January 9, 2020 • 40 mins
In the final episode of Murder in Oregon, Phil, the Francke brothers and Mike’s friends and colleagues share their thoughts on Michael Francke, his murder and the individuals who’ve avoided justice for the past thirty years.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Murder and Oregon is a production of I Heart Radio.
In April of two thousand and nineteen, federal Judge John
Acosta ruled in Frank Gable's favor. Here's an excerpt from
his ninety four page decision. Although evidence presented a trial
in resulted in a guilty verdict, the court concludes that
(00:24):
it is more likely than not that no reasonable juror
would find Gable guilty in light of the totality of
all the evidence uncovered since that time, particularly the newly
presented evidence of witness recantations. But the State of Oregon
is appealing that decision, and Gable is far from free. Yeah,
(00:47):
the case against Gabel has been completely demolished. Even The Oregonian,
in one of its first stories about the judge's ruling,
cited several legal experts who said the state couldn't possible
retry Gable because there was no case against him left.
The case is completely insured. The one thing we know
(01:08):
for sure of this case is that Gable I didn't
do it. The investigation was a cover up. And the
problem with that, of course, is that just leave so
many unanswered questions, and it's an unsolved murder. As we've
(01:51):
sorted through the details of the Frankie murder investigation and
Frank Gable's trial, the same name surface time and time again.
Perhaps one of the most significant is Johnny Krauss, who
you'll recall initially confessed to the murder, had detailed knowledge
of Mike's wounds and new information about the crime scene
he wouldn't have known unless he'd been there, But these
(02:14):
things were dismissed by police. Krauss recanted and was granted
immunity not to recant. His recantation and mention of all
of this was excluded from Gable's trial by Judge Gregory West.
Krous is no longer alive, but he may have been
one of only a handful of people who could answer
questions about Michael's actual killer. Well, the thing about Krous
(02:39):
that you just can't get past is that he knew
things he couldn't have known unless he had been there,
whether he did the stabbing or not. He knew where
the wounds were, and of course he knew about the
man who turned and ran across the Green expanse towards
the State hospital and around the Big Green generator. He
knew things that he couldn't have known otherwise unless he
(02:59):
was air. As we've covered, Kevin Frankie first learned about
Krause during reading with a psychic. Whether you believe in
psychics or not, the factory means the psychic was right.
The police did have a man in custody. She was
correct about Johnny Krauss, and as it would turn out,
many other things, but we'll get to that later. Here's Kevin.
(03:24):
She went by Jane Dark, and she didn't tell me
what her real name was until after I met her,
because she didn't want me putting her name out there.
She wasn't a psychic for profit. She never charged me
a penny. She was did psychic work for the Boston
Police Department, and I got referred to her by my
(03:46):
roofing supply guys Son worked for the Maryon County Sheriff's Department.
Jane had helped the Marion County Sheriff's Department a couple
of times, one very recently that gentleman had disappeared and
they were sure if he'd been abducted or what happened.
And she described the area where he could be found,
(04:07):
and they found him within like fifty or a hundred
feet of where she told them to go. I called her,
I said, I didn't tell her my name other than Kevin.
I need to speak to you about my brother's death.
She was describing the people that were involved in the
descriptions and one guy is tall, good looking with her
(04:30):
comback kind of signed Sandy Brown hair. I didn't know
any of these things or any of this stuff that
she was talking about. She described the dome building to
a t, and the hallway, the entryway, the entry doors,
the floyer. You know, this was back before there was
the internet being used at all, and there was no
way to research Mike Frankie. She only knew Kevin. Yeah,
(04:56):
you can't get past that. Really, it's whether you believe
in psychics or not. She knew they had someone in custody,
and she knew that his name was Johnny. Started with
a hard sarka. This was before the internet. I mean,
she couldn't have picked it up on the news. It
wasn't in the news on the East Coast. There's no
way she could have known. That's true. It certainly wasn't
(05:18):
a national news story at that point. Oh No. Local
television reporter Eric Mason believes Krauss wasn't pursued to protect others.
What I think was the biggest factor and why it
was that Frank Gable not convicted, was that the reasonable
doubt question, that is Johnny Krausse being someone who knew
(05:41):
details and said he'd done it, and the massive amount
of information that surrounded um the a G that represented
the Corrections department at all of the stuff that had
been reported by Steve and by Phil and by myself
off it was just as if none of that could
(06:04):
make its way yet it only had to do with
Frank Gable and what surrounded Frank Gable. So did it
seem to an extent that the judge had cleansed the
possibility of anything coming into the courtroom that could possibly change. Yes.
And then I think that is why the Johnny Krouse
story is so important to it, because Johnny Krause not
(06:28):
only admits to doing it, but he has information that
had never been out anywhere. You really, you, you really
needed to have his story in there to be able
to provide reasonable doubt, for the jury to be able
to say it's very possible this other person did it,
and there was no one else to look at that way.
(06:49):
Johnny Krausse endured an extremely abusive upbringing and was a
fringe character even by the standards of Salem's criminal underworld,
and not necessarily the most reliable witness. Then reporter for
The Statesman Journal Steve Jackson interviewed Krause at the time
I met Johnny. Obviously I wrote some stories regarding his
(07:11):
involvement here. You know, he was playing this for what
might he accomplish out of it? I don't know to
this day. UM. I know he both confessed to it
and then recanted his confession, and you know, you'd hear
he he confessed again and then he recanted again. And
(07:33):
with that whole class of people prison inmates, it's hard
to tell. They're so used to, uh, you know, lying
as a way of life that it was it was difficult.
I didn't find him to be like some of them,
which is, you know, constantly conniving and and you just
get this feeling from him that that's all they're about. Um,
(07:54):
I didn't quite get that from him. One of the interviews,
when I talked to him, I got this feeling that
he was kind of scared of where he was in
all of this. But I wasn't sure. Is that because
he's guilty of murder or is it because he's afraid
of the state police investigation? Who um, you know that
(08:14):
he might be going up against their their wishes, So
it was difficult to tell. I wouldn't have called him
the brightest bulb in the in the entire pack either. So,
but Kraus's confession could very well have saved frank Gable
from being convicted of Michael Frankie's murder and sentenced to
life in prison. Still, the question remains, why would Krauss
(08:38):
have confessed to the murder in the first place. Here
are Phil and Kevin. He was a very strange care
He had a history of confessing. He liked to confess.
He was brought up to feel guilty about everything, and
it is and one of the things that's that's noted
in the police reports is that he would confess to
(08:59):
the crimes he was caught for and confessed to others
as well. So my theory is that he was certainly there.
He knew things that he couldn't have known unless he
was there. Correct, He confessed because he didn't think that
he would be charged with murder. He thought that he
would be helpful in confessing this information that he had
(09:21):
the nature number and the location of the wounds, but
that it wasn't his hand that had the knife in it.
