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Oregonian,
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Author: PHIL STANFORD
- of the Oregonian Staff
This time, says Ed,
they've gone too far. The state cops, he means. He thinks they're badgering
him, trying to get him to say things he doesn't know.
He says he didn't even
know it was Michael Francke's
car until last summer, when they hauled him in front of the grand jury.
Of course he'd seen the
news stories on TV about the murder of
That's what he
remembers, anyway. Obviously the cops don't believe him.
First thing the grand
jury wanted to know was: Did you install the alarm on Michael Francke's
car?
Yes, said Ed, he had.
He'd been working at a
Was the alarm working
properly? someone asked. Ed said yes.
Someone else wanted to
know if it was possible for anyone besides the car's owner to disarm the alarm?
Ed said yes again. But only if you had the ``remote.''
By that he meant the
little plastic box, about one-by-two inches, with a tiny transmitter inside. It
has a button you press to turn the alarm on or off.
There are some alarms
that thieves can disarm by picking up their frequency on a scanner, but not a
Code Alarm. It had a scan deterrent. As Ed explained, without the remote that
came with that particular alarm that Francke bought, there was no way.
The grand jury thanked
Ed and he went home -- leaving them, as anyone who has been following this case
will recognize instantly, with an enormous problem:
Number one: On the night
of the murder, Francke's
car door was found open.
Number two: There were
no signs of forced entry on the car.
And number three: By all
accounts, Francke
was obsessive about keeping his car locked.
Even before it became
known that the car was also equipped with an alarm, this had been a problem --
especially to those who held the official view that the murder had been
committed by someone Francke
surprised in the act of burglarizing his car.
To put it as simply as
possible: If it was a car burglary, how did the burglar get in the car? And if
he wasn't already in the car, why would this would-be burglar jump Francke with
a knife? It didn't make much sense.
And now that Ed had
confirmed to them that Francke's car also had a properly functioning, high-tech
alarm, it made even less.
So it will not come as a
particular surprise to anyone who has thought this through, that shortly after
Christmas this year Ed got another call from the state police. They wanted him
to come in an take a polygraph exam.
No problem, Ed remembers
thinking. So he went into state police headquarters, and they put him on the
box.
But this time, he says,
they asked him several new questions.
For example: Had he
given the electronic code to Francke's alarm to anyone else? Or had he made a duplicate
remote alarm transmitter?
No, said Ed. And no again.
``You're lying,'' said
the polygraph operator.
``No, I'm not,'' said
Ed.
Two weeks later, at the
request of the state police, Ed went in for another polygraph exam -- with the
same results.
Last month, he says,
they brought him in again for questioning and used the good-guy, bad-guy
routine on him.
``What is it you're not
telling us?'' said the good guy. ``We know you're a good boy'' -- Ed doesn't
have a criminal record -- ``just tell us what you know and everything will be
OK.''
``You're lying to us,''
said the bad guy, ``and if you don't come clean, you're going to jail with all
the rest of them.''
Ed says he broke down
crying.
Tuesday night, he says,
they took his fingerprints and a hair sample. They also handed him a subpoena
ordering him to report to the grand jury Thursday.
``The boat's leaving,''
one of the police officers told him, ``and if you're not on it Thursday, it'll
be too late.''
``But I don't know
anything,'' says Ed. He says he thinks the cops have gone too far -- and if
he's telling the truth, you can see how he might feel that way.
On the other hand, you
can also understand why the cops would be so agitated at this point. Because if it wasn't possible for anyone besides Francke, or
someone using Francke's
remote transmitter, to have opened the car door, they still don't have the
foggiest why he was killed.