Attacking problems was in Michael Francke’s nature. The forty-two-year-old, who had played football in college, tackled challenges with the same intensity that he had tackled ball carriers. In 1987 the respected lawyer and prison reformer began tackling his greatest challenge: correcting Oregon’s troubled penal system.

In late 1988, after nearing the completion of his investigation, Francke told friends and family that he had uncovered a mountain of corruption within the Beaver State’s corrections institution extending into the department brass. He concluded that many of the people assigned to protect the public from the state’s prisoners should themselves be imprisoned.

Shortly thereafter, in the early morning hours of January 18, 1989, Michael Francke was found stabbed to death outside his office. Police concluded he had been killed in a robbery gone wrong, and a small time drug dealer was convicted of his murder.

Many believe the peddler convicted of Michael Francke’s murder is only a scapegoat and that several high ranking officials in Oregon’s criminal justice system had a role in his murder. In 2019, a judge found merit to the conspiracy claims and ordered the convicted killer released from prison.

Thirty-four years after the murder of Michael Francke, his family continues the efforts to out all of the corrupt officials in the Oregon Department of Corrections whom they believe conspired to silence him.

Michael Francke

After graduating from New Mexico Highlands University, Michael Francke obtained a law degree and became a Judge Advocate General for the United States Navy. Beginning in 1975 he served for five years as an assistant Attorney General and counsel to the New Mexico Department of Corrections. He then became a judge for the First District Court in Santa Fe for three years.

In 1983, Francke became the director of the New Mexico Department of Corrections. He was lauded nationally for reforming the state’s troubled prison system. Among the reforms he instituted were mandatory training programs for corrections officers and the establishment of an employee grievance system.

Francke With President Jimmy Carter

Four years later, Oregon Governor Neil Goldschmidt appointed Francke to a similar position with the similar goal of reforming his state’s Corrections Department. After a year-and-a-half, as his investigation was nearing completion, Francke told his family and friends that the extent of corruption he had found was far greater that what he had cleaned up in New Mexico.

Several former Oregon state prison guards told Francke that searches were never conducted on staff members as they entered and left the state prison. As a result, some often brought drugs and occasionally weapons into the facility, usually concealed in their lunch sacks.

Other major criminal activities the former prison guards said they witnessed included the falsifying of records and the theft of state property. They alleged the corrections brass were part of the “good ole boy” system and protected one another.

Greater Corruption In Oregon

By mid-January 1989, Francke had completed his investigation. He told his brother Kevin he had uncovered an organized criminal element with the Oregon Corrections Department and that he was going to do a thorough housecleaning. He said that the drug trafficking and corruption he had uncovered would implicate several top state government officials.

Michael Francke was determined to correct the corruption and, in his words, some heads in the corrections department were “going to roll.”

Francke’s Findings

Francke’s office was at the Dome Building in Salem, the headquarters office of the Oregon Department of Corrections, not to be confused with the Oregon State Capitol building.

At 6:50 p.m. on January 17, Francke spoke to a department employee following the weekly staff meeting. A half-hour later, two other corrections employees noticed his car in the parking lot. The interior light was on, the driver’s door was open. Francke could not be found, nor could he be reached on his pager, which he always carried with him. His co-workers felt something was wrong and called their superiors.

At 8:30 p.m., two corrections officers, David Caulley and Richard Peterson, began checking the Old Dome building for any sign of Francke. For an hour, they conducted what they called a “thorough search” of the building and surrounding areas, but they were unable to locate him.

The Old Dome Building

Salem, Oregon

Four hours later, at 12.45 a.m. on Tuesday, January 18, a security guard found Michael Francke lying lifeless on the side porch of the Old Dome building which had been searched four hours earlier. He had been stabbed to death.

The glass in the side door to the building was shattered. Francke’s briefcase, which he almost always had with him while at work, was missing.

Because Tuesday was the only day that Francke kept office hours, it appeared that the attackers were familiar with his schedule. Police believed he had been murdered in a robbery attempt and soon found a woman who supported those contentions.

Francke Is Found Stabbed To Death

Police questioned known drug dealers and street criminals, including teen runaway and perpetual user Jodie Swearingen. She claimed to have witnessed Francke’s murder and fingered Frank Gable, a small time methamphetamine dealer.

