December 12, 2019 • 33 mins
More than two years after Michael Francke's murder, a small time drug dealer named Frank Gable would be tried for the crime. The basis for the case and the outcome of the trial would shock and outrage many- including Kevin Francke.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Murder and Oregon is a production of I Heart Radio.
Frank Gable has found himself a key figure in the
Michael Frankie murder investigation. He says he didn't do it.
He says he's being set up. I've been so scared.
More than a year after Michael Frankie's death, the state
was now fully focused on Frank Gable as the soul's
(00:22):
suspect in his murder. Something else scares Gable too. He
says some of the members of his old drug ring
have shown up in the Coups County jail. He's not
sure why, but he thinks that has something to do
with Frankie's murder as well. I think I might have
walked into something that I'm known aware of last year,
and I think it's involved behind drugs. Gable, who maintained
(00:46):
his innocence, was indicted and arrested for Frankie's murder in
April of but he was about to receive another blow.
The defense attorney assigned to his case, Bob Abel. There
were some good lawyers in Salem, but to be as
blunt as possible, Abel was not one of them. If
I was going to pick an attorney to handle that case.
(01:09):
I would have picked several other people first, and I
think anybody would have. Bob Abel's assignment as Frank Cable's
defense attorney was just the first in a series of
missteps that would place Gable's life in jeopardy. I'm Lauren
(01:32):
Bright Pacheco, and this is murder in Oregon. Oddly, attorney
(01:55):
Bob Abel seemed to know he was going to get
the Frankie murder case before Frank Gable is even charged.
According to Tom McCallum, the lead investigator for gables defense team,
he told me several months before that he was going
to get the Michael Frankie case, and at the time
I thought it was a pretty bold statement, because I
actually I thought he was an attorney that probably wouldn't
(02:17):
even be on the list, And when he called and
told me that he had it, I was surprised. McCallum
says Abel's working conditions weren't exactly ideal for handling what
was the highest profile murder case in the state. I
knew that Bob didn't have an office because I didn't
(02:37):
Big Murder's case for him about a year before, and
he worked out of the office as co Council. We
met at the Tiki Lounge a lot of times and
occasionally in the Marion County Courthouse in the law library.
So I knew he didn't have an office, and I
knew he had been recently divorced because they helped him
his divorced and he was having some problems with that.
(03:00):
He was sort of out of touch with the I thought,
with the legal community. So in addition to not having
an office that I would assume he didn't have a
fax machine or a professional phone or a secretary at
the time. No, he didn't. In fact, he actually moved
into a spare office we had in a building in Sound.
(03:23):
While he didn't have an office of his own, what
Abel did have was a reputation. Here's Kevin My understanding
from a couple of the attorneys that are on the
list for capital cases said that they should have been
on it, and they jumped the scheduling. The pecking order
got rearranged to get Bob Abele in that position. It
(03:45):
wasn't because he was the best that they had to
offer in terms of defense attorneys. He's only had one
capital murder case on his record at that time and
he lost that in dramatic fashion. I think that he
a three year old kid, could figure out why Bob
Abel was picked. Phil goes into more specifics. Well, he
(04:06):
was a heavy drinker, and everyone in the legal business
in Salem would have known that. In fact, Abel has
acknowledged it in post conviction testimony. He denied that he
was drinking heavily during the trial, but he did admit
that not too long after the trial was over he
(04:29):
went into rehab. So the chances are he didn't develop
that issue after Gable's trial. Well, no, In fact, everyone
around him knew that he was drinking. Gable complained about it,
The investigators knew about it. Just a few years ago.
I talked to Abel's girlfriend who was with him during
the time of the trial, and she said each night
(04:51):
he was drinking about a court of vodka. He said,
vodka with squirt mixer. If you can imagine that. Kevin
also voiced his concerns to the prosecution at the time.
If I'm getting into an airplane, I don't want the
goddamn pilot drunk. If I'm Fred Gable, I don't want
(05:11):
my lawyer drunk. In addition to his reputation, Bob Abel
also had an apparent connection to the judge presiding over
the case, Gregory West. Here's lead investigator for the defense,
Tom McCallum. Again, I did know from things that I
had heard that he had at one point in time
(05:31):
shared in office with Judge West, who's the judge in
the case, But I never ever confirmed that. But Phil
Stanford did. Oh yeah. I checked the city directory for
that time immediately before the trial, and Able and Judge West,
who was then a lawyer, had had offices just down
(05:52):
the hallway from each other, joining offices on the same
hallway in the same building. Regardless of how Able landed
the case, just weeks before the trial, the investigators for
the defense were so concerned by his lack of preparedness
that they wrote and signed a letter imploring Judge West
to postpone the trial. So Grace Castle, who was the
(06:18):
only investigator that I didn't hire Bob, and to hire her,
and she suggested we should prepare a letter and send
it to the judge. So we all agreed, and she
prepared this letter saying that we thought we needed a
continuance because we didn't think that they were prepared. And
we all signed the letter, including Bob assistant. How many
(06:39):
people signed that letter? All of us? We had I
think nine investigators. All the investigors were there, and then
the next day I hand delivered to Bob, you want
to initially fire everybody and ultimately over my objections. He
called him Grace, who happened to be in our office
at the time, and fire. I think he had an
(07:03):
obligation because we've given it to him, and I know
he delivered the letter to Judge West. And then I
never nothing, never came to trial, never got postponed, nobody
ever said anything. I've heard different scenarios that have Judge
West destroyed at neither the other ones that it was
still included in the record somewhere. So, with his defense
(07:38):
woefully unprepared and without an apparent game plan, Gables trial
began on May one, and as the prosecution rested, Tom
McCallum found himself coordinating the initial witnesses for the defense,
and one of his first Phil Stanford, to share the
story about Mark Gessner, the inmate he'd interview who claimed
(08:00):
he had been approached to fabricate testimony against Gable in
exchange for leniency. I wrote a column about that and
for all the good it did, because the state went
ahead and called him as a prosecution witness. When it
came time for trial, I was sitting at my desk
at the Oregonian got a call from Tom McCallum, and
he said, a fel can you come down and testify tomorrow.
