Speaker 1: This episode of wrongful Conviction contains discussion of suicidal ideation.
Speaker 2: Please listen with caution and care. At six forty five
Speaker 2: pm on January seventeenth, nineteen eighty nine, the director of
Speaker 2: Oregon Corrections Michael Frankie, had left work ready to testify
Speaker 2: the following day before the state legislature about corruption within
Speaker 2: his department. But by seven to twenty pm, staffers notice
Speaker 2: that his car was still in his parking spot with
Speaker 2: the door ajar, but Frankie was nowhere in sight. Five
Speaker 2: hours later, his body was discovered outside the building's portico,
Speaker 2: fatally stabbed. Local authorities were quick to call it a
Speaker 2: car burglary gone wrong, even though Frankie's wallet, watch, and
Speaker 2: keys warrant missing. Then months later, an alleged tip led
Speaker 2: them to twenty nine year old Frank Gable, who maintained
Speaker 2: his innocence through a violent interrogation. So police found eight
Speaker 2: more people who were willing to cooperate as for the
Speaker 2: testimony Michael Frankie was scheduled to deliver that following day.
Speaker 2: That must have had nothing to do with it. This
Speaker 2: is wrongful conviction. The Fox Foundation is proud to support
Speaker 2: this episode of wrongful conviction and the work of After Innocence,
Speaker 2: a nonprofit that helps hundreds of people nationwide rebuild their
Speaker 2: lives after wrongful incarceration. Each year, innocent people are released
Speaker 2: after spending years behind bars for crimes they didn't commit.
Speaker 2: Nearly all of them leave prison with nothing more than
Speaker 2: the clothes on their backs, with no help or compensation
Speaker 2: from the state as they face the steep challenges of
Speaker 2: rebuilding their lives after wrongful imprisonment. After Innocence is changing
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Speaker 2: brought that help to more than eight hundred exoneries across
Speaker 2: forty six states, working tirelessly to ensure that no one
Speaker 2: released after wrongful incarceration is left behind. Learn more at
Speaker 2: after Dashinnocence dot org and join After Innocence to support
Speaker 2: exoneries as they rebuild their lives. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction.
Speaker 2: This is Lauren Bright Pacheco and I am joined now
Speaker 2: by Jason Flahm, and I have to tell you, Jason,
Speaker 2: this is such an incredible full circle moment for me
Speaker 2: because on this episode we're speaking with Frank Gable, who
Speaker 2: was wrongfully convicted and spent nearly thirty years for the
Speaker 2: murder of Michael Frankie, who was the then head of
Speaker 2: Oregon's Department of Corrections. But indirectly, it's really why you
Speaker 2: and I met In twenty eighteen, I had left television
Speaker 2: but took a freelance job as a producer just to
Speaker 2: meet you, because when I was researching Murder and Oregon,
Speaker 2: it was the first real wrongful conviction I had encountered
Speaker 2: from an investigative standpoint, and so to educate myself, I
Speaker 2: googled wrongful conviction and what pops up but your podcast,
Speaker 2: which is why I wanted to meet you. And I
Speaker 2: casually mentioned that I had a podcast too, and that's
Speaker 2: when we made the connection that you were actually listening
Speaker 2: to Murder and Oregon at the time.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean listening is not the right word. I
Speaker 3: had been obsessing about it. It's just got so many
Speaker 3: layers of insanity as it goes up levels into the
Speaker 3: even government, it's almost too much.
Speaker 2: It is a case of corruption that went high up
Speaker 2: the ranks.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think the one hope that we have
Speaker 3: is that by shining a light and not letting this
Speaker 3: story die, that maybe eventually people in positions of power
Speaker 3: will feel the heat.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, with that, we will share the interview
Speaker 2: with Frank Gable, who, again I feel very connected to Frank,
Speaker 2: to you, to Michael Frankie's brothers, Pat and to Kevin,
Speaker 2: and to Phil Stamford. It's very much a full circle
Speaker 2: moment for me. And I don't know if justice will
Speaker 2: truly ever be served in this case. But if there
Speaker 2: was ever a case in which accountability is called for,
Speaker 2: it is the conviction of Frank Gable in the murder
Speaker 2: of Michael Frankie.
Speaker 1: It was so.
Speaker 3: Brutally murdered for no other reason than the fact that
Speaker 3: he was trying to do the right thing.
Speaker 2: He was trying to fix the system.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, he was trying to fix it, and
Speaker 3: so the whole thing is exactly opposite of.
Speaker 4: What it's supposed to be.
Speaker 2: In nineteen eighty seven, Michael Frankie, a Navy veteran, former
Speaker 2: prosecutor and judge who went on to be the director
Speaker 2: of Corrections in New Mexico, was then hired to overhaul
Speaker 2: the Oregon Department of Corrections, which was headquartered at the
Speaker 2: Dome Building in Salem, Oregon. And in a town like
Speaker 2: this where the main employer is the prison, one can
Speaker 2: typically expect a sluggish economy with a thriving drug market,
Speaker 2: and it appears those two elements had intertwined in Salem.
Speaker 2: In fact, just a year earlier, an investigation into drugs
Speaker 2: smuggling at the prison led to the resignation of the
Speaker 2: prison superintendent as well as several guards losing their jobs.
