by Jim Wygant
When it came time to place the polygraph attachments on Cooperman, I saw my vulnerability increase. Reaching around his chest to fasten respiration monitors, I had to stand off balance with my face only inches from his. If that had inspired this obviously unstable man to strike, I would have been at his mercy.
I completed the test without incident, and without Cooperman ever relaxing his hateful vigilance. Although my practice is to evaluate charts in the presence of the person tested and to tell them results before I leave, I did not do that with Cooperman. I could see already, even without a detailed analysis of the charts, that he had flunked. I did not know how he would respond to that news, and I did not want to find out while I was still locked in a small room with him.
I phoned his attorney later that day and told him the test results. He said he was not surprised. I also told him that I thought his client appeared to be a truly dangerous person. He agreed. He had been troubled by his own encounter with the client.
This man had not killed anyone that I knew of. Other men who had cut throats or bashed in skulls did not worry me as Cooperman did. Those others may have been disgusting or pathetic, but there was something at least marginally rational and predictable about their acts. They represented a kind of failure of moral development that fell within the realm of human understanding. They were losers — mostly weak, impulsive persons who preyed upon acquaintances and acted in accordance with some obvious motive, however shabby it might be. Cooperman projected indiscriminate hate and violence, not blunted by any sense of self-preservation. If I allow that he was evil, I would have to characterize the others as merely inadequate by comparison. The difference was that great.
There is not much more to tell about him. And maybe the point of this story is only that people like him really do exist. Eventually he was sentenced to a term in jail for what he had done, but it was almost certain that he would be free again someday.
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Brian Shamby was a 23-year-old intelligent white male with a couple of years of college education, not your average criminal. He was on probation for misdemeanor sexual abuse. He had never been convicted of a felony, and yet I feared what he might do. I saw him three times over a period of 29 months. From our first encounter I expected that someday I would read in a newspaper that he had abducted a woman, sexually assaulted her, and murdered her. In the years that have passed since I first met him I have not learned that he has done anything that terrible. Maybe it will never happen. But Brian is no longer on probation. He is no more accountable to any authority than any other average citizen. He is free to go where he wants, and to do what he wants, until there is evidence that he has committed another crime.
Brian’s offense had been grabbing the breast of a woman who was jogging. He approached her suddenly, fondled her breast through her halter top, then tried to escape on a bicycle. He was caught, convicted, and placed on probation. The conditions included therapy and periodic polygraph examinations to see if he had re-offended.
His probation officer knew that Brian had exposed his penis in a shopping mall when he was 18. Brian also remained a suspect in a series of unresolved “gropes” in another city two years earlier. Someone with a bicycle had jumped from bushes and fondled women’s breasts. There was no positive identification, so the case remained unresolved. Brian had lived in that city at the time and was the prime suspect, but without someone to identify him there was no way to charge him.
I met Brian after another examiner had tested him once and refused to see him again. The probation officer told me that Brian was sullen and uncommunicative, and generally difficult to deal with. He also told me that he had visited Brian’s apartment unannounced and found it trashed, as though some one had experienced an uncontrolled rage. Brian had refused to offer any explanation.
I found Brian to be a classic example of what psychologists call a “flat affect.” He spoke very little, and when he did it was in a monotone. His expression never changed. His face remained blank, no anger, no humor, nothing. And yet by his own self-description he was struggling to control his sexual desires and his rage.
I would be testing him on his conduct since the previous polygraph examination, a period of several months. His probation required him to undergo periodic examinations in an attempt to discover any new offenses. I urged Brian before the test to tell me anything that he thought might interfere with his ability to answer the test questions. He readily admitted that he had brushed his hand against the buttocks of women in a shopping mall and had touched women he said backed into him on buses. He also admitted to masturbating near the front window of his apartment, but explained that he did it only when he was certain no one would notice. He made these admissions in the same dry manner of someone reading from a shopping list. I tested him to see if he had failed to disclose any sexual conduct that was illegal. He passed the test.
I generally recommend to probation officers that periodic tests be given somewhere between six and twelve months apart. That is long enough to avoid having a client become habituated to similar tests and short enough to permit him a clear memory of his conduct. Many men on probation for sex offenses are remarkably faithful about scheduling their own tests or reminding their probation officers that they might be due. Brian was not that type. It was over a year before I saw him again. He came in then because he had been ordered to by his probation officer.
For that second test Brian brought with him a two page handwritten list of conduct that he thought might be in violation of the terms of his probation. He had given a copy of the same list to his probation officer. It included bumping into women, viewing films in sex shops, watching nude dancing in bars, paying a masseuse to come to his apartment, and masturbating in the front window of his apartment when he claimed no one would notice. As overwhelming as the list was, I had concerns that it was incomplete.