(08:24):
We're starting our case and we're not ready to go.
Did he explain that? He said, Abel has been out drinking.
We haven't put together a case. And in fact is
I learned later he and another investigator had been putting
together the opening presentation for the defense on this thing.
(08:46):
It was incredible. So I went down there and I testified.
I don't think I did a particularly good job, but
it was completely out of order. There was there was
no context. I talked about the interview I had had
with Guestner, and I talked about the columnide written in
which he said he was going to make up his
testimony and that was that? And who did he say
(09:08):
was coercing his testimony? Oh? As he told me down
when he was in jail, the state police were trying
to get him to say that Gable had confessed to him,
and he said he didn't. Man, But you know, everybody's
got to look out for himself, and that's what I said.
For all the good it did, right, but even with
the defense's rocky start, Initially, Phil and the other journalists
(09:32):
covering the case, I thought it would be an uphill
battle for the prosecution with their ragtag assortment of witnesses.
Here's local television reporter Eric Mason. I think all of
us realized there was nothing really the connected Frank Gable
to this crime, and that the people who had told
(09:54):
the story that and had become informants and stitches against
Frank Gabele all they were all professional liars. They were
all people who had made serious, big deals before in
their lives with prosecutors and understood the system and the
way it worked. Steve Jackson believes the sketchy witnesses and
complete lack of physical evidence linking Gable to the murder
(10:17):
should have worked in Gable's favor had he been properly defended.
I just didn't feel that the defense attorneys were on
the same level as the prosecutors. But as witnesses, um,
I think for either side they have just been you know, problematic,
because you put them up there and you can go
(10:39):
at them and say, you know, what crimes have you
been convicted of in the past, and have you ever
lied on the stand, and have you changed your story
back and forth? Your believability and uh, you know your integrity.
Phil agrees the state had no physical evidence. Their whole case.
Their whole case rest it on these so called material
(11:02):
witnesses whose testimony they had, it's now clear, manufactured using
lie detective tests. Primarily until these jail birds, ex cons
and teenage runaways got their stories straight, they figured out
what the cops wanted them to say, and eventually several
of them did enough to put on the stand. But
(11:23):
that's what their case was. And it seems that their
witnesses all had something to lose by not testifying and
something to gain. Oh yeah. In in some cases, as
with Guessner, Uh, they were threatening to charge him with
other more serious crimes and made a deal for that,
(11:44):
and with others they threatened to tie them into into
the murder. So yeah, they made up stories and state
put them on and Abel was not capable of demonstrating
how inconsistent and ultimately uh manufactured these stories were. It
(12:09):
became clear that the state was leveraging and shaping testimony
and using polygraphs lie detector tests to do it. Several
of the witnesses, all of them, when they started out,
would say, yeah, Gables a drug dealer. I don't like him, Uh,
nothing about the murder. But then they would say, we
(12:30):
know you're lying. They give him another one, and they
were given multiple tests. Jody was even given twenty three
lie detector tests, which has unheard of, and um over
time they would figure out what the cops would accept
as the truth because they were also being threatened with
being charged with other crimes or even being drawn into
(12:50):
the Franking murder. But even the state's most reputable witness, Hansacker,
the maintenance man at the Dome building, seemed to present
testimony during the trial. The original statement he made regarding
the two men he claimed to see the night Michael
Frankie was murdered seemed altered to fit the state's narrative.
(13:10):
Here's Kevin Frankie. Even Hansacker his story changed from what
he told me before the trial. He went from his
discussion with me from his map to my ears that
the guy that turned around and went back to the
Dome building was rocking like he didn't have any place
to go. He wasn't in a hurry, he wasn't crouched,
(13:32):
he wasn't holding his chest, he wasn't stumbling. It was
just walking like he didn't have no place to go.
His exact works and his testimony at trial was that
he walked briskly back up to the North Portico entrance.
Those two big changes and Hansacker's testimony also contradicted the
(13:56):
story that the state was hinging their case on testimony
from their star witness, drug dealing career criminals Shorty Harden.
Remember that name. That's the same Shorty Harden who ran
with Tim Nativodad, the guy with the van Carrie Rothschild
mentioned multiple times. Hansakre the janitor, said he walked out
(14:18):
of the building and was looking at these two figures.
One turned around and ran away to the west and
the other walked back to the Dome building. But he
would have been looking straight at the spot where shut
He said he had parked his car. He didn't see
a car. Shorty said he started up the car after
he saw Michael Frankie get stabbed. Hansaker would have seen
(14:41):
and heard that seeing a car racing away and there
were other contradictions as well, which Abel did not have
the wherewithal to point out. And it seems to me
that Hansacker or Hansaker was the only one on the
stand who didn't have anything to gain or lose of
these crime scene witnesses. Yes, that's for sure, But yet
(15:04):
his testimony changed slightly from the statements he had made
immediately after the murder. Well, uh, Eric Mason and I
went down and talked to him shortly after the murder
and end he said that the man who walked back
to the building walked back in sort of a leisurely manner.
Leisurely is the word I put in my notes at
(15:25):
the time, And by the time the state had him
on the stand, he said he was walking back briskly,
things like that. Yeah. Shorty Harden took the stand and
told the same story he told the grand jury. Shorty
claimed when he picked Jody up, he saw Frank Cable
in the car across from him. Apparently Michael Frankie then approached.
(15:48):
There were blaring contradiction to hans Sacker's testimony, who claimed
to only see two men, never mentioned another vehicle pulling up,
seeing a woman or hearing that loud exchange, but the
defense never challenged the discrepancies. Here's Kevin Well. Shorty was
obviously making up the story that Bob Able didn't jump
(16:09):
on He never asked Hunt Sacker. Did you hear or
see Shorty Harden's car coming into the parking lot at
this time? Did you hear or see Shorty Harden pull
up and the car door opened and Jodie get out?
Did you hear or see Frank Gable wrestling in the
(16:29):
car with Mike Frankie? Did you hear Mike? Frankie yelled
out as Shorty testified, Hey, what are you doing in
my car? Never asking those questions? But I asked him
those questions and they said no. There were no other cars,
there were no other headlights, there were no engines running.
