FRANCKE'S DEPUTY TELLS OF PRESSURES

Author: PHIL MANZANO and JOHN SNELL - of the Oregonian Staff

Summary: The corrections director is said to have been laboring under several burdens in the period that ended with his murder

Michael Francke was under extraordinary professional and political pressure at the time of his slaying in 1989, Francke's second-in-command testified Monday.

Richard S. Peterson, Francke's director of institutions in the Oregon Corrections Department, said the pressure -- coupled with a failing marriage and personal financial troubles -- caused Francke to become less diligent in performing his duties the months before his death.

He added that Francke, in fact, may have been concerned about losing his job and may have been applying for work in other states.

Members of Francke's family and some news reporters have suggested that Francke uncovered political corruption in his department shortly before his death. But Peterson said the pressure Francke faced was from the political fallout of his agency's spending more money than it had been allocated.

``I'm a longstanding bureaucrat in the state of Oregon,'' said Peterson, who had worked in the Corrections Department since 1966. ``I know pressure when I see it, and he was under pressure.''

Peterson's testimony came in the third week in the murder trial of Frank E. Gable, 31. Prosecutors allege that Gable stabbed Francke outside the corrections director's office Jan. 17, 1989, when Francke caught Gable trying to burglarize his car.

Gable could be put to death if he should be convicted.

Peterson said most of the political pressure Francke faced came from Corrections Department costs, which were out of control in the late 1980s. The state was building additional prisons, he said, and Francke was leading a group that wanted to build a new prison at the Eastern Oregon State Hospital in Pendleton.

That project went over budget when Francke's committee elected to build a separate prison dining hall, which was not in the original budget.

About the same time, Francke said publicly that he thought a new communications system was needed for all Corrections Department employees and he planned to get one, whether his agency had the budget for it or not.

Peterson said the statement came at a time when other agencies were forced to cut back to foot the bill for new prisons and other facets of the expanding corrections budget.

``It was my understanding that, in short-money times, being seen as being insensitive to the budget was not viewed kindly by other branches of government,'' Peterson said.

Peterson also said that a few hours before the murder, Francke confided that his marriage was failing. Peterson said Francke had told him that his wife, Bingta, had moved out and had left for Fresno, Calif.

According to Francke, Peterson added, she ``probably would not return.''

Peterson said Francke was strapped for money the entire time he knew him. Peterson said he once loaned his boss $400 to $500 for a lawn mower and was paid back later.

Peterson said the political, financial and marital pressures seemed to take a toll on Francke in the months before his death.

He became less interested in his job, Peterson said, and frequently didn't respond to after-hours telephone calls or pages from staff members.

``I think he was under about as much pressure as I've seen in my 25 years as an administrator in Oregon,'' Peterson said.

Peterson said he took Francke to lunch Jan. 17, to try to take some of the pressure off him. He noticed that Francke looked disheveled and tired.

In the months after Francke's killing, Peterson was the subject of suspicions by members of Francke's family, who believed that Francke was the victim of a conspiracy conducted by members of his own staff.

A few months after the killing, Bingta Francke and Francke's brothers, Kevin and Patrick, urged Marion County District Attorney Dale Penn to get Peterson to submit to a polygraph test.

Peterson refused at first, saying he was on medication after a car accident. He later took the test, which indicated he did not have any involvement in the death.

Peterson testified Monday that, the night of Francke's death, he and another agency administrator, Dave Caulley, had searched the Corrections Department offices after other employees had found Francke's car door open and were unable to raise him by his pager.

Peterson said he walked through the ground floor of the Dome Building -- where the department has its headquarters. Peterson checked Francke's office and looked into Room 107 of the building but could see little because the lights were off.

He told jurors he didn't know where the light switch was because the building had been a former mental ward for the Oregon State Hospital and switches were in unlikely places where patients couldn't reach them.

According to the prosecution theory, Francke's body was on the north porch of the Dome Building, just outside Room 107, when Peterson conducted his search.

Francke had broken out a window frame pane on the door that leads from the porch to the room in an apparent effort to re-enter his office after he was stabbed. A police criminalist earlier testified that the shards of glass flew more than 7 feet into the room, but Peterson said he neither saw nor stepped on glass in the darkened room. Peterson also said he looked at the side door but saw nothing unusual.

Caulley said he had called other agency officials from the Dome Building and felt relieved when they told him Francke might have had a dinner engagement.

In other testimony:

Caulley said Francke was having problems periodically with his car alarm system and sometimes did not use it. Under the prosecution theory, Gable entered Francke's car and attacked him when Francke came out of the Dome Building. If Francke had armed his car alarm the day he was killed, the alarm would have sounded when Gable opened the car door.

Oregon State Police Trooper Richard Pileggi said he had contacted Gable on May 26 after a parole officer had called the Francke task force and said Gable might know something about the homicide.

Pileggi said Gable had told him he had been asleep most of Jan. 17 and did not know anything about the killing until he dropped his wife off for work at the Oregon State Hospital the next morning and saw the Dome Building cordoned off.

The 15-minute interview was the first contact between Gable and the task force.

State Police Detective Terry Crawford said he had examined Francke's pager Jan. 19 and found it had been turned off and no call-back numbers were visible. Employees searching for Francke had tried repeatedly to page him but had received no response.