Gut check time for Cory Streisinger

Just another letter from a pissed off writer

Hello Cory,

I’m writing a book about the Michael Francke case and this is an invitation to talk to me about it. I realize this may be an emotionally difficult thing for you to do. However a great deal of time has passed since these events occurred and I’m hoping that maybe you’ve come to the conclusion that you don’t want to go down in history as a co-conspirator in the most significant miscarriage of justice in modern Oregon history.

You were of course quite young and inexperienced then, and under the sway of a charismatic man who you probably worshipped and certainly upon whom your future depended. Perhaps your involvement was at times unwitting. And perhaps, after all the time that’s passed, you’ve even come to regret some of the things that occurred. In any case, this is your chance to set the record straight.

As things now stand, though, it appears that, as Goldschmidt’s legal counsel, you were deeply involved in the cover-up of a murder, resulting in the railroading of an innocent man for a crime he had nothing to do with, and it’s high time for you to come to grips with what you did.

More specifically (and I’ll be making the case in my book), it seems clear to me that you conspired on Goldschmidt’s behalf to conceal important information that would have been crucial to any honest investigation – including, for example, the almost unavoidable fact that when Francke was killed he was about to expose a rats nest of corruption in his department.

You and Goldschmidt even went so far as to deny abundant evidence that there was any serious corruption left over from the 1986 investigation and did so with the all-too-skillful diversion of attacking the character of the murdered man’s brother, Kevin Francke, who, as you had to know, was telling the truth.

For another, even after being presented with an ombudsman’s honest investigation of the A-Shed fire – which was of course arson for insurance purposes and one of the instances of corruption Francke was investigating – you chose to support an obvious whitewash by the State Police. Although certainly both you and Goldschmidt, lawyers that you were, were sophisticated and intelligent enough to read the records and reports available at that time and see otherwise.

And so my question is why? Why were you going through all these contortions to hide the truth about the murder of a high-ranking law enforcement official in your administration?

And the only answer that makes sense to me is that Goldschmidt, who I don’t think was involved in the actual murder, was being blackmailed by the state police, who were aware (as of course you had to be too) that while all this was going on he was trying to keep Elizabeth Dunham quiet about raping her some fifteen years earlier when he was mayor of Portland and she was just thirteen.

If you disagree with any of this or have a different explanation for why the two of you went to such lengths to prevent an honest investigation of the Francke murder, please let me know.

I’d be willing to bet that when you took the job as legal counsel you had no idea that you’d be pulled into anything like this. And when it happened, there just wasn’t any way out, was there?

Sincerely,

Phil Stanford

Cory Streisinger, Neil Goldschmidt’s legal counsel

As it turns out, this is actually the second pissed off letter I’ve sent out in the course of this substack on the Francke case. I just didn’t realize at the time that it might develop into a mini-series and I’ve got a few more to send out after this one.

The first one, though, was Yoo-hoo, Therese. You still there? addressed to Therese Bottomly who is currently the editor-in-charge at the Oregonian. It’s still up there with all the other Francke episodes and you might get a kick out of it.