why didn't her brother pick up on something being wrong?
4) Almost an hour after entering the gas station, and just ten minutes after speaking to her brother, someone matching Diane's description is seen on the side of Route 17, bent over vomiting. This is only ten minutes AFTER she spoke to her brother. And yet he didn't pick up that anything was wrong - her voice seemed fine. Even more interesting is that Emma, who called, didn't mention anything about Diane's driving - that it was erratic or that she was acting strange. She only told her father they would be a bit late. Was Diane good at hiding being drunk?
5) About 20 minutes after a witness spots Diane vomiting on the side of the freeway, Jackie, Warren's husband, and Diane's sister-in-law, calls Diane's cell phone. The two speak briefly - but, again, Diane seems fine. Jackie indicates nothing wrong was apparent.
6) Between the time she hangs up with Jackie, and roughly 40 minutes later, witnesses spot Diane and the red van driving in and out of traffic. She's also tailgating people, honking her horn, and seen on the side of the road looking ill - eventually, she follows a car into a rest area,
drives over some grass and into a parking lot.
7) Around this time, a call is made from Diane's phone that proves to be a wrong number. Shortly after, she then calls Jackie at home and sounds disoriented. This could explain the wrong number. She tried to get a hold of Jackie, but in a stupor of some sort, dialed someone else.
8) Warren returns home just as the call ends and calls Diane back. It's clear something is wrong with Diane now. She doesn't sound right - but is actually driving at this point (so, she has returned to the freeway) - Emma takes the phone, tells her dad Diane is acting funny, can't see right and tells Warren she sees a sign for Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow. At this point, Warren talks Diane into pulling over. They would have had to been on the road, again, after the Sloatsburg service stop for quite a bit when Diane makes her initial call to Jackie and Warren returns the call. I say this because Warren was on the phone while Diane was going through the Tappan Zee Toll, which is at the Tappan bridge - quite the distance from Sloatsburg (20 or so minutes).
9) Diane pulls off around Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow. At this point, there's more wrong numbers dialed (4) in a matter of a minute. Then, for whatever reason, Diane leaves her phone on a concrete barrier in a pull-off area.
This is most likely the sign for Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow Emma spots and tells her dad about shortly after the van pulls through the toll.
This is possibly where Diane left her phone - the off-ramp pull-off at the Tarrytown/Sleepy Hollow exit. It's uncertain how long she remains here before leaving her phone and driving away. This is roughly two hours after Diane has left the gas station in Liberty. She's 30 or so minutes behind the typical time it would take driving this route (according to Google Maps).
10) This is where things get sketchy. She has no phone now and there really is no indication of her path between the area of Tarrytown and the entrance onto the Taconic State Parkway. Looking at maps of the area, it's unlikely she would've gotten back on I-287 as the only directions she could go from here would either be west (back over the bridge - away from where she was heading) and east toward Long Island. If she headed east, it would have put her well beyond the point of entry to the Taconic State Parkway. So, what happened between the point she got off the freeway, left her phone, and entered the Parkway the wrong way?
That's the biggest question of all. Again, going back to the map, where she ended up entering the Parkway is a considerable distance away from the last known contact. We know she entered the wrong way around 1:30, so, a half hour or so after she last spoke with Warren. My only guess is she somehow decided to stay on surface streets, maybe to sober up, or because she was getting antsy driving on the freeway, and potentially drove up through Tarrytown, over toward the Parkway, eventually saw what she thought was an on-ramp and pulled onto to the Parkway hoping that maybe she could get a better idea of where she was.
11) She crashes.
It's pretty clear her state was getting progressively worse between the gas station and the crash. If she was drunk, that would make sense as the more we drink the sloppier we get. It's entirely possible she was trying to self-medicate her abscess with alcohol and underestimated how much she was drinking. Maybe she was also trying to get home faster because the pain was bothering her, as well as shouting kids in the van. The witnesses who report her driving aggressive don't necessarily say she was having difficulty driving - just that she was speeding and moving in and out of lanes (not entirely drifting from lanes like drunk drivers do). From the calls to Jackie and Warren, she sounded fine. But if she was quickly drinking, dumping a can's worth of vodka in her cup, the impact could be delayed - but hit really fast.
Still, her actions were a bit peculiar. I want to know why she left the phone on the side of the turnoff. It's possible she just forgot it but the police said it was neatly left. I don't know what that means. And why did she continue driving even after Warren told her not to? Was she afraid he'd spot her drunk - afraid maybe a cop would question her?
So many questions.
Sorry for the long winded post. :bedtime:
