December 19, 2019 • 42 mins
A sworn statement, unearthed in 2004, presents some very damning information involving one of Michael Francke's former co-workers. It also could have greatly aided in the defense of Frank Gable, were it presented during his trial. That document, along with others, sparks renewed interest in the Francke murder and once again places Phil at odds with his former employer.
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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 two thousand and four, fifteen years after Michael Frankie's murder,
an astounding document, one that could have aided greatly in
Frank Gable's defense, was discovered. It was a sworn statement
signed and witnessed on December eleven, five months before Gabele's trial,
(00:26):
but it was never presented in his defense or in
his subsequent appeal. In fact, it was buried in a
forgotten box of evidence until it was unearthed by Kevin Frankie.
The Linda Parker interview was extremely taller and very very,
very very disturbing. When I've read that, I could not
(00:46):
believe that this was in existence at the time that
frank was tried. But it wasn't presented to the court,
so she was never called. I was beyond belief. Linda
Parker was a former secretary and girlfriend of Scott McAllister,
That's the former Oregon Assistant Attorney General who some felt
(01:10):
really ran the state's Department of Corrections before Michael Frankie
got there. We have a copy of that sworn statement
and it reveals more than a few very concerning skeletons
in Scott McAllister's closet. I'm Lauren Bright Pacheco and this
(01:32):
is murder and Oregon. Hi, I'm here to see Mr
(01:54):
Jen Wrennen j him read in as a reporter for
the Portland Tribune and one of or against most seasoned
journalists in person. He's a jovial disposition that's balanced with
a direct, quizzical stare that peers out from behind dark
(02:16):
wire rimmed glasses. Like Stanford, Steve Jackson and Eric Mason.
He's been covering the Frankie murder for three decades. Here's
his take on Scott McAllister. Well, Scott McAllister was the
long time Department of Justice attorney for the Corrections Division,
(02:36):
and he had been there assigned to them for quite
a while. And it had been practiced in the Department
of Justice to rotate attorneys because you don't want them
getting too close to their agencies. They need to have
that arm's length objective perspective. But he stayed a long time.
(02:59):
He's even like guess he liked the work and as
possible that other attorneys just didn't want to do it
because you're dealing with the criminals all the time. Redden
like the other journalists and colleagues of Frankie we've interviewed
was aware of apparent issues with Scott McAllister. He and
Michael Frankie got into some huge argument shortly after Frankie
(03:23):
arrived and shortly before he was murdered. Mccalislor got reassigned
and quit, left the Department of Justice and moved to Utah.
That's where McAllister would meet a woman named Linda Parker.
She worked in adjoining offices to McAllister when she was
(03:43):
hired by the Attorney General's Office in Utah. It wasn't
long before she attracted McAllister's eye and unwanted interference in
her career. We were able to contact Parker, who agreed
to speak with us under the condition we not reveal
her current name or state where she resides. To this day,
she remains deeply afraid of Scott McAllister. I was a
(04:09):
paralegal for the Attorney General's Office and we were housed
at the Department of Corrections, right outside Scott's office. He
was the Inspector General and worked for the Department of Corrections.
(04:31):
So my first impression was he was arrogant and he
was always getting me to do things for the Department
of Corrections as opposed to the a g. S Office,
and then eventually he had me transferred from the a g.
S Office to the Inspector General's office without her knowledge
(04:55):
or consent. Linda was the thirty six and struggling through
a difficult divorce. Mc allister quickly attempted to take advantage
of her situation. He kept asking me out, not necessarily
on a date. He was always come for dinner, or
(05:18):
come and make dinner, or you know, stuff like that.
I was in a really rough place at the time,
going through a divorce. I had a young daughter, hadn't
worked since we had adopted my daughter, so it was
my first job back into the working field, and I
(05:39):
had a very low opinion of myself. I didn't think
anybody would be interested in a divorced single mom, so
in that sense, it was an ego boost for me.
And initially she didn't see mc allister as a manipulative opportunist,
and the two dated for about two months in summer
(06:00):
of nine. At the time, for lack of a better explanation,
I wasn't mature enough to see what was actually going on.
But his true colors soon became apparent, and we're even
on display. Scott had made a sign in Utah for
his office door, and it said the Iceman Prince of Darkness,
(06:26):
and he was very proud of the nickname that he
had assigned to himself. I don't believe that he just
came up with that when he moved to Utah. That
had to have been his attitude in Oregon and wherever
else before Oregon. Well Parker knew McAllister had recently moved
(06:48):
to Utah from Oregon. He was never clear as to why.
He just said that he was offered a job from
the executive whatever of the Department of Corrections and that
it was time for him to move. And once he
(07:08):
was in Utah, McAllister transferred a loyal Oregon work buddy
to work with him in Utah Corrections and they socialized
outside of work. There were a group of people over
at Scott's house and he had brought another gentleman over
to be the warden at a prison. Al was the name.
(07:31):
He was a police officer in Oregon, and when Scott
brought him down to Utah, he gave them the position
of director of Civil Litigation for the Inspector General's office.
So I don't know how the hierarchies are in the
police filled, but that's a pretty damn good promotion. It
(07:55):
was during one of their gatherings that Linda Parker first
heard talk of a Frankie murder. They were talking about
how they couldn't believe it was still in the news.
There was a lot of laughing, a lot of joking
about it, the fact that he was such a low life.
(08:15):
They were trying to pin something on Scott and his crew.
Scott had said that he may have to go back
up to Oregon to take care of some business, and
then it was a little bit more intense. What were
your impressions about how mc allister felt about Michael Frankie.
(08:39):
It was a burden off of his back that Michael
was dead. Yes. At some point, McAllister complained about having
to take a polygraph test. He said all he needed
to do was take valium or some sort of downer,
and that he could control roll his pulse and beat
(09:02):
any polygraph that was ever presented to him. He kept
a variety of hills in his office. He was always
taking something. After the polygraph. Scott said that he wouldn't
have needed it. He could have snowed the guy without it.
And then I had asked him if he had anything
to worry about, and he said no. There had been
(09:26):
over a hundred and forty incidents of violations and misconduct
during his seventeen years in Oregon and not one had
ever been pinned on him. So he knew the ropes,
he knew what to do. He had made the comments
several different times that he was well protected that nothing
(09:51):
was tied to him. Here are Kevin and Pat Frankie
discussing that polygraph. The District Attorney Dale pen had arranged
to have a polygraph team quote unquote, and I believe
it was. It was either local police or state police
in Utah. There was just the did it here? No, No,
(10:15):
they did it there at his office. They sent up
a list of questions to ask him and that was it.
They didn't give any background on the case, any background
on the individual. Just hear the questions to ask him
and follow the protocol to ask him these questions and
send us the results. And according to Linda Parker, he
(10:36):
took a sedative to dull his responses. Cut off the
highs and low peaks of his heart rate prior to
the polygraph, and he was expecting a team from Oregon
to come up and really grill him, and it didn't
show up. In fact, it was just the local Utah
authorities with a list of the three or five questions,
(10:59):
I think, and he was bragging about how easy it was.