Speaker 1: Like, I've seen a lot of just shady stuff there,
Speaker 1: you know, like use an inmate labor, to stealing equipment,
Speaker 1: to funneling drugs in and out, to all kind of
Speaker 1: just criminal behavior that they were doing.
Speaker 2: That is Frank different Cloud, known to the state as
Speaker 2: Frank Gable, talking about the corruption in Salem that even
Speaker 2: a state representative had described to me as similar to
Speaker 2: the mafia.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's an all buddy system because it's the prisonal hire.
Speaker 1: Like your uncle and your grandpa, you know, his brother
Speaker 1: and then so if something happens, who they going to
Speaker 1: believe the three cousins that are making a story up
Speaker 1: on you and telling you, oh, yeah, he had these
Speaker 1: drugs or whatever. He had, and you know, and that's
Speaker 1: how they do it.
Speaker 2: So Michael Frankie was hired as the director of Corrections
Speaker 2: in Oregon, only to be murdered twenty months later. And
Speaker 2: Frank was framed for that murder. And I'd like to
Speaker 2: welcome him as well as his attorney, Rachel Brady.
Speaker 1: I think he's glad to do it.
Speaker 2: And so, Frank, you were a married man at this time.
Speaker 2: Tell us about your life in Salem.
Speaker 1: I don't know, like, you know, I'm just like to say,
Speaker 1: I'm an outdoors person. I like to fish in a hunt.
Speaker 1: But then you know, I got off track, you know,
Speaker 1: was drinking and using myth infetamine and you know it
Speaker 1: was just bad. You know, it's shit I'm not proud of.
Speaker 2: But you were surrounded by that in Salem at the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was a lot of it around there, and
Speaker 1: you know, I wasn't just in it for a short time.
Speaker 1: But it didn't take but a short time to just
Speaker 1: destroy my life, you know, and might caused a lot
Speaker 1: to just have it.
Speaker 2: Frank's involvement in the drug scene made him familiar with
Speaker 2: the system, including a bunk exchange program which was born
Speaker 2: out of overcrowding, allowing inmates to cycle out for a
Speaker 2: week at a time to make room for others, which
Speaker 2: also allowed for the free flow of contraband, and one
Speaker 2: can imagine that this Golden Boy outsider, Michael Frankie, was
Speaker 2: not welcomed by the folks who were profiting from that
Speaker 2: free flow. In fact, Michael was set to testify in
Speaker 2: front of the State legislature on January eighteenth, nineteen eighty nine,
Speaker 2: about his findings, which brings us to the night before.
Speaker 2: Around six forty five pm, Michael Frankie left work at
Speaker 2: the Dome building and according to the Custodian, around seven
Speaker 2: pm he'd seen two men in the parking lot in
Speaker 2: some kind of altercation and one walked back to the building,
Speaker 2: while the other who fled was described as six foot short,
Speaker 2: dark hair, one hundred and seventy five pounds, twenty to
Speaker 2: forty years old, wearing a tanned trench coat. Now between
Speaker 2: seven o five and seven to twenty pm, several other
Speaker 2: staffers had seen Michael's car still in his parking space
Speaker 2: with the door ajar, but Michael was not discovered until
Speaker 2: twelve forty am, lying in a pool of blood at
Speaker 2: the Dome Building's north portico, stabbed in the torso, arm
Speaker 2: and heart. He also had some defensive wounds, and despite
Speaker 2: the almost six hour gap between an alleged altercation in
Speaker 2: the parking lot and the discovery of his body, the
Speaker 2: official theory became a car burglary gone wrong.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, there's a whole story of you know, their
Speaker 1: car burst. This foolish. I mean, like I've seen crime
Speaker 1: seen photos and stuff, and you could look in that car,
Speaker 1: like if you just looked in the window, there's nothing
Speaker 1: in there. Who's going to break into it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, parts in front of the head of the Department
Speaker 2: of Correction sign Frankie's found with his wallet, his watch,
Speaker 2: his car keys. Nothing was gone except they think the
Speaker 2: briefcase that would have had floppy discs and his computer,
Speaker 2: which would have been the meat of the investigation.
Speaker 1: They just jumped on something because I think Johnny Kraus
Speaker 1: put that in their head and they just went with
Speaker 1: that theory after that, I don't know.
Speaker 2: In February nineteen eighty nine, another local named Johnny Krause
Speaker 2: told his parole officer that he'd witness a group of
Speaker 2: men beating up one man by the Dome Building that night,
Speaker 2: which later became that he'd been offered three hundred thousand
Speaker 2: dollars to murder Michael Frankie. Then that April, Kraus confessed
Speaker 2: again to the carburglary theory, which sounds suspicious, but his
Speaker 2: confessions contained elements not shared with the public, like the
Speaker 2: location of the stab wounds, that he'd worn a tan jacket,
Speaker 2: and that Michael yelped when he was stabbed, which aligned
Speaker 2: with the custodian's account. He'd also repeated this confession to
Speaker 2: his brother, mother, and girlfriend in front of authorities, and
Speaker 2: soon we'll discuss why this lead was ignored in favor
Speaker 2: of Frank Gabel.
Speaker 1: Well, first, I got arrested in I think it was
Speaker 1: June in Salem for driving an unauthorized motor vehicle. They
Speaker 1: come in and wanted to talk to me then, and
Speaker 1: we're asking all people that are inmates where you were.