Swearingen said Gable was in the process of breaking into Francke’s car when Francke exited the Old Dome building around 7:00 p.m. on the evening of January 17. Upon approaching his vehicle, Francke began arguing with Gable who stabbed Francke and fled. Swearingen said the wounded Francke staggered up to the stairs of a side entrance of the building and broke the glass door in an apparent attempt to get back into the building. She believed Gable had taken Francke’s briefcase.

A maintenance worker witnessed a man matching Gable’s description running from the area around the same time. A few hours after the murder, one of Gable’s friends said Gable ordered him to throw a bag, which he believed had clothing and another object in it, into a nearby river. It was never found.

Several people also claimed Gable had confessed to the murder and had threatened to kill them and their families if they went to the police. Gable’s wife Jenine also claimed that he liked knives and was abusive toward her.

                                 Jodie Swearingen             Frank Gable

Frank Gable maintained his innocence. He had many supporters, including members of Michael Francke’s family, who found too many inconsistencies in the official version of the murder.

The police believe Francke was stabbed in the parking lot near his car, but there was no trace of blood within one hundred feet of the vehicle. In addition, bruises, abrasions and other wounds on his body suggested, in their view, a struggle with more than one person.

Furthermore, Francke had a state-of-the-art car alarm system. Swearingen said Gable was breaking into the car, but the car alarm was not set off and no signs of forced entry into the vehicle were found.

Finally, police believe Francke was killed at approximately 7:00 p.m., but neither his body nor the broken glass was found when the Old Dome building was searched between 8:30 and 9:30 p.m.

I could not find anything stating if the autopsy report determined an approximate time for the murder.

Discrepancies

Some believe Michael Francke was targeted for murder by high-ranking Oregon state government officials fearful of being named in his investigation.

At approximately 10:15-10:20 p.m. on the evening of January 17, a motorist observed five or six men running with vigor from the vicinity of the Old Dome Building to a Volkswagen van. Some believe Francke was initially kidnapped from the Old Dome Building and taken to another locale by these men earlier in the evening. They believe his abductors, acting on behalf of high ranking government officials, later brought him back to the Old Dome Building where he was murdered later than when police believed.

This theory suggests that when exiting the Old Dome Building earlier in the evening, Francke unlocked his car, deactivating the alarm. The men may have attacked him shortly afterward and taken him to an unknown locale but later brought him back to his office, under duress, perhaps to get computer files. Once there, Francke tried to escape and made it to the window which he smashed in an effort to get inside the building but was stabbed to death before he could do so.

A few days later, several Department of Corrections employees and inmates saw upwards of twenty to twenty-five bags of shredded papers being removed from Francke’s office as well as surrounding offices. It is has never been made clear who authorized the shredding of the documents, the nature of which are unknown.

Some believe Michael Francke’s murder was instigated by high-ranking officials fearful of being named in his investigation. No paperwork containing his investigation into the Oregon prison system has ever been found.

Conspiracy Claims

Several people recalled a man wearing a pin-striped suit lurking in the corrections building after hours. He had an olive complexion and did not resemble Frank Gable. He was approximately five-feet-ten-inches tall and weighed around one-hundred-eighty pounds.

Although a composite drawing based on the descriptions of several witnesses was made, the Salem District Attorney’s office did not release the drawing for five months. Officials claimed the composite quality, made a top police artist, was not detailed enough for publication.

A parole board clerk believes the sketch resembles a man who arrived at the Dome building in the late afternoon of January 17 to repair the copy machine. The clerk said the man was granted unprecedented access to remain in the building after hours to finish the repairs. The repairs, however, were never completed, the machine was left in pieces, and no record of a service call was found in the copier ‘repair log’.

The man in the composite drawing has never been identified.

Composite Sketch Of The Man

Lurking Inside The Corrections Building

Despite the rumors and evidence suggesting a possible conspiracy in the murder of Michael Francke, authorities and the Salem County District Attorney still believe the crime to be that of a botched robbery and that Frank Gable is the sole culprit. While he was on trial for murder, Gable divorced his wife and married one of his defense attorneys, Karen Steele. He was convicted of the murder of Michael Francke in June 1991 and sentenced to life in prison.

