Confessions of a Lie Detector: years of theft, sex, and murder

by Jim Wygant

  A few days later Patrick Francke released a copy of the autopsy report to the press. It turned out that Stanford’s claim about a blow to the head was wrong, like so much else of what he wrote. The report detailed scratches and abrasions near the eyes, but the medical examiner concluded they were likely to have been caused by Francke’s glasses when he fell. There had been no blow. Whoever had given Stanford that information had misread the report. Death was caused by a single knife wound to the heart, as previously disclosed. The victim had also suffered a few other cuts to hands and arms, some of them apparently defensive in nature. There had been no mutilation of any kind, contrary to the rumors that Stanford had published months earlier.

  –––

  In August, 1990, the attorneys defending Gable suggested that Francke’s death might be linked with the death of drug dealer Timothy Natividad, shot to death by his girlfriend only two weeks after Francke’s murder. The police found no connection, and the Natividad death had been deemed self-defense.

  In November, 1990, Kevin Francke permanently moved from Florida to Oregon “to pursue his own investigation,” as newspaper columnist Stanford phrased it. Stanford also soon revealed that Kevin’s “new girlfriend” was the woman who had killed Natividad, the drug dealer. She was the mother of Natividad’s six-year-old son and had lived with Natividad during those turbulent years when, as Stanford put it, Natividad was “one of the most important drug dealers in Salem.” Together Kevin and his new girlfriend demanded release to them of Natividad’s notebooks, which they suggested contained drug records that might shed light on the Francke murder. Stanford melodramatically speculated, “...It makes sense that Natividad’s notebooks might have information that would crack this baby wide open.” He took no critical notice of Kevin’s romantic involvement with a woman who had killed her drug dealer boyfriend.

  After Gable’s arrest, most of the press temporarily eased away from the Francke story. There would not be much more to say until the trial began. But in December, as the prosecution and defense continued with their preparations, columnist Stanford gloated over the usual difficulties experienced by any prosecutor in preparation of a major case. Stanford’s column was inspired by news that NBC’s “Unsolved Mysteries” television show planned to tape a re-enactment of the Francke crime. The newspaper columnist seemed to relish the discomfort that he assumed the D.A. would suffer at the hands of TV producers.

  “Poor Dale Penn,” Stanford began his column facetiously. He went on to say that since the murder “it’s been one screw-up after another.” Stanford again complained that the State Police had committed early to a murder theory he did not accept: an interrupted car prowl. “Of course it didn’t make much sense, but that didn’t seem to stop anyone.” The columnist ridiculed the D.A. for losing one of his material witnesses. She had recanted her testimony, fled the state, and was brought back in custody. To D.A. Penn, the criticism about “screw-ups” must have seemed ironic, in view of all the false rumors and errors that Stanford had rushed to print and had never corrected or acknowledged. Penn, after all, had a murder suspect in custody and was proceeding to trial. And unlike Stanford, he would need to prove his allegations.

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  In January, 1991, another curious subplot began to unfold. Like the McAlister pornography raid a year earlier, this incident had nothing to do with the Francke case except that it involved someone closely associated with one of the principle characters. The story in January of 1991 was about a romance.

  Karen Steele worked for a law firm that had been appointed to defend Gable on a federal charge of ex-convict in possession of a weapon. The federal charge could have led to prosecution as a career criminal, with the threat of a possible life term without parole. The case was not directly related to the separate murder charges, which were filed in state court. Gable pleaded guilty on December 10, 1990, to the weapon charge and avoided the career criminal prosecution. Sentencing was deferred until after the murder trial. During the negotiations leading to the guilty plea, attorney Steele met with her firm’s client on numerous occasions in jail. In the course of those meetings and unknown to any but a few jailers, a romance bloomed between Gable and Steele.

  The 32-year-old, tall, attractive redhead was one year older than the dark-haired, boyishly handsome murder defendant. She had been married for four years. Any possible match between her and Gable surprised most who knew Steele. In the few years that she had worked as a lawyer, Steele’s legal skills had impressed her colleagues. She had been regarded as one of the top attorneys in the Portland public defender’s office before being hired away by a private law firm.

  The story was first reported by a Portland television station, KOIN-TV, on January 2. A reporter had discovered that Steele, who had been an attorney for a little more than three years, was no longer allowed to have direct “contact” visits with her client. She was restricted to using a visiting room with a glass barrier and a phone. Jailers had seen her and Gable holding hands and sitting close together, sometimes for hours.

  Jail records indicated that the last contact visit Steele was allowed to have with Gable, on December 23, lasted for more than five hours. That date was nearly two weeks after Gable pleaded guilty to the charge for which Steele’s firm represented him.

  On January 7, Karen Steele’s law firm withdrew from the federal case. A senior member of the firm said that they had only recently learned of Steele’s “personal relationship with the defendant.” He added, “This relationship commenced on November 1, 1990, and is continuing.” The next day Steele herself presented an affidavit to the court in which she expanded only a little on the circumstances. She said that she had met with Gable between August 1 and November 1, 1990, without incident. On that last date “Mr. Gable handed me a letter that expressed feelings beyond those attendant an attorney-client relationship.” She said she had developed a “deep personal commitment” to Gable.