It was definitely quiet. That was astounding, and that's when
(16:52):
I knew frank was fucked. Another blow came when Jody
swearing Jin, the troubled teenage runaway and drug user, took
(17:15):
the stand. Jody had formerly been a grand jury witness
for the prosecution, but had now recanted her testimony and
was no longer on board. She was now testifying for
the defense and adamant she'd never seen Gable at the
Dome Building or witnessed him kill Michael Frankie. Her cross
examination by prosecutor Sarah Moore provided one of the most
(17:38):
dramatic moments of the trial, as More reminded her of
her previous testimony. Here's Phil. If the trial had a
turning point, it was Jody's testimony. She was called by
the defense and Sarah more than the lead prosecutor, had
a cross examine her. What Sarah did was to read
(18:00):
back to Jody her testimony before the grand jury, which,
as Sarah knew, had been manufactured using all these twenty
three lie detector tests. And so she would read, and
did you say you drove there in Frank Gable's car
over to the Dome building And Jodie would say, but
that's a lie. And then she'd say that you were
(18:22):
a lookout basically standing in front of the tree that
immediately in front of the north portico a porch area,
and Jody would say, but that's a lie, and that
you saw Frank Gable get into a struggle with a
big tall man near the car that night, and Jody,
that's a lie. Ultimately, the spectacle was damning for the defense.
(18:43):
It was at best completely confusing to the jury, but
it made Jody, uh. It must have seemed to them
that she was really confirming this story that she had
for some time recanted. So the prosecution's approach was, if
you're lying, then you're lying now, yes, and and but
(19:04):
beyond that, they got her false confession in h and
made it seem like the truth. Here's Kevin Frankie. My
take on Jody is that she was still extremely afraid
that being held, even though they had given her immunity,
she was traid that anything could happen, that she could
say the wrong thing in the immunity agreement would go
(19:27):
down the toilet, and she'd end up spend the rest
of her life for a good twenty or thirty years
in prison. Jody swearing Jin had previously been granted immunity
by the state for her grand jury testimony. That immunity
seems to have been leveraged for a reason. Even as
Kevin Frankie watched the train wreck of Jody's cross examination unfold,
(19:49):
he was waiting for the defense to retaliate with a
bombshell he'd uncovered months before the trial even started, involving
Jody swearing Jin and a lawyer she had turned to
desperate for help. Joe, this problems in his offices were
in downtown Albany, which is that twenty five miles south
of Salem. And I went down there to see him
(20:12):
after I moved out here in August. So this was
way before Gables trial. Yeah, this is before Gable Straw.
That lawyer and his wife took notes of that meeting,
which we have, and what did he share with you?
Joe said that Jody was really really wired and just
(20:35):
scared and shaking and babbling off of that her boyfriend
murdering a guy, and that she was there and that
she might be an accomplice and doesn't want to go
down for life for murder and blah blah blah and
all that, and that's worried. When she mentioned like Frankie
and who was the boyfriend she believed committed the murder,
Jody said that Tim had killed like Frankie. Did you
(20:57):
ever find out who that Tim was? Tim was Rooster
according to Natividad. Yes, that Tim Rooster. Natividad, the same
drug dealing Natividad Carrie Rothschild wiped blood off of after
a murder the same Natividad Liz god Love believes was
(21:18):
the man in the Pinstripe suit, the same Natividad. Conrad
Nick Garcia says approached him to kill Michael Frankie at
the request of the then assistant A. G. Scott McAllister
that Tim Natividad. And I gave a copy of those
notes to Gabele's defense team, and I gave a copy
(21:39):
to Sarah Moore, who was the prosecuting attorney for Frank Gable,
and I told Sarah this kind of throws a wrench
in your case against Gable. So how did the courtroom
and jury react to that incredible bombshell about Tim Natividad.
They didn't. Did that ever come up in the trial? No, never,
(22:01):
any information regarding Tim Natividad was ruled irrelevant and inadmissible.
That's right. For some reason, Judge Gregory West didn't permit
mention of Tim Natividad during the trial. Jody wasn't even
allowed to mention Natividad's name. She was specifically forbidden by
West to mention Natividad's name. There was a lot of
(22:23):
discussion out of hearing of the jury about that, and
she was forbidden to mention natividad and that's not all.
And of course Krauss was never brought up. That's the
Johnny Krauss who confessed a knowledge of the murder and
was granted immunity to recount. Those omissions would layer with
other issues, the defenses failure to point out the contradictions
(22:45):
between hands, Sacre and Shorty, failure to present an alibi
A Gable was at home that night, as would later
be proved, but they didn't do that, and after Jody swearing,
Jon testified that she had been coerced into testifying against
Gable after she recanted her story that placed Gable at
the Dome building that night as a lie. After she
(23:05):
was ripped apart by the prosecution, who used the story
they coerced and shaped with nearly two dozen polygraph tests
against her. Gables defense made a shocking decision after Sarah
More came back and destroyed everything. But it was all
stuff that we could reassemble when we called her back
in the stand. But for some reason, Bob Able refused
(23:29):
to put Jody back on the stand. He just didn't
want to mess with that. I don't want to put
her back up. She's too dangerous. Even we could have
resolved a lot of the things that Sarah did and
you know, kind of reconstructed her testimony, which was very important.
Bob wouldn't do it and from that point on, and
I didn't have the fueling that he hit through the case,
(23:51):
but he just gave up on it. Here's newspaper reporters
Steve Jackson's take on Jody So. I think that he
was being truthful when she retracted her statement to the police.
It didn't make sense, and there are some parts that
I felt the defense attorney should have been able to
(24:11):
turn on on that with you know, the timing. I mean,
you know, she supposedly left the scene and went made
a phone call and then came back to the scene
and witnessed all this. You know, she would have had
to have been a world class printer um to actually
bit into that timeline, but the defense never brought it up.
