‘Hush’ Episode 3: The SAINTS of Salem

Salem police in the 1990s began to crack down on drug users. At times, their efforts turned deadly, and regularly targeted people of color in the mostly white city.

Fatal police shootings led to the formation of a police oversight board that the head of the police union, Det. Craig Stoelk, opposed. Stoelk’s critics say this time period revealed his personal biases, and raises questions about how he investigated Harriet Thompson’s murder.

Listen to all episodes of the “Hush” podcast here.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

Leah Sottile: Before we get started: This podcast contains graphic language and descriptions of violence. Keep that in mind in choosing when and where to listen.

When Salem police detectives honed in on Jesse Johnson as their top suspect for the 1998 murder of Harriet Thompson, they tracked down all kinds of drug users who knew him.

Craig Stoelk: The date is 4/1/98, and the time is 10:47. And this is a tape recorded statement of (redacted). Also present is Detective Stoelk of the Salem police.

Sottile:The man asking the questions here was Craig Stoelk. He was one of the detectives who investigated the murder of Harriet Thompson, alongside Mike Quankenbush.

Stoelk: Has Jesse come here and visited very often?

Individual #1: No.

Stoelk: How often do you say he comes here?

Free: Maybe once every three weeks.

Sottile: Stoelk started working for Salem police in the late 1970s. He was known as a cop who took on tough cases. Even though he wasn’t the lead detective on Thompson’s murder, he was doing a lot of interviews.

Stoelk: This concerns your knowledge about a girl named Sunny. And how did you meet Sunny?

Individual #2: I met her through a friend of mine named Wayne.

Sottile: In Salem, Stoelk was revered for his work. One time his photo ran on the front page of the local newspaper, with an article talking about his work on thousands of child abuse cases.

Stoelk: And were you guys involved in the drug scene together?

Individual #3: Yeah, we got high together.

Sottile: Salem, Oregon, in the late 1990’s was like a lot of places in the country. The modern war on drugs was in its third decade. Stoelk was familiar with the drug world, gave presentations to community groups about children growing up in houses where meth was cooked.

Stoelk: OK, so when you’re saying that she would try to get him out there …

Individual #3: Probably just to try to get him out of something,

Stoelk: Try to get some dope and not have the money to pay? OK, is that kind of what she did a lot?

Individual #3: Yeah, I seen it a lot.

Sottile: One report from 1993 described Stoelk as a “short, stocky detective” who was widely regarded as the department’s chief cynic. He saw a lot of objectively terrible things in his career, and those things haunted him. So, he wasn’t exactly an optimist.

Stoelk: Before you ever heard that the police had talked to him, what was he saying about the murder?

Individual #4: When it first happened, it was talked about that she was stabbed. This girl was stabbed. “Oh, did you hear about the girl up on 12th street that was stabbed there?”

Sottile: Aside from taking on hard cases in Salem, one time Stoelk shot a German shepherd named Heidi three times while he was chasing a suspect. The dog survived, by the way. A judge found Stoelk was justified in shooting the dog.

He was also known as a man with power. For roughly a decade, he served as the president of the Salem police union. And if you want to understand power in just about any community, a police union is a great place to start. They negotiate the rules around how police officers work. Police unions also can determine how officers are – or are not – disciplined.

In 1998, Stoelk turned all that experience and power toward Jesse Johnson. Who was he? Where did he hang out? Who did he know?

Stoelk: Do you know anything else about this murder that I should know about that I haven’t asked you?

Individual #3: No. I’m trying to find out more about it myself.

Sottile: Looking at this case so many years later, we knew we had to understand the drug culture in Salem in 1998. That meant knowing more about the people who were using, but also the people who were chasing those people down – especially Detective Stoelk.

From Oregon Public Broadcasting, this is Hush. I’m Leah Sottile. This is episode 3: The SAINTS of Salem.

To understand the context of Salem in 1998, when Jesse Johnson was arrested for killing Harriet Thompson, you really have to go back a couple of years — to a rainy August morning in 1996.

Berto Hernandez was in his 40’s then. Lived in a house in Salem with several members of his family, including his father, Salvador.

Berto Hernandez: He was a fun guy to talk [to], and he always tried to be helping people too. When people got to the house he liked to cook and say, “come on, get over here to eat” and all those things. That was the kind of person he was.

Sottile: Salvador was a jovial guy, a grandpa. The whole family worked at farms nearby, but everyone was at home that day. They didn’t work when it rained. That morning, Salvador was in the kitchen cutting up meat and potatoes for breakfast. People were making coffee. And just after 7:00 a.m., Berto drove a person he worked with to a nearby convenience store. But when they got back the place was in chaos. Yellow caution tape, surrounded by police.