But he saw enough or heard enough from buck Burgess
personally in his relationship with buck Burgess that he could
transmit that information in the form of a confession or
form of I know what happened. Remember buck Burgess he
(09:45):
was the former cellmate of Conrad Nick Garcia, the inmate
who claimed he had been approached by Tennatividad to kill
Michael Frankie at the request of the Assistant Attorney General,
Scott McAllister. Buck Burgess was also married Melody Rothchild Burgess Garcia,
who was openly muling drugs into the prison. The same
(10:06):
Melody Garcia who sold her daughter Carrie to Tim Natividad.
The Carrie Rothchild who places Scott McAllister in her home
meeting with ten Natividad and Melody buck Burgess lived at
the address. Krauss told the d A and police the
knife that killed Michael Frankie came from back to phil
(10:30):
and Kevin and Johnny Krauss. I think he was there.
I think he was probably he could have very well,
I think he was. He was definitely watching across the street.
It was definitely across the street, so he could have been,
you know, right there at the parking lot. And of
course that is one of the main arguments in the
Habeas Corpus petition that got gabled out, that here was
(10:53):
someone who had confessed to the murder and new things
he couldn't have known unless he was there. And he
didn't come up in the trial. He was not. His
name was not allowed in as nativit ads, was not
allowed in pat Frankie questioned Krauss in prison, and the
Cross was just a creepy guy who eaves dropped and
heard more than he probably should have about what went on.
He had a reputation of being accountable, window paper, sneaky,
(11:16):
the son of a bitch and heard that after the fact.
And I don't think he did it. Back to phil
whatever it was, you know, whatever his role in it was,
and I think he was there looking out. He was
a lookout that night. I think that he may have
been the taller of the two men that Hans Acres
(11:38):
saw that night, the one who turned and ran. In fact,
that's what he said he did. He ran to the
medical building and around the big Green generator. Quite possibly
the one who turned and walked back to the Dome
building at a leisurely pace, as Hansacre said, was Native.
Years later, Kevin trucked Johnny Cross down and questioned him,
(11:59):
probably a better year after the trial that we're talking
about two years, two and a half years after Mike
was killed. I got ahold of john in Glee Pross
so I called. He wasn't a bushel of information. He
was very tentative. You know, what do you want? I
just want to be left alone. There is a long pause,
(12:20):
and he says, you don't understand. They can reach out
and tap you any where you are any day. He said,
I just want to be left alone. I don't even
know if this is fucking you talking and he hung up.
So his implication was if he spoke to you, they
could kill him. Yeah, that was the implication. Back to
(12:43):
phil intimative Dad. The reason I think that it's very
likely that Native A Dad is the man in the
pinstripe suit is that he resembles the composite drawing the
DAS Office tried to keep under wraps for such a
long time, and then of course you have Greg Kelsey's story,
which he told to Nigel Jake, was how he took
(13:03):
Tim Natimidad to the Doom Building that night, picked him
up later he had blood on him, And this is
a story that Kelsey had told people in the underworld
shortly after the murder. So it makes the most sense. Yes,
here's local television reporter Eric Mason. So that sketch that
everybody wonders, who is this person right there at the
(13:26):
door of the Dome building just before Michael Frankie has stabbed?
Who is that man? And Liz god Love identifies that
man as Rooster, also known as Tim Timidad. I strongly
believe that, Yeah, unless you can show me otherwise. Unfortunately,
I believe that, and that he also knows details, and
(13:51):
he also makes statements that are indicative of a person
who has murdered like Frankie. But as all of this
comes out, it's clear what happens. Then the police do
basically say, listen, Tim, Timandad's dead. What do we do
(14:12):
with that? We can't make any sense out of that.
And so all the time that they put into putting
that sketch out everywhere seems to be just like flushed
out a toilet. Here are filling Kevin. And for a
while they tried, you know, after we were Jackson and
I were making an issue with this in the in
(14:34):
the papers, they tried to put out the story that
it was a Xerox salesman who had been there working
that night. I found Xerox salesman and he was had reddish, wiry,
reddish hair. Uh. And he said he was wearing a
tweed coat that night. So I mean, that's another lie.
Why are they lying about the man in the pinstripe suit.
(14:55):
And they maintained that lie throughout the entire case, even
after it was abundantly clear that it was not the
copy of repair man, when it was, you know, patently false.
They didn't want the public to know who the man
in the pinstripe suit was because once that name comes out,
(15:17):
who that person is, then you have a nest of
thieves that get investigated. It starts pushing buttons with government people,
because if he was recognized, it would have led to
people who would have led to people who did not
want to be exposed. Exactly, you couldn't possibly pretend to
(15:38):
know who killed Michael Frankie without knowing who the man
in the pin stripe suit was, and based on the
number of people who have connected him to the murder
and noted an undeniable resemblance, the likelihood is that tmnative
it Ad was the man in the pin stripe suit.
(16:06):
The tivod AD's former drug partner and cellmate, Greg Kelsey Johnson,
also linked Nativodad to the murder. Here's the reporter he
spoke to The Will Lamb at Week's Nigel Jaques So.
Greg Johnson contacted me from uh local jail. He was
in jail on adjacent county and he said that he
(16:27):
had information about who really killed Michael Frankie and how
I was skeptical as you would be, but I decided
I would go. He said enough to make me willing
to go see him. And I went and saw him,
and he had enough information and enough specific details in
(16:47):
a in a good enough story that I think I
went and saw him four times and he essentially told
me that he had an association with a meth deal
in Salem named Tim Natividad. Johnson told Jake West that
Natividad not only asked Johnson to drive him to the
Dome building the night of Mike's murder, but later also
(17:10):
claimed to have driven him to pick up an envelope
of cash from a Department of Corrections official, and Jake
was found Johnson believable in that many other aspects of
his story checked out. I had a huge trove of
documents at that time, and Johnson was in those documents.
Those were police reports and interview transcripts and the defense
(17:32):
attorney's files. Many things that Johnson said I could I
could corroborate. Liz, who was a Natividad's girlfriend at the time,
also finds Johnson's story plausible. I bought it personally, I did.
I believed it. They were friends, they were drug partners,
they were buddies, and she confirms that Natividad came into
(17:53):
a substantial amount of money after Frankie's murder. He didn't
tell me where the money came from, but he did
come in to money. We later found out that he
hid it in my bathroom, the apartment where Tim died.
He hit it in the fan of the bathroom. There
was a story that Tim's brother got forty dollars out
of the bathroom vent of Tim's money. My sister Karen
(18:14):
is the one that cleaned my apartment out. When I
went to jail and Karen goes, it's so weird list.
The apartment manager came in and was yelling at me
for taking apart of the bathroom event, and I said,
I didn't do it. You know, you leave me alone.
