Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Murder and Oregon as a production of I Heart Radio.
After Mike Frankie's staff, gossip in the drug and crime
community linked two men too it Johnny Krauss, who actually
confessed to the murder, and Tim Natividad. In our last episode,
(00:22):
Natividad's childhood friend Vince Taylor said he believed Tim could
easily have been the man who killed Frankie, and he
wasn't the only one. There were a number of people
in the underworld who right away thought that Natividad had
been involved. One of them was Greg Johnson, who his
(00:43):
name was then He was one of the inmates who
came forward in the eighties six investigation, and he's back
out on the streets in the drug business again. Greg
Johnson first met Timothy Natividad in the Salem drug scene
in the early eighties. Johnson was jailed for robbery charges,
essentially taking the rap for Nativodad locking in their association,
(01:07):
and when Johnson was released in the two reconnected. The
morning after Frankie murder, his drug partner, John Bray, was
driving down the street going home from work release and
Greg hailed him and got him to drive into a
parking lot there in roths and Grace told me Greg
Johnson was sweating. He was, he was obviously scared and
(01:29):
had taken a lot of meth. And he told him
that he had picked up Tim Nativodad the night before
at the Dome building. And that's all Bray could get
out of him. But it was clear, he said that
Johnson was trying to tell him he knew something about
the murder. I'm Lauren Bright Pacheco, and this is murder
(01:52):
in Oregon. Nigel jay Quiz as a Pulitzer Prize winning
investigative reporter who writes for the will Emit Week in Portland's.
(02:14):
He's a tall, lean man with a direct intellectual way
about him that mirrors his meticulous reporting. In two thousand
and seven, Natividad's drug buddy, Greg Johnson reached out to
Nigel from an Oregon prison, claiming to have information about
who killed Michael Frankie. I was skeptical, as you would be,
but he said enough to make me willing to go
(02:35):
see him. And he had enough information and enough specific
details and a good enough story that I think I
went and saw him four times. He said that he
had often served as muscle or backup for Natividad, that
he would come to drug deals with a gun and
sort of be the enforcer, and that Natividad had asked
(02:56):
him to drive him to the office for my Frankie
was killed is called the Dome Building, and that he
later picked Nativity add up and also had driven him
to another location in Salem subsequently, where Nativity Ad received
and envelope full of cash, and the man Johnson claims
delivered that envelope of cash an Oregon Department of Corrections official,
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and not just any officials, actually the warden at the
Oregon State Prison, which was then the largest prison in
the state. So his story was fit into a narrative
that many people had speculated about, which was that Frankie's
murderer was not a car prow gone bad, as it
(03:41):
has been portrayed by law enforcement, but was a contract
killing orchestrated by corrupt prison officials who were threatened by
Michael Frankie. He found his story possible. I found it plausible. Again,
I couldn't prove it because key players are dead. So
the question was what did Greg Johnson have to Jane
by coming forward with the story. When I talked to him,
(04:03):
he was facing a twenty years sentence, and his stated
motivation was, in the nineteen eighties nine six, I believe
he had been a witness in a corruption proceeding against
senior Department of Corrections officials. He had basically said, here's
what I saw, and these guys are corrupt. Just a reminder,
(04:24):
that's the same n lb D investigation into corruption within corrections.
So Johnson said, since nineteen eighty six he'd considered himself
a marked man for speaking out against that corruption. But
why would he come forward with this two decades later?
What did he have to lose? Then, he said he
(04:45):
knew that the Department of Corrections officials had ordered Michael
Frankie's murder, so he thought he was doubly vulnerable. So
his view was, he's going to do twenty years in
the Oregon State prison system. He's marked me, and for
two reasons, he's unlikely to survive. So at the time
he had spoken to me, he had already asked to
(05:08):
be an administrative segregation and people call that the whole.
In other words, he wanted to be separated from the
from the mainstream prison population. So his state of motivation
was he wanted to serve his time in another state
where he was not under the thumb, and possible retribution
of people that he thought were corrupt, whether you believe
(05:28):
Greg Johnson or not, like Vince Taylor, it's another association
between Tim to Tivotad and Michael's murder, and another connection
tying the tivod Ad to the murder would soon come forward.
