FRANCKE BROTHER HOPEFUL OF ARREST

Author: PHIL MANZANO - of the Oregonian Staff

Summary: Patrick Francke says he expects an indictment within three to four weeks in his brother Michael's slaying

The older brother of slain Corrections Director Michael Francke said Sunday he expected investigators to make an arrest in the killing soon.

``I'm very excited about the way the whole thing is starting to unfold,'' Patrick Francke said in a telephone interview from Kansas City. A special grand jury considering evidence in the slaying is scheduled to reconvene this week after a layoff of nearly three months.

Francke said he thought three to four weeks was a good time frame for an indictment or an arrest and he was hopeful one would be made.

The investigators are ``hammering hard,'' he said, and they could be ``at a point where they think they can make the case stick.''

Michael Francke, 42, was stabbed to death Jan. 17, 1989, outside his agency's headquarters in Salem. No one has been charged in the slaying, which focused intense public attention on the integrity of the state's prison system.

A source close to the investigation has told The Oregonian that the special Marion County grand jury hearing evidence in Francke's slaying could meet as early as Monday. It last met in early December.

The grand jury hears evidence and decides whether to hand up an indictment, charging someone with a crime. Its proceedings are secret.

With the reconvening of the grand jury, Patrick Francke said, he sees ``a glimmer of light at the end of this tunnel.''

Marion County District Attorney Dale Penn, the official overseeing the investigation, said Sunday that he did not give Francke a time frame for an arrest.

``We have made a lot of progress in the case, but I don't have a specific time line,'' he said.

Penn said. He declined to confirm whether the grand jury would meet this week in the 14-month-old case, the most expensive homicide investigation in Oregon history.

Patrick Francke and another brother, Kevin, have suggested that Michael Francke was murdered because he had uncovered an ``organized criminal element'' in the state's prison system. That theory prompted 13 investigations and audits of the Corrections Department, including the one conducted by John Warden, a retired Oregon Court of Appeals judge, at Gov. Neil Goldschmidt's request.

Warden's report said the team found some prison system employees involved in ``significant illegal activities,'' including bringing drugs into prisons. But the report found no evidence of an ``organized, sinister conspiracy'' and no reason to believe that Francke's death was linked to corruption.

Patrick Francke said he personally had never put the corruption theory aside, although Warden and other investigators have discounted it.

``Until it is all over and done with, I'm not ready to take anyone out of the lineup,'' he said.

Much of the investigation has centered on the associates and friends of Frank E. Gable, who is serving a one-year sentence in the Coos County Jail for assaulting his wife, Janyne. According to jail records, Gable, with credit for good behavior, is due to be released April 12.

Gable said last month that he was questioned and took polygraph tests in connection with the case. But he said he was not involved and has an alibi for his whereabouts on the evening Francke was killed. Gable said Friday that investigators have not talked to him for weeks.

Penn had said earlier that reconvening the grand jury was not a signal that the homicide case was nearing an end, but he did say he thought the murder eventually would be solved.

``We are not planning an arrest; we are not planning an indictment; we are not planning to end the case,'' Penn said