  Two weeks later a senior member of Steele’s law firm announced that she had left the firm. During that same week her husband of four years filed for divorce and Steele moved out of the house.

  –––

  The “Unsolved Mysteries” television program about the Francke murder aired on NBC in February, 1991, only two weeks before jury selection was to begin.

  TV host Robert Stack introduced his national audience to the theory that Francke had been abducted, taken somewhere and questioned, then returned to his office building and killed. It was the theory endorsed by Francke’s brothers, columnist Phil Stanford, and a reporter for the Salem Statesman-Journal newspaper. In over two years of investigation there had never been one piece of evidence to support it. The show suggested that Francke had been murdered to stop his “top secret” investigation. Some of those interviewed on the TV program talked about a “cover-up.” They had not been dissuaded from that suspicion by the many separate inquiries and the large number of investigators whose integrity would have needed to be compromised to facilitate a “cover-up.”

  District Attorney Dale Penn was angry. He termed the program “irresponsible”. He knew that Francke’s brothers had urged the topic upon the show’s producers and he must have wondered why they would attempt to sabotage the prosecution of the man Penn believed killed their brother. Penn knew he might be facing potential jurors who had been persuaded by a TV show that the defendant before them, Frank Gable, was not guilty. Beyond that, the conspiracy theory had never risen from the level of pure speculation, with no evidence to support it and no identifiable suspects to prosecute.

  –––

  On March 2 the defense attorneys were allowed to review the notebooks of Natividad, the drug dealer whose girlfriend had killed him and then had become intimate with Kevin Francke.

  On March 4, 1991, jury selection began, more than two years after the murder and eleven months after Gable was indicted. No courtroom would accommodate the selection process. Three thousand persons had been ordered to report to the Salem Armory for initial scr
eening. From those were culled the potential jurors, persons who would be able to sit through a final jury selection and trial, expected to last about three months altogether. On April 26, 1991, the jury was sworn and were taken to the grounds of the Oregon State Hospital to view the murder scene.

  Only three days into the trial, Stanford condemned the prosecution’s work, on behalf of Kevin: “...It’s beginning to look like someone put the Keystone Kops up to investigating his brother’s murder.”

  The trial itself was anti-climactic, containing no surprises. The prosecution held to its theory that Francke had been killed after he interrupted Gable in the midst of a car prowl. The news media had already disclosed the likely testimony of the most important witnesses. Several persons with arrest records and histories of methamphetamine use testified against Gable, reporting his admissions to them. The defense countered with their own assortment of underworld characters in an attempt to discredit those called by the prosecution.

  The material witness who had recanted her grand jury testimony was not called by the State. Instead, the defense called her. It was a mistake they must have regretted. On cross-examination the State confronted the witness with statements she’d once made that she had been nearby when Gable murdered Francke. Her later retraction did not help the case for the defense.

  The defense tried to introduce information about the dead Natividad, but the judge refused, ruling it irrelevant so long as no connection could be demonstrated to Francke. Natividad never became an issue.

  After a two-month trial, it took the jury only 18 hours over two days to reach a conclusion. They found the defendant guilty on all of the several counts of murder. In other words, the jury held that Gable was guilty by all of the legal theories of murder charged by the D.A. As Gable was leaving the courtroom he called to reporters that he had been “dump-trucked” by his attorneys.

  All of the hours that the 12-person jury had spent listening to evidence apparently meant nothing to columnist Stanford. On the day after the verdict he attempted to discredit it. He said that the state’s “entire case rested on the testimony of one drug dealer, Shorty Harden. ...On the witness stand, Harden quickly revealed himself as the low-life liar that he was.” Stanford went on to cite testimony that he thought should have been presented but was not. He suggested unethical conduct by the prosecution: “According to some, prosecutors have an obligation to make the jury aware of information like this. Presumably that’s what our court system is about: to arrive at some measure of truth, not just an up-or-down verdict.” At best this was a naive concept of the criminal justice system, one in which the prosecution also presented the defense. It was clearly a case of sour grapes. Not even the defense attorneys ventured to make any similar complaint about the D.A.

  In that same issue of The Oregonian, the two news reporters who had followed the case since its beginnings wrote a comprehensive summary in which they pointed out how Stanford had pursued his own personal fantasies. They reminded their readers that allegations of corruption raised by Stanford and others had produced a separate investigation of the Corrections Division that cost $180,000 and found no link to the Francke murder. The reporters, perhaps glad for the chance to finally dissociate themselves from the newspaper’s gossip columnist, methodically dismantled each of his conspiracy theories, which had been thoroughly discredited by the jury verdict and by evidence at the trial that contradicted much of what Stanford had written.

  Stanford went on his merry way. In the following week he was back writing about one of his other favorite topics, flying saucers.

  –––

  Because of a possible death penalty, the trial required a separate penalty phase, in which testimony would be taken about Gable’s character. Only the jury could impose the death penalty, and it had to be a unanimous decision.

  The day before that began, Karen Steele, the attorney who had once defended Gable, obtained a marriage license. She said she intended to marry Gable.