He said he could have passed it without the medication
he was told park. But while McAlister may have been
cavalier about the polygraph or being linked to wrongdoings, he
seemed very interested in Frank Cable's trial. He was getting
updates on the trial, what was going on, what the
(11:23):
news clippings had to say. And later it all made
sense because he had a girlfriend in Oregon who was
working with him at the time. Her name was Grace,
and she would come down to visit him, and on
(11:45):
one of those visits she brought him down some boxes
of stuff, and in the beginning I didn't know what
was in the boxes. I know that they had a
lot of conversation and that was his go to person
for information. Like others loyal to McAllister, Grace would leave
(12:08):
Oregon for Utah. At the time, I thought it was
odd that he had brought so many people and put
them in high up positions within the Department of Corrections.
And then when things started evolving and I started getting
manipulated even more, it was like all of these people
(12:33):
were his minions. I mean, if Scott told him to jump,
they would bow down and ask where and how high.
It was almost as if though they didn't have a
mind of their own. At the same time, McAllister was
increasingly pressuring Linda into embracing an unusual relationship arrangement and
(12:57):
the concept of group sex. Well, he had started making
suggestions about starting a corporation. And what this corporation was
is he wanted multiple women, so he would be the
(13:19):
head of the corporation and everybody would live under one roof.
And at first it was and later confirmed, what he
was after was more like a cult. So you would
pay in proportionately to this corporation, and that would be
(13:43):
for household expenses. So he wanted, you know, a three
summer foursome, whatever it was. At first I thought it
was a real joke and I completely turned him off. Well,
then a couple of days later, I go to work
and I get this bouquet of flowers on my desk,
(14:08):
and the card said, here's to the corporation. It'll be
a beautiful corporation, nice life. And that's when I started
getting real nervous because also at that time, he had
moved Grace down from Oregon to become his right hand
(14:30):
person and to entice Linda into this unconventional lifestyle, he
implored her to use drugs and he gave her a
box of tapes to watch, pornographic tapes. He said that
he wanted me to get comfortable with the idea and Matt,
after I watched him, I would know that there was
(14:52):
nothing wrong with that type of activity. So he left
my apartment and I put the box in the closet
never touched it again until I quit. And it's at
(15:22):
this point in late July that Linda Parker overheard a
conversation at Scott McAllister's home. It happened during a dinner
gathering that was sort of a welcome party for Grace's
move to Utah. Scott was talking to Grace and Harold.
He said, um, yeah, it was really stupid about Frankie's
(15:47):
murder because it was supposed to look like a suicide,
but was really part of my language fucked up, and
Harold at the time look to Scott, and Scott had said, um,
something to the effect everybody that knew him knew that
he meaning Frankie, never used the door he was found
(16:12):
to play in front of. And so Harold and Scott
went on and was further conversing about it, and Harold
said that it was no real loss because nobody liked
Frankie anyway, and now that Frankie was out of the picture,
(16:32):
Harold could use the Oregon Department of Corrections again as
a reference because nobody would be there to soil his name.
Scott just kept saying the job was really offed up.
They couldn't get anything right. If they tried, it was
supposed to look like a suicide, and they botched it.
(16:56):
And that's exactly what Linda Parker conveyed in her sworn
statement signed in December, five months before Frank Gable's trial
even began. But there's more. As Linda tried to distance
herself increasingly uncomfortable with McAlister, his cohorts and his sexual demands.
(17:18):
When I completely made it absolutely what clear that that
was not going to happen with me anyway, he transferred
me from the executive offices two the prison at the
point of the Mountain in their mail group. My world
(17:41):
shattered once I started pulling away and didn't want anything
to do with whatever Scott wanted or how he was
manipulating the others. That's when I started having problems in
the mail room at the prison, and shortly after that
(18:01):
I left the department completely and by still hadn't had
my final paycheck. And all of this has taken place
in the beginning of ninety and mc allister's retaliation against
Linda for rejecting him didn't end in the workplace. He
(18:23):
contacted my ex husband and told him that he would
work with him to have me claimed and unfit parent,
to take my child away from me. And in fact,
when we had a custody hearing in court, he showed
up in court to back my ex husband. That's the
(18:46):
vindictive nature of this man. Finally, she'd had enough and
fought back by suing Scott McAllister for sexual harassment. When
I brought up a lawsuit against Scott and he was
served with papers when the judges said that we could
(19:07):
proceed with trial. The next morning, I went to get
into my car and all four tires were slashed. A
few days later, there was an envelope that was delivered
to my house and it told me to drop the
suit or you're dead. A few days after that, my
(19:29):
apartment was broken into. It was in the news because
of Scott's position, But he would have been the only
person that knew where I lived that could have told
somebody to intimidate me. And if he can do something
like that to a woman that doesn't have any power,
(19:53):
imagine what he could do with his connections, both within
and inside the prison system. Imagine what he could do
to people that wronged him. But the attempts to intimidate
Parker into stopping her suit didn't work. The judge had
(20:17):
found that there was more than enough evidence to back
my allegations, and he said that he was setting it
over for trial, And that afternoon, my attorney got a
call from Risk Management saying that they wanted to settle.
She would received dollars from the state in an out
(20:39):
of court settlement for the sexual harassment suit she filed
against McAllister and the Department of Corrections, an expensive taxpayer
tab for McAllister's indiscretions, but it was validation for Parker.
That proved to me that I was not imagining all
of this, that I wasn't going crazy. And remember that
(21:02):
box of pornographic tapes that Scott McAllister gave to Linda,
she still had them. The U S Attorney found out
through the Department of Labor that I had this box
of information, so they asked me to bring it down.
So I took it down to him, and that's when
(21:22):
I found out what all was in the box. It
was children, women with women, women with men. It was
like a for lack of a better word, or g
type environment. And those tapes originated from a shocking source
(21:47):
the evidence for other cases in Oregon that should have
never left the state. Scott McAllister had been amassing child
pornography seized as evidence in Oregon cases, and he had
transported it across state lines. After I gave him my box,
(22:09):
they did a search warrant on his apartment and they
found more of the same stuff. Kevin Frankie says some
of those tapes even still had evidence tags on them
because they were taken from child pornography cases. The FBI
agent that I talked to told me that he had
(22:32):
hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of porno tapes and especially
built case in a closet in his home. Linda Parker
would serve as a witness in the child pornography case
against McAllister. Ultimately, he'd plead guilty to reduce charges while
he lost his ability to practice in Utah. McAllister basically
(22:53):
received a slap on the wrist for felony possession of
child pornography, serving just seven days in jail during October.
He was untouchable, and I was so disappointed, so extremely disappointed.