I'm not taking the apartment apart. I'm getting list of
things out of here. I'm like, oh my god, putting
two and two together. That was a true story. Tim
(18:36):
Nativodad died in a violent domestic dispute just two weeks
after Mike's murder, but his name has remained linked to
the crime for the past three decades, very notably by
Conrad Garcia. The inmate Kevin Frankie met with at a
Portland halfway house. He said that he felt guilty that
(18:56):
Mike was dead, that he could have prevented it if
he'd opened his mouth sooner. And he started crying, and
I started crying to see him crying, and he apologized
to me that he didn't stop it. He said, your
brother was a good man and he shouldn't have died,
and I could have prevented it, and I didn't. And
(19:19):
I said, how could you have prevented it, and he
said what I told the police was not everything that
I could have told him. I knew specifically that Tim
Natividad wanted me to kill Mike Frankie. Not just a
big guy with corrections, It was specifically Mike Frankie. It
(19:41):
would prove just one of the many unusual tips from
many unusual sources Kevin has received over the years. Another
would come via a mysterious package delivered to the Frankie
family's Salem based attorney, Steve Krasso. He says, Hey, I
just got a package delivered to my office and I
drive down there and opened it up, and there's a
(20:03):
letter there, hand written. He said, I knew your brother
was killed because he knew too much and he was
stepping on the wrong toes and things like this. I
think I know who did it, but I can't prove
who did it. But I might be able to help
point you in the right direction and get you the
information because I was involved with these people. And if
(20:23):
you want to know more about it, then you'll meet
me at the Holiday Inn Casino in Reno, Nevada, Friday
at three o'clock. If you're not there, then I'll bet
her off. I will never talk to you again. And
Krassi says, you're not going to that, are you? And
(20:45):
I said, God, I got to Steve and he says,
you're not going to that. This sounds like fish bait.
You're going down there, You're just go put a fucking
bullet in your head. I had the whole thing, the
FedEx develope, and I took it home, and I remember
talking to Phil Stafford, reading the letter to him and
(21:05):
stuff like that over the phone. Yeah, he told me
about this, and we were both aware that it could
be a complete setup. They've tried to kill him before.
It was just too obvious that this could be another
example of it. I knew how nervous he was, and
of course I was nervous too. And I'm looking at
(21:27):
the FedEx envelope and I flip it over and there's
an address on the back of the envelope that has
reversed printed that I can see if I hold it
up sideways, and I write the address down, and I'd
get a Atlas matt for Reno, and there's a street
address for this thing in Reno, and it's got his
(21:49):
apartment number and the street address, and I think this
is the CENTI best instead of meeting at the holiday
in Now I know where I need to go meet
with him. And I borrowed a white Eldorado convertible and
Liz and I took off a reno and went down
to an apartment. Liz waited outside. I said, you know,
(22:11):
give me fifteen minutes and come up and were all
the cops. Kevin went upstairs, his hand hovering over his gun,
and I went knocked on the door and the door
opened up and this guy was standing there and he
was about five ten and kind of barrel chested and
(22:31):
forty and I said, are you j R? And he
said yeah, and I said I'm Kevin Frankie. And he
leaned back and he started to reach around, and I
pulled my gun out and I said, don't you fucking move.
And he says, I'm just getting my coat and we'll
go down to the lobby and talk. And I said,
(22:54):
I'll get your coat, and I shut the door and
got his coat mitture he didn't have a gun, and
we and down to the lobby and talked. Jr. Told
Kevin he was a former reserve of Sheriff's deputy and
claimed certain correction officials were actively involved in drug running
and prostitution. Ranks Jr. Said he moonlit as a security
(23:15):
guard at a gated home overlooking Reno, and that Michael
Frankie had visited that house once with Scott McAllister. He said,
I was running outside security. I wasn't allowed to come
into the house except for a breaker to use the bathroom.
And I remember walking by and I could see in there.
The windows were kind of tinted because it looks out
(23:37):
onto the lake and the lake reflects back up onto
the thing. I hear lake in the house and security
and everything started. I think no sp Jane Jane was
the psychic Kevin visited, the one who described a house
on a lake where his brother's killers were discussing his murder. Jr.
Claimed to have witnessed a confrontation one night involving Frankie
(24:00):
and a group of men. Now I can hear him
yelling at your brother. It was like that before you
got here, and it will be like that when they
dragged you out of hair and McAllister was behind your brother.
It looked like he was either restraining him or holding
an arm. And there was a lot of anger in there,
and I had to keep moving because I couldn't stop.
(24:20):
That would make him suspicious. But I think there's something
there that you need to look at. After the meeting
with j R, Kevin and Liz drove to that house
which Jane the Psychic had described in detail, down to
the gates that surrounded it. From the house deck, you
can look out and see the lake and it's the
(24:42):
house on the lake with the video cameras and the
iron gates. And there's two guys in a pickup truck.
One guy gets out and he's got a model Winchester
and he comes walking over to the car and he says,
can I help you? And I said, well, I'm from
Oregon and I was looking for property for sale. And
(25:04):
he says, do you see any fucking for sale signs?
And I said nope. So I said, well, look, if
anything comes up for sale, would you mind giving me
a call? And I hand him a business card and
it was one of Mike's business cards from the Department
of Corrections and he looks at it, he looks at me,
and he starts walking backwards to the truck and very
(25:27):
quickly he goes up and he has the buzzer and
he's on the phone and I get out of there.
Kevin believes that that was the house Michael Frankie had
gone to visit on the ill fated ski trip, the
one he abruptly returned from. Shaken called him up later.
I said, how is the snow? And he said, I
(25:47):
never got on the hill and I said, what do
you mean? He says, I never got on the fucking
hill and that was who. He did not want to
talk about it. He did start saying, I've got to
replace pe Uh. You gotta start surrounding myself with people
that I can trust. That ski trip would have occurred
(26:07):
a year before Mike's murder and afterwards, According to multiple sources,
Frankie and the Corrections lawyer assistant A. G. Scott McAllister
were very much on the outs. Scott McAllister left Oregon
for Utah just two weeks before Frankie was killed, and
that's where Linda Parker, McAllister's former secretary and girlfriend, claims
(26:28):
to have overheard him talking about Mike's murder. Scott was
talking to Grace and Harold. He said it was really
stupid about Frankie's murder because it was supposed to look
like a suicide, but was really part of my language.
(26:51):
Fucked up or fed up. Harold and Scott went on
conversing about it, and Harold said that it is no
real loss because nobody liked Frankie anyway, and now that
Frankie was out of the picture, Harold could use the
(27:12):
Oregon Department of Corrections again as a reference because nobody
would be there to soil his name. To this day,
Michael Frankie's death remains an unsolved murder, and thanks to
(27:35):
a federal judges ruling, the man in prison for the
past three decades for that murder is finally free. But
though the case against Frank Gable has been demolished, instead
of investigating the people responsible for the murder, Oregon's Attorney
General is appealing gables ruling on a legal technicality. Why
(27:59):
are they appealing the judge's decision. Well, whether it's just
a reflexive, bureaucratic cover your ass response or pure politics.
Because you have to remember that Ellen rosen Bloom, the
the state's a g with, was a protege of Neil Goldschmidt,
who was so instrumental in the original cover up. It's
(28:20):
got to be one of the ugliest aspects of this
whole case. Here's the Portland's Tribunes Jim Redden. It's an
unsold murder. You know, I believe Frank Gabel is innocent.
The judges said he's probably innocent, which is pretty amazing
statement from a judge. If he is innocent, then the
(28:42):
roal killer has never been caught. If it's a Natividad,
he's dead. If it is Johnny Krauss, he's dead. If
it's somebody else, maybe they're not dead. Here's reporter Nigel Jaques.