Conrade is a very unusual character. Obviously intelligent, he's he's artistic.
At least at one point in his life, he was
(05:48):
quite out of control. At this time, he had been
serving I think eleven years for a nine point rape.
He was due to get out on parole. In fact,
he was scheduled for release on role a week before
the murder. Then about six months after Michael Frankie has murdered,
he goes to his counselor in prison and tells the
(06:10):
counselor that he knows something about the murder. He said
says he was approached by Tim Natividad to do the murder,
and he knows that Scott McAllister, the prison lawyer, arranged
it is their record of that. I pulled up the
report by Lawrence Conrad's counselor and it says this is
(06:32):
what the task force wrote from his report. Lawrence was
interviewing and make Garcia concerning institutional matter. During the conversation,
Garcia told Durrance Mr. Frankie was killed by Timothy David Natividad.
This was arranged by Scott McAllister. So that's the information
they had. Wow, now the police have an official memo
(06:56):
from someone in corrections that they just can't ignore. The counselor.
Lawrence then does what he's required to do, and he
writes a short memorandum on what Conrad has told him
and sends it to the Frankie Task Force, which of
course creates a problem for them because it's now part
of the public record and they can't pretend it doesn't exist.
So they send one of the lead detectives, Ken Pissina,
(07:18):
to talk to Conrad, and it's clear from passin as
report that they're not really much interested in talking about Natividad,
and and he doesn't even ask about McAllister. The lead
detective on the task force doesn't even ask Conrad Garcia
about it, or if he did, he sure didn't write
anything about it. I've got his report here too, nothing
(07:39):
about McAllister. So then what happens to Natividad as a
suspect in the investigation at that point, so he's effectively
dropped and that's pretty much the end of Nativit Dad
as far as the official investigation goes. That's incredible. They
can't pursue him without pursuing McAllister Conrad Garcia's name comes
(08:07):
up in connection with another Salem criminal when it comes
to theories about Mike's murder. Buck Burgess, remember that name.
That's the guy who lived at the house near the
Dome building. The same guy Johnny Krauss, the man who
confessed to Mike's murder then recanted said was involved. Here's
Kevin Charles James Belden Buster a k A. Buck Burgess,
(08:32):
a k A Bear a k A Teddy Bear. Multiple
convictions and according to Kevin Burgess was also charged with murder,
but served time for manslaughter in California where he killed
a baby, numerous robberies, assaults, assault in the prison here
in Oregon. He was a person of interest back in
(08:57):
the New Mexico prison. Riots is a major ship disturber
from what I understand, and he was an inmate down
there along with I think about forty or fifty other
inmates from Oregon that Oregon had shipped down there because
of overcrowding in the Oregan system. He is formally married
to Melody Garcia. Melody Darlene Rothschild was her maiden name.
(09:23):
Melody was subsequently married to Conrad Garcia, who was an
inmate doing time at the Oregon State Penitentiary, and Conrad
Nick Garcia buck Burgess's cellmate. Melody and the drugs turned
(09:44):
out to be a common thread that connects them all.
While Melody passed a few years ago, we spoke with
her daughter, Carrie, who was subjected to her mother's drug dealing,
abuse and depravity. My name is Rie Rothschild. I am
the daughter of Melody Rothchild Garcia Burgess. I don't know honestly,
(10:11):
Melody Rothschild Burgess, then Garcia, my mother's I think fourth
and fifth husband were inmates. Instead of dating, she married people.
She's married at eight times. The death certificate was a nightmare.
I handled that. Carrie and her siblings had been raised
(10:34):
in an upper middle class home in Utah until her
mother abruptly decided to divorce their father and moved to
Oregon to marry Burgess, a distant cousin. That's when their
lives and mother really began to downhill spiral. My mom
was on meth and phetamines. She was using them with
an ivy drug use and they're often you know, lay
(11:00):
with different things. And um, there were people that were
doing heroin there as well. UM, and I don't believe
she was really into heroin. Her primary drug was crank
because what they called it at that time, and um,
but there were all sorts of drugs around us. In person,
(11:24):
Carrie is slim and delicate. She apparently inherited her striking
looks from her mother, and her refined features are very
much in keeping with her regal last name, but she
projects a toughness and uneasiness about her that reflects her
abusive upbringing. It was just a nightmare. The whole thing
was a nightmare. It was just complete insanity. Um. My
(11:46):
mom was just not a mother. We were I don't
really know, like as far as my sister and brother
and I, there was no sense of family. My mom
was just complete lee, doing everything and anything, you know,
for her own self. For visitation. Her life completely involved
(12:08):
getting up and going to the prison. She literally would
do her makeup in the morning and go do prison visitation,
come back and do her makeup, and go to the
prison again. And that was absolutely the center of her life.