I think he lost his license for a few years,
but then when he moved out of state, he was
(23:15):
able to get it back again. And it's like he
uses the law manipulates the law, just like he uses
human beings and manipulates human beings. Scott McAllister is still
a practicing lawyer today. We've reached out to him multiple
times and he's ignored our request for a statement or interview.
(23:39):
We're grateful to Linda Parker for the courage it took
to share a story. I mean, I'm sitting here thirty
years later just thinking about him, and I'm sitting here shaking,
and I've tried so hard to take that control away
from him, and he relishes in the misery that he
(23:59):
brings to people. He just absolutely relationous in it. Many
believe Scott McAllister has never been properly investigated in the
murder of Michael Frankie. Here's Steve Jackson, the reporter who
covered the Frankie case as it unfolded for The Statesman Journal.
You know, if you looked at my investigation, UM, it's
(24:22):
sort of like a tree and there's a you know,
the trunk of the tree and that this is the
stuff we know, um, and then there are branches from it.
In Scott McAllister was on one of the branches, and
that the branch was that if there was corruption in
the prison system, if there was something that Michael Frankie
was about to expose, if he had some names and
(24:45):
that sort of stuff, that branch help, you know. Scott
McCallister held Neil Goldschmidt and held a number of people
Dick Peterson Dave Culley right. Dick Peterson and Dave Culley
where Michael Frankie's number two and three in command at
the Department of Corrections. The two men who claimed they
(25:05):
did a meticulous search of the dome building the night's
body was found. So you have that branch, and that
was a viable branch to investigate. And there are certainly
things about any and all of that branch, including Scott
McAllister and some of his behavior and some of the
things you would hear from different witnesses, and that would
lead you to say, Okay, this is at least worth
(25:26):
investigating and putting to bed and making sure that we've
closed this chapter. Here's Phil Stanford's take. Yeah, for me,
the big question is why Frank Gables defense didn't jump
all over Linda Parker's statement once they got it and
they had it. It's just like their failure to get
natividad and crossed into the trial. It could have made
(25:47):
all the difference in the trial to get that sort
of information in. But also the botched suicide is a
missing piece of a puzzle that ties in some other
elements that we already know. Yeah, the the uh mc
allister's very puzzling statement here. Um, what's so important about
it is that he says they fucked up. It was
(26:08):
supposed to look like a suicide. Well, what is he
talking about? It seems to dovetail with other information we
have from the two other Department of Corrections employees who
were also on the outs with Frankie. Dick Peterson, who
is the deputy director, called Kevin the morning of the
murder and said, your brother has been shot. Well, he
(26:29):
wasn't shot, he was he was stabbed, of course. And
then Cally Dave Cally, another assistant director who was with
Peterson that night to supposedly searched the building and said
he was afraid to go into Frankie's office because he'd
find him dead. Where did McAllister come up with the
idea that it was supposed to look like a suicide.
That would be a very interesting question for the investigators
(26:52):
to have asked him, but of course they never even
interviewed him. Do you think it's because it would have
hit too close to home? But certainly what it looks
like it. But even as many in the press were
choosing to dismiss the possibility of corruption and people like
McAllister as players in Frankie's murder as conspiracy theory, Phil
Stanford refused to and was writing incessantly about it. That
(27:15):
didn't sit well with the politically loyal factions at the
paper he was working for at the time, The Oregonian.
Oh yeah, got into it with the newspaper I was
working for at the time. They attacked me in print
while I was still employed there after the verdict. It
(27:36):
was an unusual experience, let's say, over the years. I mean,
every time we'd bring it up again and take another
run at him, they would come back. The Oregonian had
committed themselves to defending the state's case, which was really
defending the notion, as I say it, that things like
(27:58):
this couldn't up in Oregon. And Phil believes it was
easier for the Oregonian to attack him than except the
possibility that Michael Frankie could have been killed by corrupt
officials and that an innocent man could have been found
guilty of that murder by a corrupt system. It was
very important to them whether they understood their their unconscious
(28:22):
motivation or not. And I think a lot of it
was unconscious to maintain what someone described me once as
presumption of regularity, you know, with without which life can
become a little bit threatening. If you think for a
minute that you can't trust the people who are responsible
for your health and safety, then things are scary if
(28:44):
you think start thinking that they are lying to you,
and then they're corrupt. That's that's frightening stuff. And it's
not that Phil was championing Gables innocence from the start,
but he did feel his guilt was certainly in question,
and that it was the job of journalism ask questions.
Most people, you know, for I think very good reasons, UH,
(29:05):
don't want to entertain those beliefs. Unfortunately, people in the
news business need to entertain those possibilities anyway, and that's
where I think The Oregonian specifically, particularly UH, went so
far astray. I was raising questions because I certainly didn't
(29:28):
know the answers at the beginning. It was years before
I knew enough about the case to to be able
to say definitively that this guy is not guilty of anything.
You made up the charges against him. Phil found himself
(29:53):
increasingly at odds with The Oregonian and his coworkers there,
to the point he eventually had no choice to leave.
I'm sure the Frankie case figured into everything that happened,
but basically it was just a new editor coming in
who decided that I did not have the proper respect
for power and prestige, and I'm I'm sure she's right.
(30:16):
So as soon as she got there, she started pushing
me out, and I finally had enough and I quit.
During his seven years at The Oregonian, in addition to
many successes like his series on the Happy Face Killer,
Stanford devoted eighty four columns to Frankie's murder and mentioned
it in seventeen others, totally nearly seventy thou words. He
(30:38):
wrote his last column for The Oregonian on April one,
saying he'd run out of things to say, and he
took one last parting shot at his editors by mentioning
Frankie quote, A lot of people think I'm nuts on
the subject, I don't unquote. He left the paper demoralized
and reflective on the path that atom to this point.
(31:02):
This wasn't the first time you had walked away from
a job or found yourself without one. As a matter
of fact, if I was there for seven years, which
I think you added up, that's probably the longest I've
held a job in my life. But yeah, I dropped
out of school. You didn't just drop out of college,
(31:22):
You dropped out of Dartmouth. Yeah, and I went surfing
in Hawaii for a couple of years, tried school again,
didn't like it any better than the first time, and
then Phil created his own unique education, one oddly well
suited to an eventual career exposing corruption. Joined the Army.
(31:45):
When I got out of the Army, I started writing
for magazine as in Washington, d C. Looked for well
the Washingtonian Magazine, Washington Post magazine, Plumby Journalism Review, a
couple three pieces for the New York Times magazine. I
had worked as an aid for a congressman on the
Armed Services Committee, so I've become sort of a half
(32:06):
asked expert on military matters. I wrote a couple of
pieces on nuclear strategy and weapons technology, worked as an
editor for Political magazine in San Francisco, and then as
a columnist for them, and then I dropped out. I
don't know but exactly I was thinking at the time.