Or a state with a low rate of vital crime,
most of the crimes take place or not. This kind
of crime that had a level of political intrigue, that
(29:05):
had a level of being connected to this golden boy governor. Um.
So even today people don't even know who Michael Frankie is.
But there hasn't been the thirty years since he was killed,
been anything like this. Any killing is horrible killing, but
but it's just it is unique, and I think a
(29:27):
lot of people were never satisfied that it was sold,
and they're even less satisfied today. Here's former State Senator
Jim Hill's take. It's hard to imagine how much time
has gone by. Many people have no idea, they don't
know anything about Michael Frankie, and so it's important that
these things keep coming up and doing things like you
(29:49):
are or doing to let people know, Yeah, this did happen,
and it happened. It happened right here. It's unsolved, um,
but at least some of this has come to light,
rather than having it left where the perpetrators wanted to
(30:12):
be left is said, here's this guilty guy, really that
and that's all that it is. Now we know better.
I always felt that as time went on there might
be people who would say things now that they would
have been afraid to talk about under those circumstances earlier,
and so here we are. Former state Representative Chuck Sides agrees.
(30:39):
I would hope that the bigger story is out now.
The judge validated it. Now people can't ignore it. We
now know, both locally and nationally, the the Justice Department fabricates,
so do the cops. That shouldn't shock me, but it does.
(31:00):
So I don't expect that people are going to ever
totally except now what's being said honestly and for the
first time, But eventually they will because they'll be reminded
and reminded reminded. Kevin Frankie believes that while one hand
(31:32):
held the knife, many others had a hand in Mike's murder.
This wasn't something that Tim sat around one night and
dreamed up and said, I think I'll go kill Mike Frankie.
Somebody put them up to it. So those are the
people that are more guilty because they did this, and
because they were protecting their own self interests and they're
(31:52):
covering their own asses to get rid of Mike. Does
that make them less culpable because they didn't have the
knife in the hands and they had some other person
to it. No, those are the people that are the
biggest fucking slime balls in the world. And they had
their freedom and their liberties and their life because they
(32:13):
had Tim Natividad killed my brother. And that it's an insult,
it's a slap in the face. The timid Ads was
another life. They were willing to throw away another victim,
if you will. And it's hard for me to say
that because is it a psychopathic killer. We may never
(32:41):
be able to force balance from the scales of justice
in regards to Michael Frankie's murder. But we have now
placed a very large spotlight on those who have hidden
their roles in his death under the protective shadows of power,
privilege and corruption for far too long. Here's Phil. It's
(33:01):
obviously an open case. Gable didn't do it. Someone else
did it. But it's also obvious that the state is
not interested in pursuing it. So what did you want
to do? What did you hope this podcast would accomplish? Well?
Most immediately, of course, to draw attention to what the
(33:22):
state is still trying to do to Gable. It's it's
really unconscionable. And maybe let Ellen rosen Bloom knows you
can't get away with it. You know, the state of
Oregon could do the right thing. They could open the case.
They could go after the people who've hidden behind their
privilege and their positions, and they could do that because
(33:46):
there is no statute of limitations on murder. Yeah, I
know they're not going to do it. Governments never never
admit they're wrong, especially when the wrongs have been so
egregious as this. The cover ups have been going on
for thirty years, and I fully expect it to continue.
I can only hope that this podcast has made people
(34:11):
who have reason to feel guilt. Very uncomfortable. I certainly
concur yes, at the very least, I hope we can
do that and maybe make a difference at the margins.
The one thing that has to be addressed right now,
of course, is the state's attempt to put Gable back
(34:31):
in prison, even though it's obvious that he didn't commit
the crime. For both Frankie brothers, pursuing justice from Mike's
murder also includes correcting the injustice of Frank Gable's conviction.
Mike would have just been livid knowing that there was
an innocent man dying in prison every day. And you know,
(34:57):
my I had two fairs, one that Frank would kill himself,
where the Frank would be killed, and the joy of
the data he got. I got the news that he
was going to be released, it was, you know, better
than any Christmas. It was amazing. And that was when
I talked to my brother and I said, let's set
(35:18):
up a go fund the account and see if we
can raise some funds to help Frank transition from thirty
years of hell into a decent life with his new
life and a new life. The go fund me account
is up and running and there's money trickling in. We've
got over six thousand dollars right now. The state through
(35:40):
another wrench into the gears. They were satisfied that adminicent
man with freed, so they're appealing the judges orders to
release him. And there is now a petition change dot
org to petition the Attorney General Ellen rosen Bloom to
have the state withdraw their appeal and declare Frankie an
(36:04):
innocent dam. Here's Michael's big brother, Pat Frankie on Mike's legacy.
I had a letter that the young man wrote me
and he said, you don't know me, but I was
seventeen sixteen. Seventeen year old punks sit in a waiting
area waiting to go before a judge for sentencing, and
your brother walked through and he stopped and he said, kid,
(36:25):
you're gonna make a big decision here in about five minutes.
If you choose to be a hard ass and smart,
I like, you're gonna never get out of prison. He
said he didn't need to stop and talk to me.
He was just passing too, but he said it really
affected me. I thought about it, went in with a
whole different attitude. Did my time, got cleaned, came out,
got a scholarship to Santa Fe Community College. He said,
(36:49):
I tell my dad all the time, Judge Frankie saved
my life. He's that still being a joint if I
hadn't listened to him. That was the kind of guy
he was. M Here's how Alice Clawson, Mike's deputy director,
would like to remember Michael Frankie as a friend and
(37:09):
has a brilliant guy that whose life was ended way
too soon because he had a lot to give the
criminal justice for. It was not just an Oregon but
probably anywhere in the United States. This podcast is a
tribute to Michael Frankie and to the love and loyalty
of his brothers Pat and Kevin, who spent the last
(37:30):
three decades fighting to expose the people responsible for his death.
We'd like to give the final word to Michael Frankie,
the man certain individuals made great effort to silence. For
those people who think of the Corrections Department as my problem,
please remember that the people under the jurisdiction of the
(37:53):
Department of Corrections are people who spent a lot of
time in the community. In fact, the vast majority of
them are in the community right now. I spent enough
time as a juvenile judge in juvenile corrections to recognize
that we've got a lot better shot at them, especially
in those single digit years, than we do when they
come into my system. The Department of Corrections is not
(38:18):
my operation, it's our operation. Murder and Oregon is hosted
(39:18):
by Lauren Bright Pacheco and Phil Stanford. Executive producers are
Noel Brown, Lauren Bright Pacheco, and Phil Stanford. Supervising producer
and lead editor is Taylor Chocoyne. Sound designed by Tristan McNeil,
Story editing by Matt Riddle, Written by Phil Stanford, Matt Riddle,
and Lauren Bright Pacheco. Music written and performed by the
Diamond Street Players and mixed by Taylor Chikoyne with music
(39:42):
supervision by Noel Brown. Additional music by Tristan McNeil. Archival
elements courtesy of KGW in Portland, Oregon. The station behind
the podcast, Urged to Kill. Murder and Oregon is a
production of I Heart Radio.