Phil Stanford thinks the defense may have been more than
(24:33):
just incompetent. He did such a bad job that the
best thing you can say about him is that he
was incompetent, But it was more than that is an
interesting question. At the time he was given this case,
his business was going down the tubes. He was desperate
for a job and he was handed one that was very,
(24:55):
very lucrative here. So it's worthwhile considering the possibility that
the case was thrown as far as I am concerned,
but as shocking as the defense is seeming an ability
to challenge and properly cross examined witnesses like Unsacker, Harden
and swearing Jen, it's the fact that Gable, who vehemently
wanted to testify, was never given the chance that still
(25:20):
haunts the lead defense investigator, Tom McCallum. I kind of
controlled all the witnesses, had witness all set up, and
at the end of our case, Dr Spitch is one
of our last witnesses, and we had several letter witnesses
coming after that, but we're gonna have Frank testify. And
I had to give Dr Spitzer right back at lunch
(25:40):
break to the Portland Airport, and it was Waal McCallum
was driving that witness back to the airport that the
defense abruptly rested, shocking many including McCallum. On my way
back at a call from Phil seeing what the else
going on? And I so what do you mean? And
you go, what do you guys, sitness you're talking about,
(26:02):
we can't arrest Frank's going to testify, and we got
all kinds of witnesses set up this afternoon, and I
guess Bob took advantage of the fact that I was
gone and rested the case that surprised me, and that
we had things that need to be addressed and said
and witnesses that I thinks the same. I guess they
lost a little bit of hope with that. Reporter Steve
(26:22):
Jackson thought when the defense rested, it was clear Gable
wasn't actually being defended. It didn't happen. In fact, that
the defense folded and closed its case in so short
a time as it was just pretty shocking. To tell you.
The truth is that, you know, I've seen defenses before
where they don't even present anything, but usually that's because
(26:44):
the state case is so ridiculous that you know, they
just go to closing and they say something like that.
But in this case, I thought there was an opportunity
to at least cast reasonable doubt on the state case
as presented and gone from there. But there was just
little to nothing. Um, there's a couple of expert witnesses,
(27:06):
some witnesses recanting um. But it was just it was
kind of over and done, and you're sitting there wondering,
what about the timeline, what about the things that don't
make sense? What about Michael Frankie and you know, the
situation around his house, and what about some of these
other things, things like the spent Riot gun shells littering
(27:28):
Frankie's back deck, or the pistol found under his pillow,
or that he was teaching his wife to shoot. But
even with all the defenses, missteps, with resting prematurely, without
letting Gable take the stand, there was still no physical
evidence linking Frank Gable to the crime. Here's local reporter
(27:48):
Eric Mason. There was no one there to provide the glue,
to put it all together, to basically say to the jury,
there's not a hair, there's not a fiber, there's not
a drop of blood that ties Frank Gabel to any
of this. It just wasn't there. Those with us who
(28:11):
understood the story thought to ourselves, man, there's just not
enough evidence here except for some inmates, some convicted and
professional liars to come forward and tell these stories about
Frank Gabel and about his admissions there's nothing there that
holds this together, and the prosecution hasn't met its burden
(28:34):
of proof in the eyes of everyone who had been
there to study the case, and Mason wasn't alone and
believing the state hadn't proved guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
I think the porters knew that he was not the
right guy. As the jury is deliberating, we did take
a straw poll, as reporters and all of us but
(28:56):
one believed that Frank Gabel should be acquitted of the crime.
Was not enough there to convict him of stabbing Michael Frankie.
It was just a lack of forensic evidence of any
kind that tied him to the scene. Even the defense's
lead investigator, Tom McCallum, thought Gable would be acquitted. In fact,
when the verdict came back, I went down and Frank
(29:18):
didn't want to come up. He was scared. I didn't
want to come up and here the verdict, and I
went down and talked to him for about half an
hour and I said, Gather, there's no way here can
find you guilty. And that's the way I felt. But
McCallum would be proved wrong after less than twenty four
hours of deliberation, the jury unanimously found Gable guilty of
(29:42):
murdering Michael Frankie. He was found guilty of six counts
of aggravated murder and one count of murder. He was
sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. Here's Kevin
when they announced guilty. I've never heard it. Decided to
quiet in my life. Talking about the reporters. There was
(30:03):
a galantine to you that was there. She looked at
me and she said, my god, that could have been
your me sitting in frank Able's chair to shot that
he was trying guilty. So everybody was. Here's Eric Mason
when the verdict was announced. What went through your head?
Complete shock that twelve people could arrive at that conclusion
(30:28):
based on two deputy district attorneys who made that case
and basically these convicts who came and told these stories,
and we all just kind of shook our heads and went, Okay, well,
I guess we just go out and report what just happened.
(30:49):
Phil still grapples with that day. You know, what what
gets me is that they knew what they'd done. They
knew that they absolutely made up a case against a
man who wasn't even there. They were smart enough to
know that there, They were smart enough to know how
they did it. All these lie detector tests, all this
manufactured testimony, and then not only do they get a
(31:13):
conviction on the basis of this phony evidence, they asked
for the death penalty and they came close to getting it. Oh, yeah,
they did. I think it was tended to. Why do
you think they would have wanted him dead? Do you
think it's safe to assume that it's because the case
would have died with Gable? Oh it would have. Yeah.
(31:34):
I think you're right. They're willing to kill him. As
far as I'm concerned, that's about as evil as you
can get. On the next murder in Oregon, another uncovered
bombshell that was kept from Gable's trial. She overheard the
conversation is supposed to look like a suicide. She now
(31:57):
comes forward it was a burden off of his back
that Michael was dead. Yes, connecting by now familiar name
to the murder of Michael Frankie. And he relishous in
the misery that he brings to people. He just absolutely
relishous in it. Murder and Oregon is hosted by Lauren
(32:24):
Bright Pacheco and Phil Stanford. Executive producers are Noel Brown,
Lauren Bright Pacheco, and Phil Stanford. Supervising producer and lead
editor is Taylor Chikogne. 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 Chocoyne, with music
(32:47):
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 work in this
production of I Heart Radio m
Murder and Oregon is a production of I Heart Radio.