I was after an upsetting divorce that might have had
something to do with it. I was looking for something else,
(32:28):
and I found it in Miami. I ended up working
as a private investigator for a detective agency called Intercept,
which I soon discovered, was, among other things, a front
for CIA drug running operation. That's sort of where I
got my education of how it really worked. Before it
was all over, the guy we were working for got killed,
(32:50):
and I ended up back in Washington, d C. Looking
for jobs that were no longer available because I had
really gotten off the ladder, and turned out the only
place my my my reputation hadn't caught up with me
was Oregon, I guess. And so I got a job
with The Oregonian as a reporter, and after about six
months they made me a columns and now Phil was
(33:12):
no longer one. Meanwhile, Frank Gable was still sitting in prison,
and he remained there even after his two thousand and
one post conviction trial, which raised questions regarding his defense attorney,
Bob Abel. One of the big issues in the post
conviction trial was whether Abel had incapacitated himself by drinking
(33:35):
too much at the time, and the judge would simply
not allow any evidence of that. At this point, Phil
was working again as a private detective and writing books
on the history of corruption in Oregon, but he never
stopped digging into the Frankie murder or Gables trial. After
about ten years, I got a complete collection of all
(33:59):
the wreck it's on the case. I got him from
Tom McCallum, the chief investigator for the defense, and he'd
had all these boxes. He was lugging around thirty bankers
boxes and they were in a boathouse out in the
river someplace. He didn't want him anymore, he said, you
want him, Yeah, So I took him and I read
them and read him twice, and it was clear to
me that they didn't have a case. They had nothing
(34:21):
on him, nothing, It's all made up. He also had
proof now in the form of official documents. Kevin Frankie
was telling the truth the entire time. He had voiced
concerns about corruption, and the records revealed the official denial
of that was more than just an oversight. But well,
I also got, you know, from reading these documents, was
(34:45):
finally an understanding of how they had no case against Gable. Nothing.
There wasn't something that we didn't understand. There wasn't something
they were holding back. They didn't have a case. Gable
was innocent. So it gave you renewed perp. This Yeah,
it got me going again. It had seemed so impossible before.
Everything seemed to be against me and Kevin, and here
(35:08):
was proof that they'd been lying about something that was
central to their case. This whole case they have revealed
themselves time and time again by the lies that they've told. Now,
armed with evidence that confirmed his suspicions about the Frankie investigation,
(35:29):
Bill was ready to tackle it again. At the time,
I was working at the Tribune and started writing about
the case again. I did a series on the case.
We had more documents, including of course the officer's notebooks,
to back up what we were saying. Then, in the
summer of two thousand and four, frank Gable made a
remarkable request. He told his attorneys turn over all the
(35:51):
evidence to the brother of the man he was convicted
of killing, Kevin. Frankie received boxes of evidence, police reports
and defense invested or interviews. Yeah, and after Kevin got
his boxes, as we would find out, there were some
missing pieces that I didn't find in mind by now Fills.
Articles in the Tribune had sparked renewed interest into Michael
(36:11):
Frankie's murder, and the will lamb It Week ran an
article titled The Murder That Would Not Die. The tagline
columnist Bill Stanford is obsessed with a decade old conspiracy theory.
What if he's right the author Nick, but Nick did
a really pretty good story on the case, and for
(36:33):
the first time, at least in the Portland media, gave
some sort of voice to the same questions that I've
been raising. And so he ended his column saying, quoting me, saying, well,
if I were still at the Oregonian, I knew I
wouldn't be writing about this. And The Oregonian didn't take
too kindly. They had obviously been drawn into a position
(36:55):
where they were defending the official version of the case,
and you were calling them on it. Yeah, I'm quite
sure that's the way they saw it. Yeah. And then
Kevin unearthed the sworn statement by Linda Parker. Now the
press knew that her statement was secured five months before
Frank Gable's trial and was never investigated by the police
(37:15):
or used in gables defense. It sparked another round of coverage.
Here's television reporter Eric Mason. There was this feeling of
vindication that all of our suspicions really was based in something.
Linda had a piece of a puzzle, which included overhearing
(37:36):
that the hit Michael Frankie was supposed to look a
certain way, and they had watched the job. I remember
her being frightened. I remember thinking, this is a woman
who really doesn't want to be interviewed and is reluctant
giving away the details, thinking to herself, perhaps she's doing
the right thing, but that she doesn't want to risk
(37:58):
her safety to do so. She was afraid of Stockhouse. Absolutely. Yeah.
The Frankie murder was making headlines again and placing scrutiny
on a newspaper consistently on board with the state's version
of Frankie's killing, The Oregonian. They attacked back and void,
(38:18):
did they ever? And I hadn't attacked any of the
writers personally, never did never. They came back and with
what they build as an exhaustive, be all, end all
investigation reinvestigation of the case. We'll revisit that article later,
but let's just say, in light of what we now know,
it's been proven a pretty large misstep for The Oregonian.
(38:42):
Jim Redden was working with Phil at the Tribune at
the time. Two reporters of The Oregonian publish what they
claimed to be the most extensive investigation into the Michael
Frankie murder and they come to the conclusion that there's
one person responsible and he's in prison already. Frank Gable,
(39:05):
no question. Then you respond to it right me and
fill together. Really it was it wasn't just that they
were saying he did it, he's the only person that
did it. They're also repeating once again that there just
wasn't the corruption to justify looking at other things. And
(39:25):
we just knew that was that was wrong. But according
to Phil Stanford, that Oregonian article wasn't hard hitting journalism.
It was hitting below the belt. It was actually just
a regurgitation of the state's case. But what what made
it particularly odious at the time and today, you know,
(39:48):
almost fifteen years later, was that they attacked me and
Kevin personally. I'm in the business, I write a column,
they can attack me. But they made Kevin ow as
someone who is so damaged by grief that he was
fantasizing all these conspiracies. And as I pointed out at
the time in my columnies said that this is breaking
(40:09):
new grounds in journalism, attacking a family member of a
murder victim for raising questions about his brother's murder. And
it is still one of the most despicable bits of
journalism I have ever seen, and and someday they will
have to answer for or it will be a curse
they live with for the rest of their corporate existence.
(40:37):
On the next murder in Oregon, a shocking scandal involving
the former governor and how old she said she was
thirteen and she was very clear about that, and the
troubling way it's handled by Phil's former paper, The Oregonian.
It had been depicted in The Oregonian as an affair
when it was rape of a child. Has possible ties
(41:01):
to Neil Goldschmidt's attitude towards Mike Frankie's murder investigation that
wanted to use him or to put it another way,
blackmail with this information. Murder and Oregon is hosted by
Lauren Bright Pacheco and Phil Stanford. Executive producers are Noel Brown,
(41:22):
Lauren Bright Pacheco, and Phil Stanford. Supervising producer and lead
editor is Taylor Chercoyne. 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 Chercoyne, with music
supervision by Noel Brown. Additional music by Tristan McNeil. Archival
(41:46):
elements courtesy of KGW and 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 two thousand and four, fifteen years after Michael Frankie's murder,
an astounding document, one that could have aided greatly in
Frank Gable's defense, was discovered. It was a sworn statement
signed and witnessed on December eleven, five months before Gabele's trial,
(00:26):
but it was never presented in his defense or in
his subsequent appeal. In fact, it was buried in a
forgotten box of evidence until it was unearthed by Kevin Frankie.