Speaker 1: And I told mom, I think I was home with
Speaker 1: my wife, you know, and I was it, and they
Speaker 1: asked times and he put the police report in there,
Speaker 1: and that's what it says.
Speaker 2: Mind you, this is four months later, so Frank wasn't sure,
Speaker 2: and he said, I think I was home with my wife.
Speaker 2: And as investigators continued to ignore Kraus's confession, they spoke
Speaker 2: with other potential suspects, like Michael Kieran's, who deflected blame
Speaker 2: from himself by claiming Frank Gable had confessed to him,
Speaker 2: at which point the police went to the local media
Speaker 2: to broadcast that Frank Gable, who they also alleged was
Speaker 2: a police informant, was now their main suspect. And so
Speaker 2: ten months in, they dragged Frank in again to ask
Speaker 2: his whereabouts, and again Frank wasn't sure, so he offered
Speaker 2: that perhaps he was with his friend Shelley Thomas.
Speaker 1: They was interrogating me, telling me, oh, well, where else
Speaker 1: could he have been? I said, well, if I wasn't there,
Speaker 1: I was at Shelley's. And then they'd go, oh, Shelley says,
Speaker 1: you wasn't there. Yeah.
Speaker 2: The crazy thing is I think it would be difficult
Speaker 2: for anybody to remember where they were.
Speaker 1: Not ten months later. I mean I didn't even remember
Speaker 1: telling like I read a bunch of police supports and
Speaker 1: then we talked a bunch and like, you're not going
Speaker 1: to know unless it was like somebody specific, like birthday
Speaker 1: or you were at work and you knew that, and
Speaker 1: that's what he said. When it was interiorgating, He's like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: you said you were here, and you said you were there,
Speaker 1: and I said no, you asked me where I possibly
Speaker 1: would and I'm trying to help you figure out where
Speaker 1: maybe I was.
Speaker 2: But it turned out that they knew where Frank was.
Speaker 2: On January seventeenth, nineteen eighty nine, Frank and his wife
Speaker 2: Janine didn't have a quiet night at home. They hosted
Speaker 2: a pretty loud party, one that was so loud, in fact,
Speaker 2: that their landlord issued them an eviction notice the next day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we had that eviction notice. And that kathing on
Speaker 1: that eviction notice is when the police asked me. He said, well, Frank,
Speaker 1: what did you get the eviction notice for? And I
Speaker 1: don't hesitate. I don't say, well, which one, because like
Speaker 1: we had multiple ones we had won, and that was
Speaker 1: that eviction notice. And they asked me that. I said, oh,
Speaker 1: blah blah blah, and they said, well, who was all there?
Speaker 1: I said all the neighbor kids through the play. These
Speaker 1: people were all here, and blah blah blah. Then immediately
Speaker 1: he realizes, I think that I know where I was
Speaker 1: on that night because the key here is he doesn't
Speaker 1: say that eviction notices for the night of the seventeenth,
Speaker 1: which is the night of the murder. He just says,
Speaker 1: what did you get the eviction notice for? And I
Speaker 1: started telling now all these people, there's nine people at
Speaker 1: this plate being thrown or mentioned this plate being thrown,
Speaker 1: or the landlady, or my ex wife, or the two
Speaker 1: neighbor kids, Lamontley, Robert Cornett, Kevin Walker were all there, everybody,
Speaker 1: and I'm listed it off. And then he goes off
Speaker 1: tape right there and says, oh, we're gonna go off tape,
Speaker 1: and then comes back on a completely different subject. So
Speaker 1: at that point he knew that I knew where I.
Speaker 2: Was, and perhaps this explains why they're alleged main suspect
Speaker 2: was let go once again. But then they picked up
Speaker 2: Jody Swearingen, a team runaway with a juvenile record who
Speaker 2: initially said she didn't know anything, but according to her
Speaker 2: later recantations, trial testimony, and sworn Affidavid's, she was interrogated
Speaker 2: twelve times, given twenty three polygraphs, after each one being
Speaker 2: told she was lying and that she was going to
Speaker 2: face criminal charges. So she told a story about how
Speaker 2: her boyfriend Kapi had picked her up at the Dome Building,
Speaker 2: which also housed the Oregon Psychiatric Hospital, and from his
Speaker 2: car they had witnessed Frank stab Michael. So they arrested
Speaker 2: Frank and tried to coerce a confession.
Speaker 1: Well, they wanted me to take a polygraph. I'm telling
Speaker 1: them I didn't do it. All these multiple detectives are
Speaker 1: just interrogating you and calling you murder and talking bad
Speaker 1: about your ex wife and your mom, telling you she's dying,
Speaker 1: telling me I'm going to get to death penalty, all
Speaker 1: kind of crap like that, trying to make me confess
Speaker 1: to something. It was crazy, like they had me crying,
Speaker 1: they break me down, and they got so mad because
Speaker 1: I keep repeating over and over I didn't do it.
Speaker 1: I don't know who did. I wasn't there. If you
Speaker 1: read the police reports, it just says that I don't
Speaker 1: know how many times I said that, And McCafferty got
Speaker 1: mad and that's why he choked me because I kept
Speaker 1: saying that and he goes, oh, you're going to cry
Speaker 1: or something, and I said, oh, you want me to
Speaker 1: cry like that. I was getting irritated with him, and
Speaker 1: he choked me out I woke up doing the dry
Speaker 1: tuning like this, and my shoulder was full of slobbery
Speaker 1: because that's how long I was blacked out because right
Speaker 1: here was all wet. And then Fred Akerman had said, oh,
Speaker 1: well they had and argument, but he never really choked him.
