February 14, 2020 • 54 mins
How far would you go for justice? Join the guys as they interview award-winning investigative journalist Phil Stanford about the strange, twisting tale behind his podcast, Murder In Oregon.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Gradios How Stuff Works. Hello, welcome
(00:25):
back to the show. My name is Matt, my name
is They called me Ben. We're joined as always with
our super producer Paul mission controlled decons. Most importantly, you
are you, You are here and that makes this stuff
they don't want you to know. This is this is
a special episode for us. No all, it's one that's
very close to your heart. We are diving into a
(00:50):
genuine mystery today, right, and this is a mystery that
may be familiar to some of our listeners in the audience,
but for some of this this may be something completely new.
Spoiler alert. We're not diving in alone. But before we
introduce our guests, no, do you want to give us
a little bit of an understanding about this? Oh? Sure,
(01:11):
I sure? What had been Thank you for for the opportunity,
my friend. Um, yeah, we just wrapped. And when I
say we, I mean myself are mystery guests today. It's
not really a mystery. It's in the metadata, but we're
gonna play at Koy for now. And Lauren Pacheco, who's
a colleague of mine, producer from New York who I've
worked on a previous show called Happy Face with UM.
(01:32):
And this show that we just wrapped us called Murder
in Oregon, and it dives into the tragic death of
Michael Frankie, who was the director of Oregon's Department of
Corrections UM in the late eighties, nineteen eighty nine, about
as late in the eighties as you can get. UM.
This gentleman was who was a pillar of the community,
a very well respected former judge. UM. And it's a
(01:56):
very very intelligent and kind man. UM was stabbed to
outside of his office. UM. And very quickly there came
to be kind of a reckoning where you know, the
government needed to pin this on somebody. It wasn't going
to go away. And UM unfortunately, as based on our
research and the research of our guest today, UM, they
(02:17):
pinned it on a patsy, someone who very very clearly
didn't do it. But within all of that and that
search for the truth is a twisting, turning story the
likes of you would which you wouldn't believe something more
along the lines of true detective than a nonfiction podcast.
But um again, we're not doing this alone. Today. We
(02:37):
have Phil Stanford with us, who has been invested in
this story for going on thirty years um and has
just done a massive amount of research and written columns
for The Oregonian on this very subject and has really
been himself a huge part of this very story. Phil,
welcome to stuff they don't want you to know, sir, Well,
(02:59):
thank you for much good to be here. Yeah, um,
I don't even it's such a massive story and we
don't want to spoil it for anyone that you know
hasn't finished listening to the series yet. But how would you,
you know, kind of characterize this story of murder and
Oregon and the death of Michael Frankie. What what would
you say some of the main themes are that we
kind of you know, touched on in this very very
(03:22):
fascinating series. Well, uh, it comes in several parts. I
mean it was first of all, an assassination, which no
one wanted to acknowledge. Things like that just don't happen,
uh in this country, Uh, let alone, uh little Old Oregon.
But this guy, Michael Frankie had come into the state
(03:43):
just about a year before he discovered that his department
was rife with corruption all the way to the top
and he was going to reveal it. Uh, they had
him killed. Well, that was the first part of it.
The second part was the cover up, a really pervasive
her up, because so many individuals and institutions in Salem,
(04:05):
even if they weren't involved in the in the murder,
had so much to cover up. It goes back to
systemic things I think, you know, just the nature of
narcotics law enforcement that corrupted the state police for example. Uh,
and and the governor too had things to cover up.
So an assassination, cover up, selection of a patsy, the
manufacture of evidence against a low level tweaker who had
(04:30):
nothing at all to do with the crime. And uh,
the insistence since then to this very day by the
state that he still deserves to be punished, even though
a federal judge has ruled that no reasonable juror would
vote to convict. Hey, Phil, I really want to know
in as much basic detail which sounds like an odd phrase,
(04:53):
but basic detail about the corruption that that Michael uncovered.
So like, what what were some of the major things
that he found out that he felt needed to be
told to the public. Okay, Well, first of all, uh,
and you'll find this in just about every prison. Uh.
The drug trade, protected drug trade. For the drug trade
(05:16):
to flourish in or out of the prison, it has
to be protected, and it was being protected. In the
Oregon State Penitentiary. There were a number of scams that
the officials had had run for for years, including hanky
panky with animals on the farm, the sale of equipment
(05:40):
that belonged to the state, and so forth. Most recently,
there had been a warehouse burned down for arson. It
was arson for insurance purposes, and he was onto that.
We referred to it as the a shed. And we
know that he was going to be talking the next day,
the morning after he was murder to the legislature about that.
(06:05):
We have evidence that he was going to be talking
about the aid and and it's just to point out,
I mean, this is all you know. While this this
might sound speculative to some folks that aren't fully familiar
with the story, these are all corroborated by multiple sources.
I mean, we we absolutely know that this type of
corruption is very, very real, and that Michael uncovered it um.
You know, there are various theories about who may or
(06:28):
may not have killed Michael Frankie, which is a big
you know, the central question to murder in Oregon, it's
who really killed Michael Frankie. But there is no question
that this corruption was rife in the system and that
the man that the crime was pinned on almost one
thousand percent, did not do it. He was like, there's
no question certainly among those who might have listened to
(06:50):
the podcast or have been doing their own research, honest research.
But there is still a sizeable contingent of a local press,
uh and and government that would argue that there was
no corruption that they will not accept that. And from
the beginning that was the problem. They could not accept
(07:11):
the idea that Michael Frankie might have been murdered because
he was investigating corruption. I was about ready to blow
the whistle on some of his top officials from the
beginning they said. The official version was that it was
a car burglary that had gone bad. And one thing
that's interesting about this, Phil is in in just some
(07:32):
preparatory research, I found that you had devoted no less
than eighty columns to the murder right when when working
with The Oregonian. And I get this sense, and tell
me if I'm wrong here, but I get this sense
that for uh, for at least part of the time,
you were in in some sense alone, speaking truth to power,
(07:55):
bringing up these various things that the authorities apparently wilfully ignored.
Did you ever feel like you were in a you know,
banging my head against the wall situation or did you
feel that the authorities were listening or did you feel
that they were actively trying to push this car Burglary narrative? Um?
(08:17):
And and do you think that they they genuinely thought
it was true or do you think they were, you know,
as you had said earlier, noal attempting to just close
some case combination. It's hard to read their minds what
they're thinking. At first, I was not entirely. I was
alone on at my newspaper, The Oregonian, which was the
(08:39):
big dog in Oregon at the time. I was writing
a column for them. It was a featured columnists. But
there were other reporters in Salem, uh, Steve Jackson, Eric
Mason on on TV who were following the story too,
But I was I was certainly one of the paper,
(09:00):
and and because the Oregonian was such a big force
in Oregon, I was sort of the appointing man on
the thing as far as the authorities were concerned. The governor,
after after about six months of my columns, held a
press conference and said, where is this garbage coming From
(09:22):
another interview, he called it bs He he really what?
And I couldn't figure out at the time why he
was resisting so strenuously. He'd just come into office and
if there was corruption, he could very well blame it
on his his predecessor and say let's uh, let's get
to the bottom of it. But he didn't. As far
(09:43):
as the state cops UH who were conducting the investigation
in the d a's office in Marin County, I think
from the beginning they knew they had to cover something
up once they realized where this thing was going, especially
then they they may have been hoping from the beginning
that it was a random car burglary, but once they
(10:03):
realized the connections which we talked about in murdering Oregon
to UH officials and UH who were engaged in in
illegal activities, they knew they could not pursue an honest
investigation I had to get a patsy. It's it's it's true.
And we do discuss all of that, and we kind
of leave it up to the listener to sort of
(10:24):
make up their minds when we present all of this evidence.
And what you realize, if you're paying attention, is that
it just doesn't add up. You mentioned the idea of
a car burglary gone wrong, and that was sort of
the narrative that the state police and the government at
large really pushed. This idea that Michael was leaving his
office and uh encountered somebody rifling through his car. They
(10:47):
used the I love this delightfully regional term jockey boxing,
which I've never heard before, but I really liked a
lot the idea of rifling through somebody's glove box. And
Michael Frankie was a very tall, very fit man, um
really imposing, you know stature. I don't know his exact height,
but I think he was six ft something and very
you know, in shape, and played basketball and you know
(11:09):
it was a very active guy. And um, you know,
the notion that he came upon somebody rifling through his
car who then gave him a single stab kill shot
to the heart in addition to like a defensive wound,
it's very hard to believe. And even in court, like
when they tried to set up the scenario of you know,
(11:29):
the angles and all of that of where how he
would have had to be stabbed, you know, if the
guy was sitting in the car, you know, the angles
didn't add up. And can you talk a little bit
about that, about how some of those narratives that were
pushed even in the trial just didn't really make sense. Well,
you know, nothing about the case made much sense. That's
that's the thing there. There there was no physical evidence
(11:52):
to start with connecting Frank Gable, that's the guy they
eventually indicted for the crime. There was no no evidence
that Frank Gable was there, I mean no physical evidence.
All they really had was, when they came down to it,
was manufactured evidence of a bunch of jail birds and
ex cons who had potential sentences hanging over their heads,
(12:15):
so you know, a serious time for federal gun charges
and federal drug charges got them to make up stories
and in the end they got a couple of young hoods,
uh seventeen year old runaway girl and then a tough
guy named Shorty Hardened to say that they had been
(12:36):
there and had seen it happen. Jody Swearings in the
seventeen year Old Girl event ran away before a trial
could be held and said this police, I had her
make it up, make the story up shortly Hardened. The
other supposed eyewitness did testify, but his testimony contradicted other tests.
(13:00):
Simony on there had been a janitor who had come
out and seen something happened in front of the the
office building, the dome buildings it's called had no reason
to lie, and Shorty Harden's testimony completely contradicted what the
janitor had said. So there were not only contradictions like that,
but Frank Gables lawyer was so bad he didn't even
(13:24):
bother or maybe even think to bring it up with
the trial. It was it was for us. It's interesting.
