12. "That's him!" she says. "That's who I saw!"

So welcome to Salem, capital of the great state of Oregon, late summer 1990.

And not just to Kevin Francke, who’s just driven across the country with all his belongings in the back of his Chevy Caprice to find his brother’s killer, but anyone else who’s stuck around this long on this Substack expedition.

It’s truly one of those times that tells us who and what we are as a people and a state. Someone has just been murdered – a high-ranking law enforcement official, as a matter of fact, the director of the Corrections Department – and no one wants to do anything about it?

As we can see clearly now, there’s a big cover-up going on. Everyone, it seems, from the governor on down, has something to hide.

Of course it’s easy enough to understand why Corrections might want to make this thing go away.

Just days before he was murdered, Corrections director Michael Francke had told a friend in the legislature that he was about to “blow the top off” an organized criminal element he’d discovered within his department. What he’d found, he said, would lead to criminal convictions, and as a former prosecutor and judge himself he probably knew what he was talking about.

But what about the state cops? Well, they’ve got their problems too. They’ve been protecting, or at least sitting on, all this prison racketeering for years. Plus a flourishing drug trade both in- and outside the prison.

Fact is, there’s a good chance they’ve already discovered that the person who probably committed the murder was also connected to one of their protected drug operations. And wouldn’t it be embarrassing if that ever came out?

As you already know if you’ve been reading this Substack faithfully, a former member the Keizer mafia, Vince Taylor, says they regularly paid off the cops in exchange for turning a blind eye to their shenanigans. Also – and here’s a tip to the alert reader – that his childhood friend and fellow mafia business partner, Tim Natividad, had recently expanded his drug business into the state prison.

So you can bet your booty the state cops aren’t about to be conducting any sort of genuine investigation into this puppy. In fact, as we know now, at this very moment they’re still hard at work fabricating evidence against their chosen patsy, Frank Gable.

Which brings us to the Marion County district attorney’s office, which was pretty much a clown car unto itself.  

In the early ‘80s, long-time DA Gary Gortmaker, who’d been  convicted of misuse of public funds, was replaced by an up-and-coming young political star Chris Van Dyke, who besides being the son of the famous actor also had a fairly serious coke habit.

In fact, about the time Gortmaker had exhausted all his appeals and was finally being sent off to prison, Van Dyke, who’d been in office little over a year, found himself in a drug fueled domestic situation which of course was successfully hushed up.

So of course Van Dyke was then eased out of office, leaving the job open for Dale Penn, who would go on to oversee the Corrections cover-up in ’86 as well as the current one ­– which, if you stop to think about it, makes this one sort of a cover-up of a cover-up.

Then there’s the Attorney General’s office, which for more than a decade had furnished the prison system’s lawyer, Scott McAlister, who, as already noted, Francke had succeeded in forcing out of government service the week before he was murdered.

And when you throw in the governor, who as we know now was fighting behind the scenes to keep the FBI out of the investigation and holding press conferences to attack anyone who might question the adequacy of the Francke investigation, what you’ve got is pretty much an entire state government, acting in unison, to cover up the murder of a ranking law enforcement official.

And at the risk of belaboring the obvious, it’s fairly obvious that the cover-up is still going on. But back to 1990.

When Kevin finally gets to Salem, driving across country with all his belongings in the back of his Chevrolet Caprice, what he’s thinking – what he’s wondering, actually – is whether the guy who killed his brother is a young gangster named Tim Natividad. And if so, who put him up to it.

Never mind that the DA has just indicted Frank Gable, and the lead prosecutor Sarah Moore has assured Kevin that once he sees all the evidence he’ll be as convinced of Gable’s guilt as they are in the DA’s office.

A year-and-a-half after his brother’s murder, Kevin is by now well aware of the games being played by the Marion County courts and law enforcement agencies.

But what makes this Natividad story a bit crazy, is that just two weeks after Mike’s murder, Natividad himself was shot dead by his girlfriend, who, as the rumor on the street would have it, was carrying out orders by the Mexican mafia or whoever ordered the hit in the first place.

