Michael Francke - Press Coverage

Press Coverage

The case has become somewhat of a battleground between the three leading Portland newspapers, with The Oregonian backing the official version of what happened, and its rivals, the Portland Tribune and (to a lesser extent) the Willamette Week questioning the official record. In May 2005, the Oregonian published the results of an investigation into the case, which concluded that Gable was indeed the killer, and that the killing was a robbery gone wrong. The Tribune ran a rebuttal, claiming to have uncovered holes in the Oregonian's reporting, which was followed by a further rebuttal by the Oregonian reporters in the newspaper's blog.

A leading advocate of the conspiracy theory is local journalist Phil Stanford. Stanford has written extensively on the case, and wrote the screenplay for a film based on the Francke murder, Without Evidence (1995), featuring a young Angelina Jolie, in one of her first major roles, as Jodie Swearingen. Stanford, then a columnist for The Oregonian, testified in the trial for the defense. He continued writing about the case in his Oregonian column until leaving the paper in 1994; he now writes for the Portland Tribune and continues to cover the case there.

In February 1991, prior to Gable's conviction, the Michael Francke story was featured on an episode of the TV program Unsolved Mysteries.