I mean, it's he was so bad to the point
where you have to think there was some intention behind it.
And again that's not something anyone has, you know, actual
proof of, but it just makes it just makes no sense.
He shouldn't have gotten the case. We talked about that
(13:44):
in the show where you know there was an investigator
we talked to who I believe was the investigator for
Frank's defense. Um who just didn't feel like this lawyer,
Bob abel Um was the last person that would have
gotten this trot this this case, and that he didn't
even have a phone, he didn't have an office of
his own, he kind of shared a space with He
was very much like almost a Saul Goodman type figure,
(14:06):
you know, early in his career. And all the judges
and lawyers, i mean, remember Salem is a fairly small town,
knew who he was. They knew he was incompetent, and
they knew he was a heavy drinker, to say the least.
So he was given this case. His business was going
down the tubes at the time, and he got the case.
(14:30):
He was just way over his head, even if he
hadn't been drinking. Uh. Shortly before the trial, the team
of investigators, i mean a tremendous amount of money was
paid by the state for the defense on this thing.
For the lawyers and and and the investigators. The investigators
wrote a letter to the judge saying, we're not prepared
to go to trial. Our our lawyers don't understand the case.
(14:54):
And the judges blew it off and and the trial
went forward. But my own opinion that Able I didn't
have to tell Able to throw it he but he
knew what he had to do. So this gentleman, Frank Gable,
he has been in prison since nineteen whatever when the
(15:14):
trial was uh. They arrested him in ninety and just
earlier this year in April, a federal judge ordered his release.
That's correct, I mean, so he did almost thirty years,
thirty years for a crime he had absolutely nothing to
do with. The judge rule that no reasonable juror would
(15:36):
vote to convict on the basis of evidence that was
available then, and and the new evidence in including the
recantation of all the so called material witnesses against him,
leaving absolutely nothing left of the case, right, and and
then like the notion that they would retry him is
really almost comical, right, because they don't really have they
(15:59):
would have nothing to uh to try him on. Yet
the State of Oregon is appealing the judge's decision. Judges
ruling on technical grounds, in effect trying to put him
back in prison for something they know he didn't do it.
It's a fairly evil political stance to take. And furthermore,
(16:19):
phil from what I understand, the Oregon d o J
also wanted to keep Gable in prison while that appeal
was being hashed out. Is that correct? Yes, they went
to the federal judge and after his ruling and said
that he's a dangerous the community, he must be kept
in and the judge by by this time, I mean
(16:42):
it had taken him two years to rule. I mean,
we were all very nervous. We didn't know what was
going to happen because this was a highly from the
beginning has been a highly political case. Uh and and
you know with all all the Democratic establishment in Oregon,
which you know, this is a one party state behind
the cover up over the decades, And we didn't know
(17:04):
what was going to happen. So he kept it two years.
He really understood the case thanks to a brilliant habeas
corpus petition that written by the federal public defender Neil
Brown and and and so when the state asked for that,
he just said, nope, he's out. Let's let's get on
with the appeal. It's worth pointing out that the a
(17:29):
g Attorney General for for Oregon, Ellen Rosenbloom, is a
protege of Neil Goldschmidt, who was the governor at the
time of the Frankie murder and who was instrumental in
the instrumental force behind the cover up. Wow, the whole
(17:51):
story with Goldschmidth is its own thing and almost deserves
its own podcast because he was, you know, found out too.
I don't know, like I hate, I don't want to
feel like I'm spoiling anything. But honestly, you can't really
spoil this story because what we do is this more
of like it really takes you inside all of the
ins and outs of every character involved in this whole
situation and lets the listener kind of make up their
(18:12):
own mind as to what they believe. But the idea
of gold Schmidt. There's an episode that we devote to
gold Schmidt where he essentially was found known. He absolutely
was found out to have been um a pedophile child
rapist is the term that we use um because he
was carrying on a relationship with a thirteen year old
girl or I believe what how old was she felt?
(18:34):
Was it fourteen when it started? And it was. It's
so heartbreaking because she was the daughter of two of
gold Schmidt's most fervent supporters who were like, you know,
stumping for or campaigning for him, going door to door,
and they were really you know, they worshiped the guy,
and they knew about the the affair quote unquote, the
the you know, the completely inappropriate relationship, and they borderline
(18:58):
encouraged it. And we got all of this for him.
One of your colleagues at the time, uh, Phil, Margie Boulet,
who wrote this incredible expose about this relationship where she,
you know, was trusted by this young woman when she
was you know, much older, and this relationship had literally
wrecked her life. I mean she became, you know, an
alcoholic and outcast. Um she you know, he sent her
(19:21):
away and paid her off and all of this really
heartbreaking stuff and then she and you know, ultimately passed away.
But to hear Margie talk about this stuff and to
know what gold Schmidt was capable of and that this
was something he was trying to keep buried for years,
you know, you can't make the one to one connection
that this is why they didn't want, you know, they
(19:41):
didn't want um Frankie digging around. But there's sure are
a lot of characters in this story that had a
lot of stuff to hide, including the governor of the state.
You know, Yeah, I don't think uh could be proved wrong.
I don't think that gold Schmidt had anything to do
with the murder as elf, but he certainly didn't want
(20:03):
a thorough going investigation of the murder at which would
have led to corruption, which would have led to ripping
backs that covers on everything in Salem, because at that
time he was negotiating with the girl and her lawyers
for the hush money payment. He eventually paid her over
three hundred thousand dollars as long as she kept her
(20:24):
mass will pause here for a brief word from our sponsor,
and we're back. Okay, So phil Aton met something I've
I grew up in Georgia. I've lived here my entire life,
done a little bit of traveling, but I've never been
(20:46):
to Oregon. I have a picture of this state in
my mind from popular culture, Um, you know Portlandia, of course,
speaking particularly of Portland. Um, also just of kind of
marijuana cole sure of Um. I have a picture of
it in my mind a little bit that is very
much of popular culture, like a liberal bastion, kind of
(21:08):
like on the hill. And that's just the way. I'm
very progressive right, that's the way I think about in
my mind because that's what's been highlighted. Right. So can
you paint a little bit of a picture of what
what Oregon, what Salem is like in the eighties? What
what does it feel like? Talk to me about I mean,
we've talked about the corruption that we know of, but
what is the place actually like and what's going on there? Well?
(21:31):
Uh I wrote a column for The Oregonian for for
a while, and that's how I'm usually identified, uh in
in this this context. But since then, I've written several
books about corruption in Oregon. And the first one, which
I wrote about about twenty years ago, I guess called
(21:52):
Portland's Confidential, Oh, which, by the way, everybody won the
Independent Publisher's Best True Crime Award of two thousand five. Yeah,
it was. It was. It was very successful. It was
a regional bestseller, and and The Oregonian would not write
about it. It was it was actually pretty funny. I
(22:16):
knew they weren't going to review it. The book review
editor told me that he had been ordered not to
review it. But they at that time they were printing
at once a week. They would print the best sellers
in the Northwest. He couldn't keep keep Portland's Confidential out
because it was number one for several weeks. And so
that first book was about a big vice scandal in Portland.
(22:38):
At one time, back in the early fifties, Portland's was
notorious throughout the nation. You know, they were Life magazine
features on how corrupt it was, and there had been
a big vice scandal. A lot of it had to
do with national politics and with the teamsters trying to
move in and the local mob trying to protect itself.
(23:00):
You're Going In won a Pulitzer Prize at the time
for telling half the story about how the teamsters were
coming in, but they didn't record acknowledge that the town
had been set up for for decades, well back into
the nineteenth century, by local mobs. And it ended in
Senate hearings. I mean, it was that big a deal
(23:22):
in nineteen fifty seven, and everyone came back and tried
to forget about it. So by when I wrote that book,
it had really been a secret, not to be talked about,
and and everyone liked to imagine that Oregon was this
pristine state. I think that that's sort of a carryover
from the time when people were coming west anyway, and
(23:43):
I thought they could leave the evils of civilization behind.
So at least here the impression that Oregon was somehow
an exception to the general rules of humanity was fostered.
And so when I wrote this, uh, Portland Confidential, it
was one of the reasons it was successful is that
(24:05):
it was it was just a real breakthrough, you know,
people starting to realize except the fact that there was
a real tradition of corruption here as there is in
most places. I think that you can find this in
just about any American city. And one thing, one thing
I like about that that understanding of corruption and it's ubiquity,
(24:29):
is that despite the image a lot of people outside
of Oregon or outside of the Northwest have about the
region and the place, despite that image, many of those
same rules and I like that you call them rules
fille still apply. Uh. Many people don't know that Oregon
as a state was initially founded as a yeah, as
(24:54):
a racially motivated separatist society. Now, of course that's that.
It's just another example of how many skeletons we can
find when we dig into these closets. But I'd like
to change gears here just a bit and ask ask
a personal question of you. I've I've worked with many
UH investigative journalists on various projects before, and one thing
(25:17):
that I always find profoundly impressive and moving is the
drive and the tenacity. And I think for many of
our UM journalism students or journalists in the audience today,
that's something that they would like like to hear your
take on and hear you talk about. Could you tell
us what keeps you going on on a case like this,
(25:40):
because this has been a hard road and uh twisting tail, Like,
are there ever moments where there's a dark night of
the soul where you think maybe I should let this go?
Or do you double up? I mean, where does the
energy and the power and the drive come from to
stay with these kind of cases. It's always sort of
(26:02):
a complicated thing, you know. From the beginning I got
started on it, I was writing a column. I was interested,
it was obviously an interesting story. And then then there
are inconsistencies. I I certainly didn't know the answers, uh,
but but I I knew there were a lot of questions,
and so I started raising them. And then once I
started getting all this pushback, it became a little bit
(26:25):
of a matter of pride, I suppose. And of course,
you know, we haven't talked about the brothers of the
murdered man, uh, Kevin and Pat Frankie, who from the
beginning raised questions about it, and once they realized that
Gabel was a Patsy, defended him, I mean, And so
(26:45):
I took there their part in it from the beginning,
partly because it was made it easier for me to
tell the story through Kevin's eyes, but also because they
were they were raising good questions, and so you know,
I got I got more and more involved in the
(27:07):
story over the years, and I would say, Okay, I'm
going to write a book about it now, and then
I say, no, I don't have enough, and I'd go
off and write a book about something else. Then I'd
come back to it and I said, okay, I'm gonna
do it now. Finally, you know, over the years, Kevin
was doing more research himself, investigation, and I was we
(27:29):
found it, you know, started understanding the case more. I mean.