Speaker 1: He choked me on. I mean, if the guy didn't
Speaker 1: choke me now here, I am sixty six years old,
Speaker 1: why would I need to lie about the guy choking me.
Speaker 2: I just think back to how confused you must have been,
Speaker 2: knowing that you were innocent and not understanding why they
Speaker 2: were so aggressively trying to get you to confess.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because all they do is ask you questions to
Speaker 1: try to implicate you. Period. That's all they're doing. They're
Speaker 1: not trying to like, go, oh it is this guy innocent.
Speaker 1: They're just trying to implicate your ass. They don't care,
Speaker 1: they don't have to have no evidence, nothing, They will
Speaker 1: just come at you.
Speaker 2: I want to just point back to two things. One
Speaker 2: you mentioned the tape going off and the tape going
Speaker 2: back on, And that's really important because they basically use
Speaker 2: selective recordings to make it look like you were incriminating yourself.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, they would make statements then try to make
Speaker 1: it sound like I said something that I didn't like
Speaker 1: the God me statement.
Speaker 2: The God me statement Frank's talking about was a moment
Speaker 2: in this stop and Go recording in which Frank said
Speaker 2: there were quote only two people who know who killed Frankie,
Speaker 2: Frankie and God end quote and a detective pointed out
Speaker 2: that Frankie couldn't know because he was dead.
Speaker 1: And I said, well, I know this, I know and
Speaker 1: God know. And then he jumps on and says, oh,
Speaker 1: Fridian slip. And I said, well, what's that now. I'm
Speaker 1: just a young country kid. I didn't know what the
Speaker 1: hell Freudian slip man. And he's explaining the Freudian slip.
Speaker 1: It's like, well, your mouth says something before your mind
Speaker 1: catches it, and da da da, And so you just
Speaker 1: confess to the murder that you said only you and
Speaker 1: God know who did it. I said, no, I didn't
Speaker 1: say that. I said, you cut me off with the
Speaker 1: Friudian slip thing.
Speaker 2: But it appears that even they knew that didn't amount
Speaker 2: to a confession, since they dragged in a trove of
Speaker 2: people from the drug scene in Salem looking to gather
Speaker 2: statements and they use the same tactics that they used
Speaker 2: on Frank and Jodi Swarringen.
Speaker 4: So polygraphs are unreliable, they are not admissible in court,
Speaker 4: they are impossible to verify, and they are subject completely
Speaker 4: to the polygraph examiner's interpretation of the information that comes
Speaker 4: out at the charts. Polygraphs are also really scary, and
Speaker 4: they're intimidating, and for witnesses who have other crimes in
Speaker 4: their backgrounds, for witnesses who are vulnerable in any number
Speaker 4: of ways, witnesses who are being threatened with other crimes,
Speaker 4: this crime, witnesses who are being threatened to have their
Speaker 4: children taken away from them, any number of vulnerabilities can
Speaker 4: be exploited.
Speaker 1: Some of the stuff they did to some of these
Speaker 1: witness and like say Shelley Thomas go over there, threaten
Speaker 1: to arrest her take her child away if she didn't
Speaker 1: bring the right story. Or John and Kelly Bender, they
Speaker 1: got them turn on each other and make different stories.
Speaker 1: And then the stories that they were developing, I mean
Speaker 1: it was so like you can just see they weren't true.
Speaker 1: So then they'd take them and change that story, like
Speaker 1: take them out to the crime scene or give them
Speaker 1: a polygraph.
Speaker 4: So when you have a person who comes into a
Speaker 4: polygraph in a heightened emotional state with a lot on
Speaker 4: the line, can very easily figure out what answer they
Speaker 4: think they're supposed to be giving to any question on
Speaker 4: a polygraph. And none of these witnesses were polygraphed once.
Speaker 4: They were polygraphed repeatedly, multiple times over the same day,
Speaker 4: over in the middle of the night, over the course
Speaker 4: of months. These witnesses were given polygraphs, and each time
Speaker 4: they were told which questions they passed and which questions
Speaker 4: they failed.
Speaker 2: So they were using them as a training tool.
Speaker 4: Yes, absolutely, And so if any person could figure out, oh,
Speaker 4: I failed this particular question on a polygraph, and my
Speaker 4: freedom is at stake, let me just give a different
Speaker 4: answer next time I'm asked a similar question. And you
Speaker 4: can see the progression every single witness. You can see
Speaker 4: the progression and the questions they're asked and how their
Speaker 4: answers change over time.
Speaker 2: Like what happened over Jody's swearing gens twenty three polygraphs.
Speaker 1: Jody said they took her to the crime scene like
Speaker 1: thirteen times, told her there were cigarette butts on the ground,
Speaker 1: what kind they were? Just so they could form a
Speaker 1: later story. Said, oh, well, there were some cigarette butts
Speaker 1: over here. Do you smoke camels? And she says yeah, Jody,
Speaker 1: she's a sixteen year old runaway and you're taking her
Speaker 1: out of Hillcrest giving her a nine hundred dollars in
Speaker 1: cash at sixteen seventeen years old. What do you think
Speaker 1: she's going to go do with it? She's gonna go
Speaker 1: buy myth and fetomine and hang out with the meth heads.