“What about the masseuse?” I asked. “Did she do anything sexual?” He admitted that he had paid her to masturbate him. I asked if there was anything else that was not on the list. He said there had been a girl in shorts. He felt a strong sexual attraction toward her. He followed her. She apparently became aware of that and stopped abruptly. He walked on by.
In a test that asked about any undisclosed sexual offense since his last polygraph examination, Brian again passed.
I had taken detailed notes of his admissions. I incorporated all of them into my report, and then I phoned the probation officer. I told him that I thought Brian was dangerous. My fear was that if Brian lost control and sexually assaulted a woman, he might feel a powerful need to also kill her. He would probably resent a woman he believed had caused him to lose control, and he would regard her as the likely source of another sex offense conviction. That might mean a jail sentence – for someone who could barely tolerate probation. With Brian’s degree of latent rage, murder could easily result. The probation officer told me that he had the same fear.
But Brian’s case posed a painful dilemma. His admissions were probably not serious enough to get a judge to revoke the probation. Even if that happened, the original crime was only a misdemeanor. If Brian’s probation were revoked he would serve less than one year in jail and then be discharged without any subsequent supervision. At least the term of probation would last longer than the jail sentence and would keep him under some modest degree of surveillance.
Again more than a year passed before Brian’s next examination. Once more, it was the insistence of his probation officer that finally got him into my office. In response to my questions, he told me that he thought he was having difficulty controlling his sexual impulses. I asked him to estimate his chance of re-offending. He guessed about a five per cent chance.
The admissions seemed to me more serious than before. There was the usual business about brushing his hand against women’s buttocks, this time in elevators. He continued to frequent sex shops and to masturbate in their viewing booths. He was going to bars with nude dancing about twice per month (I as
sumed that was a conservative estimate). He had also masturbated in the restroom of a movie theater and on a school playground at night. These were new activities. And he had approached a woman as they were both leaving a movie.
“I would like to use you,” he told her.
“Excuse me?” she replied.
He said “Never mind” and walked away.
His behavior had escalated to a sexual declaration to a stranger. He had risked rejection and it had happened. Sitting before me as sullen as ever, he offered no clues to his regard for this experience.
His test produced inconclusive results, meaning that it was not possible to tell whether he was concealing something. I asked if he had any idea why the test might be inconclusive. He asked back, still in that same flat tone, “could it be that I’m seething with resentment?” I suggested that since the test was essentially the same as the previous two, there was no reason for him to feel any worse about it or for his resentment to interfere to any greater extent. The other two tests had produced definite results of truthfulness. He said that he was more resentful and believed that he should not have to take any more tests. He accused me of hostility toward him. That truly surprised me. For the sake of obtaining accurate test results I had taken extraordinary care to appear neutral and to avoid any suggestion of personal judgment. He told me “your tone is accusatory at times.”
I did not think he was correct about that, but that did not matter. If he perceived me as hostile toward him, even if he were wrong about that, it could interfere with his examination. When I spoke with his probation officer I told him that I could not do any more tests of Brian. I gave him the name of another examiner. The probation officer was not surprised at my refusal to see Brian any more. He revealed that after my second test the psychologist treating Brian had resigned from the case. He thought he had been making progress until he had gotten a copy of my report with all of Brian’s admissions.
I know that Brian did take another test from the examiner I recommended. That examiner experienced the same extreme difficulties in dealing with Brian that everyone else had. Trying to talk to Brian was like talking to a wall. But the test got done, and there were more of the same kinds of admissions.
This is a story without an end. Nothing happened to Brian. There was nothing the “system” could do to him or for him that had not already been tried. Everyone who met him considered him a threat, but the threat remained dormant. Society cannot impose sanctions on one of its members based upon what we think he might do. We must wait to see if he ever acts, and hope that he will not. Brian did nothing serious enough to get himself arrested. Although he clearly suffered from profound mental and emotional problems, he was not delusional and was not even close to being disturbed enough for mental commitment. The term of his probation expired and he was discharged from all supervision. I imagine that he immediately dropped any therapy, which he had always resented. His condition seemed to be deteriorating when I last saw him. His story remains unfinished.
13. The Francke Case
Michael Francke (pronounced frank-ee) was the head of the Oregon Department of Corrections [real names are used in this chapter]. When he was murdered outside his office, a bizarre series of events began to unfold. The tale rivals the most melodramatic, implausible plot that a second-rate producer might propose for a low-budget television series. For more than two years, hardly a month passed without a new episode. The case became the most expensive criminal prosecution in Oregon’s history. It is a stunning example of the effects of media speculation and irresponsible journalism. Numerous polygraph examinations were conducted during the course of the investigation, but they ultimately added little to what other evidence already indicated.