It was very difficult because the official investigation was a
cover up. And finally there's brilliant habeas corpus petition by
the public defender. Uh. They She and her team spent
several years going into this in depth that confirmed so
(27:52):
much of what we talked about and and elucidated all
the rest of it. Finally, after all these years, finally
understood it well enough to to make the case that
we make in Murder and Oregon. But why, I guess
your your question, why why do you? Why do you
keep doing it? It's it's it's for a combination of motives,
and some of them very personal and and and some
(28:14):
of them probably a little selfish at the beginning, but
in this case anyway, deeply invested in it finally because
just the the injustice of it on so many levels.
And I've got to say also, because I'm very interested
in these stories I spend my I've discovered that I
(28:34):
really enjoy putting together cases like this and understanding how
they really work. So that's part of it too. It's
really interesting to fill spending time with you and Kevin
U through the production of the show and kind of
seeing the way you you guys basically became you had
each other's backs in such a real way. And when
you and Kevin sort of met back when this was
(28:55):
was happening. Um, you really forged a friendship. It was
like a part ship where you were almost kind of
a duo of kind of makes detectives, I guess for
for lack of a better term. That's why I kind
of compare this to the whole True Detective story of
the first season, where it really is you know, YouTube
against kind of the world, trying to you know, push
(29:17):
for the truth against all odds. And Kevin even was
targeted by the police. I mean there were times where
he was harassed and his tires were slashed and there
were notes on his car saying go home. He had
guns pointed at it, right, and they tried to get
him killed. Yeah, And he uprooted his life from Florida,
where he had a successful construction business and moved to
(29:37):
Oregon and really embedded himself in this kind of underbelly
where he you know, almost became like that hard boiled
kind of dashiel Ham detective, going to all the sleazy
dives and really becoming you know, making his own informants
and you know, and and doing all the things that
the police clearly weren't going to do because it wasn't
(29:58):
and their interest to actually you know point the fingers
at the right people. Um, and I think that's really fascinating.
And to spend time with you guys, I realized that
both of you are almost more comfortable in the presence
of of of folks that maybe skirt the law in
a little. And you introduced me to a friend of yours,
for example, who was like he was a pilot. Who
(30:19):
tell me about your your your friend who you introduced
me to if you without naming names, but like these
the pilot story is another one. I at one point
I was working as a legitimate journalist in Washington, did
you see. I dropped out and went back, went down
to Miami, dropped out again from a newspaper and ended
(30:40):
up working for investigative agents, private investigator who was doing
business for one of the biggest drug smugglers in the
Western hemisphere. And and I got caught up in that.
But I think the guy you're talking about in Salem
was my friend Roger came down when we're doing interviews
(31:02):
h in Salem, and he had spent a lot of
time in some of the best prisons around the country,
h for a number of crimes. Very intelligent guys sort
of uh and and and a great storyteller. I do
feel comfortable with with people who have gone through stuff
like that. It's it's listening to war stories and and
(31:25):
you know, the drug drug drug wars were wars. I
mean I I give people the same sort of license
I would I would give someone who had been overseas
more with Phil Stanford. After we take a quick sponsor
break and we're back, let's dive in. Hey, Phil, I
(31:49):
want to ask you a question about your opinion. Please
feel free to skip this if you'd like to. But
just as someone you you currently still live in order, correct, right, So,
as someone who lives in Oregon, Um, how do you
feel about the culture the that's happening right now the
legalization of marijuana? Like how how how do you feel
(32:14):
about all of that growing up, you know, covering crime
in the drug trade over all these years, the uh,
the legalization has made very little difference in in my
life or the life of people around me. Most of
the people I know have have smoked dope most of
(32:36):
their lives. The biggest difference legalization has made in Oregon
is that has put some people out of business who
are operating illegally. You know, their prices the prices dropped
as we would PreTect and and um so let's put
some some friends out of out of business. But right
now I'm living out on the coast, Oregon coast, in
(32:57):
little town and gotten to know the a little bit
about the history that here, everyone here, uh was raising dope.
Everyone knew. This a little town, everyone knows who the dope,
who's selling dope. Had to be protected by the local police,
and they were. I guess I'm getting a little bit
off the question of what legalization has meant, but it's
(33:20):
actually meant very little. Why I I think I think
you make an interesting point though you talk about police
protection of of say, marijuana dealers, but what in Murdering Oregon,
we're talking a lot about police protection of methamphetamine dealers
and much more sinister drugs and things that really ruined
(33:40):
people's lives. That's the thing that why I said, none
of this is spoilers about murder and Oregon, because it
really is about the experience of meeting all of these characters,
and we have firsthand accounts from people that you know,
really had their lives ruined by a lot of the players,
the higher level players in the story. But you know,
meth in Oregon is a rampant problem, and that's the
(34:00):
kind of drugs that were being smuggled into the prisons
with police protection. UH. And that's a big part of
our story. So, I mean, do you differentiate between the two.
I know you're talking about you know, people that are
in the drug wars. You you respect them in their stripes, etcetera.
But you know, I do feel like there's a difference
between you know, smuggling marijuana and smuggling heroin and meth
(34:21):
amphetamine and things that you know, tear families apart and
ruined lives. Sure, there's a difference between between them. I um,
but they all get involved in the same trade. I mean,
the people who were protecting the officials who are expecting marijuana,
we're protecting heroin, We're protecting meth The big deal in
(34:43):
in UH Oregon prisons now as they've declared cigarettes out
of bound so uh cigarettes sell for more than marijuana
and uh and and so there's there's a lively trade
UH of of cigarettes smuggling UH run by the guards.
The guards are allowed to bring cigarettes into the US.
(35:04):
Where do you think they go? So it's um, drugs
are drugs as far as I am concerned. I mean,
I certainly recognized that some are more dangerous than others.
I would certainly say that hard liquor is more dangerous
than marijuana. But yeah, and has probably ruined more lives
than heroin and is probably doing more doing more damage
(35:25):
as we record this episode. Yeah, I do think your
agnostic approach to like you you're looking at you have
a problem with injustice. You don't make judgments necessarily, but
what you what really gets under your skin is people
who are liars and who are covering up the truth.
And you have this thirst for and that's what drives you.
(35:46):
I think, in my opinion to Ben's previous question, is
you cannot abide by people getting away with, you know,
throwing others under the bus, who didn't deserve it, who
didn't actually have any steak in the game, and who
you were just used as kind of ponds and these
other more powerful people's kind of master plan for lack
of a better term. Would you agree with that or
(36:07):
what are your thoughts about Yeah? I think I would
thank you. Yeah. Uh. Another question, we're talking a lot
about police corruption, which is an open secret, especially in
various smaller communities throughout the United States, do you, in
your experience, UH, in the various regions of work, do
you find that Oregon has it feels so cynical to
(36:30):
ask it this way, do you find that it has
an extraordinarily high amount of law enforcement corruption or a
normal amount whatever that is? Uh? And I guess the
question is is Oregon exceptional in the degree of corruption,
whether through UH smuggling or protected rackets or is this
(36:51):
just sort of the the lay of the land that
we don't typically talk about in mainstream media. I think
that's exactly what it is. And it's not just that
we don't talk about it and it's not really recognized.
People can't really afford to recognize this. But I think
it is. Of course, the levels of corruption depends on
(37:14):
the place and on the time, and vary from time
to time, but in every place, but um, yeah, I've
lived a number of different places, and I worked as
a private investigator in Miami, in d C. And UH
in Portland. I've worked, you know, UH as a writer
(37:34):
in in those places and lived a lot of places.
I think that corruption is certainly part of our our
our political economy. There's a really good book on it.
It's by a sociologist, William Chambliss called On the Take.
(37:57):
He wrote it back in the I think the seventies
or eighties. You can, uh, it's worth getting. But he
talks about crime as a system that involves politicians, law
enforcement people, and of course he says not always most
importantly the racketeers. It's certainly true. In fact, he was
(38:19):
sort of the inspiration for me getting started writing about corruption.
I've been pushed out at the Oregonian and uh doing
this and that. It was in Powell's Bookstore, which is
a great bookstore there, and looking at the section and
and there was this book I hadn't heard of before,
called On the Take by William Chambler. So I got it.
(38:41):
And he talks about Seattle in the seventies. He was
doing his doctoral thesis there and he basically penetrated the
Seattle underworld where you know, and at the time in Seattle,
everyone was telling him, oh, this is a squeaky clean town. No,
he got out there and he started talking to these people,
worked his way up the chain, and he wrote the
thesis about it, and it's really terrific. And I said, well,
(39:05):
maybe that will explain some things in Portland. So I
started researching those things that uh sort of the lower
level people involved in in in the vice activities, and
UH made friends, got to got to know these people
who was a lot of them were dead by that time.
