An Innocent Man: The Trial Of Frank Gable On Murder In Oregon

Judge holding gavel in courtroom

In 1989, Oregon Corrections Department director Michael Francke was stabbed and killed outside his office building in Salem, Oregon. Authorities passed it off as a robbery, but Michael’s brother Kevin Francke and journalist Phil Stanford both thought there was more going on. Michael had been hired to investigate corruption at the Department of Corrections, and he had some evidence, as well as some enemies at the attorney general’s office and within his own department. Rumors swirled that the assistant attorney general had arranged Mike’s murder with a drug dealer named Tim Natividad, but suddenly, the state zeroed in on a low-level criminal named Frank Gable. With no physical evidence tying him to the murder, Kevin, Phil, and plenty of others thought the defense would have an easy time winning Frank’s case. But at the trial, it was clear there wouldn’t be any justice for him. On this episode of Murder In Oregon, host Lauren Bright Pacheco focuses on the Gable murder trial, the inconsistencies in the state’s evidence, and the pitiful case put up by the defense. 

The first problem was the attorney assigned to Frank’s case, Bob Abel. “There were some good lawyers in Salem,” Phil tells Lauren, “but to be as blunt as possible, Abel was not one of them.” A heavy drinker, he’d only argued one capital murder case before, and had “lost that in a dramatic fashion,” Kevin says. He also had a personal connection with the judge. Whether that got him the job or not, it certainly seems to have helped him keep it: as the trial approached, the nine investigators on the defense team were so concerned with Bob’s lack of preparation that they all signed a letter asking the judge to postpone. “Nothing ever came of it,” defense investigator Tom McCallum says. “The trial never got postponed. Nobody ever said anything.” Tom had to schedule the witnesses himself, and even put together the opening remarks: “I...got a call from Tom McCallum and he said, ‘Hey, Phil, can you come down and testify tomorrow?’” Phil remembers. “He said, ‘Abel’s been out drinking. We haven’t put together a case.’” 

On the plus side, the state’s case against Frank was weak. “I think all of us realized there was nothing really that connected Frank Gable to this crime,” local TV reporter Eric Mason says, “and that the people who...had become informants and snitches against Frank Gable, they were all professional liars.” The state’s witnesses, many of them criminals, had been coerced by police to testify that they had seen Frank stab Mike. But the story they told directly contradicted the state’s most reliable witness, the night janitor, who had actually seen two men talking in the parking lot that night. But Bob Abel never challenged the discrepancies in their stories, never presented Frank’s alibi (it would later be proven that he was at home alone), and never challenged the state to provide a single piece of physical evidence. Most shocking of all, the defense abruptly rested, even though it had several more witnesses lined up to take the stand – including Frank himself, who desperately wanted to testify. “That was astounding,” Kevin says, “and that's when I knew Frank was f**ked.” 

Full Length Of Man Sitting On Seat At Prison

Phil, Lauren tells us, is still haunted by the trial. “They absolutely made up a case against a man who wasn’t even there...and then not only do they get a conviction on the basis of this phony evidence, they ask for the death penalty,” he says. “They were willing to kill him. As far as I’m concerned, that’s about as evil as you can get.” Listen to hear more details about the trial, why the investigators and reporters all thought Frank was innocent, and why no one ever brought up Tim Natividad, on this episode of Murder In Oregon.

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