Like that was so sheld go to the prison two
times a day to visit one of her husbands at
(12:30):
the time. It was always Nick. That's always what I remember.
It was always Nick Conrad Garcia. And actually the whole
thing was she was completely insanely obsessed with it. It
was that was her entire life was I got to
get him out. It was all she talked about was
Nick and this conspiracy about getting him out. And you
(12:52):
were either with her or against her, and that was it.
Aside from visiting the man, she was obsessed TWI Melody's other,
perhaps main purpose was moving drugs into the prison and
contraband out. I know she was bringing drugs and I
know she was getting jewelry, So those would be the
(13:15):
two things I would say. And when I say jewelry,
I mean it was always gold and um, different kinds
of jewels in the jewelry so um. And bringing drugs
in and it would be in balloons and different things.
Melody would even take Carrie and her siblings to the
prison for twisted family visits. Especially at the beginning. She
(13:40):
wanted us to embrace Nikki as our stepdad. Actually, she
wanted us to call him dad and things like that.
So he was young. He was as old as my
oldest sister. Young, good looking guy, soft spoken. Really, I mean,
looking back, I see like he came across as a
really nice guy. He was very well mannered. Um gentle,
(14:06):
you know. It was like, crawl up on his laugh
and love your daddy. Melody's multiple daily visits to the
prison would obviously have raised red flags and violated visitation protocol,
but it was allowed to happen, and it happened openly.
When we were at the prison, it seemed like she
(14:27):
knew everyone who worked there. She did have a few
people she knew she was talking to them, but she
had been going to the prison for visitation. So she'd
be like, you stay right here, you know, and she'd
walk up and talk to people. And she had a
way about her though she was never in fear, like
(14:47):
she knew what she was doing while we were there.
Here's Kevin's take. She's moving a lot of drugs into
the joint. She's going into visit three times a day,
seven days a week, which is unheard of. You've got
to have some sort of connection there to get in
(15:09):
that many visits. You're not allowed that many that often
unless your name doesn't go on the visitation records. So
you must have known somebody that could get you in
without documenting your visit. Look back now and like, remember
she didn't seem scared or and they remember her having
to go into the bathroom, And I think that's what
(15:32):
they did, is they put stuff in the bathroom and
then the inmate would go in the bathroom and get
it and you know, put it in their butt or
mouth or wherever. Melody's interaction with the prisoners and corrections
officials wasn't limited to prisons, and carries home soon deteriorated
(15:54):
into a disturbing flophouse due to overcrowding in the prisons.
Inmates would be even periodic passes and they'd wind up
crashing at melodies place to very physically reconnect with their
wives or girlfriends. They would do like conjugal visits at
your house. Yes, so while they're getting out on pass
(16:16):
to do whatever job it was to you know, trade
for an early parole release, their wives would be able
to meet them at our house and see them that
night or nights while they were out, and nobody would
(16:39):
be the wiser. Yep. And according to Kevin, prisoner passes
were also passed out for favors. The people that were
involved could get inmates out at any time at their
leisure without their permission, slept, getting signed from the from
(17:00):
the maximum security prison. It got to be pretty batter
in there. And I remember one guy that he was
a biker that most people would not talk to. This guy,
he came in. He looked at our house, he looked
at our fridge, he saw nothing in there. He looked
at me and he said, I'm taking you to the
store to get some groceries. He filled his saddle bags
(17:21):
with groceries. We got back on his bike and came back.
