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Speaker 1: 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, 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 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, 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 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 in Oregon. Nigel jay Quiz as a Pulitzer Prize winning investigative reporter who writes for the will Emit Week in Portland's. 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 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 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, 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 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, 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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. 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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? 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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, 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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. 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 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.
Speaker 1: 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, 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 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, 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 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 in Oregon. Nigel jay Quiz as a Pulitzer Prize winning investigative reporter who writes for the will Emit Week in Portland's. 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 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 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, 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 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, 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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. 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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? 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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, 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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. 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 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.
