David's murder? You mean Tim Natividad, as "David" was his middle name? There was quite a bit going on with Natividad, most of which wouldn't be learned for another six months.
From Journal of a Murder...
Late December 1988 - Timothy David “Rooster” Natividad tells Melody Garcia, whose husband Konrad Garcia, is a penitentiary inmate, not to worry about her husband’s troubles with corrections administrators, according to Melody Garcia.
She told her story to the Statesman Journal and the state police in July 1989.
Natividad “mentioned Francke and said, ‘a lot of people will be happy when that man is dead,’” she said.
Jan. 16, 1989 - Natividad shows up at Melody Garcia’s house high on methamphetamines. According to Melody Garcia, “he was…babbling about shooting it out with some Mexicans…he said his people would get even with Michael Francke.”
Konrad Garcia had been getting repeatedly turned down for parole. That was his problem with corrections officials.
I wrote a piece about Melody Garcia with help from Kevin Francke when I first created my website entitled "
Thanks, but no thanks-Says the Oregon State Police and Frank’s attorney-Bob Abel."
Excerpt from that piece...
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?
Kevin wanted to point out the error in the date Natividad allegedly showed up at Melody's house. The bulk of my excerpt above came from Kevin, however it apparently wasn't accurate.
Nearly three years ago I was contacted by Karie Rothschild Roos, Melody Garcia's daughter...the 14 year old mentioned in the excerpt above. She explained it was her sister who met Natividad at the door and who let him in the house. She also said they never would've denied entry to Natividad. She also claimed Natividad left a long, light-colored trenchcoat with blood on it at their house, which he later came back to retrieve.
Furthermore, she claimed she had witnessed Natividad kill someone else in her presence months earlier. That claim is substantiated by Gable defense investigator reports of an interview conducted with Karie prior to Gable's trial.
I corresponded with Karie for 2-3 weeks, at which time I decided to alert Kevin Francke to the contact as I knew he had been trying to locate her for months. Even though a good deal of animosity had built up between Kevin and I over other issues, and we hadn't spoken to each other for months, I decided to email him and alert him to the contact.
Within 12 hours my email to Kevin ended up in Karie's inbox. An interesting sequence of events which transpired in those 12 hours and which I wrote about in another piece on my website...
Melody Garcia’s daughter contacts website
Karie was livid with me for contacting Kevin saying she didn't trust him ever since he married Liz. I, on the other hand, was still trying to convince myself that Kevin could be trusted. That his intentions in investigating his brother's murder were pure and genuine, and that I was allowing my cynicism to get the best of me in thinking otherwise.
Kevin's actions only fueled my cynicism further, and there is no reasonable explanation for Kevin not responding to my email and his actions compromising anything more which could've been learned from Karie, or even her mother Melody.
As for any fingers being pointed at that time...no. The police had no suspect/s, and they wouldn't zero in on Gable for over another year.
Whose ex-wife? Gable's? Janyne Vierra? You can read a transcript of her testimony by clicking a link on the homepage of my website, and yes, there's background there. Her brother, Randy Studer, was facing charges of molesting a family member. Although Randy consistently claimed that he had no knowledge of Frank being involved, he eventually turned on Frank. Pressure from the cops regarding his sex abuse case perhaps? Who knows, but after all this time these people need to be approached again.