Murder and Oregon is a production of I Heart Radio.
In April of two thousand and nineteen, federal Judge John
Acosta ruled in Frank Gable's favor. Here's an excerpt from
his ninety four page decision. Although evidence presented a trial
in resulted in a guilty verdict, the court concludes that
(00:24):
it is more likely than not that no reasonable juror
would find Gable guilty in light of the totality of
all the evidence uncovered since that time, particularly the newly
presented evidence of witness recantations. But the State of Oregon
is appealing that decision, and Gable is far from free. Yeah,
(00:47):
the case against Gabel has been completely demolished. Even The Oregonian,
in one of its first stories about the judge's ruling,
cited several legal experts who said the state couldn't possible
retry Gable because there was no case against him left.
The case is completely insured. The one thing we know
(01:08):
for sure of this case is that Gable I didn't
do it. The investigation was a cover up. And the
problem with that, of course, is that just leave so
many unanswered questions, and it's an unsolved murder. As we've
(01:51):
sorted through the details of the Frankie murder investigation and
Frank Gable's trial, the same name surface time and time again.
Perhaps one of the most significant is Johnny Krauss, who
you'll recall initially confessed to the murder, had detailed knowledge
of Mike's wounds and new information about the crime scene
he wouldn't have known unless he'd been there, But these
(02:14):
things were dismissed by police. Krauss recanted and was granted
immunity not to recant. His recantation and mention of all
of this was excluded from Gable's trial by Judge Gregory West.
Krous is no longer alive, but he may have been
one of only a handful of people who could answer
questions about Michael's actual killer. Well, the thing about Krous
(02:39):
that you just can't get past is that he knew
things he couldn't have known unless he had been there,
whether he did the stabbing or not. He knew where
the wounds were, and of course he knew about the
man who turned and ran across the Green expanse towards
the State hospital and around the Big Green generator. He
knew things that he couldn't have known otherwise unless he
(02:59):
was air. As we've covered, Kevin Frankie first learned about
Krause during reading with a psychic. Whether you believe in
psychics or not, the factory means the psychic was right.
The police did have a man in custody. She was
correct about Johnny Krauss, and as it would turn out,
many other things, but we'll get to that later. Here's Kevin.
(03:24):
She went by Jane Dark, and she didn't tell me
what her real name was until after I met her,
because she didn't want me putting her name out there.
She wasn't a psychic for profit. She never charged me
a penny. She was did psychic work for the Boston
Police Department, and I got referred to her by my
(03:46):
roofing supply guys Son worked for the Maryon County Sheriff's Department.
Jane had helped the Marion County Sheriff's Department a couple
of times, one very recently that gentleman had disappeared and
they were sure if he'd been abducted or what happened.
And she described the area where he could be found,
(04:07):
and they found him within like fifty or a hundred
feet of where she told them to go. I called her,
I said, I didn't tell her my name other than Kevin.
I need to speak to you about my brother's death.
She was describing the people that were involved in the
descriptions and one guy is tall, good looking with her
(04:30):
comback kind of signed Sandy Brown hair. I didn't know
any of these things or any of this stuff that
she was talking about. She described the dome building to
a t, and the hallway, the entryway, the entry doors,
the floyer. You know, this was back before there was
the internet being used at all, and there was no
way to research Mike Frankie. She only knew Kevin. Yeah,
(04:56):
you can't get past that. Really, it's whether you believe
in psychics or not. She knew they had someone in custody,
and she knew that his name was Johnny. Started with
a hard sarka. This was before the internet. I mean,
she couldn't have picked it up on the news. It
wasn't in the news on the East Coast. There's no
way she could have known. That's true. It certainly wasn't
(05:18):
a national news story at that point. Oh No. Local
television reporter Eric Mason believes Krauss wasn't pursued to protect others.
What I think was the biggest factor and why it
was that Frank Gable not convicted, was that the reasonable
doubt question, that is Johnny Krausse being someone who knew
(05:41):
details and said he'd done it, and the massive amount
of information that surrounded um the a G that represented
the Corrections department at all of the stuff that had
been reported by Steve and by Phil and by myself
off it was just as if none of that could
(06:04):
make its way yet it only had to do with
Frank Gable and what surrounded Frank Gable. So did it
seem to an extent that the judge had cleansed the
possibility of anything coming into the courtroom that could possibly change. Yes.
And then I think that is why the Johnny Krouse
story is so important to it, because Johnny Krause not
(06:28):
only admits to doing it, but he has information that
had never been out anywhere. You really, you, you really
needed to have his story in there to be able
to provide reasonable doubt, for the jury to be able
to say it's very possible this other person did it,
and there was no one else to look at that way.
(06:49):
Johnny Krausse endured an extremely abusive upbringing and was a
fringe character even by the standards of Salem's criminal underworld,
and not necessarily the most reliable witness. Then reporter for
The Statesman Journal Steve Jackson interviewed Krause at the time
I met Johnny. Obviously I wrote some stories regarding his
(07:11):
involvement here. You know, he was playing this for what
might he accomplish out of it? I don't know to
this day. UM. I know he both confessed to it
and then recanted his confession, and you know, you'd hear
he he confessed again and then he recanted again. And
(07:33):
with that whole class of people prison inmates, it's hard
to tell. They're so used to, uh, you know, lying
as a way of life that it was it was difficult.
I didn't find him to be like some of them,
which is, you know, constantly conniving and and you just
get this feeling from him that that's all they're about. Um,
(07:54):
I didn't quite get that from him. One of the interviews,
when I talked to him, I got this feeling that
he was kind of scared of where he was in
all of this. But I wasn't sure. Is that because
he's guilty of murder or is it because he's afraid
of the state police investigation? Who um, you know that
(08:14):
he might be going up against their their wishes, So
it was difficult to tell. I wouldn't have called him
the brightest bulb in the in the entire pack either. So,
but Kraus's confession could very well have saved frank Gable
from being convicted of Michael Frankie's murder and sentenced to
life in prison. Still, the question remains, why would Krauss
(08:38):
have confessed to the murder in the first place. Here
are Phil and Kevin. He was a very strange care
He had a history of confessing. He liked to confess.
He was brought up to feel guilty about everything, and
it is and one of the things that's that's noted
in the police reports is that he would confess to
(08:59):
the crimes he was caught for and confessed to others
as well. So my theory is that he was certainly there.
He knew things that he couldn't have known unless he
was there. Correct, He confessed because he didn't think that
he would be charged with murder. He thought that he
would be helpful in confessing this information that he had
(09:21):
the nature number and the location of the wounds, but
that it wasn't his hand that had the knife in it.
But he saw enough or heard enough from buck Burgess
personally in his relationship with buck Burgess that he could
transmit that information in the form of a confession or
form of I know what happened. Remember buck Burgess he
(09:45):
was the former cellmate of Conrad Nick Garcia, the inmate
who claimed he had been approached by Tennatividad to kill
Michael Frankie at the request of the Assistant Attorney General,
Scott McAllister. Buck Burgess was also married Melody Rothchild Burgess Garcia,
who was openly muling drugs into the prison. The same
(10:06):
Melody Garcia who sold her daughter Carrie to Tim Natividad.
