And Never See Her Again (12 page)

On July 17, 1995, Franks failed to attend a group counseling session, and the sex offender assessmenttreatment program provider notified the Wise County probation office. Franks again failed to attend his scheduled sex-offender counseling in August 1995. Again the probation office was notified. The district attorney filed a second motion to revoke probation for failing to attend counseling. Franks was arrested and ordered to serve thirty days in the Wise County jail.

Judge John Fostel modified the terms of Franks's probation in June 1996 to include no contact with any child younger than age seventeen. Two years later, he extended Franks's probation one year, to end April 2, 1999. The extension would allow Franks enough time to pay court-ordered fees and to complete the sex-offender-counseling program.

Six days following Opal Jennings's abduction, April 1, 1999, Franks appeared at the Wise County probation office with a fresh haircut and driving a vehicle that matched the description of the car driven by Opal's abductor. That was when Jesse Herrera, Franks's probation officer, called his friend Sergeant Harlon Wright, of the Wise County Sheriff's Office, and reported his suspicion of Franks's possible involvement in the Opal Jennings case. Wright, in turn, passed the tip on to the Fort Worth police that same day.

April 13, 1999, judge Fostel discharged Franks from probation, stating, "The court is of the opinion that the ends of justice have been served."

Four months later, Mike Adair met with Sergeant Wright and Jesse Herrera for the first time since they'd provided the tip about Ricky Franks.

The news stories chronicling the series of events concerning Franks's legal problems led to a rash of tongue-wagging criticism.

"I know she disappeared March twenty-sixth, and he came in on April first," Wright said. "I know that agency had a lot of information coming in, and it had to be funneled through."

Indeed, more than twenty-five hundred tips had been generated. Franks's name was but one of many that had been passed on.

"Knowing the number of leads in a case of this magnitude, the Monday-morning quarterbacking will be humongous," Wise County sheriff Phil Ryan said of the lag time between the tip about Franks and his arrest. The sheriff added that if anything went right, it was that the Wise County community supervision department, the Wise County Sheriff's Office, and the Fort Worth police were talking to one another about the sex offenders under their watch.

As others scrutinized the effectiveness of the law enforcement community, Teresa Sanderford quietly wrote a short five-to-six-line letter to Ricky Franks at the Tarrant County jail.

The letter asked Franks, if he took Opal, to please tell them where she was. The family cast no stones. Their interest was only focused on finding Opal. The family asked their pastor, Grady Brittian, if he would attempt to deliver the letter to Franks in jail.

On August 30, 1999, the Tarrant County grand jury met in one of the secured Grand Jury rooms of the Tarrant County Criminal Justice Center to consider the case against Richard Lee Franks. Metal detectors and armed security guards had protected the entrance ways of the building since a deadly shooting spree on July 1, 1992.

George Lott, disgruntled following a bitter divorce and child custody battle, had entered the fourth floor of the Second Court of Appeals in Tarrant County. Neatly dressed, Lott took a seat on one of the courtroom benches, placing his briefcase on his lap. Lott quietly opened the case and, with malice aforethought, gunned down Chris Marshall, a Tarrant County assistant district attorney. Lott also wounded three others, including two appellate judges, before reloading his nine-millimeter semiautomatic and chasing down thirty-three-year-old Dallas attorney John Edwards. Lott shot and killed Edwards in the stairwell of the courthouse. None of these men were responsible for Lott's divorce or custody decision, which had been handled in another state. Lott had simply lashed out at the judicial system itself.

Entering the Tarrant County Justice Center had taken the grand jurors several minutes as women's purses passed through the X-ray machine, and men had to empty their pockets of money, keys, and other items that would set off the metal detectors. They had stood by the bank of elevators in the center of the justice center and waited along with county employees to catch the next elevator going up. Each of the impaneled jurors anticipated a full day of testimony on the Richard Franks case.

The first day was tiring for Assistant District Attorney Robert Foran, the prosecutor Greg Miller had tagged to begin presenting the case. Foran, a man of medium height and brown hair, would be one of three assistant district attorneys to present evidence against Franks. Six members of the Franks family, including his wife, testified.