Speaker 2: Like her boyfriend Kathy Hardin, who came in and backed
Speaker 2: up her story that they had actually seen Frank Gable
Speaker 2: stab Michael Frankie in the parking lot. And investigators visited
Speaker 2: other vulnerable people from the Salem drug scene who knew Frank,
Speaker 2: like Earl Childers, who claimed to have seen Frank driving
Speaker 2: near the scene that night and that Frank later confessed
Speaker 2: to him while they were doing meth. Then there was
Speaker 2: Mark Gesner, who claimed that Frank had dropped by his
Speaker 2: house that night and asked him to get rid of
Speaker 2: a bag of clothes. And then Kevin Walker said that
Speaker 2: Frank had confessed to him the following day.
Speaker 1: Now, I've never ever had any real bones with Kevin
Speaker 1: Walker ever like I liked him, he liked me, I
Speaker 1: thought him or Mark Gist's dumb ass. And I didn't
Speaker 1: even meet Mark gust until then. First came to my
Speaker 1: house was that viction. Notice that's the first night. So
Speaker 1: how was I ever going to his house and bring
Speaker 1: him a damn bag of clothes or whatever he said
Speaker 1: and throwing it off a freaking bridge or a river.
Speaker 2: That's the crazy part about Kevin Walker and Mark Gesner.
Speaker 2: On the night of the murder. They were both at
Speaker 2: Frank's house party that got him evicted, So they should
Speaker 2: have been alibi witnesses.
Speaker 1: Like every one of them had some kind of crime
Speaker 1: against him, like charge like Guesner's federal charges and guns, drugs,
Speaker 1: and then like Earl Childers Jeanie, all of them.
Speaker 2: Frank's wife should have been an alibi witness too, But
Speaker 2: somewhere during this investigation, she and Frank had a huge
Speaker 2: falling out and she had lost custody of her daughter.
Speaker 2: So investigators promised to get her daughter back if she
Speaker 2: said there was no house party on January seventeenth, but
Speaker 2: rather that she was home with her daughter while Frank
Speaker 2: was out somewhere in the car in addition, there were
Speaker 2: Daniel Walsh and Linda Perkins who also claimed that Frank
Speaker 2: had made vague, incriminating statements.
Speaker 4: The thing that sets Frank's case apart from most of
Speaker 4: the other cases that I've worked on is just the
Speaker 4: sheer volume of the misconduct. There are some cases and
Speaker 4: small departments where one detective coerces one witness into providing
Speaker 4: a false identification and the whole investigation is wrapped up
Speaker 4: in twenty four hours. Frank was antagonized by law enforcement
Speaker 4: for months and months before he was ultimately charged, and
Speaker 4: law enforcement went to such astonishing lengths to tie up
Speaker 4: any possible loose end and really perfect the false narratives
Speaker 4: that they were putting forward. And they weren't just relying
Speaker 4: on one person to provide a false inculpatory statement.
Speaker 2: They'd amassed a web of at least nine liars, one
Speaker 2: of whom Michael Kieran's, who testified at the grand jury,
Speaker 2: recanted on the eve of trial in May nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 2: So the state moved ahead with what they thought were
Speaker 2: eight witnesses, most of whom had allegedly heard a confession
Speaker 2: or should have been alibi witnesses. But Capy Harten testified
Speaker 2: that he and Jody Swearingen had actually seen Frank stab
Speaker 2: Michael in the parking lot, and then Jody Swearingen took
Speaker 2: the stand. Yet she decided to recant, saying that neither
Speaker 2: she nor Cappy had seen anything, and they pulled out
Speaker 2: her grand jury testimony, but she insisted that she had
Speaker 2: been pressured to lie.
Speaker 1: So.
Speaker 2: In addition to the states now seven witnesses, some of
Speaker 2: the investigators testified about various things Frank said that were
Speaker 2: presented as incriminating, like the god me statement.
Speaker 1: The Freudian slip thing. That was a big thing in
Speaker 1: my trial because I said, well, I know this, I
Speaker 1: know and God know that. He jumps on and says, oh,
Speaker 1: Friudian slip, you just confess to the murder. I said, no,
Speaker 1: I didn't say that. I said you cut me off
Speaker 1: with the Freudian slip thing. But in trial they told
Speaker 1: the jury that I said, oh, only me and God
Speaker 1: know who did.
Speaker 2: They also presented Frank's confusion over his whereabouts as deceit.
Speaker 1: It made it sounds of the jury like, oh, well
Speaker 1: he said he was here, then he said he was there,
Speaker 1: And the whole time they had my alibi, and they
Speaker 1: hit it, and they literally just hit the freaking eviction. Notice,
Speaker 1: my attorney does nothing with it.
Speaker 2: And even though Frank's trial council called his landlord to
Speaker 2: testify about the party on January seventeenth that resulted in
Speaker 2: the eviction, the defense failed to use that information to
Speaker 2: impeach Kevin Walker, Mark Gesner, and Janine Gable, all of
Speaker 2: whom were at that party. The defense also tried to
Speaker 2: raise Johnny Krause's confession, but the state's evidence rules barred
Speaker 2: it from trial. So, with so many unimpeached witnesses incriminating Frank,
Speaker 2: the verdict came back guilty, and then the jury voted
Speaker 2: again on his sentence, life without the possibility of parole
Speaker 2: or death.