(39:27):
Because this was about Portlands in the fifties. It was
the old vice scandal turned into Portland Confidential, the vice
scandal that everyone pretended never happened and was able to
reconstruct that. But it is a system and and and
if you look at Portland's history, for example, the first
Marshal was the saloon keeper. He was a gun slinger
(39:47):
from California. A saloon back then was booze gambling. And
upstairs the girls six of the nine councilmen early on
in poor Land, we're saloon keepers. Come on. And Portland
considered itself an exception to the rule. I mean, it's
because they were they had their blinders on. But yeah,
(40:12):
you look at New York, Chicago, Providence, Rhode Island, Miami,
San Francisco, Los Angeles, I mean, and then the small
towns of the same way, same way. So I'd also
like to ask you if you have any advice to
(40:34):
our our budding investigative journalists in the audience today, because
I know my spider sense tells me at least that
a lot of people who are who are hearing this,
even if they haven't tuned into the podcast Murder and
Oregon yet, are are also identifying on some level with
some of the personal and professional struggles you have to
(40:55):
face when you're you know, when you're in what can
you feel like a Dave adversus Goliath situation? Do you
have advice to UH to journalists who are are digging
into a story or people who would want to pursue
investigative journalism. Sure, um, I don't know what I would
(41:15):
do now. When I got into it, it was it
was easier to sort of slip through the front door
and get a job. These days, it seems you have
to be so credential to UH TO to to get
in and by that time you're you're pretty well conditioned
not to ask a lot of the questions that a
(41:36):
good investigative journalist would ask. A lot of what passes
for investigative journalism at the local and the national level
is just people being fed leaks to really go against
conventional wisdom, which is what we're talking about here. Is
A is a very difficult proposition in the media, especially now,
(42:02):
and the best investigative journalists in this country, in this
country seemour Hirsch can't publish in this country anymore. That
will give you some idea of his problems. So, I mean,
there are people out there who are getting away with
good stuff. Matt Tybee is good, Glenn Greenwald is good,
and there there are a few more. But you've got
(42:23):
to find an organization that will support you. I I
I spend a lot of time in UH sort of
devising getting my stuff out by devising strategies. When I
was writing the column, I would always pretend to be
a little bit more conservative than I was, use the
conservative argument to UH support a radical position. I mean
(42:45):
that there's a lot of mental judo that goes on
in anyway, and you have to learn how to do that.
But I'm not terribly sanguine about the possibilities for UH
doing an investigative work on on the in the mass
media right now. You know, Phil I I agree with
all of that UM completely in terms of print journalism
(43:08):
and more traditional media outlets. But I will say that
you know, some of those UH, those organizations that are
more traditional are not the only game in town anymore.
They're no longer the only arbiters of you know, distribution
of information. And even with Murder in Oregon, while maybe
we couldn't have gotten The Oregonian to print a story
like that, obviously, uh, we were able to do it
(43:31):
as a podcast and and and the only arbiters of
that information were you know, you and myself and and
Lauren Pacheco, the producer, and of course you know, we've
added things with legal to make sure we didn't get sued.
But you know, with podcasting, I think, you know, young
people have the opportunity if they really see something they
want to uncover, like our friend Payne Lindsay for example,
(43:51):
and Up and Vanished, he did an investigative deep dive
into a cold case that ultimately lead to it being solved.
So I think podcasting is kind of taking that place
and sort of democratizing the ability of new voices to
kind of really push things forward, um in a way
that maybe you know, print journalism wouldn't allow, like for example,
(44:12):
Leaven that Marguie Boulet story we talked about in the
show Murder and Oregon that exposed Neil Goldschmidt's um crimes
uh and and horrific acts. They wouldn't publish it. The
Oregonian wouldn't publish it until this woman had died. I mean,
it's right. I obviously left off stopped short of of
(44:32):
of social media and podcasts, but um yeah, this this
would never have come out in the print media. And
uh and and and and and we did it as
a podcast and it's very solid. Um uh. It's amusing
to note that The Oregonian has not taken note even
(44:56):
of the podcast successful as it has been. Didn't you
guys slipping ad in there? We sure did we? Uh yeah.
And just to point this out to like maybe we
were burying the lead here, Phil wrote for The Oregonian
for many years and was basically pushed out. And it
became pretty clear that the Oregonian had a political act
(45:18):
to grind in this whole thing, that they were kind
of in the gold Schmidt camp. And even when it
was revealed in a press conference, because you know, many
many years later, after statuted limitations on rape had passed,
gold Schmidt was exposed for having had this relationship. He
did this this press conference where the Oregonians sent all
(45:38):
of their kind of you know, company company guys um
who basically buried the lead. And I think they used
the headline they called it had an affair with an
underaged girl as opposed to yeah, which obviously that's absurd.
It is it is rape, you know, it's it's statutory
(45:59):
or otherwise having there's no such thing as having an
affair with an underaged girl. That's an absolute misnomer. And
it just goes to show they really did stand firm
in that gold Schmidt camp. And that was a big
part of why you guys but it had so much
is because you wouldn't tell that company line, right, Oh yeah, yeah.
The the editor I find that who finally pushed me out, uh,
(46:21):
was a celebrity sucker and and and and she came
to town her her biggest u aim obviously, was to
become good friends with gold Schmidt and his wife. They
are to this day. So I have a question here,
Phil that I definitely wanted to get to before we
close our show, and it's it's again it's another personal question,
(46:45):
but I know it's something a lot of us are
thinking while we're listening. Clearly, were you know, clearly were
persecuted by the oregony. And that's that's just a demonstrable fact.
Did you ever feel that your life or have you
ever felt at any point in this investigation that your
life was in danger or that you know, somebody might
(47:10):
as stereotypical as it sounds, send some goons your way,
or practice some sort of intimidation tactic. Well, actually, a
judge who conducted a an investigation in the Frankie case
at that time called me at one point and said,
we received a threat, an anonymous threat against your life.
(47:32):
And I said, well, who's it from? And he said,
I said anonymous? Uh. I said, well, wh I did
tell me? He said, well, I that's what I had
to do. And I said, thank you very much. But
it's nothing that you could think too much about. In fact,
I I never had, hardly ever had a firsthand information
(47:55):
that would have made me dangerous to people. I was
just a journalist. Kevin was the one who was uh
most in danger because he was the one who was
really driving the moral force behind the resistance on on
this thing, the brother of the murdered man trying to
get get answers to his brother's murder. But you know,
(48:16):
I've received threats now and again. Uh, and uh, you
know it's I guess the best advice I ever got
on those is that from Bob Adams, who was head
of the detective agency I worked for in Miami. I
got a threat back then. I went in and said
(48:37):
Bob um and told him about it, and he said, oh,
don't worry about the ones you hear. O. Yeah, I
know that's I can see that. Well, so then what
does your home security situation look like? Phil Oh? I
I used to have alarms. I'm living on the coast.
Now if they want to get me, no, I'm I'm uh,
(49:01):
I don't think anyone's out together. Well. Uh, that is,
first off, obviously fantastic to hear, because I think, you know,
sometimes people are pre frightened or pre intimidated to dive
into stories like that because they they have they have
(49:22):
a fear that outweighs their tenacity. And folks listening, we
hope you understand. This is just a taste of the
show Murder and Oregon, which I believe is available in
its entirety and that can benge the entire twelve episode
series on Apple Podcasts or the I Heart Radio app
(49:43):
or wherever you get podcasts, uh, and you know it's
just just to to to that point you made Ben.
It's funny with Phil and I also work together. We
met working on Happy Faith. Whire's another series you can
binge in its entirety about the daughter of a Pacific
Northwest long haul truck driver UH and serial killer and
rapists by the name of Hunter jesperson who fill Um
reported on, and actually he reached out to Phil's newspaper
(50:05):
and then Phil coined the name Happy Face Killer, and
that's where we met Um and found out about this
story about Michael Frankie. But I had a very distinct
feeling late in the game and production on Happy Face
about you know, Keith Jess person is alive and in prison,
and we all know the kind of cult of personality
that serial killers are and the kind of potential followers
(50:26):
they attract. It occurred to me in production, my name's
all over this thing. Am I gonna start getting threats?
You know, if people are gonna come like stalk me
and my family at my house. And I had that momentary,
you know, fear, and then just kind of push it
away and realized, like, no, we're doing interesting work. You
have to kind of be a little bit. I'm not
saying I'm fearless, but you do have to kind of
(50:47):
throw caution to the winds sometimes and and really dive
in with this stuff. And I know all three of
us here have we've worked on shows like that and
just this show in general. We talk about things that
could potentially make us targets for crazed individuals of some
striper and others. So, UM, we're with you there, Phil,
and you definitely have to kind of shove that stuff
into the back of your mind and just keep pushing forward. Um. Yeah,
(51:13):
I didn't have anything intelligence to say well that. Uh,
you have uh many many brilliant works out there for
people who would like to learn more about Phil Stanford's
work and his research. Again, we recommend Portland's Confidential. Uh.
There's also White House, Call Girl. Uh. There's also a
(51:34):
collection columns from The Oregonian called do You Know how
Much a Light Year? Is? And Phil I was surprised
to note that there's also uh graphic novel City of Roses. Yeah, yeah,
that was fun did it with dark Horse Comics, great
artists and uh it's the story of corruption and uh
(51:57):
in Portland in the seventies when the nark Addis cops
were uh going wild. Uh uh. I later I did
the graphic novel while I was getting up the uh
steam to write the book, which had to be documented
a good deal more and it was very difficult to
(52:19):
do because no one wanted to talk. And that book
is called Rose City Vice. It's dirty cops and dirty
robbers Portland in the seventies. I am going to get
that graphic novel as soon as we finish this episode,
which is which is ending right now. That's right. Uh
So the award winning author investigative journalists, the mind behind
(52:40):
our podcast Murder in Oregon, Phil Stanford, Phil, thank you
so much for your time. Uh and Phil, where can people?
Where can people go to learn more about your work
or to find some of your publications? Okay, well, Amazon
is the easiest way to do it. All the books
are available on Amazon as far as I know, and
(53:02):
um Wikipedia, Yeah, and don't forget you can check out
Murdering Oregon and its entirety available now wherever you get podcasts.
And also Happy Face where Phil is featured pretty regularly
on that one. But but Murdering Oregan really is Phil's
kind of brain child, and it's been a pleasure working
with you, and I do believe we've got some exciting
(53:23):
things up our sleeves for the future. Phil. But thanks
a million for coming on Stuff they Don't Want You
to Know, my friend, Okay, it's been great, Thanks very much.
And you can also find us on the internet. This
concludes our episode, but not our show. Find Stuff they
Don't Want You to Know on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
We especially like to recommend our Facebook community group Here's
where it gets Crazy, where you get to hang out
(53:45):
with our favorite part of the show, your fellow listeners.