The Linda Parker interview was extremely taller and very very,
very very disturbing. When I've read that, I could not
(00:46):
believe that this was in existence at the time that
frank was tried. But it wasn't presented to the court,
so she was never called. I was beyond belief. Linda
Parker was a former secretary and girlfriend of Scott McAllister,
That's the former Oregon Assistant Attorney General who some felt
(01:10):
really ran the state's Department of Corrections before Michael Frankie
got there. We have a copy of that sworn statement
and it reveals more than a few very concerning skeletons
in Scott McAllister's closet. I'm Lauren Bright Pacheco and this
(01:32):
is murder and Oregon. Hi, I'm here to see Mr
(01:54):
Jen Wrennen j him read in as a reporter for
the Portland Tribune and one of or against most seasoned
journalists in person. He's a jovial disposition that's balanced with
a direct, quizzical stare that peers out from behind dark
(02:16):
wire rimmed glasses. Like Stanford, Steve Jackson and Eric Mason.
He's been covering the Frankie murder for three decades. Here's
his take on Scott McAllister. Well, Scott McAllister was the
long time Department of Justice attorney for the Corrections Division,
(02:36):
and he had been there assigned to them for quite
a while. And it had been practiced in the Department
of Justice to rotate attorneys because you don't want them
getting too close to their agencies. They need to have
that arm's length objective perspective. But he stayed a long time.
(02:59):
He's even like guess he liked the work and as
possible that other attorneys just didn't want to do it
because you're dealing with the criminals all the time. Redden
like the other journalists and colleagues of Frankie we've interviewed
was aware of apparent issues with Scott McAllister. He and
Michael Frankie got into some huge argument shortly after Frankie
(03:23):
arrived and shortly before he was murdered. Mccalislor got reassigned
and quit, left the Department of Justice and moved to Utah.
That's where McAllister would meet a woman named Linda Parker.
She worked in adjoining offices to McAllister when she was
(03:43):
hired by the Attorney General's Office in Utah. It wasn't
long before she attracted McAllister's eye and unwanted interference in
her career. We were able to contact Parker, who agreed
to speak with us under the condition we not reveal
her current name or state where she resides. To this day,
she remains deeply afraid of Scott McAllister. I was a
(04:09):
paralegal for the Attorney General's Office and we were housed
at the Department of Corrections, right outside Scott's office. He
was the Inspector General and worked for the Department of Corrections.
(04:31):
So my first impression was he was arrogant and he
was always getting me to do things for the Department
of Corrections as opposed to the a g. S Office,
and then eventually he had me transferred from the a g.
S Office to the Inspector General's office without her knowledge
(04:55):
or consent. Linda was the thirty six and struggling through
a difficult divorce. Mc allister quickly attempted to take advantage
of her situation. He kept asking me out, not necessarily
on a date. He was always come for dinner, or
(05:18):
come and make dinner, or you know, stuff like that.
I was in a really rough place at the time,
going through a divorce. I had a young daughter, hadn't
worked since we had adopted my daughter, so it was
my first job back into the working field, and I
(05:39):
had a very low opinion of myself. I didn't think
anybody would be interested in a divorced single mom, so
in that sense, it was an ego boost for me.
And initially she didn't see mc allister as a manipulative opportunist,
and the two dated for about two months in summer
(06:00):
of nine. At the time, for lack of a better explanation,
I wasn't mature enough to see what was actually going on.
But his true colors soon became apparent, and we're even
on display. Scott had made a sign in Utah for
his office door, and it said the Iceman Prince of Darkness,
(06:26):
and he was very proud of the nickname that he
had assigned to himself. I don't believe that he just
came up with that when he moved to Utah. That
had to have been his attitude in Oregon and wherever
else before Oregon. Well Parker knew McAllister had recently moved
(06:48):
to Utah from Oregon. He was never clear as to why.
He just said that he was offered a job from
the executive whatever of the Department of Corrections and that
it was time for him to move. And once he
(07:08):
was in Utah, McAllister transferred a loyal Oregon work buddy
to work with him in Utah Corrections and they socialized
outside of work. There were a group of people over
at Scott's house and he had brought another gentleman over
to be the warden at a prison. Al was the name.
(07:31):
He was a police officer in Oregon, and when Scott
brought him down to Utah, he gave them the position
of director of Civil Litigation for the Inspector General's office.
So I don't know how the hierarchies are in the
police filled, but that's a pretty damn good promotion. It
(07:55):
was during one of their gatherings that Linda Parker first
heard talk of a Frankie murder. They were talking about
how they couldn't believe it was still in the news.
There was a lot of laughing, a lot of joking
about it, the fact that he was such a low life.
(08:15):
They were trying to pin something on Scott and his crew.
Scott had said that he may have to go back
up to Oregon to take care of some business, and
then it was a little bit more intense. What were
your impressions about how mc allister felt about Michael Frankie.
(08:39):
It was a burden off of his back that Michael
was dead. Yes. At some point, McAllister complained about having
to take a polygraph test. He said all he needed
to do was take valium or some sort of downer,
and that he could control roll his pulse and beat
(09:02):
any polygraph that was ever presented to him. He kept
a variety of hills in his office. He was always
taking something. After the polygraph. Scott said that he wouldn't
have needed it. He could have snowed the guy without it.
And then I had asked him if he had anything
to worry about, and he said no. There had been
(09:26):
over a hundred and forty incidents of violations and misconduct
during his seventeen years in Oregon and not one had
ever been pinned on him. So he knew the ropes,
he knew what to do. He had made the comments
several different times that he was well protected that nothing
(09:51):
was tied to him. Here are Kevin and Pat Frankie
discussing that polygraph. The District Attorney Dale pen had arranged
to have a polygraph team quote unquote, and I believe
it was. It was either local police or state police
in Utah. There was just the did it here? No, No,
(10:15):
they did it there at his office. They sent up
a list of questions to ask him and that was it.
They didn't give any background on the case, any background
on the individual. Just hear the questions to ask him
and follow the protocol to ask him these questions and
send us the results. And according to Linda Parker, he
(10:36):
took a sedative to dull his responses. Cut off the
highs and low peaks of his heart rate prior to
the polygraph, and he was expecting a team from Oregon
to come up and really grill him, and it didn't
show up. In fact, it was just the local Utah
authorities with a list of the three or five questions,
(10:59):
I think, and he was bragging about how easy it was.
