After 15 years, where is the man in the pinstriped suit?

By Phil Stanford

The Portland Tribune, Aug 31, 2004, Updated Oct 30, 2009

A security guard found Michael Francke at 12:35 a.m on Jan. 18, 1989, lying on the north porch of the Oregon Department of Corrections office building in Salem. Cause of death was a knife wound to the heart.

Initial reports said police were looking for a man wearing a light-colored trench coat.

A custodian, leaving work about 7 o’clock earlier that night, had heard a sound Ñ something like the “oomph” of a man being hit in the stomach Ñ and turned to see two men facing each other near the edge of the parking lot,

One turned and walked at a leisurely pace toward the Dome Building. The other one, wearing the light trench coat, turned and ran in the opposite direction, west across the grounds of the Dome Building, as the corrections department office building is called.

Because neither of the men appeared to be hurt, the custodian went home and didn’t think about it again until he saw the police lines the next day.

The custodian couldn’t offer much of a description. It was, after all, already dark, and he’d been standing yards away.

Two weeks later, state police announced they were looking for a second man Ñ described as olive-skinned, well-groomed and wearing a pinstriped suit Ñ who’d been spotted inside the Dome Building at about 6:30 the night of the murder.

A corrections employee, working late that night, had walked around a corner in the nearly deserted building and come face to face with him. She got a good look at him. She’d never seen him before.

Even at the time, the significance of the sighting was unmistakable.

At 6:30 p.m. the Dome Building already had been locked for an hour and a half. If he’d been there on legitimate business, he would have come forward when he heard about the murder.

And if he didn’t come forward Ñ which he never did Ñ there’s only one good explanation for why he was in the Dome Building an hour after closing time.

It’s no small detail. If you don’t know who the man in the pinstriped suit is, you can’t claim to know how Michael Francke was killed.

Fifteen years later, no one Ñ including Marion County District Attorney Dale Penn, who succeeded in pinning the murder on a small-time crook named Frank Gable Ñ has ever been able to identify the olive-skinned man in the pinstriped suit.

I’m not the only citizen of this state who believes that Gable is serving life without parole for a crime he simply didn’t commit.

• • •

Despite public charges that Francke’s death might be connected to massive corruption within Oregon’s prison system, the state police focused on members of Salem’s methamphetamine underworld. Within a year, they had zeroed in on Gable, a low-level Salem druggie.

Since there was no physical evidence linking Gable or anyone else to the murder, the state police case against Gable, by necessity, consisted of statements by jailbird types, almost all of them facing serious legal problems of their own.

Investigators also came up with two eyewitnesses: Jodie Swearingen, an 18-year-old street kid who said she’d been standing lookout for Gable that night while he broke into Francke’s car, and a local meth freak and all-around tough guy by the name of Shorty Harden.

For his part, Harden claimed to have happened by the murder scene almost by accident. Shortly before the time of the killing, he said, he received a phone call from Jodie asking him to come pick her up at the Dome Building.

Never mind that in those pre-cell-phone days, no one was ever able to find a pay phone closer than a 24-minute round-trip walk from the building, making the whole scenario slightly ridiculous.

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