Speaker 1: I was two votes away from the death penalty. So
Speaker 1: that's like ten people thought I wasn't worthy to live
Speaker 1: and then they give you life without parol. I never
Speaker 1: thought I was going to get out. As I went
Speaker 1: through prison, I studied law myself. I did a lot
Speaker 1: of classes. You know, then once you read the stuff
Speaker 1: and you see what happened, oh the crap, and then
Speaker 1: you really understand what happened and things they were doing.
Speaker 2: What kept you going all those years against all odds.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know if I was really
Speaker 1: like going. I just was like living, just trying to survive.
Speaker 1: I actually tried to commit suicide a couple of times,
Speaker 1: but I didn't have the courage.
Speaker 2: I'm so glad you didn't make that choice, because now
Speaker 2: you have a wonderff.
Speaker 1: Different for me. You know, I'm thankful I to do
Speaker 1: nothing stupid, I am too.
Speaker 2: You know what's crazy too about this is the amount
Speaker 2: of support that you did have, not just from Michael
Speaker 2: Frankie's brothers, Kevin and Pat, but also you had almost
Speaker 2: the who's who of journalists in Oregon constantly writing about
Speaker 2: your case. You would Phil Stamford from the Oregonian, You
Speaker 2: had Steve Jackson from the Statesman Journal, in addition to
Speaker 2: Nigel Jaquis from willam At Week, and then of course
Speaker 2: Jim Reddin from the Portland Tribune. Whereas so many of
Speaker 2: these wrongful convictions are waiting for the attention, your case
Speaker 2: had the attention and still because of as we've talked about,
Speaker 2: the forces above and beyond your control.
Speaker 1: Yeah, going to let it am.
Speaker 2: Not at state level anyway, unfortunately, frank State remedies were
Speaker 2: not exhausted until two thousand and seven, when he could
Speaker 2: move on to filing a federal habeas where proper attention
Speaker 2: might be paid not only to the confession of Johnny Krause,
Speaker 2: but also some recantations, starting with Kevin Walker in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety three, who admitted that he had been at the
Speaker 2: Gables House party on January seventeenth, which also impeached Janine
Speaker 2: Gable and Mark Gesner. And then in two thousand and five,
Speaker 2: Kapy Hardin swore that after he was repeatedly questioned, polygraphed, threatened,
Speaker 2: and told that Frank had informed on him that he
Speaker 2: had decided to align with JODI's false statement. But Frank's
Speaker 2: federal proceedings didn't get traction until Frank's attorney, Nell Brown
Speaker 2: came on board in twenty fourteen.
Speaker 1: Before Nel Brown coming on, like, I had other attorneys
Speaker 1: and I had to get some of them fired disbarred
Speaker 1: because they were just selling out and not doing no
Speaker 1: job for me at all. I was tired of taking
Speaker 1: advantage of me.
Speaker 2: How did you get connected with now?
Speaker 1: Well, now just got a pointed through the federal defenders
Speaker 1: and we just kind of clicked right out of the gate,
Speaker 1: and then like she seen all the stuff, and then
Speaker 1: she believed in it and started really championing my case.
Speaker 1: You know, in between my wife and all the investigative
Speaker 1: stuff she did and research on legal stuff she did,
Speaker 1: we put together a case.
Speaker 2: The wife he just mentioned is Rainy, who he married
Speaker 2: while he was still inside. She was and is still
Speaker 2: his fiercest advocate. And so by twenty fourteen, there were
Speaker 2: four more recantations, Jody Swarringen, Janine Gable, Daniel Walch, and
Speaker 2: Michael Kieran's. In addition, Mark Gesner and Linda Perkins were
Speaker 2: impeached by the other recantations or witnesses to the circumstances
Speaker 2: of their statements, which just left Earle Childers who is
Speaker 2: now just not sure about what he said he saw
Speaker 2: or heard. And all of the witnesses described the same
Speaker 2: coercive tactics, for which the defense hired an expert to
Speaker 2: testify about how those tactics can lead to false statements.
Speaker 1: They knew, I was, there's no way you couldn't know.
Speaker 1: The eviction, noticed the phone records and all the stuff
Speaker 1: that don't match their bullshit stories. I Mean, there was
Speaker 1: just so many red flags along the.
Speaker 2: Way, including the biggest red flag, Johnny Krause. So after
Speaker 2: his credible April nineteen eighty nine confession, that June he
Speaker 2: gave more information involving a conspiracy among state officials who
Speaker 2: tried to hire him to kill Michael Frankie to keep
Speaker 2: him from exposing their prison drug operation, And in the
Speaker 2: following months other witnesses came forward identifying another man named
Speaker 2: Timothy Natividad as participating in the murder as well at
Speaker 2: the behest of the same cabal. But most telling was
Speaker 2: in November nineteen nine, Kraus was offered immunity from prosecution
Speaker 2: for making alleged fault statements to the police. So unless
Speaker 2: he went on records saying that his previous confessions involving
Speaker 2: the state officials was false, they were going to prosecute
Speaker 2: him for it. So he accepted immunity and went away quietly.