Judy Franks, her thin brown hair noticeably graying and the lines in her face deepened, testified under oath that her husband could not have kidnapped Opal Jennings because he had been with her at their South Fort Worth home the entire day.

No one who testified revealed anything new to the prosecution.

Presenting the evidence to the members of the jury was not the end of the intensive investigation. The search for Opal and evidence concerning her disappearance would continue throughout the grand jury process and on through the trial, if there was to be one.

"This is one of the most massive investigations I've ever seen in Tarrant County," Greg Miller commented after the first day of testimony. "We're going to lay it all out for the grand jury and see what happens. It's going to be a long and tedious process because we have a lot to bring to them."

The following morning, Richard Franks's mother, looking distressed and anxious, walked into the Tarrant County Criminal Justice Center on her way to testify before the grand jury on behalf of her son.

"I'm Richard's mother, and I'm proud to be his mother," Bessie Franks told reporters just before entering the grand jury chamber. "He's innocent. He is a good Christian boy, and the truth will come out."

In addition to Mrs. Franks, five other witnesses testified, including the man who sold Franks the black Cougar, and another who once got a ticket while driving the vehicle.

In all, more than twenty persons, for both the prosecution and defense, spoke before the grand jury. Proceedings were suspended until October 1999 while prosecutors waited for physical evidence to be returned from the FBI laboratory.

Meanwhile, the defense continued to hope there would be no indictment. Their client had persistently maintained his innocence, and his attorneys believed his diminished mental capacity led him to tell investigators what they wanted to hear.

"Under interrogation people will say things just to get the interrogators to leave them alone," Ed Jones stated. "This is especially true in Ricky's case, a person who has been diagnosed as mildly mentally retarded. "

Jones's statement signified the course the defense would take if Franks was indicted and taken to trial.

Responding, Robert Foran insisted that prosecutors would not have presented the case if they thought the confession was false. Miller's prosecution team was certain they were building a case against the man who had kidnapped Opal Jennings. Only one remaining question was left to be answered: where was Opal?

The grand jury had been read the sickening confession of Ricky Franks, describing the sexual advances of six-year-old Opal Jennings. They had listened to Franks deny the statement, contending he had been coerced into making the false confession. The panel had paid close attention to each witness. It was their duty to determine whether the facts and accusations presented by the prosecution warranted a trial of Richard Lee Franks for the kidnapping of Opal Jennings.

On September 21, 1999, state district judge Don Leonard extended the term of the grand jury hearing evidence in the Franks case. It was not an unusual move to lengthen the standard ninety-day term of service by another ninety days. It was no indication of the strength of the state's case. It merely allowed the panel to continue deliberations without interruption.

While the grand jury continued their discussions, parents across the North Texas metroplex continued taking extra precautions to protect their children.

About sixty parents and children met at W. R Hatfield Intermediate School to learn how to prevent child abductions. The "Velcro method" was demonstrated with a five-year-old child. The child clung tightly to the instructor's arm while he walked around the room, sticking to him "like Velcro." Soon the room was filled with children clinging to a parent like a fabric sheet to freshly dried clothes.

Investigators from thirteen North Texas cities, as well as the county and state, continued to work the nearly three thousand leads concerning Opal's abduction. They hoped knowledge of the Jennings case would prevent such horror from ever happening again. Realistically, they knew that evil lurked near soccer and baseball fields, playgrounds, and other areas where children normally congregated. Their job was to continue to look for one little girl who had been a victim of such evil.

On October 20, 1999, a change in the weather prompted investigators to bring back search dogs to look again for signs of the missing six-year-old. The two highly trained dogs had last searched in the August heat. Investigators hoped the cooler temperatures would allow the animals to gain a better scent.

The canines sniffed around the lake near the intersection of Loop 820 and North Main Street, near Meacham Airport, and back to a quarry earlier identified by Franks as a place where Opal might be found. They turned up nothing.