Frank Gable has found himself a key figure in the
Michael Frankie murder investigation. He says he didn't do it.
He says he's being set up. I've been so scared.
More than a year after Michael Frankie's death, the state
was now fully focused on Frank Gable as the soul's
(00:22):
suspect in his murder. Something else scares Gable too. He
says some of the members of his old drug ring
have shown up in the Coups County jail. He's not
sure why, but he thinks that has something to do
with Frankie's murder as well. I think I might have
walked into something that I'm known aware of last year,
and I think it's involved behind drugs. Gable, who maintained
(00:46):
his innocence, was indicted and arrested for Frankie's murder in
April of but he was about to receive another blow.
The defense attorney assigned to his case, Bob Abel. There
were some good lawyers in Salem, but to be as
blunt as possible, Abel was not one of them. If
I was going to pick an attorney to handle that case.
(01:09):
I would have picked several other people first, and I
think anybody would have. Bob Abel's assignment as Frank Cable's
defense attorney was just the first in a series of
missteps that would place Gable's life in jeopardy. I'm Lauren
(01:32):
Bright Pacheco, and this is murder in Oregon. Oddly, attorney
(01:55):
Bob Abel seemed to know he was going to get
the Frankie murder case before Frank Gable is even charged.
According to Tom McCallum, the lead investigator for gables defense team,
he told me several months before that he was going
to get the Michael Frankie case, and at the time
I thought it was a pretty bold statement, because I
actually I thought he was an attorney that probably wouldn't
(02:17):
even be on the list, And when he called and
told me that he had it, I was surprised. McCallum
says Abel's working conditions weren't exactly ideal for handling what
was the highest profile murder case in the state. I
knew that Bob didn't have an office because I didn't
(02:37):
Big Murder's case for him about a year before, and
he worked out of the office as co Council. We
met at the Tiki Lounge a lot of times and
occasionally in the Marion County Courthouse in the law library.
So I knew he didn't have an office, and I
knew he had been recently divorced because they helped him
his divorced and he was having some problems with that.
(03:00):
He was sort of out of touch with the I thought,
with the legal community. So in addition to not having
an office that I would assume he didn't have a
fax machine or a professional phone or a secretary at
the time. No, he didn't. In fact, he actually moved
into a spare office we had in a building in Sound.
(03:23):
While he didn't have an office of his own, what
Abel did have was a reputation. Here's Kevin My understanding
from a couple of the attorneys that are on the
list for capital cases said that they should have been
on it, and they jumped the scheduling. The pecking order
got rearranged to get Bob Abele in that position. It
(03:45):
wasn't because he was the best that they had to
offer in terms of defense attorneys. He's only had one
capital murder case on his record at that time and
he lost that in dramatic fashion. I think that he
a three year old kid, could figure out why Bob
Abel was picked. Phil goes into more specifics. Well, he
(04:06):
was a heavy drinker, and everyone in the legal business
in Salem would have known that. In fact, Abel has
acknowledged it in post conviction testimony. He denied that he
was drinking heavily during the trial, but he did admit
that not too long after the trial was over he
(04:29):
went into rehab. So the chances are he didn't develop
that issue after Gable's trial. Well, no, In fact, everyone
around him knew that he was drinking. Gable complained about it,
The investigators knew about it. Just a few years ago.
I talked to Abel's girlfriend who was with him during
the time of the trial, and she said each night
(04:51):
he was drinking about a court of vodka. He said,
vodka with squirt mixer. If you can imagine that. Kevin
also voiced his concerns to the prosecution at the time.
If I'm getting into an airplane, I don't want the
goddamn pilot drunk. If I'm Fred Gable, I don't want
(05:11):
my lawyer drunk. In addition to his reputation, Bob Abel
also had an apparent connection to the judge presiding over
the case, Gregory West. Here's lead investigator for the defense,
Tom McCallum. Again, I did know from things that I
had heard that he had at one point in time
(05:31):
shared in office with Judge West, who's the judge in
the case, But I never ever confirmed that. But Phil
Stanford did. Oh yeah. I checked the city directory for
that time immediately before the trial, and Able and Judge West,
who was then a lawyer, had had offices just down
(05:52):
the hallway from each other, joining offices on the same
hallway in the same building. Regardless of how Able landed
the case, just weeks before the trial, the investigators for
the defense were so concerned by his lack of preparedness
that they wrote and signed a letter imploring Judge West
to postpone the trial. So Grace Castle, who was the
(06:18):
only investigator that I didn't hire Bob, and to hire her,
and she suggested we should prepare a letter and send
it to the judge. So we all agreed, and she
prepared this letter saying that we thought we needed a
continuance because we didn't think that they were prepared. And
we all signed the letter, including Bob assistant. How many
(06:39):
people signed that letter? All of us? We had I
think nine investigators. All the investigors were there, and then
the next day I hand delivered to Bob, you want
to initially fire everybody and ultimately over my objections. He
called him Grace, who happened to be in our office
at the time, and fire. I think he had an
(07:03):
obligation because we've given it to him, and I know
he delivered the letter to Judge West. And then I
never nothing, never came to trial, never got postponed, nobody
ever said anything. I've heard different scenarios that have Judge
West destroyed at neither the other ones that it was
still included in the record somewhere. So, with his defense
(07:38):
woefully unprepared and without an apparent game plan, Gables trial
began on May one, and as the prosecution rested, Tom
McCallum found himself coordinating the initial witnesses for the defense,
and one of his first Phil Stanford, to share the
story about Mark Gessner, the inmate he'd interview who claimed
(08:00):
he had been approached to fabricate testimony against Gable in
exchange for leniency. I wrote a column about that and
for all the good it did, because the state went
ahead and called him as a prosecution witness. When it
came time for trial, I was sitting at my desk
at the Oregonian got a call from Tom McCallum, and
he said, a fel can you come down and testify tomorrow.
(08:24):
We're starting our case and we're not ready to go.
Did he explain that? He said, Abel has been out drinking.
We haven't put together a case. And in fact is
I learned later he and another investigator had been putting
together the opening presentation for the defense on this thing.
