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

by Jim Wygant

  Attorney Karen Steele changed her name to Gable and moved her law practice to Salem, near the state penitentiary where her husband was being held. In 1997 she divorced him. Kevin Francke, brother of the victim, stayed on in Oregon, working occasionally as an investigator and helping to maintain a web site which two decades after Michael Francke’s murder still advocates freeing Frank Gable. Kevin married his girlfriend, the woman who had killed her drug dealer boyfriend.

  Columnist Phil Stanford left The Oregonian. In 1995, Stanford’s hopes for a movie, first expressed during the investigation, were finally realized with the release of “Without Evidence,” which listed Stanford as co-writer. The director, who was also the other writer, had never before directed a commercial film. The story was presented from brother Kevin’s point of view and relied upon the discredited conspiracy theory. Judging from viewer’s scores on internet movie rating services, the film was not well received or widely distributed. Angelina Jolie had a small part, and one can only wonder why. A few years later Stanford briefly reappeared as a columnist for a free weekly paper in Portland. He quickly resurrected his old theories about the Francke case, still insisting that Gable was innocent.

  In 2005, 16 years after Francke’s murder, the continuing interest in it was reflected in yet another story in The Oregonian by a different set of reporters. The headline declared, “Facts Dispute Francke Conspiracy.” After reviewing thousands of pages of documents and re-interviewing most of the surviving principles, the reporters found no support for any murder theory other than the one established in court.

  14. Prisoner Schemes

  Most polygraph work in the Francke case was done by police examiners testing suspects, but a few additional examinations were done by private examiners on people who claimed to be witnesses. I conducted two of those. Both of the men I examined were prisoners. Both knew about the Francke case from the media and from the rumors that ran rampant among the inmates of Oregon’s jails and prisons, rumors fed by an attentive press. Some prisoners had been elevated already to the status of news sources. It was a moment of fame that nearly every man behind bars would relish. There was also the possibility of a more lasting reward. A convincing story might lead to special consideration regarding incarceration. Prisoners dreamed of early parole, dismissal of pending charges, transfer to a more comfortable facility, or any other kind of deal they might make with the beleaguered Francke investigators in exchange for information.

  The men I tested had nothing to lose by lying, like most of the other prison “informants” who were already being quoted by the press. In an investigative climate less beset by media speculation, elaborate conspiracy theories, and bizarre rumors, simple interrogation of each of these men might have disposed of their stories and saved time and money. But the murder investigators had become like doctors who were afraid of being sued for something neglected. In that climate, everything was checked, regardless of how implausible it first appeared.

  ––––

  Lyle Pettygrove was serving a long term in the Oregon State Penitentiary for rape and armed robbery. He had a previous conviction for manslaughter. He had already been at the pen for ten years when I met him. He was 42 years old and looked at least ten years older. My other Francke client, Doug Massingen, had only recently been convicted of murder and was still in a county jail, only days away from transfer to the penitentiary where he would begin serving a life sentence. He was 31 but still retained a boyish arrogance and aura of invulnerability.

  I saw them in September, 1989. Michael Francke, the head of the Oregon Department of Corrections, had been murdered outside his Salem office building eight months earlier. No one had been arrested yet. For a while the police had focused on parolee John Crouse, whom they said gave conflicting stories, sometimes claiming knowledge of the murder and at other times claiming ignorance. By September the police had consigned Crouse to the category of exhausted leads. They had lost interest in him, even though his name did occasionally reappear in the press.

  It was the enigmatic John Crouse that prison inmate Lyle Pettygrove wanted to talk about, even if it was a little late in the game. Pettygrove wanted to prove that he had valuable information to trade about Crouse. To do that, he needed to pass a polygraph examination.

  Pettygrove submitted a list of 39 questions to his attorney, block printed on the lined stationery that the prison furnished to inmates. He wanted his polygraph test to consist of exactly those questions. He wanted to be asked if Crouse had described the murder, even drawing a map in the cinders of the prison exercise track. There were also questions to establish that Crouse had claimed knowledge of the murder weapon, which had never been found. Mixed in with these relatively important considerations, were an assortment of trivial details, such as “When John Crouse talked to you was he very extra depressed?” and “Did he tell you about a Buick?”

  Pettygrove’s lawyer forwarded the list of 39 questions to me. Ordinarily I would have spoken with the lawyer by phone about the impossibility of Pettygrove’s proposed test. But like the Francke investigators, I felt the need to create a precise record of what I did, in case any of it ever became a topic for the media. Since it would have been inappropriate for me to correspond directly with Pettygrove while he was represented by an attorney, I sent the lawyer a letter, knowing he would forward a copy to his client. I wrote, “It would be impossible for any examiner to conduct a valid examination using those questions and I will not attempt that.” I detailed my objections to the questions. “There are too many of them, many are imprecise, many are of no consequence, and most are in a form unsuitable for polygraph testing.”

  My stern tone reflected my impatience with sensationalized media coverage of the Francke investigation. I and others believed that the media’s unrestrained and uncritical acceptance of virtually any claim encouraged lies and mistakes. I concluded my letter by saying, “I will undertake this effort only within the constraints of standard procedures. To do otherwise with such a grave issue would be, at the very least, a waste of time.”

