11. Two slashed tires – and a warning on the windshield

Without a shred of physical evidence linking Frank Gable to the crime scene, the state’s entire case would rest entirely on the testimony of so-called material witnesses who have since admitted they were lying.

And as is now quite clear, those lies were manufactured by the state police, using false readings of polygraph tests to bully and threaten their interviewees – for the most part ex-cons and jailbirds with sentences hanging over their heads – until they got their stories right.

Just a couple of lowlights:

A 17-year-old runaway named Jodie Swearingen, had to be given 23 polygraphs before she managed to tell investigators what they wanted to hear. At one point the state police officer conducting the exam pointed his finger at her and shouted, “If this next test doesn’t come out right, I’ll flush you down the toilet like a fucking turd.”

They eventually got her to say that she was present the night of the murder and saw Gable stab Michael Francke after Gable had dropped her off at the Dome Building.

As would later be established – and the state police couldn’t help but have known it themselves – she hadn’t even met Gable then.

They also got Jodie to say that after Gable dropped her off, she called another tweaker named Shorty Harden to pick her up at the Dome Building, and she was there with him, sitting in his parked car off to the side, when the murder occurred.

Of course, both Shorty and Jodie have since recanted their stories, but it was obvious even at the time that their stories didn’t jibe with one another. In those pre-cell phone days, Jodie wouldn’t have had a way to call him, and the state knew that too.

When Shorty’s name hit the papers, he called the Statesman-Journal to proclaim that he, not Mike Keerins, was the state’s “million-dollar baby.” Then he went on the run and ended up in the hospital when he was injured trying to escape the police.

As he was being wheeled out of the operating room, he was heard to say (by a police officer who was sent there to guard him, no less) that he was going to get out of whatever legal difficulties he was then experiencing, “once I hang a rap on Gable.”

And those, ladies and gentlemen, were the state’s two eyewitnesses.

After Jodie Swearingen said she couldn’t lie any longer, Cappie “Shorty” Harden became the state’s only eyewitness. He has also recanted.

Although none of the other so-called material witnesses would claim to have seen Gable commit the murder, they all managed to come up with stories suggesting that Gable had done or said something incriminating afterward. From the state’s own records, it’s clear that their testimony was manufactured, just like Jodie’s and Shorty’s, using multiple polygraph exams and threats.

In late October 1989, just a month after Keerins went public with his cock-and-bull story about how Gable had confessed to him in the Marion Country jail, I got a call from a guard at the Clark County jail, just across the river from Portland in Washington.

The guard said he had a guy over there I ought to talk to, name of Mark Gesner. And what Gesner was telling him was that the Oregon state cops were offering him a deal if he made up a story implicating Gable in the Francke murder.

So I hustled over, and sure enough, Gesner told me the same thing. He said the state cops were leaning on him to come up with something on Gable, but the problem was he didn’t know anything about the Francke murder.

And then he also said – with a sort of sheepish smile, as I recall – “But man, what’re you going to do? You gotta look out for yourself, right?” At the time Gesner was looking at a couple of decades in prison on gun and drug charges.

A few days later I got a call from the guard letting me know that Gesner has no longer in the Clark County jail. “They moved him out as soon as he told them what they wanted to hear,” he said.

At trial Gesner would testify that the night of the murder Gable gave him a bag to dispose of. He said he didn’t bother to look inside, but it felt like clothing and a long cylindrical object. Gesner would also testify that a few days later Gable told him he’d committed the murder.

There’s evidence investigators even knew that Gable had an alibi for the night of the murder. In exchange for not testifying at all, Robert Cornett, who we know now was at Gable’s apartment doing a drug deal at the time of the murder, was given a huge break on drug charges that could have put him in prison for twenty or thirty years.

At the time it was a big mystery, because Dale Penn and others involved absolutely denied that Cornett’s “departure,” as the legal folks say, had anything to do with the Francke case. But the records are still sealed, and Cornett, who is now a successful businessman in Salem, received only a six-year sentence.

It's also worth noting that Cornett and Gesner, as well as one other of the so-called “material witnesses” against Gable were clients of Paul Ferder, the Keizer mafia’s favorite lawyer, and perhaps not incidentally the one who Gable offered to set up for the Keizer narcotics cops.

In any case, the state’s investigation was proceeding nicely when Jodie, the 17-year-old runaway, told her friends she could no longer lie, and she absconded. The state tracked her down in Colorado and brought her back to Oregon where they put her in prison and held her for trial.

In February, Gable, who was still locked up in Coos Bay, gave what in retrospect is a remarkably level-headed interview to Steve Jackson of the Salem Statesman-Journal. “The cops are frustrated,” he said. “If they’re whacking on me, it’s obvious their case isn’t progressing because I didn’t do it. But I’m getting real tweaked that they’re getting to the point where they need to hang this on someone, and that someone is me.”

And sure enough, less than two months later Kevin got a call from Dennis O’Donnell, who by now Kevin had come to think of as just a con man in a police uniform.

“I know you’re not going to like this,” O’Donnell says, “but it’s my duty to inform you and the other family members that we’re indicting Frank Gable for the murder of your brother.”

“So how’d you get the job, Dennis?” asks Kevin.

“Guess I just drew the short straw,” says O’Donnell.

And so with much public fanfare, on April 2, 1990, Gable was indicted for the murder of Michael Francke.

Dennis O’Donnell, who ran the state police cover-up in the Michael Francke murder case, would later be rewarded with a promotion (as pictured here) to Deputy Superintendent.

In August 1990 Kevin closes down his construction business in Florida, which by now had gone down the tubes anyway, loads everything he can into his ’79 Chevy Caprice and heads to Oregon to pursue the investigation on his own. Along the way he stops in Kansas City to see his elderly parents.

That night, sleeping in the large room he once shared with his brothers, he has a dream in which he sees Mike coming up the stairs. There is a bright light behind him and he seems to be floating as he comes nearer.

“Who did it?” Kevin asks in the dream. “I trusted someone I shouldn’t have trusted,” says Mike. “You’ll see. I’ve got to be going now. I’ve got people waiting for me.” Already he is vanishing.

In Salem, Kevin gets an apartment and starts making contacts. He’s been in Salem only a few days when he walks out of his apartment one morning to discover a note on the windshield saying GO HOME and two slashed tires.

Welcome to Oregon.