The Carrie Rothchild who places Scott McAllister in her home
meeting with ten Natividad and Melody buck Burgess lived at
the address. Krauss told the d A and police the
knife that killed Michael Frankie came from back to phil
(10:30):
and Kevin and Johnny Krauss. I think he was there.
I think he was probably he could have very well,
I think he was. He was definitely watching across the street.
It was definitely across the street, so he could have been,
you know, right there at the parking lot. And of
course that is one of the main arguments in the
Habeas Corpus petition that got gabled out, that here was
(10:53):
someone who had confessed to the murder and new things
he couldn't have known unless he was there. And he
didn't come up in the trial. He was not. His
name was not allowed in as nativit ads, was not
allowed in pat Frankie questioned Krauss in prison, and the
Cross was just a creepy guy who eaves dropped and
heard more than he probably should have about what went on.
He had a reputation of being accountable, window paper, sneaky,
(11:16):
the son of a bitch and heard that after the fact.
And I don't think he did it. Back to phil
whatever it was, you know, whatever his role in it was,
and I think he was there looking out. He was
a lookout that night. I think that he may have
been the taller of the two men that Hans Acres
(11:38):
saw that night, the one who turned and ran. In fact,
that's what he said he did. He ran to the
medical building and around the big Green generator. Quite possibly
the one who turned and walked back to the Dome
building at a leisurely pace, as Hansacre said, was Native.
Years later, Kevin trucked Johnny Cross down and questioned him,
(11:59):
probably a better year after the trial that we're talking
about two years, two and a half years after Mike
was killed. I got ahold of john in Glee Pross
so I called. He wasn't a bushel of information. He
was very tentative. You know, what do you want? I
just want to be left alone. There is a long pause,
(12:20):
and he says, you don't understand. They can reach out
and tap you any where you are any day. He said,
I just want to be left alone. I don't even
know if this is fucking you talking and he hung up.
So his implication was if he spoke to you, they
could kill him. Yeah, that was the implication. Back to
(12:43):
phil intimative Dad. The reason I think that it's very
likely that Native A Dad is the man in the
pinstripe suit is that he resembles the composite drawing the
DAS Office tried to keep under wraps for such a
long time, and then of course you have Greg Kelsey's story,
which he told to Nigel Jake, was how he took
(13:03):
Tim Natimidad to the Doom Building that night, picked him
up later he had blood on him, And this is
a story that Kelsey had told people in the underworld
shortly after the murder. So it makes the most sense. Yes,
here's local television reporter Eric Mason. So that sketch that
everybody wonders, who is this person right there at the
(13:26):
door of the Dome building just before Michael Frankie has stabbed?
Who is that man? And Liz god Love identifies that
man as Rooster, also known as Tim Timidad. I strongly
believe that, Yeah, unless you can show me otherwise. Unfortunately,
I believe that, and that he also knows details, and
(13:51):
he also makes statements that are indicative of a person
who has murdered like Frankie. But as all of this
comes out, it's clear what happens. Then the police do
basically say, listen, Tim, Timandad's dead. What do we do
(14:12):
with that? We can't make any sense out of that.
And so all the time that they put into putting
that sketch out everywhere seems to be just like flushed
out a toilet. Here are filling Kevin. And for a
while they tried, you know, after we were Jackson and
I were making an issue with this in the in
(14:34):
the papers, they tried to put out the story that
it was a Xerox salesman who had been there working
that night. I found Xerox salesman and he was had reddish, wiry,
reddish hair. Uh. And he said he was wearing a
tweed coat that night. So I mean, that's another lie.
Why are they lying about the man in the pinstripe suit.
(14:55):
And they maintained that lie throughout the entire case, even
after it was abundantly clear that it was not the
copy of repair man, when it was, you know, patently false.
They didn't want the public to know who the man
in the pinstripe suit was because once that name comes out,
(15:17):
who that person is, then you have a nest of
thieves that get investigated. It starts pushing buttons with government people,
because if he was recognized, it would have led to
people who would have led to people who did not
want to be exposed. Exactly, you couldn't possibly pretend to
(15:38):
know who killed Michael Frankie without knowing who the man
in the pin stripe suit was, and based on the
number of people who have connected him to the murder
and noted an undeniable resemblance, the likelihood is that tmnative
it Ad was the man in the pin stripe suit.
(16:06):
The tivod AD's former drug partner and cellmate, Greg Kelsey Johnson,
also linked Nativodad to the murder. Here's the reporter he
spoke to The Will Lamb at Week's Nigel Jaques So.
Greg Johnson contacted me from uh local jail. He was
in jail on adjacent county and he said that he
(16:27):
had information about who really killed Michael Frankie and how
I was skeptical as you would be, but I decided
I would go. He said enough to make me willing
to go see him. And I went and saw him,
and he had enough information and enough specific details in
(16:47):
a in a good enough story that I think I
went and saw him four times and he essentially told
me that he had an association with a meth deal
in Salem named Tim Natividad. Johnson told Jake West that
Natividad not only asked Johnson to drive him to the
Dome building the night of Mike's murder, but later also
(17:10):
claimed to have driven him to pick up an envelope
of cash from a Department of Corrections official, and Jake
was found Johnson believable in that many other aspects of
his story checked out. I had a huge trove of
documents at that time, and Johnson was in those documents.
Those were police reports and interview transcripts and the defense
(17:32):
attorney's files. Many things that Johnson said I could I
could corroborate. Liz, who was a Natividad's girlfriend at the time,
also finds Johnson's story plausible. I bought it personally, I did.
I believed it. They were friends, they were drug partners,
they were buddies, and she confirms that Natividad came into
(17:53):
a substantial amount of money after Frankie's murder. He didn't
tell me where the money came from, but he did
come in to money. We later found out that he
hid it in my bathroom, the apartment where Tim died.
He hit it in the fan of the bathroom. There
was a story that Tim's brother got forty dollars out
of the bathroom vent of Tim's money. My sister Karen
(18:14):
is the one that cleaned my apartment out. When I
went to jail and Karen goes, it's so weird list.
The apartment manager came in and was yelling at me
for taking apart of the bathroom event, and I said,
I didn't do it. You know, you leave me alone.