(08:46):
It was incredible. So I went down there and I testified.
I don't think I did a particularly good job, but
it was completely out of order. There was there was
no context. I talked about the interview I had had
with Guestner, and I talked about the columnide written in
which he said he was going to make up his
testimony and that was that? And who did he say
(09:08):
was coercing his testimony? Oh? As he told me down
when he was in jail, the state police were trying
to get him to say that Gable had confessed to him,
and he said he didn't. Man, But you know, everybody's
got to look out for himself, and that's what I said.
For all the good it did, right, but even with
the defense's rocky start, Initially, Phil and the other journalists
(09:32):
covering the case, I thought it would be an uphill
battle for the prosecution with their ragtag assortment of witnesses.
Here's local television reporter Eric Mason. I think all of
us realized there was nothing really the connected Frank Gable
to this crime, and that the people who had told
(09:54):
the story that and had become informants and stitches against
Frank Gabele all they were all professional liars. They were
all people who had made serious, big deals before in
their lives with prosecutors and understood the system and the
way it worked. Steve Jackson believes the sketchy witnesses and
complete lack of physical evidence linking Gable to the murder
(10:17):
should have worked in Gable's favor had he been properly defended.
I just didn't feel that the defense attorneys were on
the same level as the prosecutors. But as witnesses, um,
I think for either side they have just been you know, problematic,
because you put them up there and you can go
(10:39):
at them and say, you know, what crimes have you
been convicted of in the past, and have you ever
lied on the stand, and have you changed your story
back and forth? Your believability and uh, you know your integrity.
Phil agrees the state had no physical evidence. Their whole case.
Their whole case rest it on these so called material
(11:02):
witnesses whose testimony they had, it's now clear, manufactured using
lie detective tests. Primarily until these jail birds, ex cons
and teenage runaways got their stories straight, they figured out
what the cops wanted them to say, and eventually several
of them did enough to put on the stand. But
(11:23):
that's what their case was. And it seems that their
witnesses all had something to lose by not testifying and
something to gain. Oh yeah. In in some cases, as
with Guessner, Uh, they were threatening to charge him with
other more serious crimes and made a deal for that,
(11:44):
and with others they threatened to tie them into into
the murder. So yeah, they made up stories and state
put them on and Abel was not capable of demonstrating
how inconsistent and ultimately uh manufactured these stories were. It
(12:09):
became clear that the state was leveraging and shaping testimony
and using polygraphs lie detector tests to do it. Several
of the witnesses, all of them, when they started out,
would say, yeah, Gables a drug dealer. I don't like him, Uh,
nothing about the murder. But then they would say, we
(12:30):
know you're lying. They give him another one, and they
were given multiple tests. Jody was even given twenty three
lie detector tests, which has unheard of, and um over
time they would figure out what the cops would accept
as the truth because they were also being threatened with
being charged with other crimes or even being drawn into
(12:50):
the Franking murder. But even the state's most reputable witness, Hansacker,
the maintenance man at the Dome building, seemed to present
testimony during the trial. The original statement he made regarding
the two men he claimed to see the night Michael
Frankie was murdered seemed altered to fit the state's narrative.
(13:10):
Here's Kevin Frankie. Even Hansacker his story changed from what
he told me before the trial. He went from his
discussion with me from his map to my ears that
the guy that turned around and went back to the
Dome building was rocking like he didn't have any place
to go. He wasn't in a hurry, he wasn't crouched,
(13:32):
he wasn't holding his chest, he wasn't stumbling. It was
just walking like he didn't have no place to go.
His exact works and his testimony at trial was that
he walked briskly back up to the North Portico entrance.
Those two big changes and Hansacker's testimony also contradicted the
(13:56):
story that the state was hinging their case on testimony
from their star witness, drug dealing career criminals Shorty Harden.
Remember that name. That's the same Shorty Harden who ran
with Tim Nativodad, the guy with the van Carrie Rothschild
mentioned multiple times. Hansakre the janitor, said he walked out
(14:18):
of the building and was looking at these two figures.
One turned around and ran away to the west and
the other walked back to the Dome building. But he
would have been looking straight at the spot where shut
He said he had parked his car. He didn't see
a car. Shorty said he started up the car after
he saw Michael Frankie get stabbed. Hansaker would have seen
(14:41):
and heard that seeing a car racing away and there
were other contradictions as well, which Abel did not have
the wherewithal to point out. And it seems to me
that Hansacker or Hansaker was the only one on the
stand who didn't have anything to gain or lose of
these crime scene witnesses. Yes, that's for sure, But yet
(15:04):
his testimony changed slightly from the statements he had made
immediately after the murder. Well, uh, Eric Mason and I
went down and talked to him shortly after the murder
and end he said that the man who walked back
to the building walked back in sort of a leisurely manner.
Leisurely is the word I put in my notes at
(15:25):
the time, And by the time the state had him
on the stand, he said he was walking back briskly,
things like that. Yeah. Shorty Harden took the stand and
told the same story he told the grand jury. Shorty
claimed when he picked Jody up, he saw Frank Cable
in the car across from him. Apparently Michael Frankie then approached.
(15:48):
There were blaring contradiction to hans Sacker's testimony, who claimed
to only see two men, never mentioned another vehicle pulling up,
seeing a woman or hearing that loud exchange, but the
defense never challenged the discrepancies. Here's Kevin Well. Shorty was
obviously making up the story that Bob Able didn't jump
(16:09):
on He never asked Hunt Sacker. Did you hear or
see Shorty Harden's car coming into the parking lot at
this time? Did you hear or see Shorty Harden pull
up and the car door opened and Jodie get out?
Did you hear or see Frank Gable wrestling in the
(16:29):
car with Mike Frankie? Did you hear Mike? Frankie yelled
out as Shorty testified, Hey, what are you doing in
my car? Never asking those questions? But I asked him
those questions and they said no. There were no other cars,
there were no other headlights, there were no engines running.