Speaker 2: So the court allowed all of this procedurally barred evidence
Speaker 2: to be heard based on Frank's actual innocence claim, and
Speaker 2: the ruling finally came down in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was like out on the yard and then
Speaker 1: I talked to my wife and I said, well, I'm
Speaker 1: going to go in. It was like I worked out
Speaker 1: in the yard, and so I go in and shower
Speaker 1: and hanging outside the tier because like a lot of
Speaker 1: the guards, you know, they liked me, said they let
Speaker 1: me run around a lot. So I thought, well, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna jump on the phone real quick and call my wife.
Speaker 1: So I went around the phone and she said, I'll
Speaker 1: be there Friday to get you. I said what she said. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Judge corst it is just with your favor. You're one
Speaker 1: hundred present exonerated. You just do nothing but cry. I mean,
Speaker 1: I just broke down. It was crazy hearing that. You know,
Speaker 1: you kind of believed it would come, but you just
Speaker 1: didn't never really want to hope that much where it
Speaker 1: would crush you, you know what I mean, you didn't
Speaker 1: want to hope that much.
Speaker 2: Judge Acosta's ruling rachel He didn't just overturn Frank's conviction.
Speaker 2: He called it constitutionally invalid, ordered the entire record expunged,
Speaker 2: and barred the state from ever trying him again.
Speaker 4: It is very difficult to get the kind of relief
Speaker 4: that was granted in this case. As a general matter,
Speaker 4: I mean, there are so many people who they never
Speaker 4: get out they never get the relief. So the fact
Speaker 4: that Judge Acosta acknowledged the misconduct, that he acknowledged this
Speaker 4: signal nificance of the evidence in the case is no
Speaker 4: small deal.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, And you know, the state is still challenging Frank's
Speaker 2: innocence despite multiple court siding with him.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's an interesting posture that the certificate of innocence
Speaker 4: case is in because it shows the competing interests at
Speaker 4: play here. And so you have the State of Oregon,
Speaker 4: and you have the organ Attorney General and the governor,
Speaker 4: and then you have the individual defendants and the wrongful
Speaker 4: conviction case, and you have the Oregon State Police. And
Speaker 4: it shows that their competing interests here and that doing
Speaker 4: the right thing is not the only interest at stake.
Speaker 2: So even though their certificate of innocence is a separate
Speaker 2: suit from the civil matters, it might have an impact
Speaker 2: on the dynamic and their other proceedings.
Speaker 4: I'm sure communication is happening on the back end about
Speaker 4: how the wrongful conviction case would be impacted by a
Speaker 4: certificate of innocence. So we want everybody to do the
Speaker 4: right thing, but these cases have a lot of working
Speaker 4: parts and a lot of it is political and unfortunately,
Speaker 4: you can't force someone to do the right thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, in an ideal world, people would acknowledge mistakes,
Speaker 2: take responsibility, make amends. That's what accountability really should look like. Frank,
Speaker 2: you and I have had conversations about accountability, and I
Speaker 2: know that. You know you've been compensated just to the
Speaker 2: exact amount that Oregon they thought they had to compensate you.
Speaker 2: But you filed a suit now against twenty four officers
Speaker 2: who helped build the case against you and fabricate evidence.
Speaker 2: Why is that accountability so important?
Speaker 1: They just shouldn't be allowed to do this to somebody.
Speaker 1: It's like, and it's not just me, there's many. It's
Speaker 1: like they just keep doing it and there's no accountability.
Speaker 1: They need to change the laws, like something like you
Speaker 1: can just take a person's life for thirty years. Make
Speaker 1: me basically live in hell, you know, watching people get murdered,
Speaker 1: stab shot, you know, riots every day, and then they think, oh,
Speaker 1: throw some money at them, and I don't make it better.
Speaker 1: I guess I got a little bit of money. I'm
Speaker 1: not much happier, you know. I still every day I'm
Speaker 1: in turmoil. Every day I have nightmares about prison violence
Speaker 1: and people getting stabbed and you know their throats cut
Speaker 1: or shot.
Speaker 2: Well, you told me something about the doorbell ringing.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, any well, certain noises say like somebody drops
Speaker 1: a broom and it cracks on the floor. I mean
Speaker 1: I instantly like get in a chemical adrenaline thing in
Speaker 1: my throat and my mind, you know, goes right back
Speaker 1: to prison and you know, people getting shot. It just
Speaker 1: immediately reminds you of, you know, that freaking nightmare.
Speaker 2: In terms of preventing this nightmare from happening in the future,
Speaker 2: what do you think needs to be done in terms
Speaker 2: of the system. You and I talked about the fact
Speaker 2: that you need to go to school longer to be
Speaker 2: a barber.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it takes longer to be a barber than
Speaker 1: go to be at the academy at the state police office.
Speaker 1: Ten weeks, you know, and then they're deciding your life
Speaker 1: where they lock you up, what their constitutional rights is.
Speaker 1: Come on, you can't tell me you know enough about
Speaker 1: the law and the constitution in ten weeks and look
Speaker 1: what happened. Just retrain them all, get rid of all
Speaker 1: the buddy buddy crap, you know, cousins and brothers in
Speaker 1: there to cover each other's back.
Speaker 2: What to you, Rachel, would accountability look like, not just
Speaker 2: in this case, but you know, perhaps in wrongful convictions
Speaker 2: in general.