All Kevin knows for sure is what the newspapers say. Elizabeth Godlove, described as Natividad’s 25-year-old live-in girlfriend, was charged with murder, and then just four months later found not guilty by reason of self-defense.

One way or another, he’s got to meet this girl and find out for himself.

So he persuades Eric Mason, the Salem correspondent for Portland TV station KOIN, to set up an interview with her in her lawyer Charlie Burt’s office, and Kevin just happens to be there when it takes place.

Elizabeth Godlove was 25 years old when she shot Tim Natividad in self-defense.

Liz, who’s backlit for the interview, tells Mason she believes Tim killed Michael Francke. When he came home that night, she says, he looked like he’d been in a fight. He’d been hit in the head and had a leg wound besides. He said he’d gotten into it with some Mexicans downtown.

Over the next few days, she says, he became increasingly paranoid. Keeping all the blinds closed, not permitting her to leave the apartment. When her sister came over and saw all the guns and knives lying around, she took their one-year-old son, Anthony, home with her to keep him safe.

Now Tim was threatening to kill Liz and her sister as well for taking Anthony. She remembers him saying he’d killed a man before, although he didn’t say who, and it was an easy thing to do.

Two days later, Kevin and Liz are having dinner at the Night Deposit, a nice downtown Salem restaurant. Kevin still hasn’t made up his mind yet about whether Liz was a paid assassin or not, but as he listens to her his suspicions fall away and he begins to see her as a victim in this whole thing.

The year before, she and her sister Becky, who was married to Tim’s boyhood friend Vince Taylor, had moved to Colorado just to get away from Tim’s violence and insane possessiveness.

After a year in Colorado, the three of them returned to Salem and of course Tim found her, and the abuse started all over again. The two couples lived in the Iberis Apartments, a sprawling two-story complex in a run-down part of Salem. Becky and Vince lived on the second floor just above Liz and Tim and they could hear the commotion below.

As time went on, Tim wouldn’t let her leave the apartment, even to go grocery shopping, unless he was with her. And after the Francke murder he became even more paranoid. Closing all the blinds, constantly peeking out.

Shortly after the murder he showed her a large amount of money he said he’d just come into. He talked about moving to Hawaii with her and Anthony. And then, toward the end, about killing them all. When it looked like he was about to do it, that’s when she picked up one of the guns and shot him.

Just days before the Francke murder, Liz said, she and Tim had been at Fred Meyers when who should they run into but this guy whose picture she’d seen recently in the newspapers. He’d been testifying at some sort of hearing.

It seemed like an arranged meeting, she said. Tim introduced him to her as “my good friend Scott” then the two of them walked off a bit and talked so she couldn’t hear what they said. But the newspaper pictures were so grainy it was hard to be sure.

Alarm bells ringing in his head, Kevin invites Liz back to the KOIN studio. If it’s actually Scott McAlister, then things are finally beginning to make sense.

Kevin says he has some film of the same hearing he’d like to show her. Mason, the KOIN reporter, has shown Kevin how to operate the TV station’s Beta-Max machine and has provided him with a key to the office. The Beta-Max can be slowed down and advanced frame by frame.

“That’s him!” she says when it comes to a stop. “That’s who I saw.”

And that, as best I can figure, is when the two of them fell in love. Or maybe it was even earlier at the TV interview. Kevin remembers seeing her then as if surrounded by a golden aura, but maybe it was just the back-lighting. Who knows?

Someone obviously much wiser than I has said it was two people realizing that no one else in the world could possibly understand what each of them had just been through. In any case, for the benefit of people who keep track of such things, they were married three years later and are still together today.

The next day Kevin tells Steve Jackson at the Salem Statesman-Journal and both Jackson and Mason interview Liz about Natividad’s perhaps not-so-chance meeting with Scott McAlister at Fred Meyer.

When this hits the news, Dale Penn says his office will look into the matter but of course nothing comes of it.  Gable’s trial is coming up, and there’s no reason he would want to confuse matters any further.