I'm not taking the apartment apart. I'm getting list of
things out of here. I'm like, oh my god, putting
two and two together. That was a true story. Tim
(18:36):
Nativodad died in a violent domestic dispute just two weeks
after Mike's murder, but his name has remained linked to
the crime for the past three decades, very notably by
Conrad Garcia. The inmate Kevin Frankie met with at a
Portland halfway house. He said that he felt guilty that
(18:56):
Mike was dead, that he could have prevented it if
he'd opened his mouth sooner. And he started crying, and
I started crying to see him crying, and he apologized
to me that he didn't stop it. He said, your
brother was a good man and he shouldn't have died,
and I could have prevented it, and I didn't. And
(19:19):
I said, how could you have prevented it, and he
said what I told the police was not everything that
I could have told him. I knew specifically that Tim
Natividad wanted me to kill Mike Frankie. Not just a
big guy with corrections, It was specifically Mike Frankie. It
(19:41):
would prove just one of the many unusual tips from
many unusual sources Kevin has received over the years. Another
would come via a mysterious package delivered to the Frankie
family's Salem based attorney, Steve Krasso. He says, Hey, I
just got a package delivered to my office and I
drive down there and opened it up, and there's a
(20:03):
letter there, hand written. He said, I knew your brother
was killed because he knew too much and he was
stepping on the wrong toes and things like this. I
think I know who did it, but I can't prove
who did it. But I might be able to help
point you in the right direction and get you the
information because I was involved with these people. And if
(20:23):
you want to know more about it, then you'll meet
me at the Holiday Inn Casino in Reno, Nevada, Friday
at three o'clock. If you're not there, then I'll bet
her off. I will never talk to you again. And
Krassi says, you're not going to that, are you? And
(20:45):
I said, God, I got to Steve and he says,
you're not going to that. This sounds like fish bait.
You're going down there, You're just go put a fucking
bullet in your head. I had the whole thing, the
FedEx develope, and I took it home, and I remember
talking to Phil Stafford, reading the letter to him and
(21:05):
stuff like that over the phone. Yeah, he told me
about this, and we were both aware that it could
be a complete setup. They've tried to kill him before.
It was just too obvious that this could be another
example of it. I knew how nervous he was, and
of course I was nervous too. And I'm looking at
(21:27):
the FedEx envelope and I flip it over and there's
an address on the back of the envelope that has
reversed printed that I can see if I hold it
up sideways, and I write the address down, and I'd
get a Atlas matt for Reno, and there's a street
address for this thing in Reno, and it's got his
(21:49):
apartment number and the street address, and I think this
is the CENTI best instead of meeting at the holiday
in Now I know where I need to go meet
with him. And I borrowed a white Eldorado convertible and
Liz and I took off a reno and went down
to an apartment. Liz waited outside. I said, you know,
(22:11):
give me fifteen minutes and come up and were all
the cops. Kevin went upstairs, his hand hovering over his gun,
and I went knocked on the door and the door
opened up and this guy was standing there and he
was about five ten and kind of barrel chested and
(22:31):
forty and I said, are you j R? And he
said yeah, and I said I'm Kevin Frankie. And he
leaned back and he started to reach around, and I
pulled my gun out and I said, don't you fucking move.
And he says, I'm just getting my coat and we'll
go down to the lobby and talk. And I said,
(22:54):
I'll get your coat, and I shut the door and
got his coat mitture he didn't have a gun, and
we and down to the lobby and talked. Jr. Told
Kevin he was a former reserve of Sheriff's deputy and
claimed certain correction officials were actively involved in drug running
and prostitution. Ranks Jr. Said he moonlit as a security
(23:15):
guard at a gated home overlooking Reno, and that Michael
Frankie had visited that house once with Scott McAllister. He said,
I was running outside security. I wasn't allowed to come
into the house except for a breaker to use the bathroom.
And I remember walking by and I could see in there.
The windows were kind of tinted because it looks out
(23:37):
onto the lake and the lake reflects back up onto
the thing. I hear lake in the house and security
and everything started. I think no sp Jane Jane was
the psychic Kevin visited, the one who described a house
on a lake where his brother's killers were discussing his murder. Jr.
Claimed to have witnessed a confrontation one night involving Frankie
(24:00):
and a group of men. Now I can hear him
yelling at your brother. It was like that before you
got here, and it will be like that when they
dragged you out of hair and McAllister was behind your brother.
It looked like he was either restraining him or holding
an arm. And there was a lot of anger in there,
and I had to keep moving because I couldn't stop.
(24:20):
That would make him suspicious. But I think there's something
there that you need to look at. After the meeting
with j R, Kevin and Liz drove to that house
which Jane the Psychic had described in detail, down to
the gates that surrounded it. From the house deck, you
can look out and see the lake and it's the
(24:42):
house on the lake with the video cameras and the
iron gates. And there's two guys in a pickup truck.
One guy gets out and he's got a model Winchester
and he comes walking over to the car and he says,
can I help you? And I said, well, I'm from
Oregon and I was looking for property for sale. And
(25:04):
he says, do you see any fucking for sale signs?
And I said nope. So I said, well, look, if
anything comes up for sale, would you mind giving me
a call? And I hand him a business card and
it was one of Mike's business cards from the Department
of Corrections and he looks at it, he looks at me,
and he starts walking backwards to the truck and very
(25:27):
quickly he goes up and he has the buzzer and
he's on the phone and I get out of there.
Kevin believes that that was the house Michael Frankie had
gone to visit on the ill fated ski trip, the
one he abruptly returned from. Shaken called him up later.
I said, how is the snow? And he said, I
(25:47):
never got on the hill and I said, what do
you mean? He says, I never got on the fucking
hill and that was who. He did not want to
talk about it. He did start saying, I've got to
replace pe Uh. You gotta start surrounding myself with people
that I can trust. That ski trip would have occurred
(26:07):
a year before Mike's murder and afterwards, According to multiple sources,
Frankie and the Corrections lawyer assistant A. G. Scott McAllister
were very much on the outs. Scott McAllister left Oregon
for Utah just two weeks before Frankie was killed, and
that's where Linda Parker, McAllister's former secretary and girlfriend, claims
(26:28):
to have overheard him talking about Mike's murder. Scott was
talking to Grace and Harold. He said it was really
stupid about Frankie's murder because it was supposed to look
like a suicide, but was really part of my language.
(26:51):
Fucked up or fed up. Harold and Scott went on
conversing about it, and Harold said that it is no
real loss because nobody liked Frankie anyway, and now that
Frankie was out of the picture, Harold could use the
(27:12):
Oregon Department of Corrections again as a reference because nobody
would be there to soil his name. To this day,
Michael Frankie's death remains an unsolved murder, and thanks to
(27:35):
a federal judges ruling, the man in prison for the
past three decades for that murder is finally free. But
though the case against Frank Gable has been demolished, instead
of investigating the people responsible for the murder, Oregon's Attorney
General is appealing gables ruling on a legal technicality. Why
(27:59):
are they appealing the judge's decision. Well, whether it's just
a reflexive, bureaucratic cover your ass response or pure politics.
Because you have to remember that Ellen rosen Bloom, the
the state's a g with, was a protege of Neil Goldschmidt,
who was so instrumental in the original cover up. It's
(28:20):
got to be one of the ugliest aspects of this
whole case. Here's the Portland's Tribunes Jim Redden. It's an
unsold murder. You know, I believe Frank Gabel is innocent.
The judges said he's probably innocent, which is pretty amazing
statement from a judge. If he is innocent, then the
(28:42):
roal killer has never been caught. If it's a Natividad,
he's dead. If it is Johnny Krauss, he's dead. If
it's somebody else, maybe they're not dead. Here's reporter Nigel Jaques.