I think that's all he said. The whole time that
he was at our house. There were some scary people,
Like I probably shouldn't have gone on his motorcycle, you know,
Like I think back, but like he probably wasn't a rapist,
(17:43):
job abuser, you know, um, but it was probably had
to do a hit. There are people coming in and
out of your constantly and they're like they're fucking they're
ruining things, they're stealing, they're doing drugs. There's needles. I mean,
it's horrible. Carrie would have been barely thirteen when her
(18:16):
older sister, Christie fled the dysfunctional chaos. Carrie lost her
protector and the room they shared when I moved to
another house, left her with no space of her own.
I know, sounds so weird, but all of a sudden,
my bedroom became under the kitchen table. I just took
blankets and I piled them over, made a bedroom for
(18:38):
myself under there, because that was the only space I
had that I could create to have like, you know, privacy.
So that was my bedroom. So it seems so weird now,
But Tracy had a bedroom because she had now I think,
two kids. I can't even remember. The situation around the
house eventually got so dangerous that Melody finally decided to
(19:01):
send Carrie away. She sent me away because she said
that they were trafficking kids and she was trying to
keep me safe. And so I left. And of all
the places Melody could have sent Carrie, including her biological
father's functional home, Melody chose Conrad Garcia's mother. It was
(19:23):
so weird, like I look back and I'm like, why
you just sent me to my dog's. So I'm in Hellsburg,
California with a Jehovah's Witness in like a liberal area
where they're like teaching sex education and she won't sign
off on me being able to participate. And I'm like
(19:44):
coming from this totally like interesting situation, like where things
were not exactly conservative. But Carrie had grown up around
the type of people her mom surrounded herself with, and
at that point was and drugs herself, so she willingly
returned to the dysfunction she knew. I remember calling my
(20:06):
mom and she's like, you better get back here, and
I'm like, now you know you sent me away? And
then eventually I ended up getting on a I think
it was a Greyhound bus maybe, And that's really when
Tim got in Brewster guy in my life. Right around
there that Tim or Rooster's Carrie calls him, is Tim
(20:32):
the Tipo Dad. Tim became one of the main suppliers
of Melody's drugs and he was a frequent visitor to
the house. But he wasn't like the usual criminals that
hung around. He was well dressed, good looking, you know,
had good dope I mean, he was just a completely
different situation. He wasn't coming over to just like come
(20:56):
hang about. He had purpose when he came there. There
was a businessman. He was from businessman. Carrie would barely
have been a teenager at this point, and the dashing
Natividad stuck out because of his looks and his companions.
When not Tivida would come to our house, usually he
would come alone, and he came to our house on
(21:18):
a couple of different occasions with different people. One time
he came with who I believe a Scott McAllister, and
then the other time he came with someone who I
believe is the guard from the Um prison. They pulled
up in government vehicles, and I only know that now
(21:39):
from working in the field of federal law and seeing
government vehicles and knowing you know, well, we know that
she definitely recognized a guard from the prison who she'd
see at the visitor's desk. So that is the person
(22:02):
who had to allow her mother, Melody, to go back
and forth several times a day into the prison, you know,
in and out of the prison carrying drugs. That was
the major game that was being played here. Beyond that,
why other state cars would have been there. I don't know,
except that obviously you can't deal drugs that openly into
(22:24):
a prison without protection. So at some point or another,
corrections officials, state police officials are involved. She specifically didn't
know and have detailed conversations with people Scott McAllister. He
came with Tim and they had conversations, and my mom
(22:45):
was very much like talk talk talk, and she wouldn't
shut up. My mom wouldn't shut up. She was like
a conspiracy theorist. It showed me crazy. She couldn't keep
anything quiet. I question Phil about Carrie's recollection of the
players involved. She also believes that she saw Scott McAllister
(23:08):
in her house. Did she mention that to you? Oh yeah.
She said that she saw his picture in the paper
and she said, oh yeah, I remember him. He was
in our house at this point. We want to stress
that we have attempted to reach out to Scott McAllister
(23:28):
and others mentioned in this podcast multiple times via phone, email,
and certified letter requesting an interview and or statement regarding
the murder of Michael Frankie. To this date, no one
has agreed to our requests, but Carrie is adamant that
correction officials were in and out of her home visiting
(23:49):
her mother. Did you know what they were talking about?
I would try to avoid it as much as possible,
but she would always just blob her mouth everything, and oh,
we gotta have this part of pune call. Oh we
gotta have this call. They're gonna call, and we're gonna
go in there. We're gonna have a call. And when
(24:09):
they come, we're going to be in there, you know,
And um, I just didn't pay attention to it all.