The Salem Area Interagency Narcotics Team — or the SAINTS, for short - had fanned out across the city. They got the go-ahead to bust into several houses they suspected were a part of a drug ring. The SAINTS kicked in doors and put 17 people in handcuffs. Almost all of them were Latino.

The Hernandez family’s front door was unlocked that morning, so the two SAINT officers walked in, guns drawn, and within three seconds, they’d shot and killed Salvador.

Hernandez: They just go in and shoot. I mean, in three seconds you think he’s going to go towards them? No. A second is like one, two, three, yeah.

Sottile: Later, police said Salvador had confronted them with a 10 and three-quarter inch knife.

Hernandez: I always figured, I know my dad’s going to die drinking because he was an alcoholic, but he didn’t die like that. He died because somebody killed him.

Sottile: That morning, Berto returned home to what looked like a warzone — a warzone where only one side was shooting.

Hernandez: Like I said, I was not there, but I think they’re afraid. They think we are drug dealers or whatever, but we are not. And they just go in there and start shooting.

Sottile: The Salvador Hernandez shooting was big news in 1996, and in the days after, more and more details came out in the local newspaper. It turned out that Salvador didn’t speak English and he was very hard of hearing. A man who was with him in the kitchen said the officers gave commands in Spanish, but the SAINTS shot Salvador before anyone could get to the floor. The police came there looking for a man in his 30s. Turns out it was the guy Berto took to the store that morning – who they later arrested for drugs, and put in jail for 30 days.

In the aftermath, detectives from the Salem PD arrived at the scene. Mike Quakenbush was there, interviewing people in the house, and Craig Stoelk was there taking photos.

When producer Ryan Haas and I got the records on the case, it was pretty clear that police didn’t follow best practices. Typically, when an officer shoots someone, they are taken away from the scene, separated and asked to give statements. But at the scene of the Hernandez shooting, the officers who killed him were allowed to return to the scene to review it before they gave any statements.

When an Oregon State Police officer pushed back on letting the officers back inside, a deputy Marion County district attorney said he had an arrangement with the local police union. Craig Stoelk would become the president of that union a year later.

The SAINTS killed Salvador Hernandez on a Friday, and by Wednesday that next week – so three business days later – an all-white grand jury cleared the two officers, and said they were justified in killing him.

Johnny Lake: I was doing my undergrad at Willamette, and had heard about some of the stuff that happened.

Sottile: Johnny Lake is an educator and speaker on issues of racial justice in Oregon, but in the 1990s he was attending college in Salem and writing for the local newspaper. Lake participated in protests back then, where demonstrators called for a citizen’s review board to be formed. But also for Salem police to hire more officers of color.

Lake: There were white people, Latino community, Black people, just a broad range of communities that marched right down the middle of Salem, down Commercial Street to the police station.

Sottile: Lake said when the protesters rallied, the police chief refused to meet with them until Salem’s mayor got involved and set up a meeting. Lake started asking tough questions.

Lake: I said, “When y’all burst into some old white man’s kitchen early in the morning and you shoot him five times in the upper chest, ‘cause that’s the only choice you have,’” I said, “I might believe it’s an accident, but every time I hear about these incidents, it’s always people looking like me.”

Sottile: Letters flooded into the local newspaper from readers outraged that anyone would question the police’s actions. If they shot someone, the city’s majority white residents trusted they had good reason to. In one article, the same deputy DA that let the officers back into the scene of the shooting called the protests “shameful.”

As Lake spoke out more about issues of racial bias in the local police, white residents started to gripe. One white woman blamed Lake personally for the social strife.

Lake: She says, “If it wasn’t people like you who talk about these things so much, we wouldn’t have so much problem with them.” So I was accused of harassing the Salem police. I said, “This little skinny Black man from Tennessee couldn’t have brought you all the issues that y’all have in this community.”

Sottile: In the years afterward, city officials and community members held meetings to discuss the formation of a citizen’s review board, which would have a say in police oversight.

By November 2001, it seemed like plans were pretty well underway for that to come together. There was just one voice of dissent: Detective Craig Stoelk. At a meeting about the citizen’s review board he said, “Philosophically, I do not dispute a citizen’s review board if it truly builds trust. But what I hear coming out of this group is an attempt to appease the minority community.”

I told you that this story would lead us to a Salem Applebee’s, and that’s where Ryan and I ended up one day for an interview. I don’t know if you’ve been to an Applebee’s lately, but they’re kind of all the same, right? Big bar in the middle, big menus. Nothing fancy.

We were at an Applebee’s to meet a woman who was on the citizen’s review board in 2001, who tangled very directly with Detective Stoelk. We got there before she did, and grabbed a quiet table in the back corner. She said she wanted to sit away from everyone else. We ordered some drinks, and waited.