It was definitely quiet. That was astounding, and that's when
(16:52):
I knew frank was fucked. Another blow came when Jody
swearing Jin, the troubled teenage runaway and drug user, took
(17:15):
the stand. Jody had formerly been a grand jury witness
for the prosecution, but had now recanted her testimony and
was no longer on board. She was now testifying for
the defense and adamant she'd never seen Gable at the
Dome Building or witnessed him kill Michael Frankie. Her cross
examination by prosecutor Sarah Moore provided one of the most
(17:38):
dramatic moments of the trial, as More reminded her of
her previous testimony. Here's Phil. If the trial had a
turning point, it was Jody's testimony. She was called by
the defense and Sarah more than the lead prosecutor, had
a cross examine her. What Sarah did was to read
(18:00):
back to Jody her testimony before the grand jury, which,
as Sarah knew, had been manufactured using all these twenty
three lie detector tests. And so she would read, and
did you say you drove there in Frank Gable's car
over to the Dome building And Jodie would say, but
that's a lie. And then she'd say that you were
(18:22):
a lookout basically standing in front of the tree that
immediately in front of the north portico a porch area,
and Jody would say, but that's a lie, and that
you saw Frank Gable get into a struggle with a
big tall man near the car that night, and Jody,
that's a lie. Ultimately, the spectacle was damning for the defense.
(18:43):
It was at best completely confusing to the jury, but
it made Jody, uh. It must have seemed to them
that she was really confirming this story that she had
for some time recanted. So the prosecution's approach was, if
you're lying, then you're lying now, yes, and and but
(19:04):
beyond that, they got her false confession in h and
made it seem like the truth. Here's Kevin Frankie. My
take on Jody is that she was still extremely afraid
that being held, even though they had given her immunity,
she was traid that anything could happen, that she could
say the wrong thing in the immunity agreement would go
(19:27):
down the toilet, and she'd end up spend the rest
of her life for a good twenty or thirty years
in prison. Jody swearing Jin had previously been granted immunity
by the state for her grand jury testimony. That immunity
seems to have been leveraged for a reason. Even as
Kevin Frankie watched the train wreck of Jody's cross examination unfold,
(19:49):
he was waiting for the defense to retaliate with a
bombshell he'd uncovered months before the trial even started, involving
Jody swearing Jin and a lawyer she had turned to
desperate for help. Joe, this problems in his offices were
in downtown Albany, which is that twenty five miles south
of Salem. And I went down there to see him
(20:12):
after I moved out here in August. So this was
way before Gables trial. Yeah, this is before Gable Straw.
That lawyer and his wife took notes of that meeting,
which we have, and what did he share with you?
Joe said that Jody was really really wired and just
(20:35):
scared and shaking and babbling off of that her boyfriend
murdering a guy, and that she was there and that
she might be an accomplice and doesn't want to go
down for life for murder and blah blah blah and
all that, and that's worried. When she mentioned like Frankie
and who was the boyfriend she believed committed the murder,
Jody said that Tim had killed like Frankie. Did you
(20:57):
ever find out who that Tim was? Tim was Rooster
according to Natividad. Yes, that Tim Rooster. Natividad, the same
drug dealing Natividad Carrie Rothschild wiped blood off of after
a murder the same Natividad Liz god Love believes was
(21:18):
the man in the Pinstripe suit, the same Natividad. Conrad
Nick Garcia says approached him to kill Michael Frankie at
the request of the then assistant A. G. Scott McAllister
that Tim Natividad. And I gave a copy of those
notes to Gabele's defense team, and I gave a copy
(21:39):
to Sarah Moore, who was the prosecuting attorney for Frank Gable,
and I told Sarah this kind of throws a wrench
in your case against Gable. So how did the courtroom
and jury react to that incredible bombshell about Tim Natividad.
They didn't. Did that ever come up in the trial? No, never,
(22:01):
any information regarding Tim Natividad was ruled irrelevant and inadmissible.
That's right. For some reason, Judge Gregory West didn't permit
mention of Tim Natividad during the trial. Jody wasn't even
allowed to mention Natividad's name. She was specifically forbidden by
West to mention Natividad's name. There was a lot of
(22:23):
discussion out of hearing of the jury about that, and
she was forbidden to mention natividad and that's not all.
And of course Krauss was never brought up. That's the
Johnny Krauss who confessed a knowledge of the murder and
was granted immunity to recount. Those omissions would layer with
other issues, the defenses failure to point out the contradictions
(22:45):
between hands, Sacre and Shorty, failure to present an alibi
A Gable was at home that night, as would later
be proved, but they didn't do that, and after Jody swearing,
Jon testified that she had been coerced into testifying against
Gable after she recanted her story that placed Gable at
the Dome building that night as a lie. After she
(23:05):
was ripped apart by the prosecution, who used the story
they coerced and shaped with nearly two dozen polygraph tests
against her. Gables defense made a shocking decision after Sarah
More came back and destroyed everything. But it was all
stuff that we could reassemble when we called her back
in the stand. But for some reason, Bob Able refused
(23:29):
to put Jody back on the stand. He just didn't
want to mess with that. I don't want to put
her back up. She's too dangerous. Even we could have
resolved a lot of the things that Sarah did and
you know, kind of reconstructed her testimony, which was very important.
Bob wouldn't do it and from that point on, and
I didn't have the fueling that he hit through the case,
(23:51):
but he just gave up on it. Here's newspaper reporters
Steve Jackson's take on Jody So. I think that he
was being truthful when she retracted her statement to the police.
It didn't make sense, and there are some parts that
I felt the defense attorney should have been able to
(24:11):
turn on on that with you know, the timing. I mean,
you know, she supposedly left the scene and went made
a phone call and then came back to the scene
and witnessed all this. You know, she would have had
to have been a world class printer um to actually
bit into that timeline, but the defense never brought it up.