M h h. Stuff they Don't Want You to Know
(54:08):
is a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works.
For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Gradios How Stuff Works. Hello, welcome
(00:25):
back to the show. My name is Matt, my name
is They called me Ben. We're joined as always with
our super producer Paul mission controlled decons. Most importantly, you
are you, You are here and that makes this stuff
they don't want you to know. This is this is
a special episode for us. No all, it's one that's
very close to your heart. We are diving into a
(00:50):
genuine mystery today, right, and this is a mystery that
may be familiar to some of our listeners in the audience,
but for some of this this may be something completely new.
Spoiler alert. We're not diving in alone. But before we
introduce our guests, no, do you want to give us
a little bit of an understanding about this? Oh? Sure,
(01:11):
I sure? What had been Thank you for for the opportunity,
my friend. Um, yeah, we just wrapped. And when I
say we, I mean myself are mystery guests today. It's
not really a mystery. It's in the metadata, but we're
gonna play at Koy for now. And Lauren Pacheco, who's
a colleague of mine, producer from New York who I've
worked on a previous show called Happy Face with UM.
(01:32):
And this show that we just wrapped us called Murder
in Oregon, and it dives into the tragic death of
Michael Frankie, who was the director of Oregon's Department of
Corrections UM in the late eighties, nineteen eighty nine, about
as late in the eighties as you can get. UM.
This gentleman was who was a pillar of the community,
a very well respected former judge. UM. And it's a
(01:56):
very very intelligent and kind man. UM was stabbed to
outside of his office. UM. And very quickly there came
to be kind of a reckoning where you know, the
government needed to pin this on somebody. It wasn't going
to go away. And UM unfortunately, as based on our
research and the research of our guest today, UM, they
(02:17):
pinned it on a patsy, someone who very very clearly
didn't do it. But within all of that and that
search for the truth is a twisting, turning story the
likes of you would which you wouldn't believe something more
along the lines of true detective than a nonfiction podcast.
But um again, we're not doing this alone. Today. We
(02:37):
have Phil Stanford with us, who has been invested in
this story for going on thirty years um and has
just done a massive amount of research and written columns
for The Oregonian on this very subject and has really
been himself a huge part of this very story. Phil,
welcome to stuff they don't want you to know, sir, Well,
(02:59):
thank you for much good to be here. Yeah, um,
I don't even it's such a massive story and we
don't want to spoil it for anyone that you know
hasn't finished listening to the series yet. But how would you,
you know, kind of characterize this story of murder and
Oregon and the death of Michael Frankie. What what would
you say some of the main themes are that we
kind of you know, touched on in this very very
(03:22):
fascinating series. Well, uh, it comes in several parts. I
mean it was first of all, an assassination, which no
one wanted to acknowledge. Things like that just don't happen,
uh in this country, Uh, let alone, uh little Old Oregon.
But this guy, Michael Frankie had come into the state
(03:43):
just about a year before he discovered that his department
was rife with corruption all the way to the top
and he was going to reveal it. Uh, they had
him killed. Well, that was the first part of it.
The second part was the cover up, a really pervasive
her up, because so many individuals and institutions in Salem,
(04:05):
even if they weren't involved in the in the murder,
had so much to cover up. It goes back to
systemic things I think, you know, just the nature of
narcotics law enforcement that corrupted the state police for example. Uh,
and and the governor too had things to cover up.
So an assassination, cover up, selection of a patsy, the
manufacture of evidence against a low level tweaker who had
(04:30):
nothing at all to do with the crime. And uh,
the insistence since then to this very day by the
state that he still deserves to be punished, even though
a federal judge has ruled that no reasonable juror would
vote to convict. Hey, Phil, I really want to know
in as much basic detail which sounds like an odd phrase,
(04:53):
but basic detail about the corruption that that Michael uncovered.
So like, what what were some of the major things
that he found out that he felt needed to be
told to the public. Okay, Well, first of all, uh,
and you'll find this in just about every prison. Uh.
The drug trade, protected drug trade. For the drug trade
(05:16):
to flourish in or out of the prison, it has
to be protected, and it was being protected. In the
Oregon State Penitentiary. There were a number of scams that
the officials had had run for for years, including hanky
panky with animals on the farm, the sale of equipment
(05:40):
that belonged to the state, and so forth. Most recently,
there had been a warehouse burned down for arson. It
was arson for insurance purposes, and he was onto that.
We referred to it as the a shed. And we
know that he was going to be talking the next day,
the morning after he was murder to the legislature about that.
(06:05):
We have evidence that he was going to be talking
about the aid and and it's just to point out,
I mean, this is all you know. While this this
might sound speculative to some folks that aren't fully familiar
with the story, these are all corroborated by multiple sources.
I mean, we we absolutely know that this type of
corruption is very, very real, and that Michael uncovered it um.
You know, there are various theories about who may or
(06:28):
may not have killed Michael Frankie, which is a big
you know, the central question to murder in Oregon, it's
who really killed Michael Frankie. But there is no question
that this corruption was rife in the system and that
the man that the crime was pinned on almost one
thousand percent, did not do it. He was like, there's
no question certainly among those who might have listened to
(06:50):
the podcast or have been doing their own research, honest research.
But there is still a sizeable contingent of a local press,
uh and and government that would argue that there was
no corruption that they will not accept that. And from
the beginning that was the problem. They could not accept
(07:11):
the idea that Michael Frankie might have been murdered because
he was investigating corruption. I was about ready to blow
the whistle on some of his top officials from the
beginning they said. The official version was that it was
a car burglary that had gone bad. And one thing
that's interesting about this, Phil is in in just some
(07:32):
preparatory research, I found that you had devoted no less
than eighty columns to the murder right when when working
with The Oregonian. And I get this sense, and tell
me if I'm wrong here, but I get this sense
that for uh, for at least part of the time,
you were in in some sense alone, speaking truth to power,
(07:55):
bringing up these various things that the authorities apparently wilfully ignored.
Did you ever feel like you were in a you know,
banging my head against the wall situation or did you
feel that the authorities were listening or did you feel
that they were actively trying to push this car Burglary narrative? Um?
(08:17):
And and do you think that they they genuinely thought
it was true or do you think they were, you know,
as you had said earlier, noal attempting to just close
some case combination. It's hard to read their minds what
they're thinking. At first, I was not entirely. I was
alone on at my newspaper, The Oregonian, which was the
(08:39):
big dog in Oregon at the time. I was writing
a column for them. It was a featured columnists. But
there were other reporters in Salem, uh, Steve Jackson, Eric
Mason on on TV who were following the story too,
But I was I was certainly one of the paper,
(09:00):
and and because the Oregonian was such a big force
in Oregon, I was sort of the appointing man on
the thing as far as the authorities were concerned. The governor,
after after about six months of my columns, held a
press conference and said, where is this garbage coming From
(09:22):
another interview, he called it bs He he really what?
And I couldn't figure out at the time why he
was resisting so strenuously. He'd just come into office and
if there was corruption, he could very well blame it
on his his predecessor and say let's uh, let's get
to the bottom of it. But he didn't. As far
(09:43):
as the state cops UH who were conducting the investigation
in the d a's office in Marin County, I think
from the beginning they knew they had to cover something
up once they realized where this thing was going, especially
then they they may have been hoping from the beginning
that it was a random car burglary, but once they
(10:03):
realized the connections which we talked about in murdering Oregon
to UH officials and UH who were engaged in in
illegal activities, they knew they could not pursue an honest
investigation I had to get a patsy. It's it's it's true.
And we do discuss all of that, and we kind
of leave it up to the listener to sort of
(10:24):
make up their minds when we present all of this evidence.
And what you realize, if you're paying attention, is that
it just doesn't add up. You mentioned the idea of
a car burglary gone wrong, and that was sort of
the narrative that the state police and the government at
large really pushed. This idea that Michael was leaving his
office and uh encountered somebody rifling through his car. They
(10:47):
used the I love this delightfully regional term jockey boxing,
which I've never heard before, but I really liked a
lot the idea of rifling through somebody's glove box. And
Michael Frankie was a very tall, very fit man, um
really imposing, you know stature. I don't know his exact height,
but I think he was six ft something and very
you know, in shape, and played basketball and you know
(11:09):
it was a very active guy. And um, you know,
the notion that he came upon somebody rifling through his
car who then gave him a single stab kill shot
to the heart in addition to like a defensive wound,
it's very hard to believe. And even in court, like
when they tried to set up the scenario of you know,
(11:29):
the angles and all of that of where how he
would have had to be stabbed, you know, if the
guy was sitting in the car, you know, the angles
didn't add up. And can you talk a little bit
about that, about how some of those narratives that were
pushed even in the trial just didn't really make sense. Well,
you know, nothing about the case made much sense. That's
that's the thing there. There there was no physical evidence
(11:52):
to start with connecting Frank Gable, that's the guy they
eventually indicted for the crime. There was no no evidence
that Frank Gable was there, I mean no physical evidence.
All they really had was, when they came down to it,
was manufactured evidence of a bunch of jail birds and
ex cons who had potential sentences hanging over their heads,
(12:15):
so you know, a serious time for federal gun charges
and federal drug charges got them to make up stories
and in the end they got a couple of young hoods,
uh seventeen year old runaway girl and then a tough
guy named Shorty Hardened to say that they had been
(12:36):
there and had seen it happen. Jody Swearings in the
seventeen year Old Girl event ran away before a trial
could be held and said this police, I had her
make it up, make the story up shortly Hardened. The
other supposed eyewitness did testify, but his testimony contradicted other tests.
(13:00):
Simony on there had been a janitor who had come
out and seen something happened in front of the the
office building, the dome buildings it's called had no reason
to lie, and Shorty Harden's testimony completely contradicted what the
janitor had said. So there were not only contradictions like that,
but Frank Gables lawyer was so bad he didn't even
(13:24):
bother or maybe even think to bring it up with
the trial. It was it was for us. It's interesting.
I mean, it's he was so bad to the point
where you have to think there was some intention behind it.