Kim Barnett strolled in looking like a woman who doesn’t eat at Applebee’s very often. She explained that she was late because she’d misplaced one of the massive diamond earrings glittering from her ears that morning. There were more gems sparkling from rings on her fingers. None of it was costume jewelry.

Barnett worked at the Marion County District Attorney’s office, but when the citizens review board formed, she applied to be the board’s coordinator, and got the job – meaning, she was the paid staff person who acted as an intermediary between the police and the Salem residents on the board.

Kim Barnett: But every one of these citizens, every single one of them had an agenda against the police.

Sottile: As Barnett explained it, it seemed like her concern at the time – and now– was that the police had someone looking out for them on the board. And the way she talked about the Hernandez shooting … it’s almost like it was fresh for her.

Barnett: So if you read online about this case, it’s all lies. Every single thing is a lie. There’s not one article that tells the truth online, not one.

Ryan Haas: And those officers involved with that case, they never ended up disciplined or anything?

Barnett: They didn’t do anything wrong. I mean, Ken was cut on the face. No, but it turned into a lifelong trauma for them.

Sottile: Just as a point of fact-checking, we got the records on this shooting, and there was no mention of any officers with face cuts in the investigation. And I think this was an early suggestion to Ryan and I that she might not be a reliable source. We came here to meet with Barnett thinking she’d tell us about why the Salem police needed a citizen’s review board, and how she helped get it off the ground. But instead, she said the opposite. She told us that the board had formed and then no one ever complained. Everything was fine.

Barnett: Anyway, nobody came.

Sottile: Did that surprise you?

Barnett: Sort of.

Sottile Yeah.

Barnett: But on the other hand, at least at that time, the complaints – and I worked with IA every day, so I knew what complaints were coming into them. A lot of it was just silly stuff, but there was nothing major happening at that time in terms of complaints from citizens. It just wasn’t. So I really wasn’t surprised. And my understanding is there has not been a complaint brought to the board in the last five years, currently. So it’s just not a big thing.

Sottile: Barnett was on the board for two years in the aftermath of the Hernandez shooting, and it’s pretty clear she agreed with the deputy district attorney – her former boss – that the protests against police were shameful.

Barnett: So then this blew up into a big, “Well, it’s a racist killing. He’s an elderly gentleman.” He’s 62 years old, and he worked in the fields. He was a strong guy. And the mayor held a protest where he had people marching from Willamette University to the city hall, marching against his own police department, and ignored all the facts of this case and this situation. And then it blew up. There was no internet then, but it blew up into “racist cops, racist cops” – the first thing anybody says.

Sottile: There are two interesting things we learned during our interview at Applebee’s. Well, three, if you count me choking on a tortilla chip. Don’t eat chips when you’re doing an interview.

The first thing was something that Barnett spilled as we talked, about why this was so all so sensitive for her. She is married to one of the Salem police who killed Hernandez – a longtime officer named John Manitsas. They weren’t married when the shooting happened, or when she was on the citizen’s review board. They got together later. But during our interview, she made her worldview pretty clear: She thinks police who kill people suffer way more than anyone wants to hear.

Barnett: So this turned into a big thing, and the cops were not racist cops. There are racists. Craig is a racist. Craig Stoelk is a racist cop - on the record.

Sottile: Did you catch that? She said the cops in the Hernandez shooting, one being her husband, were not racist. But there was one Salem officer she thinks is racist – Detective Craig Stoelk. That’s the other thing we learned. We asked Salem police if they had any records of complaints against Stoelk, or Detective Mike Quakenbush, for that matter. And they said, no. They don’t keep records of complaints against officers after they retire.

We went to the district attorney’s office and requested their Brady List – essentially, a list of officers past and present who have had complaints levied against them. Stoelk and Quakenbush weren’t on that list either. So we couldn’t back up what Barnett was saying, and it was clear Barnett had beef with Stoelk. In 2008, she sued the city and detective Stoelk for wrongful termination – and lost. When we met, she said she couldn’t say much about it. The judge put a gag order on the case. It seemed like she came to meet with us for this reason alone – to say police are wonderful, with the exception of Craig Stoelk.

Barnett: Police don’t go out thinking, I’m going to kill someone today. It doesn’t work that way. People think that. It’s not that. Police officers are very sensitive people. I mean, obviously you have exceptions like Craig Stoelk.

Sottile: We left Applebee’s that day a little more confused than when we arrived, on some things. Barnett clearly had a grievance and didn’t seem like someone we could rely on for good information. She thinks there’s no need for citizen oversight of the police – not then, and not now. But it did emphasize to us that any oversight of the police in Salem is built on shaky ground. And I think Barnett drove home a perspective that is pretty common. People want to believe in the police, believe that they’re doing the right thing, even when they kill people. They create stories that support that.