More than a month after testifying before the grand jury, on November 4, 1999, and prior to the grand jury's decision on an indictment of her hus- band,Judy Franks was arrested on charges of providing her husband a false alibi for the day of Opal's kidnapping.

Judy, perhaps unknown to her husband, had a boyfriend. She frequently wrote Jerry Burrows at the prison where he was incarcerated, at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. In one of her letters to Burrows, Judy admitted she had given her husband an alibi for the day Opal Jennings was abducted.

Special Agent Andy Farrell learned of Judy Franks's relationship with Burrows when letters from Burrows to Judy were found during the search of her parents' house for evidence linking Ricky Franks to Opal. Shortly after the letters were given to Greg Miller, Farrell and Miller traveled to Huntsville to talk with Burrows.

A man in his forties, with receding brown hair, Burrows spoke openly with the prosecutor and FBI agent. He confirmed Judy's confession that she had given Ricky an alibi and even supplied Miller and Farrell with Judy's letter stating she had lied.

Miller was delighted with the hard evidence disputing Franks's alibi. He was uncertain if the grand jury had given any credence to Judy's testimony, but the obsessive prosecutor wasn't about to take any chances.

Along with Judy Franks's letter to her boyfriend, Miller had also obtained photographs from the FBI of a blue Mead notebook kept by Judy's mother. The notebook contained a daily diary of Mrs. Magby's medication and water consumption, as well as the goings and comings of Ricky and Judy. The notebook itself hadn't been seized, but an astute FBI agent had taken time to photograph the pages, unaware that they would play a big part in the prosecution's case.

On March 25, 1999, Mrs. Magby had written in the notebook that Judy and Ricky had stayed out all night. On March 26, the day of Opal's kidnapping, Mrs. Magby made a notation in her book that Judy and Ricky came in at 5:00 A.M., a statement in direct conflict with that given by Judy Franks during her grand jury testimony.

With Jerry Burrows's letter from Judy and Mrs. Magby's diary as evidence, Miller charged Judy Franks with the offense of perjury. In addition, she was also indicted for theft and forgery in connection with a 1996 stolen Internal Revenue Service tax refund check for $1,053.

The check was issued to a woman living with Judy Franks at the time of the theft. Judy had asked her aunt, a bank teller, to cash the check for her friend, who, Judy claimed, had lost her identification. The woman later complained she never received the IRS check and a short time later Judy Franks asked the woman to move out.

The forgery and theft charges were unrelated to the case against Ricky Franks.

After being indicted, Judy Franks was taken to the Tarrant County Jail, where Ricky Franks awaited word on the grand jury's findings. Her bond totaled $60,000. If convicted, Judy Franks could face up to ten years in prison for perjury and up to two years in prison for theft and forgery.

When Bessie Franks heard the news of her daughter-in-law's arrest, her heart sank. It was like a recurring nightmare. First Ricky arrested for kidnapping, then Judy for perjury, theft, and forgery. As Bessie had done with Ricky, she defended Judy, basing her advocacy on Judy's limited mental capabilities.

Judy is a slow learner, too. She could have misunderstood some of the questions. I don't want to say anything bad about Judy, but I don't think she would be smart enough to lie on purpose," Bessie Franks told reporters.

Bessie wanted to help her daughter-in-law, but she was having a difficult time herself. Ricky was in jail, his half brother Harold had been in jail, and Bessie had tried to help both boys. Her limited financial resources had been stretched to the breaking point. The $800 she had used for gasoline and other expenses going to see her sons and their attorneys had just about tapped her out. She hoped Judy's parents would be able to help her.

That help didn't come for nearly a month. Once the Magbys obtained Brantley Pringle as counsel, Pringle posted the $60,000 bond and Judy Franks was released from jail.

Five days after his wife's arrest, Richard Franks learned that the grand jury had agreed to indict him for the kidnapping of Opal Jennings with the intent to harm or sexually abuse her. Assistant District Attorney Robert Foran announced that a second charge against Franks, of indecency with a child, would be dropped so that the prosecution could focus on the higher charge of aggravated kidnapping. Franks could be sentenced from five years to life in prison.