  Pettygrove agreed to my terms. I arranged with the superintendent’s office at the State’s maximum security penitentiary to test Pettygrove inside the walls.

  I have done many examinations inside a score of jails and prisons. Some of the facilities are new, some are old, like the Oregon State Penitentiary. In all of them the heavy doors clank behind you with the same solid finality, a signal that there is no going back except with someone else’s consent. They are all places that men cannot leave by choice, and that is the overriding atmosphere, not how fresh the paint is or how new the bunks are.

  At the Oregon State Penitentiary an isolated tower like a small lighthouse oversees the entrance. A guard at the top can scan the landscaped grounds outside the prison walls and can speak by intercom to the drivers of all approaching cars. The metallic voice of the intercom directed me to park next to the nearest exterior wall. Above me, on the corners of the high wall, were the familiar turrets manned by guards with rifles. I went inside and identified myself at the main reception desk. They already had the paperwork that authorized my visit. I waited a few minutes for my escort to arrive, a prison guard. We went through the usual security procedures, including a search through my equipment and then my own separate passage through the metal detector. With that completed, I followed the guard down a ramp to the turnkey’s station, the main entrance into the secured area of the prison. All such entrances and exits into jails and prisons consist of what jailers call a “sally port”. Ironically the name is taken from the double gated entrances into medieval castles, intended to keep people out rather than in. The two gates or doors enclose a small area where those passing through must wait for the first door to close completely behind them before the second door is opened.

  Within the sally port at the state prison, between the two heavily barred doors, I completed a few routine procedures before the second door was opened. I surrendered my driver’s license and was given a visitor’
s badge. The exchange was conducted through a small gap in the heavily shielded cage of the turnkey, who was locked away from everyone entering and leaving the secured area of the prison. I was also directed to stick my forearm through the gap into the turnkey’s domain. I watched him imprint the back of my hand with a rubber stamp. There was no visible image where he had pressed the stamp. The ink was a kind that would only be revealed under black light. If I tried to leave later without the stamp on my hand I would not get beyond the sally port.

  The guard took me to the parole board office, where I was left alone in a small room with inmate Lyle Pettygrove.

  Pettygrove had spent most of his adult life locked up, and his face had the tired look of someone whose life behind the walls had conditioned him to constant vigilance and suspicion. His expression was flat, humorless, guarded. He had completed one polygraph examination years earlier on an unrelated issue. He had also begun a test only recently on the same matter on which I was to test him. That test was attempted by an examiner for the Oregon State Police. Pettygrove’s distrust of the police examiner had escalated to such an extent during their brief time together that Pettygrove refused to complete the test.

  Pettygrove told me that John Crouse had drawn a diagram in the cinder track at the penitentiary, pointing out where he said Francke had been stabbed. Crouse also supposedly talked about a fake alibi to establish that he was in Tennessee when the murder happened. And, according to Pettygrove, Crouse claimed to have beaten the polygraph test about Francke that he’d been given by the police.

  I questioned Pettygrove carefully, and he backed away from his initial assertions. He admitted that Crouse never actually said he had been involved in the Francke murder. When I suggested a test question that asked if Crouse claimed to have “beaten” his polygraph test, Pettygrove also backed off from that assertion. He said that Crouse had only claimed to be able to beat any polygraph test, a common boast by jail and prison inmates, many of whom have failed a polygraph test at some point in their criminal careers and won’t admit it to other prisoners.

  When I proposed a test question that asked if Crouse had drawn a diagram, Pettygrove requested that I include “in the dirt.” When I made that change and read it back to him, he hesitated as though harboring some lingering uncertainty.

  I constructed a standard ten-question test and carefully discussed the wording of each question with Pettygrove before we began. Three of the questions would ask directly about the issues. They were:

  Did Crouse draw you a diagram in the dirt showing where he said Francke was stabbed?

  Did Crouse tell you he had arranged for a phony alibi in Tennessee for the Francke case?

  After his Francke test, did Crouse tell you he could beat any polygraph?

  Pettygrove answered “yes” to those three questions. I went through all ten test questions three separate times, while Pettygrove answered and the instrument recorded his reactions. The charts showed strong and consistent reactions that indicated lying. I told Pettygrove the results. He had no explanation. He said he didn’t know why he had done badly. He asked about taking another test, which I discouraged. His family had paid for this test. There was no point in wasting any more of their money. I packed up, returned Pettygrove to a guard, and made my way back out of the prison.

  Whether Pettygrove had made up everything he claimed, or only part of it, made no difference in the test results. Any polygraph test requires that the person answering the questions be completely truthful. I suspected that Pettygrove’s claims were probably a combination of truth, lies, exaggerations, and rumors that Pettygrove had picked up from others in the penitentiary. There was enough deceit to cause him to fail the test and to make his information worthless. There was no way to know how much of it, if any, was truthful.

  ––––

  I saw Doug Massingen only three days later. About a week earlier he had been convicted of a particularly brutal murder. He was awaiting sentencing, which would definitely mean a trip to the penitentiary. The only variable was the length of imprisonment. Massingen hoped to get some favorable recommendation included in his sentence, based upon the contribution he intended to make to the Francke investigation.

