Who Killed Michael Francke: And How They Got Away With It

Michael Francke was a ranking law enforcement official—a good and decent man, former prosecutor and judge, just 42 years of age, recently appointed head of the Oregon Corrections Department. He was stabbed to death the night before he was scheduled to appear before the Oregon State Senate Judiciary Committee to expose a rats' nest of corruption he'd discovered within his own department.

Yet, almost from the moment of his death, virtually every public official involved in the case would deny that Francke was investigating anything of the sort. The official line: His death was the result of a bungled car burglary. The investigation was little more than a cover-up. The trial was a farce.

Frank Gable, a 29-year-old petty thief and small-time drug dealer, was convicted with fabricated evidence and sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison. He spent more than three decades in jail before being exonerated by two Federal Appeals courts.

But what makes this more than just another tale of justice gone terribly wrong is that after the murder, Michael Francke's younger brother, Kevin, who never bought the official line, would leave behind his life as a contractor in Florida and enter into Salem, Oregon's underworld to find his brother's killers—pitting himself against the dirty cops and corrections officials who seemed to be behind the killing, and also the governor himself, who had his own dark secret to hide.

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Phil Stanford has worked as a magazine writer, newspaper columnist, private investigator, and, most recently, a podcaster. He has covered the Francke case for more than 30 years. Stanford worked with iHeartRadio podcasts to produce the 12-part series "Murder in Oregon: Who Killed Michael Francke?," which climbed to No. 1 on the true crime podcast charts. This is his fifth book.

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Praise for Other Books by Phil Stanford

"Portland Confidential lays it out in all its gritty glory, rattling skeletons in the city's many musty closets." —Seattle Times

"A film noir incarnation of the Rose City . . . The city Stanford writes about is a lost world – nastier, denser, wilder and more elegant than today." —Willamette Week on Portland Confidential

"A para-political diamond mine . . . A major contribution to the Watergate narrative."   —Jim Hougan, author of Secret Agenda on White House Call Girl

"Phil Stanford trawls the dark side of 1970s Portland in Rose City Vice… There are no heroes here. The city and its denizens are mostly venal and violent beyond description. Stanford, to his credit, makes you wish that you were there." —Douglas Perry, Oregonian

"Late style in crime fascinates Phil Stanford in this irresistibly greasy scrapbook. Behind the sordid tales, the outline of how corruption and city power work is very visible." — Martin Bellheimer, Counterpunch, on Rose City Vice