He said he could have passed it without the medication
he was told park. But while McAlister may have been
cavalier about the polygraph or being linked to wrongdoings, he
seemed very interested in Frank Cable's trial. He was getting
updates on the trial, what was going on, what the
(11:23):
news clippings had to say. And later it all made
sense because he had a girlfriend in Oregon who was
working with him at the time. Her name was Grace,
and she would come down to visit him, and on
(11:45):
one of those visits she brought him down some boxes
of stuff, and in the beginning I didn't know what
was in the boxes. I know that they had a
lot of conversation and that was his go to person
for information. Like others loyal to McAllister, Grace would leave
(12:08):
Oregon for Utah. At the time, I thought it was
odd that he had brought so many people and put
them in high up positions within the Department of Corrections.
And then when things started evolving and I started getting
manipulated even more, it was like all of these people
(12:33):
were his minions. I mean, if Scott told him to jump,
they would bow down and ask where and how high.
It was almost as if though they didn't have a
mind of their own. At the same time, McAllister was
increasingly pressuring Linda into embracing an unusual relationship arrangement and
(12:57):
the concept of group sex. Well, he had started making
suggestions about starting a corporation. And what this corporation was
is he wanted multiple women, so he would be the
(13:19):
head of the corporation and everybody would live under one roof.
And at first it was and later confirmed, what he
was after was more like a cult. So you would
pay in proportionately to this corporation, and that would be
(13:43):
for household expenses. So he wanted, you know, a three
summer foursome, whatever it was. At first I thought it
was a real joke and I completely turned him off. Well,
then a couple of days later, I go to work
and I get this bouquet of flowers on my desk,
(14:08):
and the card said, here's to the corporation. It'll be
a beautiful corporation, nice life. And that's when I started
getting real nervous because also at that time, he had
moved Grace down from Oregon to become his right hand
(14:30):
person and to entice Linda into this unconventional lifestyle, he
implored her to use drugs and he gave her a
box of tapes to watch, pornographic tapes. He said that
he wanted me to get comfortable with the idea and Matt,
after I watched him, I would know that there was
(14:52):
nothing wrong with that type of activity. So he left
my apartment and I put the box in the closet
never touched it again until I quit. And it's at
(15:22):
this point in late July that Linda Parker overheard a
conversation at Scott McAllister's home. It happened during a dinner
gathering that was sort of a welcome party for Grace's
move to Utah. Scott was talking to Grace and Harold.
He said, um, yeah, it was really stupid about Frankie's
(15:47):
murder because it was supposed to look like a suicide,
but was really part of my language fucked up, and
Harold at the time look to Scott, and Scott had said, um,
something to the effect everybody that knew him knew that
he meaning Frankie, never used the door he was found
(16:12):
to play in front of. And so Harold and Scott
went on and was further conversing about it, and Harold
said that it was no real loss because nobody liked
Frankie anyway, and now that Frankie was out of the picture,
(16:32):
Harold could use the Oregon Department of Corrections again as
a reference because nobody would be there to soil his name.
Scott just kept saying the job was really offed up.
They couldn't get anything right. If they tried, it was
supposed to look like a suicide, and they botched it.
(16:56):
And that's exactly what Linda Parker conveyed in her sworn
statement signed in December, five months before Frank Gable's trial
even began. But there's more. As Linda tried to distance
herself increasingly uncomfortable with McAlister, his cohorts and his sexual demands.
(17:18):
When I completely made it absolutely what clear that that
was not going to happen with me anyway, he transferred
me from the executive offices two the prison at the
point of the Mountain in their mail group. My world
(17:41):
shattered once I started pulling away and didn't want anything
to do with whatever Scott wanted or how he was
manipulating the others. That's when I started having problems in
the mail room at the prison, and shortly after that
(18:01):
I left the department completely and by still hadn't had
my final paycheck. And all of this has taken place
in the beginning of ninety and mc allister's retaliation against
Linda for rejecting him didn't end in the workplace. He
(18:23):
contacted my ex husband and told him that he would
work with him to have me claimed and unfit parent,
to take my child away from me. And in fact,
when we had a custody hearing in court, he showed
up in court to back my ex husband. That's the
(18:46):
vindictive nature of this man. Finally, she'd had enough and
fought back by suing Scott McAllister for sexual harassment. When
I brought up a lawsuit against Scott and he was
served with papers when the judges said that we could
(19:07):
proceed with trial. The next morning, I went to get
into my car and all four tires were slashed. A
few days later, there was an envelope that was delivered
to my house and it told me to drop the
suit or you're dead. A few days after that, my
(19:29):
apartment was broken into. It was in the news because
of Scott's position, But he would have been the only
person that knew where I lived that could have told
somebody to intimidate me. And if he can do something
like that to a woman that doesn't have any power,
(19:53):
imagine what he could do with his connections, both within
and inside the prison system. Imagine what he could do
to people that wronged him. But the attempts to intimidate
Parker into stopping her suit didn't work. The judge had
(20:17):
found that there was more than enough evidence to back
my allegations, and he said that he was setting it
over for trial, And that afternoon, my attorney got a
call from Risk Management saying that they wanted to settle.
She would received dollars from the state in an out
(20:39):
of court settlement for the sexual harassment suit she filed
against McAllister and the Department of Corrections, an expensive taxpayer
tab for McAllister's indiscretions, but it was validation for Parker.
That proved to me that I was not imagining all
of this, that I wasn't going crazy. And remember that
(21:02):
box of pornographic tapes that Scott McAllister gave to Linda,
she still had them. The U S Attorney found out
through the Department of Labor that I had this box
of information, so they asked me to bring it down.
So I took it down to him, and that's when
(21:22):
I found out what all was in the box. It
was children, women with women, women with men. It was
like a for lack of a better word, or g
type environment. And those tapes originated from a shocking source
(21:47):
the evidence for other cases in Oregon that should have
never left the state. Scott McAllister had been amassing child
pornography seized as evidence in Oregon cases, and he had
transported it across state lines. After I gave him my box,
(22:09):
they did a search warrant on his apartment and they
found more of the same stuff. Kevin Frankie says some
of those tapes even still had evidence tags on them
because they were taken from child pornography cases. The FBI
agent that I talked to told me that he had
(22:32):
hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of porno tapes and especially
built case in a closet in his home. Linda Parker
would serve as a witness in the child pornography case
against McAllister. Ultimately, he'd plead guilty to reduce charges while
he lost his ability to practice in Utah. McAllister basically
(22:53):
received a slap on the wrist for felony possession of
child pornography, serving just seven days in jail during October.
He was untouchable, and I was so disappointed, so extremely disappointed.
I think he lost his license for a few years,
but then when he moved out of state, he was
(23:15):
able to get it back again. And it's like he
uses the law manipulates the law, just like he uses
human beings and manipulates human beings. Scott McAllister is still
a practicing lawyer today. We've reached out to him multiple
times and he's ignored our request for a statement or interview.
