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"A Killing That Won't Go Away" Jim Hill - Former Oregon Senator
| "Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are." -Benjamin Franklin |
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| Rob's Corner |
| Thanks, but no thanks-Says the Oregon State Police and Frank’s attorney- Bob Abel By Rob Taylor Six months following the murder of Corrections Director Michael Francke, investigators from Frank Gable’s defense team were interviewing various people whom they hoped could give them information pertaining to the murder. One of these people, Melody Rothchild Garcia, was interviewed on June 8, 1990. Melody had a husband, Konrad Garcia, who was in the Oregon State Penitentiary, and had spent most of the past thirteen years there. During one of her visits to Konrad in July or August of 1987, Melody met Pat Sacre, whose husband Steve was doing time with Konrad. She decided to help Pat out, and let her and her family move in with her. It didn't take long before Pat started using meth, and began hooking to support her habit. More and more, Pat involved herself in Salem’s perfidious meth crowd, ignoring her responsibilities at home, and eventually stealing whatever she could get her hands on, including things that belonged to Melody. Melody recalled the time Pat brought home some stolen guns, a VCR, and a stereo. Enough was enough! She gathered up the items, and took them to the Oregon State Police. There she spoke with a Detective Tindle. She was told they couldn’t help her. They weren’t even interested! During the time Pat began using meth, there were a lot of people coming around the house. Two of these people were Robert “Zink” Nicholson and Dave Rabe. Melody thought these two were some of the “nicer ones”. They would always talk about a guy named Tim Natividad, and how tough he was; how he once tied a guy up for the entire weekend in an effort to collect on a debt he owed. They called him “Rooster”, and told Melody she should meet him. And soon, she would. Tim Natividad, “Rooster”, suddenly popped into her life in June of 1988, six months before the murder of Mike Francke, and his very own demise. He arrived unannounced; Melody was in her bedroom, and Natividad strutted in like he owned the place. He related that he had heard much about her, and her situation with her husband Konrad, who was finishing out a long 20-year sentence at the joint in Salem on a rape conviction. He knew that Konrad had been down an awfully long time, and would be up for a promising parole hearing in the coming weeks. This was the first of several meetings that would take place with Rooster. He seemed to know much, too much she felt, about Melody’s affairs, as well as Konrad’s, attributing it to the fact that he had spent time in the joint with Konrad. He was going out of his way to befriend her, and gain her, and Konrad’s trust. Neither Melody nor Konrad could place him, but clearly he knew, much more information about both of them than someone walking in out of the blue should know. This led to several conversations arranged between Rooster and Konrad on the phone from the penitentiary to Melody’s. Eventually they decided Tim should try to get approved to visit Konrad. Weeks passed, but it never materialized. Later, Melody would discover that Tim was lying about doing time, and knowing her husband. But who could have been the source of the information that Natividad had, and what was his purpose? From their first encounter, Natividad spoke to Melody about needing to get rid of some guy. Natividad wanted Melody’s husband Konrad, to do the job. Konrad was up for parole, and anticipating his release. “Someone has to go down”, Natividad said. He told Melody if this guy went down it would make her happy. It would help her with her problems. At the time, the only problem Melody had mentioned was waiting time after time for her husband to win his parole. He kept getting denied. This led Melody to believe the person Natividad wanted to get rid of was someone in the corrections system. Natividad eventually told Konrad that he could get him out of the joint to “take out” somebody if he didn’ t mind who the target was. Rooster told Konrad he would be paid, providing he didn’t care where the money came from, since it all came from the same place. He talked about it on many occasions, but never mentioned a name. Not until the time he came over to her house, and as he was getting ready to leave, sitting on his motorcycle revving the engine, Melody asked him who he was going to kill, and all she heard over the sound of the engine was the name “Frank”. Melody recalls Tim’s fascination with knives. He collected them like some people collect stamps. She recalls a menacing ten-inch boot-knife strapped to his leg. She vividly relives the horrifying night Natividad came to her house, completely whacked out, and crazy on meth. His eyes practically popping out of their sockets. Her