Berto Hernandez told us his father was old and in less than perfect health; Kim Barnett told us no, he was strong and violent. People want to believe police don’t have racial bias, but data doesn’t do much to support that belief. In fact, it tells a story of massive racial disparities in who police throw in jail. As of 2019 in Oregon, jail intakes in the Salem area of Black and Latino men were far out of proportion with the population, and that applied statewide in Oregon, too.

After talking to Barnett, we reached out to Craig Stoelk to get his side of the story.

Sottile: Hi, is Craig available?

Stoelk: Speaking.

Sottile: Hi Craig, my name is Leah Sottile. I am a journalist with Oregon Public Broadcasting. How are you?

Sottile: We talked for a few minutes on the phone. He said he looks back now on his police career and time as head of the police union as a dark period in his life. It was obvious he was reluctant to do an interview.

Stoelk: I’m retired and I just don’t care.

Sottile: Well, I think that’s kind of what we would want to talk to you about. We want to take a more long approach to this whole thing. It’s a big project, it’s not a quick story

Stoelk: Yeah, I don’t think I’d have anything positive to say, and I’d come out sounding like a malcontent. I really do, and I’m incredibly glad that … I mean, I thought I had a really good career and I investigated some close to 4,000 child abuse cases and 250 murders, and it seems like I’m just so sick of it all. I don’t want to have anything to do with it anymore.

Sottile: He said that part of his life is far behind him, and he doesn’t like to think about it. But still, when I pushed him, he said he’d consider giving us an interview. He didn’t want to commit. I told him I’d call back in a couple weeks.

Jesse Johnson’s attorney, Lynne Morgan, was pretty blunt with her opinion that the truth of her client’s case was a racist system. One that started with the police detectives who honed in on him as their prime suspect back in 1998. As we continued to fight for public records, Ryan and I asked Lynne if she had any other materials that might help us understand this case and the detectives involved.

One day she told me to come by and pick up a massive moving box, said it was filled with all the depositions they’d been planning to present at Johnson’s retrial. They didn’t need them now. Inside, were all kinds of statements – interviews with the DA’s office, the detectives. And buried in the box was an interview with a woman who lived across the street from Harriet Thompson in 1998.

Mike Charlton: First of all, let’s just start with the formalities. Your name is Patricia Hubbard?

Patricia Hubbard: Correct.

Charlton: Where did you live?

Sottile: Patricia Hubbard said that she lived right across the street from Thompson.

Charlton: All right. And how long did you live there?

Hubbard: From 1987 till 2002.

Sottile: One day while we were in Salem reporting, we decided to swing by the neighborhood and get our bearings of where everything happened. Harriet Thompson’s house was on the corner of 12th and Shamrock, and was only accessible from the Shamrock side. On 12th, there is an elementary school parking lot next to the other side of her place.

Sottile: OK. So which house is Patricia’s?

Haas: So Patricia’s, I think, is that blue one. I’m going to turn around.

Sottile: The blue one … Oh, the blue one next to that?

Haas: Yeah.

Sottile: We were a little lost. And it turns out that parking outside people’s houses, pointing at them and taking notes, definitely gives off more of a home burglar vibe than an intrepid reporter.

Haas: But she said she saw someone come down. I wonder if this one is hers.

Sottile: That’s what I’m wondering. These people are looking at us, so …

Haas: Which ones?

Sottile: They’re just standing in their front window. I waved, but they did not wave back.

Sottile: As we sat parked on the street outside, we could see how Hubbard’s front patio had a view down the driveway of Thompson’s house.

Haas: I can go, so we’re not being weirdos in front of people’s houses. Let’s see if we can get into this parking lot. Might be a better spot for us.

Sottile: We pulled the car around to the other side, into the school parking lot. Some thick bushes separated the house from the lot – those were there in 1998, too.

Sottile: Harriet’s is downstairs, which makes it even more interesting because I think Patricia Hubbard’s view from the back of the house is actually the best view of Harriet’s apartment, unless somebody was sitting in this parking lot.

Sottile: Hubbard said she saw something that night back in 1998 … someone. In fact, she told investigators that she spoke to the Salem police the day after the murder. But that conversation didn’t go like she thought it would.

Charlton: So, the detective comes to your house and identifies himself as the detective from Salem?

Hubbard: Correct.

Charlton: And what did you tell him?

Sottile: What Hubbard had to say would blow this entire case apart.

Hubbard: I started telling him what I saw, and he stopped me and he said that won’t be necessary And do you want me to say what I was told?

Charlton: Yes.

Hubbard: He said that won’t be necessary. He said a n**** got murdered and a n**** going to pay for it.

Sottile: That’s next time.