(23:39):
We're grateful to Linda Parker for the courage it took
to share a story. I mean, I'm sitting here thirty
years later just thinking about him, and I'm sitting here shaking,
and I've tried so hard to take that control away
from him, and he relishes in the misery that he
(23:59):
brings to people. He just absolutely relationous in it. Many
believe Scott McAllister has never been properly investigated in the
murder of Michael Frankie. Here's Steve Jackson, the reporter who
covered the Frankie case as it unfolded for The Statesman Journal.
You know, if you looked at my investigation, UM, it's
(24:22):
sort of like a tree and there's a you know,
the trunk of the tree and that this is the
stuff we know, um, and then there are branches from it.
In Scott McAllister was on one of the branches, and
that the branch was that if there was corruption in
the prison system, if there was something that Michael Frankie
was about to expose, if he had some names and
(24:45):
that sort of stuff, that branch help, you know. Scott
McCallister held Neil Goldschmidt and held a number of people
Dick Peterson Dave Culley right. Dick Peterson and Dave Culley
where Michael Frankie's number two and three in command at
the Department of Corrections. The two men who claimed they
(25:05):
did a meticulous search of the dome building the night's
body was found. So you have that branch, and that
was a viable branch to investigate. And there are certainly
things about any and all of that branch, including Scott
McAllister and some of his behavior and some of the
things you would hear from different witnesses, and that would
lead you to say, Okay, this is at least worth
(25:26):
investigating and putting to bed and making sure that we've
closed this chapter. Here's Phil Stanford's take. Yeah, for me,
the big question is why Frank Gables defense didn't jump
all over Linda Parker's statement once they got it and
they had it. It's just like their failure to get
natividad and crossed into the trial. It could have made
(25:47):
all the difference in the trial to get that sort
of information in. But also the botched suicide is a
missing piece of a puzzle that ties in some other
elements that we already know. Yeah, the the uh mc
allister's very puzzling statement here. Um, what's so important about
it is that he says they fucked up. It was
(26:08):
supposed to look like a suicide. Well, what is he
talking about? It seems to dovetail with other information we
have from the two other Department of Corrections employees who
were also on the outs with Frankie. Dick Peterson, who
is the deputy director, called Kevin the morning of the
murder and said, your brother has been shot. Well, he
(26:29):
wasn't shot, he was he was stabbed, of course. And
then Cally Dave Cally, another assistant director who was with
Peterson that night to supposedly searched the building and said
he was afraid to go into Frankie's office because he'd
find him dead. Where did McAllister come up with the
idea that it was supposed to look like a suicide.
That would be a very interesting question for the investigators
(26:52):
to have asked him, but of course they never even
interviewed him. Do you think it's because it would have
hit too close to home? But certainly what it looks
like it. But even as many in the press were
choosing to dismiss the possibility of corruption and people like
McAllister as players in Frankie's murder as conspiracy theory, Phil
Stanford refused to and was writing incessantly about it. That
(27:15):
didn't sit well with the politically loyal factions at the
paper he was working for at the time, The Oregonian.
Oh yeah, got into it with the newspaper I was
working for at the time. They attacked me in print
while I was still employed there after the verdict. It
(27:36):
was an unusual experience, let's say, over the years. I mean,
every time we'd bring it up again and take another
run at him, they would come back. The Oregonian had
committed themselves to defending the state's case, which was really
defending the notion, as I say it, that things like
(27:58):
this couldn't up in Oregon. And Phil believes it was
easier for the Oregonian to attack him than except the
possibility that Michael Frankie could have been killed by corrupt
officials and that an innocent man could have been found
guilty of that murder by a corrupt system. It was
very important to them whether they understood their their unconscious
(28:22):
motivation or not. And I think a lot of it
was unconscious to maintain what someone described me once as
presumption of regularity, you know, with without which life can
become a little bit threatening. If you think for a
minute that you can't trust the people who are responsible
for your health and safety, then things are scary if
(28:44):
you think start thinking that they are lying to you,
and then they're corrupt. That's that's frightening stuff. And it's
not that Phil was championing Gables innocence from the start,
but he did feel his guilt was certainly in question,
and that it was the job of journalism ask questions.
Most people, you know, for I think very good reasons, UH,
(29:05):
don't want to entertain those beliefs. Unfortunately, people in the
news business need to entertain those possibilities anyway, and that's
where I think The Oregonian specifically, particularly UH, went so
far astray. I was raising questions because I certainly didn't
(29:28):
know the answers at the beginning. It was years before
I knew enough about the case to to be able
to say definitively that this guy is not guilty of anything.
You made up the charges against him. Phil found himself
(29:53):
increasingly at odds with The Oregonian and his coworkers there,
to the point he eventually had no choice to leave.
I'm sure the Frankie case figured into everything that happened,
but basically it was just a new editor coming in
who decided that I did not have the proper respect
for power and prestige, and I'm I'm sure she's right.
(30:16):
So as soon as she got there, she started pushing
me out, and I finally had enough and I quit.
During his seven years at The Oregonian, in addition to
many successes like his series on the Happy Face Killer,
Stanford devoted eighty four columns to Frankie's murder and mentioned
it in seventeen others, totally nearly seventy thou words. He
(30:38):
wrote his last column for The Oregonian on April one,
saying he'd run out of things to say, and he
took one last parting shot at his editors by mentioning
Frankie quote, A lot of people think I'm nuts on
the subject, I don't unquote. He left the paper demoralized
and reflective on the path that atom to this point.
(31:02):
This wasn't the first time you had walked away from
a job or found yourself without one. As a matter
of fact, if I was there for seven years, which
I think you added up, that's probably the longest I've
held a job in my life. But yeah, I dropped
out of school. You didn't just drop out of college,
(31:22):
You dropped out of Dartmouth. Yeah, and I went surfing
in Hawaii for a couple of years, tried school again,
didn't like it any better than the first time, and
then Phil created his own unique education, one oddly well
suited to an eventual career exposing corruption. Joined the Army.
(31:45):
When I got out of the Army, I started writing
for magazine as in Washington, d C. Looked for well
the Washingtonian Magazine, Washington Post magazine, Plumby Journalism Review, a
couple three pieces for the New York Times magazine. I
had worked as an aid for a congressman on the
Armed Services Committee, so I've become sort of a half
(32:06):
asked expert on military matters. I wrote a couple of
pieces on nuclear strategy and weapons technology, worked as an
editor for Political magazine in San Francisco, and then as
a columnist for them, and then I dropped out. I
don't know but exactly I was thinking at the time.