And again that's not something anyone has, you know, actual
proof of, but it just makes it just makes no sense.
He shouldn't have gotten the case. We talked about that
(13:44):
in the show where you know there was an investigator
we talked to who I believe was the investigator for
Frank's defense. Um who just didn't feel like this lawyer,
Bob abel Um was the last person that would have
gotten this trot this this case, and that he didn't
even have a phone, he didn't have an office of
his own, he kind of shared a space with He
was very much like almost a Saul Goodman type figure,
(14:06):
you know, early in his career. And all the judges
and lawyers, i mean, remember Salem is a fairly small town,
knew who he was. They knew he was incompetent, and
they knew he was a heavy drinker, to say the least.
So he was given this case. His business was going
down the tubes at the time, and he got the case.
(14:30):
He was just way over his head, even if he
hadn't been drinking. Uh. Shortly before the trial, the team
of investigators, i mean a tremendous amount of money was
paid by the state for the defense on this thing.
For the lawyers and and and the investigators. The investigators
wrote a letter to the judge saying, we're not prepared
to go to trial. Our our lawyers don't understand the case.
(14:54):
And the judges blew it off and and the trial
went forward. But my own opinion that Able I didn't
have to tell Able to throw it he but he
knew what he had to do. So this gentleman, Frank Gable,
he has been in prison since nineteen whatever when the
(15:14):
trial was uh. They arrested him in ninety and just
earlier this year in April, a federal judge ordered his release.
That's correct, I mean, so he did almost thirty years,
thirty years for a crime he had absolutely nothing to
do with. The judge rule that no reasonable juror would
(15:36):
vote to convict on the basis of evidence that was
available then, and and the new evidence in including the
recantation of all the so called material witnesses against him,
leaving absolutely nothing left of the case, right, and and
then like the notion that they would retry him is
really almost comical, right, because they don't really have they
(15:59):
would have nothing to uh to try him on. Yet
the State of Oregon is appealing the judge's decision. Judges
ruling on technical grounds, in effect trying to put him
back in prison for something they know he didn't do it.
It's a fairly evil political stance to take. And furthermore,
(16:19):
phil from what I understand, the Oregon d o J
also wanted to keep Gable in prison while that appeal
was being hashed out. Is that correct? Yes, they went
to the federal judge and after his ruling and said
that he's a dangerous the community, he must be kept
in and the judge by by this time, I mean
(16:42):
it had taken him two years to rule. I mean,
we were all very nervous. We didn't know what was
going to happen because this was a highly from the
beginning has been a highly political case. Uh and and
you know with all all the Democratic establishment in Oregon,
which you know, this is a one party state behind
the cover up over the decades, And we didn't know
(17:04):
what was going to happen. So he kept it two years.
He really understood the case thanks to a brilliant habeas
corpus petition that written by the federal public defender Neil
Brown and and and so when the state asked for that,
he just said, nope, he's out. Let's let's get on
with the appeal. It's worth pointing out that the a
(17:29):
g Attorney General for for Oregon, Ellen Rosenbloom, is a
protege of Neil Goldschmidt, who was the governor at the
time of the Frankie murder and who was instrumental in
the instrumental force behind the cover up. Wow, the whole
(17:51):
story with Goldschmidth is its own thing and almost deserves
its own podcast because he was, you know, found out too.
I don't know, like I hate, I don't want to
feel like I'm spoiling anything. But honestly, you can't really
spoil this story because what we do is this more
of like it really takes you inside all of the
ins and outs of every character involved in this whole
situation and lets the listener kind of make up their
(18:12):
own mind as to what they believe. But the idea
of gold Schmidt. There's an episode that we devote to
gold Schmidt where he essentially was found known. He absolutely
was found out to have been um a pedophile child
rapist is the term that we use um because he
was carrying on a relationship with a thirteen year old
girl or I believe what how old was she felt?
(18:34):
Was it fourteen when it started? And it was. It's
so heartbreaking because she was the daughter of two of
gold Schmidt's most fervent supporters who were like, you know,
stumping for or campaigning for him, going door to door,
and they were really you know, they worshiped the guy,
and they knew about the the affair quote unquote, the
the you know, the completely inappropriate relationship, and they borderline
(18:58):
encouraged it. And we got all of this for him.
One of your colleagues at the time, uh, Phil, Margie Boulet,
who wrote this incredible expose about this relationship where she,
you know, was trusted by this young woman when she
was you know, much older, and this relationship had literally
wrecked her life. I mean she became, you know, an
alcoholic and outcast. Um she you know, he sent her
(19:21):
away and paid her off and all of this really
heartbreaking stuff and then she and you know, ultimately passed away.
But to hear Margie talk about this stuff and to
know what gold Schmidt was capable of and that this
was something he was trying to keep buried for years,
you know, you can't make the one to one connection
that this is why they didn't want, you know, they
(19:41):
didn't want um Frankie digging around. But there's sure are
a lot of characters in this story that had a
lot of stuff to hide, including the governor of the state.
You know, Yeah, I don't think uh could be proved wrong.
I don't think that gold Schmidt had anything to do
with the murder as elf, but he certainly didn't want
(20:03):
a thorough going investigation of the murder at which would
have led to corruption, which would have led to ripping
backs that covers on everything in Salem, because at that
time he was negotiating with the girl and her lawyers
for the hush money payment. He eventually paid her over
three hundred thousand dollars as long as she kept her
(20:24):
mass will pause here for a brief word from our sponsor,
and we're back. Okay, So phil Aton met something I've
I grew up in Georgia. I've lived here my entire life,
done a little bit of traveling, but I've never been
(20:46):
to Oregon. I have a picture of this state in
my mind from popular culture, Um, you know Portlandia, of course,
speaking particularly of Portland. Um, also just of kind of
marijuana cole sure of Um. I have a picture of
it in my mind a little bit that is very
much of popular culture, like a liberal bastion, kind of
(21:08):
like on the hill. And that's just the way. I'm
very progressive right, that's the way I think about in
my mind because that's what's been highlighted. Right. So can
you paint a little bit of a picture of what
what Oregon, what Salem is like in the eighties? What
what does it feel like? Talk to me about I mean,
we've talked about the corruption that we know of, but
what is the place actually like and what's going on there? Well?
(21:31):
Uh I wrote a column for The Oregonian for for
a while, and that's how I'm usually identified, uh in
in this this context. But since then, I've written several
books about corruption in Oregon. And the first one, which
I wrote about about twenty years ago, I guess called
(21:52):
Portland's Confidential, Oh, which, by the way, everybody won the
Independent Publisher's Best True Crime Award of two thousand five. Yeah,
it was. It was. It was very successful. It was
a regional bestseller, and and The Oregonian would not write
about it. It was it was actually pretty funny. I
(22:16):
knew they weren't going to review it. The book review
editor told me that he had been ordered not to
review it. But they at that time they were printing
at once a week. They would print the best sellers
in the Northwest. He couldn't keep keep Portland's Confidential out
because it was number one for several weeks. And so
that first book was about a big vice scandal in Portland.
(22:38):
At one time, back in the early fifties, Portland's was
notorious throughout the nation. You know, they were Life magazine
features on how corrupt it was, and there had been
a big vice scandal. A lot of it had to
do with national politics and with the teamsters trying to
move in and the local mob trying to protect itself.
(23:00):
You're Going In won a Pulitzer Prize at the time
for telling half the story about how the teamsters were
coming in, but they didn't record acknowledge that the town
had been set up for for decades, well back into
the nineteenth century, by local mobs. And it ended in
Senate hearings. I mean, it was that big a deal
(23:22):
in nineteen fifty seven, and everyone came back and tried
to forget about it. So by when I wrote that book,
it had really been a secret, not to be talked about,
and and everyone liked to imagine that Oregon was this
pristine state. I think that that's sort of a carryover
from the time when people were coming west anyway, and
(23:43):
I thought they could leave the evils of civilization behind.
So at least here the impression that Oregon was somehow
an exception to the general rules of humanity was fostered.
And so when I wrote this, uh, Portland Confidential, it
was one of the reasons it was successful is that
(24:05):
it was it was just a real breakthrough, you know,
people starting to realize except the fact that there was
a real tradition of corruption here as there is in
most places. I think that you can find this in
just about any American city. And one thing, one thing
I like about that that understanding of corruption and it's ubiquity,
(24:29):
is that despite the image a lot of people outside
of Oregon or outside of the Northwest have about the
region and the place, despite that image, many of those
same rules and I like that you call them rules
fille still apply. Uh. Many people don't know that Oregon
as a state was initially founded as a yeah, as
(24:54):
a racially motivated separatist society. Now, of course that's that.
It's just another example of how many skeletons we can
find when we dig into these closets. But I'd like
to change gears here just a bit and ask ask
a personal question of you. I've I've worked with many
UH investigative journalists on various projects before, and one thing
(25:17):
that I always find profoundly impressive and moving is the
drive and the tenacity. And I think for many of
our UM journalism students or journalists in the audience today,
that's something that they would like like to hear your
take on and hear you talk about. Could you tell
us what keeps you going on on a case like this,
(25:40):
because this has been a hard road and uh twisting tail, Like,
are there ever moments where there's a dark night of
the soul where you think maybe I should let this go?
Or do you double up? I mean, where does the
energy and the power and the drive come from to
stay with these kind of cases. It's always sort of
(26:02):
a complicated thing, you know. From the beginning I got
started on it, I was writing a column. I was interested,
it was obviously an interesting story. And then then there
are inconsistencies. I I certainly didn't know the answers, uh,
but but I I knew there were a lot of questions,
and so I started raising them. And then once I
started getting all this pushback, it became a little bit
(26:25):
of a matter of pride, I suppose. And of course,
you know, we haven't talked about the brothers of the
murdered man, uh, Kevin and Pat Frankie, who from the
beginning raised questions about it, and once they realized that
Gabel was a Patsy, defended him, I mean, And so
(26:45):
I took there their part in it from the beginning,
partly because it was made it easier for me to
tell the story through Kevin's eyes, but also because they
were they were raising good questions, and so you know,
I got I got more and more involved in the
(27:07):
story over the years, and I would say, Okay, I'm
going to write a book about it now, and then
I say, no, I don't have enough, and I'd go
off and write a book about something else. Then I'd
come back to it and I said, okay, I'm gonna
do it now. Finally, you know, over the years, Kevin
was doing more research himself, investigation, and I was we
(27:29):
found it, you know, started understanding the case more. I mean.