The characters had a comic book quality. There was a Florida psychic; relatives of the victim who insisted that the murder was the consequence of a dark political conspiracy; an irresponsible newspaper columnist who exploited ludicrous rumors and relied upon self-serving tales from prison inmates; a former assistant attorney general caught with pornographic movies; and a defense attorney who married her client. At the climax, just before the trial began, the TV show “Unsolved Mysteries” suggested to its nationwide audience that the man about to be tried for the murder of Michael Francke was not the real killer. Controversy remains in some stale Internet postings by those who continue to support a conspiracy theory and assert that the convicted killer was really innocent.
Police and prosecutors characterized the murder as a simple robbery gone bad, a crime of opportunity. That was the State’s theory from the beginning of the investigation, and they proved it in a trial that lasted three months. Francke’s brothers, Kevin and Patrick, did not accept that theory. They argued that Michael was a crusader who had undertaken an effort to eliminate corruption from the Oregon Department of Corrections, which runs the State’s prisons. They insisted that Michael’s murder could not possibly be a routine street crime. It had to be part of a political conspiracy to silence him.
The brothers’ motivation to resist the course taken by the investigation is easy to understand. They seemed determined to make a hero of their dead brother. Who can fault that? But compared to them, the motives of newspaper columnist Phil Stanford appear to have been more self-serving. As he detailed the latest rumors week after week, he found his readership growing. Rather than informing investigators of new information he received, he published it without corroboration and consequently insinuated himself into the investigation.
Brother Kevin often reached the public through Stanford, a gossip columnist for The Oregonian, the state’s largest newspaper. The forum that Stanford provided for Kevin served two purposes: it increased Stanford’s readership and it encouraged Kevin to generate more material for future columns. Without Stanford as a public advocate, Kevin’s refusal to accept the conclusions of the official investigation might have lapsed. Instead, Stanford’s columns encouraged Kevin to reject the prosecution’s case, to proclaim the innocence of the defendant, and eventually to befriend the man convicted of killing Michael Francke.
Stanford’s response to criticism or official resistance to his inquiries was swift, personal, and vicious. Incredibly, in one column he was so angry at the District Attorney for not telling him more that he printed every rumor he knew of, including the totally erroneous claim that the victim’s body had been sexually mutilated. Stanford did not even suggest that this rumor might be wrong. The next day in Portland I heard people on the street asking each other, “Did you see in the paper that Francke was sexually mutilated?”
When Stanford found that he had an audience, he used his column relentlessly, attacking the District Attorney, the Attorney General (who was not involved in the investigation but had criticized publication of blatant rumors), and anyone else involved in an official capacity in trying to solve the murder.
This was the same columnist who shortly after the murder, and before he began to focus all of his energies in that direction, wrote a piece in support of a family who said they had seen a flying saucer. Stanford had not yet discovered his bigger audience.
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The murder case began in the early morning of Jan. 18, 1989, with the discovery of the victim’s body by a security guard. Michael Francke, the director of the Oregon Department of Corrections, had collapsed outside an exterior door that led into his office building. He had been stabbed once through the heart and had died within minutes of receiving the wound.
Hours earlier, at about 7 p.m. on Jan. 17, members of the staff who were leaving had found the driver’s door of Francke’s car standing open. They closed the door and went back into the building to look for him. They called his beeper number without results. They did not realize that the beeper was still on Francke’s body, which lay a short distance away. He had gotten as far as a secluded doorway near the main entrance to the building. He had broken a pane of glass in the locked door in an effort to get in, but had collapsed before being able to do anything more.
/> There were only four possible witnesses, none of them very helpful. Three residents of the state mental hospital said they had seen a man running away. They did not recognize him. They could only describe him as having dark hair. The fourth witness, a state employee, said he had seen two men standing close together at a car that was determined later to be Francke’s. When the men parted one ran away and the other walked slowly toward the building. The witness did not regard the situation as alarming or unusual at the time. He did nothing. Later he told police that he did not recognize either man.
Francke himself was described by those who knew him as “soft spoken.” He had recently separated from his wife, who had moved to California. Their relationship reportedly remained amicable.
He was 42 years old, a big man, six-foot three inches tall, a little over 200 pounds. His brothers suggested that his size supported their theory that he could only have been killed by someone he knew and trusted, rather than a random car prowler. They thought he was still wearing his Rolex watch when found, which meant to them that robbery had not been the motive. This speculation, endorsed by newspaper gossip columnist Phil Stanford, was one of his many errors. The dead man had actually been wearing a cheap digital watch.
The victim was a lawyer. He had been appointed to his job by the Oregon governor less than two years earlier. He came from a similar job in New Mexico. Francke’s brothers and newspaper columnist Stanford characterized the victim as someone who worked in a dangerous job, in which every convicted felon in the state was his enemy. In fact, Francke’s office was not located at a correctional facility. It was on the grounds of the State Mental Hospital, a few miles away from the state penitentiary. As a high level bureaucrat, Francke’s face and name were probably unknown to nearly all prison inmates. His most urgent task at the time of his murder was defense of his department’s budget before the state legislature. The politicians had complained about cost overruns in construction of new prison facilities.