Did she kill her own daughter?

Hi there,

I just watched the movie and really enjoyed it. Especially the performance by Judith Light, I never saw her in a role like that. It was really great!

I just have one question, I don't know if this was fictional or really based on true events but while Diana Donahue was in court the lawyer asked her about her daughter and what had happened to her. Diana said that she died of a undiscovered blood disease a couple of weeks after her birth. Regarding Diana's history do you think this was true? I have not read the book about Ma Duncan, so I don't know if the real life woman that this movie was based on also had a daughter which died as an infant.

I somehow got the feeling that she killed her daughter to protect her from this world. Did you guys get the same impression? I mean in the 1950s you could easily hide something like this. Also since Diana was a woman herself and had always had terrible experiences with men, I believed that she didn't want her own daughter to experience the same and that's why she killed her. With Nikki it was something else, he was a man and could protect himself.

Does anyone know more about this?