  He said he had talked with someone named Tony Boult. Massingen claimed that Boult admitted being present at the murder of Michael Francke. Both Boult and Massingen were deeply involved in the use and sale of methamphetamine, known on the street as “crank.” They both had arrest records, and neither of them had much credibility.

  I conducted my test in the basement of an old gingerbread court house, in a back room of the Sheriff’s Office, with an armed guard posted outside the door. Although most of my work is done exclusively for defense attorneys, this test was a cooperative arrangement between the defense attorney and the District Attorney who was responsible for the Francke investigation. The county where we were doing the test was not even in the Francke prosecutor’s jurisdiction, but a few phone calls had arranged for a test that all parties agreed to keep secret. Nobody wanted the press to know about Massingen’s claims until it could be established how reliable they were. The media had already demonstrated an inclination to print erroneous information and blind speculation, which only made the work of the investigators more difficult.

  Although Massingen was 31 years old at that time, he had the cocky attitude of a delinquent teenager. His previous sentences had been served in county jails. He had never done any hard time in the state prison system. He swaggered arrogantly and tried to project a “don’t care” attitude, but his offer to talk about Tony Boult was clearly motivated by his desire to stay away from the pen for as long as possible and to shorten any unavoidable stay there.

  I talked briefly with him about the murder for which he had just been convicted. He expressed no remorse, except to the extent that he had been deprived of his own freedom. He had lured a drug dealer to a meeting with the promise of buying drugs. He had then slipped behind the unwary drug dealer and deftly cut his throat. When the drug dealer did not die fast enough, Massingen also shot him. The motive had been simple robbery. My polygraph test of Massingen would have nothing to do with that crime, which had been resolved by his recent conviction. We would focus on Massingen’s claims about the murder of Michael Francke, head of the Oregon Department of Corrections.

  Massingen had told his attorney that Tony Boult admitted participating in the Francke murder. There had supposedly been a witness to Boult’s admission, but the witness was Massingen’s co-defendant in his own murder case, not exactly a disinterested party.

  To construct a polygraph test I needed to know precisely what Massingen had heard and the circumstances under which he had heard it. If there were portions of his recollection that were uncertain, I also needed to know that. When I had spoken with his attorney a few days earlier, he said that Massingen claimed a high degree of certainty about what he’d heard. Massingen could definitely say that Boult had admitted participating in the murder of Francke — no doubts, no uncertainties. I knew the attorney and I was confident that he was not misrepresenting to me what his client told him. However, as my pre-test interview with Massingen progressed, it became evident that he was not as certain as he had initially claimed. Issues for the test began to fade away.

  Massingen told me that he’d had several conversations with Boult within the month following the Francke murder, which meant those conversations occurred about seven months before our present meeting. In one or more of those conversations – Massingen was not sure how often – Boult said something about being involved in the Francke murder.

  That was it, everything Massingen claimed he could remember about murder admissions by Boult: “Boult said something about being involved in the Francke murder.” Not exactly a solid statement.

  Massingen had earlier told his attorney that Boult talked about disposing of a car that been used in the murder. When I asked about that, Massingen said that Boult had spoken of a car, which Massingen assumed had been used
in the murder. Boult never actually said it had.

  Massingen had claimed that Boult named someone known as “Irish” as the actual murderer. When I suggested a test question that corresponded to that, Massingen again backed off. Boult had merely mentioned the name “Irish.” Since Massingen claimed to know someone named “Irish” who killed people, Massingen assumed that “Irish” killed Francke.

  By the time I had completed the pre-test interview, there was little left to constitute a test. I focused on those areas about which Massingen continued to express certain knowledge, rather than assumptions.

  I conducted two examinations of eight questions each. In each test there were two questions about the issue. In the first test I asked if Boult had mentioned that he was involved in the Francke murder. In the second test I asked about witnesses that Massingen claimed had heard Boult’s remarks. We went through all of the questions three times while the polygraph instrument silently traced lines on the chart paper.

  I scored the charts by a standard method, obtaining a result in the first test that was nearly indicative of lying but was not quite strong enough to support that decision. The second test gave no indication at all of either truthfulness or lying. I reported both tests as inconclusive. The issues that I had salvaged from all of his original claims were weak for polygraph purposes, but I suspected another factor might at least partly account for the unclear results.

  I observed that the charts on both tests were unusually “flat”. Massingen produced very little physiological response to anything. That kind of unresponsiveness can be a consequence of drugs. What is poorly understood by the general public is that drugs can only force a test toward an inconclusive result. They do not improve chances of passing the test. Massingen told me that he had taken one Librium in the morning and another at mid-day, only a short time before I arrived. He said he had gotten the drugs from jail personnel because he was upset about the poor health of several relatives. Whether he had secreted the first dose and taken both just before his examination I had no way of knowing. I also could not know if he had taken other drugs as well, which are not difficult to obtain illicitly in most jails and prisons. He had undergone three prior polygraph examinations on unrelated matters, so I assumed he had some familiarity with what the instrument monitored and what it might take to defeat that.