It was very difficult because the official investigation was a
cover up. And finally there's brilliant habeas corpus petition by
the public defender. Uh. They She and her team spent
several years going into this in depth that confirmed so
(27:52):
much of what we talked about and and elucidated all
the rest of it. Finally, after all these years, finally
understood it well enough to to make the case that
we make in Murder and Oregon. But why, I guess
your your question, why why do you? Why do you
keep doing it? It's it's it's for a combination of motives,
and some of them very personal and and and some
(28:14):
of them probably a little selfish at the beginning, but
in this case anyway, deeply invested in it finally because
just the the injustice of it on so many levels.
And I've got to say also, because I'm very interested
in these stories I spend my I've discovered that I
(28:34):
really enjoy putting together cases like this and understanding how
they really work. So that's part of it too. It's
really interesting to fill spending time with you and Kevin
U through the production of the show and kind of
seeing the way you you guys basically became you had
each other's backs in such a real way. And when
you and Kevin sort of met back when this was
(28:55):
was happening. Um, you really forged a friendship. It was
like a part ship where you were almost kind of
a duo of kind of makes detectives, I guess for
for lack of a better term. That's why I kind
of compare this to the whole True Detective story of
the first season, where it really is you know, YouTube
against kind of the world, trying to you know, push
(29:17):
for the truth against all odds. And Kevin even was
targeted by the police. I mean there were times where
he was harassed and his tires were slashed and there
were notes on his car saying go home. He had
guns pointed at it, right, and they tried to get
him killed. Yeah, And he uprooted his life from Florida,
where he had a successful construction business and moved to
(29:37):
Oregon and really embedded himself in this kind of underbelly
where he you know, almost became like that hard boiled
kind of dashiel Ham detective, going to all the sleazy
dives and really becoming you know, making his own informants
and you know, and and doing all the things that
the police clearly weren't going to do because it wasn't
(29:58):
and their interest to actually you know point the fingers
at the right people. Um, and I think that's really fascinating.
And to spend time with you guys, I realized that
both of you are almost more comfortable in the presence
of of of folks that maybe skirt the law in
a little. And you introduced me to a friend of yours,
for example, who was like he was a pilot. Who
(30:19):
tell me about your your your friend who you introduced
me to if you without naming names, but like these
the pilot story is another one. I at one point
I was working as a legitimate journalist in Washington, did
you see. I dropped out and went back, went down
to Miami, dropped out again from a newspaper and ended
(30:40):
up working for investigative agents, private investigator who was doing
business for one of the biggest drug smugglers in the
Western hemisphere. And and I got caught up in that.
But I think the guy you're talking about in Salem
was my friend Roger came down when we're doing interviews
(31:02):
h in Salem, and he had spent a lot of
time in some of the best prisons around the country,
h for a number of crimes. Very intelligent guys sort
of uh and and and a great storyteller. I do
feel comfortable with with people who have gone through stuff
like that. It's it's listening to war stories and and
(31:25):
you know, the drug drug drug wars were wars. I
mean I I give people the same sort of license
I would I would give someone who had been overseas
more with Phil Stanford. After we take a quick sponsor
break and we're back, let's dive in. Hey, Phil, I
(31:49):
want to ask you a question about your opinion. Please
feel free to skip this if you'd like to. But
just as someone you you currently still live in order, correct, right, So,
as someone who lives in Oregon, Um, how do you
feel about the culture the that's happening right now the
legalization of marijuana? Like how how how do you feel
(32:14):
about all of that growing up, you know, covering crime
in the drug trade over all these years, the uh,
the legalization has made very little difference in in my
life or the life of people around me. Most of
the people I know have have smoked dope most of
(32:36):
their lives. The biggest difference legalization has made in Oregon
is that has put some people out of business who
are operating illegally. You know, their prices the prices dropped
as we would PreTect and and um so let's put
some some friends out of out of business. But right
now I'm living out on the coast, Oregon coast, in
(32:57):
little town and gotten to know the a little bit
about the history that here, everyone here, uh was raising dope.
Everyone knew. This a little town, everyone knows who the dope,
who's selling dope. Had to be protected by the local police,
and they were. I guess I'm getting a little bit
off the question of what legalization has meant, but it's
(33:20):
actually meant very little. Why I I think I think
you make an interesting point though you talk about police
protection of of say, marijuana dealers, but what in Murdering Oregon,
we're talking a lot about police protection of methamphetamine dealers
and much more sinister drugs and things that really ruined
(33:40):
people's lives. That's the thing that why I said, none
of this is spoilers about murder and Oregon, because it
really is about the experience of meeting all of these characters,
and we have firsthand accounts from people that you know,
really had their lives ruined by a lot of the players,
the higher level players in the story. But you know,
meth in Oregon is a rampant problem, and that's the
(34:00):
kind of drugs that were being smuggled into the prisons
with police protection. UH. And that's a big part of
our story. So, I mean, do you differentiate between the two.
I know you're talking about you know, people that are
in the drug wars. You you respect them in their stripes, etcetera.
But you know, I do feel like there's a difference
between you know, smuggling marijuana and smuggling heroin and meth
(34:21):
amphetamine and things that you know, tear families apart and
ruined lives. Sure, there's a difference between between them. I um,
but they all get involved in the same trade. I mean,
the people who were protecting the officials who are expecting marijuana,
we're protecting heroin, We're protecting meth The big deal in
(34:43):
in UH Oregon prisons now as they've declared cigarettes out
of bound so uh cigarettes sell for more than marijuana
and uh and and so there's there's a lively trade
UH of of cigarettes smuggling UH run by the guards.
The guards are allowed to bring cigarettes into the US.
(35:04):
Where do you think they go? So it's um, drugs
are drugs as far as I am concerned. I mean,
I certainly recognized that some are more dangerous than others.
I would certainly say that hard liquor is more dangerous
than marijuana. But yeah, and has probably ruined more lives
than heroin and is probably doing more doing more damage
(35:25):
as we record this episode. Yeah, I do think your
agnostic approach to like you you're looking at you have
a problem with injustice. You don't make judgments necessarily, but
what you what really gets under your skin is people
who are liars and who are covering up the truth.
And you have this thirst for and that's what drives you.
(35:46):
I think, in my opinion to Ben's previous question, is
you cannot abide by people getting away with, you know,
throwing others under the bus, who didn't deserve it, who
didn't actually have any steak in the game, and who
you were just used as kind of ponds and these
other more powerful people's kind of master plan for lack
of a better term. Would you agree with that or
(36:07):
what are your thoughts about Yeah? I think I would
thank you. Yeah. Uh. Another question, we're talking a lot
about police corruption, which is an open secret, especially in
various smaller communities throughout the United States, do you, in
your experience, UH, in the various regions of work, do
you find that Oregon has it feels so cynical to
(36:30):
ask it this way, do you find that it has
an extraordinarily high amount of law enforcement corruption or a
normal amount whatever that is? Uh? And I guess the
question is is Oregon exceptional in the degree of corruption,
whether through UH smuggling or protected rackets or is this
(36:51):
just sort of the the lay of the land that
we don't typically talk about in mainstream media. I think
that's exactly what it is. And it's not just that
we don't talk about it and it's not really recognized.
People can't really afford to recognize this. But I think
it is. Of course, the levels of corruption depends on
(37:14):
the place and on the time, and vary from time
to time, but in every place, but um, yeah, I've
lived a number of different places, and I worked as
a private investigator in Miami, in d C. And UH
in Portland. I've worked, you know, UH as a writer
(37:34):
in in those places and lived a lot of places.
I think that corruption is certainly part of our our
our political economy. There's a really good book on it.
It's by a sociologist, William Chambliss called On the Take.
(37:57):
He wrote it back in the I think the seventies
or eighties. You can, uh, it's worth getting. But he
talks about crime as a system that involves politicians, law
enforcement people, and of course he says not always most
importantly the racketeers. It's certainly true. In fact, he was
(38:19):
sort of the inspiration for me getting started writing about corruption.
I've been pushed out at the Oregonian and uh doing
this and that. It was in Powell's Bookstore, which is
a great bookstore there, and looking at the section and
and there was this book I hadn't heard of before,
called On the Take by William Chambler. So I got it.
(38:41):
And he talks about Seattle in the seventies. He was
doing his doctoral thesis there and he basically penetrated the
Seattle underworld where you know, and at the time in Seattle,
everyone was telling him, oh, this is a squeaky clean town. No,
he got out there and he started talking to these people,
worked his way up the chain, and he wrote the
thesis about it, and it's really terrific. And I said, well,
(39:05):
maybe that will explain some things in Portland. So I
started researching those things that uh sort of the lower
level people involved in in in the vice activities, and
UH made friends, got to got to know these people
who was a lot of them were dead by that time.