Phil Stanford thinks the defense may have been more than
(24:33):
just incompetent. He did such a bad job that the
best thing you can say about him is that he
was incompetent, But it was more than that is an
interesting question. At the time he was given this case,
his business was going down the tubes. He was desperate
for a job and he was handed one that was very,
(24:55):
very lucrative here. So it's worthwhile considering the possibility that
the case was thrown as far as I am concerned,
but as shocking as the defense is seeming an ability
to challenge and properly cross examined witnesses like Unsacker, Harden
and swearing Jen, it's the fact that Gable, who vehemently
wanted to testify, was never given the chance that still
(25:20):
haunts the lead defense investigator, Tom McCallum. I kind of
controlled all the witnesses, had witness all set up, and
at the end of our case, Dr Spitch is one
of our last witnesses, and we had several letter witnesses
coming after that, but we're gonna have Frank testify. And
I had to give Dr Spitzer right back at lunch
(25:40):
break to the Portland Airport, and it was Waal McCallum
was driving that witness back to the airport that the
defense abruptly rested, shocking many including McCallum. On my way
back at a call from Phil seeing what the else
going on? And I so what do you mean? And
you go, what do you guys, sitness you're talking about,
(26:02):
we can't arrest Frank's going to testify, and we got
all kinds of witnesses set up this afternoon, and I
guess Bob took advantage of the fact that I was
gone and rested the case that surprised me, and that
we had things that need to be addressed and said
and witnesses that I thinks the same. I guess they
lost a little bit of hope with that. Reporter Steve
(26:22):
Jackson thought when the defense rested, it was clear Gable
wasn't actually being defended. It didn't happen. In fact, that
the defense folded and closed its case in so short
a time as it was just pretty shocking. To tell you.
The truth is that, you know, I've seen defenses before
where they don't even present anything, but usually that's because
(26:44):
the state case is so ridiculous that you know, they
just go to closing and they say something like that.
But in this case, I thought there was an opportunity
to at least cast reasonable doubt on the state case
as presented and gone from there. But there was just
little to nothing. Um, there's a couple of expert witnesses,
(27:06):
some witnesses recanting um. But it was just it was
kind of over and done, and you're sitting there wondering,
what about the timeline, what about the things that don't
make sense? What about Michael Frankie and you know, the
situation around his house, and what about some of these
other things, things like the spent Riot gun shells littering
(27:28):
Frankie's back deck, or the pistol found under his pillow,
or that he was teaching his wife to shoot. But
even with all the defenses, missteps, with resting prematurely, without
letting Gable take the stand, there was still no physical
evidence linking Frank Gable to the crime. Here's local reporter
(27:48):
Eric Mason. There was no one there to provide the glue,
to put it all together, to basically say to the jury,
there's not a hair, there's not a fiber, there's not
a drop of blood that ties Frank Gabel to any
of this. It just wasn't there. Those with us who
(28:11):
understood the story thought to ourselves, man, there's just not
enough evidence here except for some inmates, some convicted and
professional liars to come forward and tell these stories about
Frank Gabel and about his admissions there's nothing there that
holds this together, and the prosecution hasn't met its burden
(28:34):
of proof in the eyes of everyone who had been
there to study the case, and Mason wasn't alone and
believing the state hadn't proved guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
I think the porters knew that he was not the
right guy. As the jury is deliberating, we did take
a straw poll, as reporters and all of us but
(28:56):
one believed that Frank Gabel should be acquitted of the crime.
Was not enough there to convict him of stabbing Michael Frankie.
It was just a lack of forensic evidence of any
kind that tied him to the scene. Even the defense's
lead investigator, Tom McCallum, thought Gable would be acquitted. In fact,
when the verdict came back, I went down and Frank
(29:18):
didn't want to come up. He was scared. I didn't
want to come up and here the verdict, and I
went down and talked to him for about half an
hour and I said, Gather, there's no way here can
find you guilty. And that's the way I felt. But
McCallum would be proved wrong after less than twenty four
hours of deliberation, the jury unanimously found Gable guilty of
(29:42):
murdering Michael Frankie. He was found guilty of six counts
of aggravated murder and one count of murder. He was
sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. Here's Kevin
when they announced guilty. I've never heard it. Decided to
quiet in my life. Talking about the reporters. There was
(30:03):
a galantine to you that was there. She looked at
me and she said, my god, that could have been
your me sitting in frank Able's chair to shot that
he was trying guilty. So everybody was. Here's Eric Mason
when the verdict was announced. What went through your head?
Complete shock that twelve people could arrive at that conclusion
(30:28):
based on two deputy district attorneys who made that case
and basically these convicts who came and told these stories,
and we all just kind of shook our heads and went, Okay, well,
I guess we just go out and report what just happened.
(30:49):
Phil still grapples with that day. You know, what what
gets me is that they knew what they'd done. They
knew that they absolutely made up a case against a
man who wasn't even there. They were smart enough to
know that there, They were smart enough to know how
they did it. All these lie detector tests, all this
manufactured testimony, and then not only do they get a
(31:13):
conviction on the basis of this phony evidence, they asked
for the death penalty and they came close to getting it. Oh, yeah,
they did. I think it was tended to. Why do
you think they would have wanted him dead? Do you
think it's safe to assume that it's because the case
would have died with Gable? Oh it would have. Yeah.
(31:34):
I think you're right. They're willing to kill him. As
far as I'm concerned, that's about as evil as you
can get. On the next murder in Oregon, another uncovered
bombshell that was kept from Gable's trial. She overheard the
conversation is supposed to look like a suicide. She now
(31:57):
comes forward it was a burden off of his back
that Michael was dead. Yes, connecting by now familiar name
to the murder of Michael Frankie. And he relishous in
the misery that he brings to people. He just absolutely
relishous in it. Murder and Oregon is hosted by Lauren
(32:24):
Bright Pacheco and Phil Stanford. Executive producers are Noel Brown,
Lauren Bright Pacheco, and Phil Stanford. Supervising producer and lead
editor is Taylor Chikogne. 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 Chocoyne, with music
(32:47):
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 work in this
production of I Heart Radio m
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show. Clay Travis and Buck Sexton tackle the biggest stories in news, politics and current events with intelligence and humor. From the border crisis, to the madness of cancel culture and far-left missteps, Clay and Buck guide listeners through the latest headlines and hot topics with fun and entertaining conversations and opinions.