Speaker 4: I think one of the things that I wish would
Speaker 4: happen in our cases generally is I wish somebody would
Speaker 4: admit what they did, and I wish that they would say, look,
Speaker 4: we got it wrong, and we're really sorry, and we're
Speaker 4: going to fix it, and we're not going to challenge
Speaker 4: your innocence petition, and we're not going to resist giving
Speaker 4: you relief and giving the accountability that you're seeking. It
Speaker 4: happens every so often, but I think that the impulse
Speaker 4: for law enforcement is to protect their convictions no matter what,
Speaker 4: even when they are so obviously false. And I think
Speaker 4: there's probably some level of you know, if we admit
Speaker 4: that we got it wrong, then what does that mean
Speaker 4: for the rest of our convictions, and what does that
Speaker 4: mean for our belief in the criminal legal system generally?
Speaker 4: And so you have to just dig in your heels
Speaker 4: and say we didn't get it wrong. And I wish
Speaker 4: that that didn't happen. I wish that folks were willing
Speaker 4: to really reflect on what they did and acknowledge when
Speaker 4: they did it wrong.
Speaker 2: That's wild because frank in a way, when this all
Speaker 2: went down, that's what you wanted. You wanted that acknowledgment,
Speaker 2: that apology.
Speaker 1: I think the apology means more to me than the
Speaker 1: money man. Look me in the face and apologize, you know,
Speaker 1: it's simple thing. There should be. What kind of character
Speaker 1: do you have? You know, if you can't look another
Speaker 1: man in a face and apologize when you did something
Speaker 1: wrong and admit it, you know, and it's like people
Speaker 1: don't care, you know. It's like they put you in
Speaker 1: prison and they throw you some money and say, oh,
Speaker 1: we're sorry, but that doesn't help. You know, my mom
Speaker 1: and dad died when I was in there. All my
Speaker 1: uncles passed away. Get out and a year later my
Speaker 1: brother dies. A year after that, my sister, you know,
Speaker 1: my two of my best friends die. Since I've bet out,
Speaker 1: it's like, you know why I even get out sometimes
Speaker 1: and so every day you wake up thinking, well, why
Speaker 1: did I have to suffer all this? And why did
Speaker 1: my family have to die? And why did all these
Speaker 1: other people have to go this? Like the Frankie family,
Speaker 1: they don't have justice yet, you know, And I'm out
Speaker 1: here and you know, we're pretty good friends, and so
Speaker 1: I'm trying to like not celebrate like I'm free and
Speaker 1: you know, I got a settlement while they're suffering.
Speaker 2: That's the bittersweet thing of this. You know, the Frankie
Speaker 2: brothers have championed you from the beginning. They knew that
Speaker 2: you didn't kill their brother. But you're right, they've had
Speaker 2: no justice. Yeah, it's still an unsolved murder, and unfortunately,
Speaker 2: it doesn't seem that there's a lot of interest in
Speaker 2: solving it, which is an injustice in and of itself.
Speaker 2: They should want to know who killed a high ranking
Speaker 2: public official. They should want to have the right person
Speaker 2: health account.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you would think I told them that in the interview.
Speaker 1: I said, look, there's a murder out there running around,
Speaker 1: and you're coming at me and my knowledgy list join
Speaker 1: a cross. Are he's still out there? Because I have
Speaker 1: no idea.
Speaker 2: I have some theories. We can talk about it.
Speaker 1: After Oh I have no idea. It's like, oh, grip
Speaker 1: all right.
Speaker 2: Last question for both of you, Rachel, what do you
Speaker 2: hope people take away from Frank's story.
Speaker 4: A lot of folks think, you know, this could happen
Speaker 4: to someone else, but it would never happen to me,
Speaker 4: but it can happen to anybody. And until police are
Speaker 4: held accountable for what they're doing, and until it is
Speaker 4: crystal clear that you cannot prosecute someone without probable cause
Speaker 4: and you can't make up evidence to support your theory,
Speaker 4: it has to work the other way around. You follow
Speaker 4: the evidence, not the person, that that this work will
Speaker 4: never stop and that they're innocent people in prison, and
Speaker 4: there needs to be a concerted effort to uncover all
Speaker 4: of the wrongful convictions and get folks out of prison
Speaker 4: who are innocent. It is such an injustice that this
Speaker 4: happens to even one person, and people need to understand
Speaker 4: in law enforcement needs to understand that this can't.
Speaker 2: Keep happening right beautifully put, Frank, do you want to
Speaker 2: add anything to that? No?
Speaker 1: Oh, gied.
Speaker 2: If you could sit down with anyone who doubted you,
Speaker 2: what would you want them to know and what would
Speaker 2: you want them to take away from your experience?
Speaker 1: I'd want to know that there's just because you've got
Speaker 1: a shitty live doesn't mean you don't have value, And
Speaker 1: don't send a person that you think don't have no
Speaker 1: value to present wrongfully convicted.
Speaker 2: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen
Speaker 2: to this and all LoVa for Good podcasts one week
Speaker 2: early and add free by subscribing to LoVa for Good
Speaker 2: Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'd like to thank our production
Speaker 2: team Connor Hall and Kathleen Fink, as well as executive
Speaker 2: producers Jason Vlahm, Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wartis, and Jeff Clyburn.
Speaker 2: The music in this production was supplied by three time
Speaker 2: OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us
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Speaker 2: at Lauren Bright Pacheco. Wrongful Conviction is a production of
Speaker 2: Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number One.
Speaker 1: We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported
Speaker 1: in this show are accurate.
Speaker 2: The views and opinions expressed by the individuals featured in
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