(39:27):
Because this was about Portlands in the fifties. It was
the old vice scandal turned into Portland Confidential, the vice
scandal that everyone pretended never happened and was able to
reconstruct that. But it is a system and and and
if you look at Portland's history, for example, the first
Marshal was the saloon keeper. He was a gun slinger
(39:47):
from California. A saloon back then was booze gambling. And
upstairs the girls six of the nine councilmen early on
in poor Land, we're saloon keepers. Come on. And Portland
considered itself an exception to the rule. I mean, it's
because they were they had their blinders on. But yeah,
(40:12):
you look at New York, Chicago, Providence, Rhode Island, Miami,
San Francisco, Los Angeles, I mean, and then the small
towns of the same way, same way. So I'd also
like to ask you if you have any advice to
(40:34):
our our budding investigative journalists in the audience today, because
I know my spider sense tells me at least that
a lot of people who are who are hearing this,
even if they haven't tuned into the podcast Murder and
Oregon yet, are are also identifying on some level with
some of the personal and professional struggles you have to
(40:55):
face when you're you know, when you're in what can
you feel like a Dave adversus Goliath situation? Do you
have advice to UH to journalists who are are digging
into a story or people who would want to pursue
investigative journalism. Sure, um, I don't know what I would
(41:15):
do now. When I got into it, it was it
was easier to sort of slip through the front door
and get a job. These days, it seems you have
to be so credential to UH TO to to get
in and by that time you're you're pretty well conditioned
not to ask a lot of the questions that a
(41:36):
good investigative journalist would ask. A lot of what passes
for investigative journalism at the local and the national level
is just people being fed leaks to really go against
conventional wisdom, which is what we're talking about here. Is
A is a very difficult proposition in the media, especially now,
(42:02):
and the best investigative journalists in this country, in this
country seemour Hirsch can't publish in this country anymore. That
will give you some idea of his problems. So, I mean,
there are people out there who are getting away with
good stuff. Matt Tybee is good, Glenn Greenwald is good,
and there there are a few more. But you've got
(42:23):
to find an organization that will support you. I I
I spend a lot of time in UH sort of
devising getting my stuff out by devising strategies. When I
was writing the column, I would always pretend to be
a little bit more conservative than I was, use the
conservative argument to UH support a radical position. I mean
(42:45):
that there's a lot of mental judo that goes on
in anyway, and you have to learn how to do that.
But I'm not terribly sanguine about the possibilities for UH
doing an investigative work on on the in the mass
media right now. You know, Phil I I agree with
all of that UM completely in terms of print journalism
(43:08):
and more traditional media outlets. But I will say that
you know, some of those UH, those organizations that are
more traditional are not the only game in town anymore.
They're no longer the only arbiters of you know, distribution
of information. And even with Murder in Oregon, while maybe
we couldn't have gotten The Oregonian to print a story
like that, obviously, uh, we were able to do it
(43:31):
as a podcast and and and the only arbiters of
that information were you know, you and myself and and
Lauren Pacheco, the producer, and of course you know, we've
added things with legal to make sure we didn't get sued.
But you know, with podcasting, I think, you know, young
people have the opportunity if they really see something they
want to uncover, like our friend Payne Lindsay for example,
(43:51):
and Up and Vanished, he did an investigative deep dive
into a cold case that ultimately lead to it being solved.
So I think podcasting is kind of taking that place
and sort of democratizing the ability of new voices to
kind of really push things forward, um in a way
that maybe you know, print journalism wouldn't allow, like for example,
(44:12):
Leaven that Marguie Boulet story we talked about in the
show Murder and Oregon that exposed Neil Goldschmidt's um crimes
uh and and horrific acts. They wouldn't publish it. The
Oregonian wouldn't publish it until this woman had died. I mean,
it's right. I obviously left off stopped short of of
(44:32):
of social media and podcasts, but um yeah, this this
would never have come out in the print media. And
uh and and and and and we did it as
a podcast and it's very solid. Um uh. It's amusing
to note that The Oregonian has not taken note even
(44:56):
of the podcast successful as it has been. Didn't you
guys slipping ad in there? We sure did we? Uh yeah.
And just to point this out to like maybe we
were burying the lead here, Phil wrote for The Oregonian
for many years and was basically pushed out. And it
became pretty clear that the Oregonian had a political act
(45:18):
to grind in this whole thing, that they were kind
of in the gold Schmidt camp. And even when it
was revealed in a press conference, because you know, many
many years later, after statuted limitations on rape had passed,
gold Schmidt was exposed for having had this relationship. He
did this this press conference where the Oregonians sent all
(45:38):
of their kind of you know, company company guys um
who basically buried the lead. And I think they used
the headline they called it had an affair with an
underaged girl as opposed to yeah, which obviously that's absurd.
It is it is rape, you know, it's it's statutory
(45:59):
or otherwise having there's no such thing as having an
affair with an underaged girl. That's an absolute misnomer. And
it just goes to show they really did stand firm
in that gold Schmidt camp. And that was a big
part of why you guys but it had so much
is because you wouldn't tell that company line, right, Oh yeah, yeah.
The the editor I find that who finally pushed me out, uh,
(46:21):
was a celebrity sucker and and and and she came
to town her her biggest u aim obviously, was to
become good friends with gold Schmidt and his wife. They
are to this day. So I have a question here,
Phil that I definitely wanted to get to before we
close our show, and it's it's again it's another personal question,
(46:45):
but I know it's something a lot of us are
thinking while we're listening. Clearly, were you know, clearly were
persecuted by the oregony. And that's that's just a demonstrable fact.
Did you ever feel that your life or have you
ever felt at any point in this investigation that your
life was in danger or that you know, somebody might
(47:10):
as stereotypical as it sounds, send some goons your way,
or practice some sort of intimidation tactic. Well, actually, a
judge who conducted a an investigation in the Frankie case
at that time called me at one point and said,
we received a threat, an anonymous threat against your life.
(47:32):
And I said, well, who's it from? And he said,
I said anonymous? Uh. I said, well, wh I did
tell me? He said, well, I that's what I had
to do. And I said, thank you very much. But
it's nothing that you could think too much about. In fact,
I I never had, hardly ever had a firsthand information
(47:55):
that would have made me dangerous to people. I was
just a journalist. Kevin was the one who was uh
most in danger because he was the one who was
really driving the moral force behind the resistance on on
this thing, the brother of the murdered man trying to
get get answers to his brother's murder. But you know,
(48:16):
I've received threats now and again. Uh, and uh, you
know it's I guess the best advice I ever got
on those is that from Bob Adams, who was head
of the detective agency I worked for in Miami. I
got a threat back then. I went in and said
(48:37):
Bob um and told him about it, and he said, oh,
don't worry about the ones you hear. O. Yeah, I
know that's I can see that. Well, so then what
does your home security situation look like? Phil Oh? I
I used to have alarms. I'm living on the coast.
Now if they want to get me, no, I'm I'm uh,
(49:01):
I don't think anyone's out together. Well. Uh, that is,
first off, obviously fantastic to hear, because I think, you know,
sometimes people are pre frightened or pre intimidated to dive
into stories like that because they they have they have
(49:22):
a fear that outweighs their tenacity. And folks listening, we
hope you understand. This is just a taste of the
show Murder and Oregon, which I believe is available in
its entirety and that can benge the entire twelve episode
series on Apple Podcasts or the I Heart Radio app
(49:43):
or wherever you get podcasts, uh, and you know it's
just just to to to that point you made Ben.
It's funny with Phil and I also work together. We
met working on Happy Faith. Whire's another series you can
binge in its entirety about the daughter of a Pacific
Northwest long haul truck driver UH and serial killer and
rapists by the name of Hunter jesperson who fill Um
reported on, and actually he reached out to Phil's newspaper
(50:05):
and then Phil coined the name Happy Face Killer, and
that's where we met Um and found out about this
story about Michael Frankie. But I had a very distinct
feeling late in the game and production on Happy Face
about you know, Keith Jess person is alive and in prison,
and we all know the kind of cult of personality
that serial killers are and the kind of potential followers
(50:26):
they attract. It occurred to me in production, my name's
all over this thing. Am I gonna start getting threats?
You know, if people are gonna come like stalk me
and my family at my house. And I had that momentary,
you know, fear, and then just kind of push it
away and realized, like, no, we're doing interesting work. You
have to kind of be a little bit. I'm not
saying I'm fearless, but you do have to kind of
(50:47):
throw caution to the winds sometimes and and really dive
in with this stuff. And I know all three of
us here have we've worked on shows like that and
just this show in general. We talk about things that
could potentially make us targets for crazed individuals of some
striper and others. So, UM, we're with you there, Phil,
and you definitely have to kind of shove that stuff
into the back of your mind and just keep pushing forward. Um. Yeah,
(51:13):
I didn't have anything intelligence to say well that. Uh,
you have uh many many brilliant works out there for
people who would like to learn more about Phil Stanford's
work and his research. Again, we recommend Portland's Confidential. Uh.
There's also White House, Call Girl. Uh. There's also a
(51:34):
collection columns from The Oregonian called do You Know how
Much a Light Year? Is? And Phil I was surprised
to note that there's also uh graphic novel City of Roses. Yeah, yeah,
that was fun did it with dark Horse Comics, great
artists and uh it's the story of corruption and uh
(51:57):
in Portland in the seventies when the nark Addis cops
were uh going wild. Uh uh. I later I did
the graphic novel while I was getting up the uh
steam to write the book, which had to be documented
a good deal more and it was very difficult to
(52:19):
do because no one wanted to talk. And that book
is called Rose City Vice. It's dirty cops and dirty
robbers Portland in the seventies. I am going to get
that graphic novel as soon as we finish this episode,
which is which is ending right now. That's right. Uh
So the award winning author investigative journalists, the mind behind
(52:40):
our podcast Murder in Oregon, Phil Stanford, Phil, thank you
so much for your time. Uh and Phil, where can people?
Where can people go to learn more about your work
or to find some of your publications? Okay, well, Amazon
is the easiest way to do it. All the books
are available on Amazon as far as I know, and
(53:02):
um Wikipedia, Yeah, and don't forget you can check out
Murdering Oregon and its entirety available now wherever you get podcasts.
And also Happy Face where Phil is featured pretty regularly
on that one. But but Murdering Oregan really is Phil's
kind of brain child, and it's been a pleasure working
with you, and I do believe we've got some exciting
(53:23):
things up our sleeves for the future. Phil. But thanks
a million for coming on Stuff they Don't Want You
to Know, my friend, Okay, it's been great, Thanks very much.
And you can also find us on the internet. This
concludes our episode, but not our show. Find Stuff they
Don't Want You to Know on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
We especially like to recommend our Facebook community group Here's
where it gets Crazy, where you get to hang out
(53:45):
with our favorite part of the show, your fellow listeners.
M h h. Stuff they Don't Want You to Know
(54:08):
is a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works.
For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
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