Or a state with a low rate of vital crime,
most of the crimes take place or not. This kind
of crime that had a level of political intrigue, that
(29:05):
had a level of being connected to this golden boy governor. Um.
So even today people don't even know who Michael Frankie is.
But there hasn't been the thirty years since he was killed,
been anything like this. Any killing is horrible killing, but
but it's just it is unique, and I think a
(29:27):
lot of people were never satisfied that it was sold,
and they're even less satisfied today. Here's former State Senator
Jim Hill's take. It's hard to imagine how much time
has gone by. Many people have no idea, they don't
know anything about Michael Frankie, and so it's important that
these things keep coming up and doing things like you
(29:49):
are or doing to let people know, Yeah, this did happen,
and it happened. It happened right here. It's unsolved, um,
but at least some of this has come to light,
rather than having it left where the perpetrators wanted to
(30:12):
be left is said, here's this guilty guy, really that
and that's all that it is. Now we know better.
I always felt that as time went on there might
be people who would say things now that they would
have been afraid to talk about under those circumstances earlier,
and so here we are. Former state Representative Chuck Sides agrees.
(30:39):
I would hope that the bigger story is out now.
The judge validated it. Now people can't ignore it. We
now know, both locally and nationally, the the Justice Department fabricates,
so do the cops. That shouldn't shock me, but it does.
(31:00):
So I don't expect that people are going to ever
totally except now what's being said honestly and for the
first time, But eventually they will because they'll be reminded
and reminded reminded. Kevin Frankie believes that while one hand
(31:32):
held the knife, many others had a hand in Mike's murder.
This wasn't something that Tim sat around one night and
dreamed up and said, I think I'll go kill Mike Frankie.
Somebody put them up to it. So those are the
people that are more guilty because they did this, and
because they were protecting their own self interests and they're
(31:52):
covering their own asses to get rid of Mike. Does
that make them less culpable because they didn't have the
knife in the hands and they had some other person
to it. No, those are the people that are the
biggest fucking slime balls in the world. And they had
their freedom and their liberties and their life because they
(32:13):
had Tim Natividad killed my brother. And that it's an insult,
it's a slap in the face. The timid Ads was
another life. They were willing to throw away another victim,
if you will. And it's hard for me to say
that because is it a psychopathic killer. We may never
(32:41):
be able to force balance from the scales of justice
in regards to Michael Frankie's murder. But we have now
placed a very large spotlight on those who have hidden
their roles in his death under the protective shadows of power,
privilege and corruption for far too long. Here's Phil. It's
(33:01):
obviously an open case. Gable didn't do it. Someone else
did it. But it's also obvious that the state is
not interested in pursuing it. So what did you want
to do? What did you hope this podcast would accomplish? Well?
Most immediately, of course, to draw attention to what the
(33:22):
state is still trying to do to Gable. It's it's
really unconscionable. And maybe let Ellen rosen Bloom knows you
can't get away with it. You know, the state of
Oregon could do the right thing. They could open the case.
They could go after the people who've hidden behind their
privilege and their positions, and they could do that because
(33:46):
there is no statute of limitations on murder. Yeah, I
know they're not going to do it. Governments never never
admit they're wrong, especially when the wrongs have been so
egregious as this. The cover ups have been going on
for thirty years, and I fully expect it to continue.
I can only hope that this podcast has made people
(34:11):
who have reason to feel guilt. Very uncomfortable. I certainly
concur yes, at the very least, I hope we can
do that and maybe make a difference at the margins.
The one thing that has to be addressed right now,
of course, is the state's attempt to put Gable back
(34:31):
in prison, even though it's obvious that he didn't commit
the crime. For both Frankie brothers, pursuing justice from Mike's
murder also includes correcting the injustice of Frank Gable's conviction.
Mike would have just been livid knowing that there was
an innocent man dying in prison every day. And you know,
(34:57):
my I had two fairs, one that Frank would kill himself,
where the Frank would be killed, and the joy of
the data he got. I got the news that he
was going to be released, it was, you know, better
than any Christmas. It was amazing. And that was when
I talked to my brother and I said, let's set
(35:18):
up a go fund the account and see if we
can raise some funds to help Frank transition from thirty
years of hell into a decent life with his new
life and a new life. The go fund me account
is up and running and there's money trickling in. We've
got over six thousand dollars right now. The state through
(35:40):
another wrench into the gears. They were satisfied that adminicent
man with freed, so they're appealing the judges orders to
release him. And there is now a petition change dot
org to petition the Attorney General Ellen rosen Bloom to
have the state withdraw their appeal and declare Frankie an
(36:04):
innocent dam. Here's Michael's big brother, Pat Frankie on Mike's legacy.
I had a letter that the young man wrote me
and he said, you don't know me, but I was
seventeen sixteen. Seventeen year old punks sit in a waiting
area waiting to go before a judge for sentencing, and
your brother walked through and he stopped and he said, kid,
(36:25):
you're gonna make a big decision here in about five minutes.
If you choose to be a hard ass and smart,
I like, you're gonna never get out of prison. He
said he didn't need to stop and talk to me.
He was just passing too, but he said it really
affected me. I thought about it, went in with a
whole different attitude. Did my time, got cleaned, came out,
got a scholarship to Santa Fe Community College. He said,
(36:49):
I tell my dad all the time, Judge Frankie saved
my life. He's that still being a joint if I
hadn't listened to him. That was the kind of guy
he was. M Here's how Alice Clawson, Mike's deputy director,
would like to remember Michael Frankie as a friend and
(37:09):
has a brilliant guy that whose life was ended way
too soon because he had a lot to give the
criminal justice for. It was not just an Oregon but
probably anywhere in the United States. This podcast is a
tribute to Michael Frankie and to the love and loyalty
of his brothers Pat and Kevin, who spent the last
(37:30):
three decades fighting to expose the people responsible for his death.
We'd like to give the final word to Michael Frankie,
the man certain individuals made great effort to silence. For
those people who think of the Corrections Department as my problem,
please remember that the people under the jurisdiction of the
(37:53):
Department of Corrections are people who spent a lot of
time in the community. In fact, the vast majority of
them are in the community right now. I spent enough
time as a juvenile judge in juvenile corrections to recognize
that we've got a lot better shot at them, especially
in those single digit years, than we do when they
come into my system. The Department of Corrections is not
(38:18):
my operation, it's our operation. Murder and Oregon is hosted
(39:18):
by Lauren Bright Pacheco and Phil Stanford. Executive producers are
Noel Brown, Lauren Bright Pacheco, and Phil Stanford. Supervising producer
and lead editor is Taylor Chocoyne. Sound designed by Tristan McNeil,
Story editing by Matt Riddle, Written by Phil Stanford, Matt Riddle,
and Lauren Bright Pacheco. Music written and performed by the
Diamond Street Players and mixed by Taylor Chikoyne with music
(39:42):
supervision by Noel Brown. Additional music by Tristan McNeil. Archival
elements courtesy of KGW in Portland, Oregon. The station behind
the podcast, Urged to Kill. Murder and Oregon is a
production of I Heart Radio.
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