  The press immediately talked to the administrator of the County Jail, where Gable was still being held. The administrator flatly rejected any wedding in his facility. He said it would create too much of a security risk. The chaplain at the State Penitentiary did not offer any greater hope. He said that there was a long waiting list of wedding requests and that Gable, who had not yet been sent to the penitentiary, was not on the list.

  Steele, undeterred, continued to show up in court every day, always sitting in the same place so Gable would know where to look for her. It was during the penalty phase that she heard the testimony of Gable’s ex-wife. That woman, a former nurse, described beatings that left her bruised and with broken bones. She told how a raging Gable had once ripped out stitches she had needed to repair an earlier injury by him.

  Eight days after the penalty proceeding began, Gable and Steele staged their own impromptu wedding. On July 10, 1991, Gable returned from a court recess and seated himself at the defense table. The judge had not yet re-entered the court room. Gable turned so that he faced toward the Rev. R.F. “Bob” Biggs, a mail order minister of the Universal Life Church who was authorized to conduct legally binding marriages in Oregon. Biggs sat beside Karen Steele in the third row, her usual place. In a 10-second ceremony Biggs asked Steele and Gable if each took the other as spouse. Each of them answered “yes”. He declared them married.

  One of the two official witnesses to the wedding was a reporter from the Salem Statesman-Journal newspaper, Stephen P. Jackson. Like Stanford he had been a strong and constant advocate of the conspiracy theory. He too could not resist making himself a part of the story he was supposed to be covering.

  The next day the jury began deliberating about the penalty. They could recommend life with a possibility of parole, life without any parole, or death. After seven hours they sent a note to the judge, asking if a life sentence without possibility of parole really meant that. The judge assured them that it did. They immediately agreed on that penalty. Two of the jurors had wanted the death penalty. With the judge’s assurance that Gable would never be freed, those two made the decision unanimous for life imprisonment with no parole. When the penalty was announced in the courtroom, Gable’s eyes sought out his wife of one day. He winked at her.

  The guilty verdict and severe sentence surprised many of those who had been following the case for two years on television and in the press. They had been led to believe that the case was weak and that a dark conspiracy was the likely explanation for the murder. The jurors, who sat through all of the actual testimony, complained about the media coverage, saying that it bore little resemblance to what they had seen and heard day after day in court.

  Less than two weeks later, The Oregonian published a remarkable commentary. It was the lead article in the editorial section of the Sunday paper. It was by reporters John Snell and Phil Manzano, the two who had provided the news coverage of the story for their paper from the beginning. They had previously hinted in their stories that they were embarrassed by what appeared in Phil Stanford’s columns elsewhere in their own newspaper. Now that the verdict was in, they let go with both barrels.

  They began by defining “the worst instincts in our trade: There is an urge among journalists sometimes to print or broadcast the story that reads or sounds the best, rather than the one that most closely reflects the truth.” They went on, “At our own newspaper, articles about conspiracy and corruption and the ineptness of the police investigation into Francke’s death helped put Phil Stanford, a columnist for The Oregonian, in the forefront. Based upon the flimsiest of evidence, and frequently no evidence at all, Stanford suggested in his earliest columns that Francke was the victim of a plot by everyone from the Mexican mafia to the highest levels of state government.”

  This exercise in media self-criticism must not have been entirely satisfying to those police investigators and prosecutors who spent more than two years working on an extremely difficult case. The same newspaper that had let Stanford run unrestrained was now allowing tw
o of its most honorable reporters to complain. It was as though the publisher had decided that all of the damage done by printing Stanford’s nonsense could be undone by one editorial.

  That the editorial got printed at all may be attributable to its broad sweep, beyond Stanford. The authors allowed that “Stanford got the ball rolling on sensational media coverage....” But television news was also a target for their criticism. So was the Salem Statesman-Journal newspaper. The two Oregonian reporters said that the Statesman-Journal “virtually ignored the bulk of the State’s evidence against Gable and instead parroted the efforts of his lawyers to set him free.” They reminded their readers that Stephen Jackson, the Statesman-Journal’s Francke reporter, had appeared on the “Unsolved Mysteries” television program as an advocate of a conspiracy theory. He had also served as one of the two official witnesses for the quickie wedding of Karen Steele and the defendant.

  –––

  The costs to the public could only be approximated. Shortly after the sentence had been passed, defense costs alone were estimated at $850,000 and still rising. The Oregon State Police, which had from six to thirty men detailed to the investigation for more than two years, said that their expenses were over one million dollars, mostly in salaries and overtime pay. No one had yet begun to calculate costs incurred by the District Attorney’s office and the court. The earlier corruption investigation of the Corrections Division had already been reported as $180,000. By the most conservative estimates the case cost the taxpayers of Oregon more than two million dollars.

  In December, 1991, a disciplinary panel for the Oregon State Bar recommended that former assistant Attorney General Scott McAlister be given a public reprimand. McAlister, the legal counsel to the Department of Corrections until shortly before Michael Francke’s murder, had earlier pleaded guilty in Utah to a misdemeanor charge of giving a girlfriend some pornographic films that he had retrieved from trial evidence. He left his government job there and moved to another state.