daughter went to the door, familiar, by now, with Rooster dropping in unexpectedly. But something was very different this time. Though just fourteen at the time, her instincts told her not to open the door. The face and demeanor of Rooster terrified her. She retreated to the back room and told her mom what she had seen. Melody instructed her to not let him in: to lie, and tell him that Melody wasn’t there and just go away. “It was the night before Francke was killed”, she said. Or was it? Michael Francke’s car was found by employees in its usual designated spot in the front parking circle of the Dome Building with the driver’s door ajar around 7:15 p.m. on January the 17th. Despite this very out-of-character occurrence, and no response from numerous pages and a search of the office building, the police were never summoned. Five hours later, just minutes into the morning of the 18th, a guard “rattling doorknobs” discovered his lifeless body on the north portico, lying in front of a door leading in to a clerical area in the Dome Building. Police and paramedics were summoned; soon the crime scene was taken over and expanded by the Oregon State Police. Governor Goldschmidt and representatives of the District Attorney’s office were soon on the scene, but measures were taken to keep a lid on the news until the scene was secure, and any secondary crime scenes could be checked out. It was decided to issue the first press release at 8:00 a.m. PST, on the morning of the 18th. Anyone in the northwest alive at the time would soon be deluged with the streams of radio and television coverage that the murder of one of the governor’s key cabinet members would create. Melody Garcia was no exception. Thinking that Francke had been killed the 18th, the day the body was discovered and the day of the press release, then the bizarre incident with Natividad the “night before the murder” was actually the very night of the murder. So was it just drugs fueling his freakish, paranoid behavior, or had something gone bad, very bad? Melody said the word on the street was that Natividad had killed Francke. Also that he had a white slavery ring of young girls, that he would string out on meth, and turn them into prostitutes, using them for sex, and to make porno films. Melody says he was quite infatuated with her 14 year-old daughter. It was probably just four months or so before Francke’s murder. Natividad stopped by Melody’s house with someone else in tow. Nothing strange about that, except he usually left the other person or persons in his car. This time he brought the guy inside with him. The guy didn’t say anything. He just stood there, while Tim went on about his business. What struck Melody as odd was that this guy was definitely not the type to be hanging around Tim. He was straight looking, a businessman type. His hair was short, and he was much cleaner than the people Tim hung around. She didn’t think much of it at all, until several months later when she saw a newspaper article with a picture of Scott McAlister splashed across the front page. “Former Asst. Attorney General Arrested for Kiddie-Porn”. She immediately recognized him as the guy who had come to her house with Natividad. She’s convinced they were the same person. We now know that Scott McAlister, the former legal counsel for Corrections whom Francke pushed out of power just a week before his murder, has a perverse fondness for underage sexual diversions, in fact, it was that very fascination which led FBI agents to his new home in Salt Lake City in 1990. Among the many items seized, two films depicting minors in pornographic situations, which were at the heart of their search. The icing on the cake was the fact that the films bore stamps indicating they had been transported from out of state into Utah. A long vacation to Club Fed seemed imminent. But Scott was not just part of the system, in many ways he was the system. Far be it that any of his peers and judges, all fellow lawyers themselves, put one of their own on ice. McAlister was able to wheedle his way out of the federal net, and eventually pleaded down to misdemeanor charges involving the endangerment of a minor (but still having to admit that he possessed child pornography). Combined with Melody Garcia’s statement that Natividad was involved with numerous young girls, and the fact she can positively identify the guy who came to her house with Tim as Scott McAlister, it’s not at all difficult to believe they knew each other. In fact, it would be a surprise if they didn’t! Add Former Governor Neil Goldschmidt to this pedophile club with what we know about him now, and you can form your own opinions. What surprises me the most about all of this is that it was completely disregarded by the Oregon State Police, and Bob Abel, Frank’s trial attorney, never gave it the time of day. Never admitted it into evidence, never brought it up at all! |
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