But it was a big deal that I know, a
big big deal. It was also around this time that
Melody began to treat carry like currency, a possession she
could trade for drugs and money. And this is how
Carry and Tim's arrangement began. That was really when I
(24:33):
started getting involved with him and he started coming around,
and um, and then he would just take me away,
you know, kind of like take me away. And then
and I remember I was really intrigued with him. He
was always on his motorcycle or a fancy car, and
it was, you know, I much preferred to be there,
(24:54):
you know, like I hated being at my mom's. It
was just way better. But then it was always like
I needed to shut up when I was around people
that he was with, and I was okay with that,
Like I was much much happier doing that, like than
being at my mom's house. Your fourteen, he's how old,
(25:14):
twenty twenty something something too. I don't even know what
kind of relationship did you guys have, So I guess
this is the weird thing is that, like I don't know,
like I think that she thought that she was going
to be selling me for sacks. And at the time,
I was still a virgin, you know, and when I
(25:38):
went with him, you know, at first, it was really
really tense. And um I remember like him coming around
at first, and he had gotten chlamydia and so he
was taking like pills for chlamydia. Oh god. At one
point when he was like, are like good with us?
(25:59):
And I was like, I'm I've never like done this,
and he was like you what never right now? And
I'm like, oh, And maybe it was Carrie's innocence or
her young age or just pity, but tim native dad
(26:20):
did something decent. He didn't push himself on me at all.
And then he's like, I paid your mom for you
to come with me, and I'm like, oh, I think
at that point I was just like everything, just like
sunk in, and he was like, I'm gonna take care
(26:40):
of you. In a very heartbreaking way, Tim became more
of a caretaker to carry than her own mother. It's like,
it's st a feeling of betrayal from the person who's
supposed to protect you. But but he paid my mom
again and end, and he never ever made me be
(27:03):
with him never, So it was really confusing. You know,
I thought I was in love with him. You know,
he bought me jewelry, me true's fed. Carrie's home life
was so unbearable that to her time spent with Natividad
was just better by comparison, Even when he would take
(27:25):
her along on drug deals and worse. I'd go with
him and I would be quiet, and I would I
wouldn't look if he didn't want me to look. And
he did a lot of really bad things. You know,
there's a lot of really bad things, And it was
really confusing. He was always really really good to me.
(27:51):
It was really really difficult to sort out. It's hard
when somebody's characters so conflicted, and I think he was
a really conflicted person. Could hear him like biting the
people in the other room all the time. He just
wanted to be like a big mobster, as much of
(28:14):
a caretaker as Natividad may have been, and despite Carrie's
fondness for him, he was dragging her into extremely dangerous situations.
I remember one time we literally like picked up kilos
of stuff and I just was with him, and I'm
literally like I was so so high because the method
(28:37):
or crank whatever it was was so strong that I
was like wound up and I just didn't know what
I was doing, you know, And I'm literally like lifting kilos,
like I didn't know there were kilos, But I'm just
helping him, like load him into Shorty's van, like so
many of them. A quick aside, Shorty is Shorty Hardened,
(28:59):
a drug dealing horde of Natividad, who will also figure
into the Frankie murder trial. Back to Carrie and Nativodad,
he was moving so much, I mean probably like fifty
and I wouldn't shut up because I was so high,
and I mean I was a young girl anyway, so
I wouldn't shut up. But I just was so spun out.
(29:19):
All I wanted was to not be at home. So
that's all I wanted, was really to go with him,
because it was better Carrie would witness natividad irrational and
violent side firsthand. We were at a house in I
don't even know where it was. I was too young
to drive, and I don't know what exactly where, but
(29:41):
you know, we would go places and there would be
dealings or whatever they were doing. I don't know. I
would never ask. I would sit outside. I would wait
if I needed to wait in the car, in the van,
or in the kitchen or whatever. And this time I
was sitting in at a table with a woman and
(30:01):
he was in another room and there was a lot
of shouting and then there were some gunshots. Then the
door opened and somebody in the other room, obviously I
don't know if it was him, had shot one of
the people that he was with and killed him. And
(30:28):
he had them over his shoulder, and um, I'm pretty
sure it was the woman that I'm sitting with, her boyfriend,
her husband, and she just started screaming, and I mean,
I've had nightmares about this day forever. But um, he
(30:48):
takes them out and put some in a trunk of
a car, and then we drove in Shorty's van and
we took off and drove away, and I went with
him and I helped him, unfortunately clean up the blood
(31:09):
in the van because it was on him on the van.