The verdict was reached despite Jodie Swearingen’s recanting her testimony that she saw Gable burglarizing Francke’s car. Swearingnen then instead accused another local drug dealer, Timothy Natividad.

Gable Convicted

Swearingen’s fingering of Natividad was backed by the claims of another career criminal, Greg Kellcy, who says he was often an “enforcer” for Natividad on drug deals.

In a signed affidavit, Kellcy stated he drove Natividad to the corrections building on the evening of January 17, 1989. When he returned an hour later, Natividad had blood on his clothes.

Kellcy further swore in the affidavit that several days later Natividad asked him to take him to receive a payoff. Natividad did not say what the payoff was for, but he asked Kellcy to bring a gun.

Kellcy says he saw Natividad approach a car with official Oregon government license plates. Several men were inside the vehicle, and Kellcy says he recognized one of them as Hoyt Cupp, the warden of the Oregon State Penitentiary.

In the affidavit, Kellcy says the envelope contained $20,000. Natividad told him the money was for killing Michael Francke.

Natividad was shot and killed by his wife during a domestic fight two weeks after Michael Francke’s murder. Hoyt Cupp died the following year, in 1990.

                             Timothy Natividad                       Hoyt Culp

Scott McAlister is thought by many to have had involvement in Michael Francke’s murder. Francke was critical of McAlister’s performance and legal advice to the Corrections Department.

Shortly before the murder, McAlister had resigned as Oregon’s Assistant Attorney General to become Inspector General of the Utah Corrections Department. A former girlfriend told the Portland Tribune that McAlister, after moving from Oregon to Utah, was still in possession of internal police documents concerning the Francke murder which he no longer had any official reason to possess. The girlfriend also said that she had overheard him describe Francke’s killing as a “botched hit that was supposed to look like a suicide.”

Scott McAlister

In October 1990, less than two years after moving to Utah, McAlister pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of distribution of pornographic material. He had brought to Utah at least thirty, and possibly hundreds, of hard-core pornographic films depicting graphic sexual acts among children. He claimed that as an Assistant Attorney General in Oregon, he had access to the films as evidence in a 1977 case and had mistakenly brought them with him when he moved to Utah in January 1989.

McAlister was sentenced to one week in the Salt Lake County jail. He is now an attorney in Tempe, Arizona, and has never been charged in connection with any sort of crime during his time in Oregon, but many believe he either took part, ordered, or knew who ordered the murder of Michael Francke.

A Slap On the Wrist

In April 2019, United States Magistrate Judge John Acosta overturned Frank Gable’s murder conviction, ruling that he either had to be released or be re-tried for the murder of Michael Francke. Judge Acosta cited that many of the initial witnesses against Gable, including Jodie Swearingen, have since recanted their claims and that their testimony was obtained via coercive interrogation tactics and skewed polygraph examinations. The Oregon Department of Justice appealed the ruling.

Gable was released from prison in June 2019 but remains under supervision pending the appeal. Officials have not said if he will be retried for the murder of Michael Francke should the appeal be rejected.

Gable Gets Out

Coverage of the murder of Michael Francke has become somewhat of a battleground among Oregon’s three leading newspapers. The Oregonian backs the official version of what happened: that he was killed in a robbery attempt. The Portland Tribune and, to a lesser extent, the Willamette Week question the official ruling.

In May 2005, the Oregonian published the results of an investigation into the case, concluding that Frank Gable was the sole killer of Michael Francke during a robbery gone wrong. The Portland Tribune then ran a rebuttal, claiming to have uncovered holes in the Oregonian’s reporting, which was followed by a further rebuttal by The Oregonian reporters in the newspaper’s blog, claiming inaccuracies in the Portland Tribune’s claims.

The Media Outlets Are At Odds With Each Other

The 1995 film Without Evidence is based on the murder of Michael Francke.

The film features a young Angelina Jolie, in one of her first major roles, as Jodie Swearingen.

Angelina Jolie As Jodie Swearingen

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/17549989/james-michael-francke

https://www.odmp.org/officer/5072-corrections-director-james-michael-mike-francke

 

SOURCES:

• The Oregonian
• Portland Tribune
• Santa Fe New Mexican
• Unsolved Mysteries
• Willamette Week