I was after an upsetting divorce that might have had
something to do with it. I was looking for something else,
(32:28):
and I found it in Miami. I ended up working
as a private investigator for a detective agency called Intercept,
which I soon discovered, was, among other things, a front
for CIA drug running operation. That's sort of where I
got my education of how it really worked. Before it
was all over, the guy we were working for got killed,
(32:50):
and I ended up back in Washington, d C. Looking
for jobs that were no longer available because I had
really gotten off the ladder, and turned out the only
place my my my reputation hadn't caught up with me
was Oregon, I guess. And so I got a job
with The Oregonian as a reporter, and after about six
months they made me a columns and now Phil was
(33:12):
no longer one. Meanwhile, Frank Gable was still sitting in prison,
and he remained there even after his two thousand and
one post conviction trial, which raised questions regarding his defense attorney,
Bob Abel. One of the big issues in the post
conviction trial was whether Abel had incapacitated himself by drinking
(33:35):
too much at the time, and the judge would simply
not allow any evidence of that. At this point, Phil
was working again as a private detective and writing books
on the history of corruption in Oregon, but he never
stopped digging into the Frankie murder or Gables trial. After
about ten years, I got a complete collection of all
(33:59):
the wreck it's on the case. I got him from
Tom McCallum, the chief investigator for the defense, and he'd
had all these boxes. He was lugging around thirty bankers
boxes and they were in a boathouse out in the
river someplace. He didn't want him anymore, he said, you
want him, Yeah, So I took him and I read
them and read him twice, and it was clear to
me that they didn't have a case. They had nothing
(34:21):
on him, nothing, It's all made up. He also had
proof now in the form of official documents. Kevin Frankie
was telling the truth the entire time. He had voiced
concerns about corruption, and the records revealed the official denial
of that was more than just an oversight. But well,
I also got, you know, from reading these documents, was
(34:45):
finally an understanding of how they had no case against Gable. Nothing.
There wasn't something that we didn't understand. There wasn't something
they were holding back. They didn't have a case. Gable
was innocent. So it gave you renewed perp. This Yeah,
it got me going again. It had seemed so impossible before.
Everything seemed to be against me and Kevin, and here
(35:08):
was proof that they'd been lying about something that was
central to their case. This whole case they have revealed
themselves time and time again by the lies that they've told. Now,
armed with evidence that confirmed his suspicions about the Frankie investigation,
(35:29):
Bill was ready to tackle it again. At the time,
I was working at the Tribune and started writing about
the case again. I did a series on the case.
We had more documents, including of course the officer's notebooks,
to back up what we were saying. Then, in the
summer of two thousand and four, frank Gable made a
remarkable request. He told his attorneys turn over all the
(35:51):
evidence to the brother of the man he was convicted
of killing, Kevin. Frankie received boxes of evidence, police reports
and defense invested or interviews. Yeah, and after Kevin got
his boxes, as we would find out, there were some
missing pieces that I didn't find in mind by now Fills.
Articles in the Tribune had sparked renewed interest into Michael
(36:11):
Frankie's murder, and the will lamb It Week ran an
article titled The Murder That Would Not Die. The tagline
columnist Bill Stanford is obsessed with a decade old conspiracy theory.
What if he's right the author Nick, but Nick did
a really pretty good story on the case, and for
(36:33):
the first time, at least in the Portland media, gave
some sort of voice to the same questions that I've
been raising. And so he ended his column saying, quoting me, saying, well,
if I were still at the Oregonian, I knew I
wouldn't be writing about this. And The Oregonian didn't take
too kindly. They had obviously been drawn into a position
(36:55):
where they were defending the official version of the case,
and you were calling them on it. Yeah, I'm quite
sure that's the way they saw it. Yeah. And then
Kevin unearthed the sworn statement by Linda Parker. Now the
press knew that her statement was secured five months before
Frank Gable's trial and was never investigated by the police
(37:15):
or used in gables defense. It sparked another round of coverage.
Here's television reporter Eric Mason. There was this feeling of
vindication that all of our suspicions really was based in something.
Linda had a piece of a puzzle, which included overhearing
(37:36):
that the hit Michael Frankie was supposed to look a
certain way, and they had watched the job. I remember
her being frightened. I remember thinking, this is a woman
who really doesn't want to be interviewed and is reluctant
giving away the details, thinking to herself, perhaps she's doing
the right thing, but that she doesn't want to risk
(37:58):
her safety to do so. She was afraid of Stockhouse. Absolutely. Yeah.
The Frankie murder was making headlines again and placing scrutiny
on a newspaper consistently on board with the state's version
of Frankie's killing, The Oregonian. They attacked back and void,
(38:18):
did they ever? And I hadn't attacked any of the
writers personally, never did never. They came back and with
what they build as an exhaustive, be all, end all
investigation reinvestigation of the case. We'll revisit that article later,
but let's just say, in light of what we now know,
it's been proven a pretty large misstep for The Oregonian.
(38:42):
Jim Redden was working with Phil at the Tribune at
the time. Two reporters of The Oregonian publish what they
claimed to be the most extensive investigation into the Michael
Frankie murder and they come to the conclusion that there's
one person responsible and he's in prison already. Frank Gable,
(39:05):
no question. Then you respond to it right me and
fill together. Really it was it wasn't just that they
were saying he did it, he's the only person that
did it. They're also repeating once again that there just
wasn't the corruption to justify looking at other things. And
(39:25):
we just knew that was that was wrong. But according
to Phil Stanford, that Oregonian article wasn't hard hitting journalism.
It was hitting below the belt. It was actually just
a regurgitation of the state's case. But what what made
it particularly odious at the time and today, you know,
(39:48):
almost fifteen years later, was that they attacked me and
Kevin personally. I'm in the business, I write a column,
they can attack me. But they made Kevin ow as
someone who is so damaged by grief that he was
fantasizing all these conspiracies. And as I pointed out at
the time in my columnies said that this is breaking
(40:09):
new grounds in journalism, attacking a family member of a
murder victim for raising questions about his brother's murder. And
it is still one of the most despicable bits of
journalism I have ever seen, and and someday they will
have to answer for or it will be a curse
they live with for the rest of their corporate existence.
(40:37):
On the next murder in Oregon, a shocking scandal involving
the former governor and how old she said she was
thirteen and she was very clear about that, and the
troubling way it's handled by Phil's former paper, The Oregonian.
It had been depicted in The Oregonian as an affair
when it was rape of a child. Has possible ties
(41:01):
to Neil Goldschmidt's attitude towards Mike Frankie's murder investigation that
wanted to use him or to put it another way,
blackmail with this information. Murder and Oregon is hosted by
Lauren Bright Pacheco and Phil Stanford. Executive producers are Noel Brown,
(41:22):
Lauren Bright Pacheco, and Phil Stanford. Supervising producer and lead
editor is Taylor Chercoyne. 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 Chercoyne, with music
supervision by Noel Brown. Additional music by Tristan McNeil. Archival
(41:46):
elements courtesy of KGW and Portland, Oregon. The station behind
the podcast, Urged to Kill Murder and Oregon is a
production of I Heart Radio
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