He looked at me and said, will never ever speak
of this again? And I was so scared from that day,
you know. And sometime after that is when someone supposedly
(31:29):
taps tend to Tivodad to have one of his prison
connections kill Michael Frankie while out on a pass here's Kevin.
The idea that they would get somebody out of the
joint to do the murder seems a little overwhelming, I
guess of the average person, But you have to realize that,
you know, guys like mc allister had been in and
out of that prison thousands of times and had a
(31:52):
key to every passage way, every booby hatch in the
entire joint, and there's hundreds of him, and he was
very familiar, very comfortable in the prison. And for years
you've been able to have this relationship with some of
the inmates that you be able to profit from those relationships.
(32:13):
So it is no stretch of the imagination that if
you want somebody to commit a criminal act. Where would
you go to the farm that grows the criminal acts,
but the prison, and that you could take that person
out and they would have the perfect alibi to commit
the crime and get back in. And who's gonna be
the wiser. So he had access to let anybody in
(32:35):
or out that he wanted at any time. He could
go in and out at his leisure, and he could
take anybody out with him at his leisure and take
him back at his leisure. Sounds like a pretty full
proof alibi. If people think you're in prison, it's a
pretty good alibi. Even if that were the case in
(32:57):
terms of Conrad Garcia, none of that would have been
necessary because Garcia was already scheduled to be paroled the
week before Mike Frankie was murdered. It was almost a
little too convenient. But Conrad felt like he was getting
set up and he got scared, so he got himself
(33:18):
into trouble that got him put in the whole just
a few weeks before the murder. He was going to
be the guy. Years after Michael's murder, when the theories
regarding Tim nativot At and Scott McAllister began to emerge,
Kevin wanted to speak to Conrad Garcia face to face
to confirm the things he'd heard, so he tracked him
(33:39):
down at a halfway house in Portland. I went up
there and asked the guy, I'd like to meet Conrad
Garcia it and he won, You're my name signed in
and he said, I don't know if he wants to
talk to you, because I know why you're here. Uh.
And he went and talked to Conrad, and Conrad came
out and he said, let's go sit down. I got
some things to tell you. You know, you expect a
(34:00):
pretty rough character, but he seemed like a He was
very muscular and you know, obviously had been on in
the weight room a lot. He said that he felt
guilty that Mike was dead, that he could have prevented
it if he had opened his mouth sooner. And he
started crying, and I started crying to see him crying,
(34:27):
and he apologized to me that he didn't stop it.
He said, your brother was a good man and he
shouldn't have died, and I could have prevented it and
I didn't. And I said, how could you have prevented it?
And he said what I told the police was not
everything that I could have told him. I knew specifically
(34:50):
that Tim na Tipodad wanted me to kill Mike Frankie.
Not just a big guy with corrections, it was specifically
Mike Frankie. On the next Murder in Oregon, another woman
linked with Tim Natividad reveals his obsession with his weapon
(35:10):
of choice. Tim always carried a knife. Tim had a
huge knife collection. With controlling her, Tim was threatening to
kill me, my family, and with murder. I told God,
you know I'm ready. He's gonna feel me. I'm already.
(35:37):
Murder and Oregan is hosted by Lauren Bright Pacheco and
Phil Stanford. Executive producers are Noel Brown, Lauren Bright Pacheco,
and Phil Stanford. Supervising producer and lead editor is Taylor Scogne.
Sound designed by Tristan McNeil, Story editing by Matt Riddle,
Written by Phil Stanford, Matt Riddle and Lauren Bright Pacheco.
Music written and performed by the Diamond Street Players and
(35:59):
mix by Taylor Chickoyne, with music supervision by Noel Brown.
Additional music by Tristan McNeil. Murder and Oregon as a
production of I Heart Radio.