Eileen Franklin: Recovered Memory, Conviction, and Dismissal

The Eileen Franklin recovered memory case is the 1990 California prosecution in which Eileen Franklin-Lipsker’s claim of a suddenly resurfaced childhood memory led to her father George Franklin’s conviction for the 1969 murder of eight-year-old Susan Nason, a conviction that a federal judge vacated in 1995 and that prosecutors abandoned in 1996 after evidence emerged that Eileen had been hypnotized before trial, had lied about it under oath, and had accused her father of a second murder that DNA later tied to a different man.

The 1969 Murder of Susan Nason

Susan Nason disappeared on September 22, 1969, while walking near her home in Foster City, California. Her remains were found that December in a ravine off Highway 92 near the Crystal Springs Reservoir. She had been bludgeoned to death with a rock, and her body was concealed under a mattress. A ring was found near her body. The San Mateo Times and other local outlets reported these details at the time.¹ No suspect was identified, and the case went cold for twenty years.

How the Memory Surfaced in 1989

In January 1989, Eileen Franklin-Lipsker, then in her late twenties, said a buried memory had returned while she looked into her six-year-old daughter’s eyes. The child’s gaze reminded her of Susan Nason, she said, and in that moment she recalled riding in her father’s van as an eight-year-old, watching him sexually assault Nason, and seeing him crush the girl’s skull with a rock in a wooded area near Half Moon Bay Road.²

She began telling family members in August and September 1989. She first told her sister Janice that the memory had emerged through hypnotherapy, then retracted that, saying she had never been hypnotized.² On November 17, 1989, she gave her account to San Mateo County detectives. Eleven days later, George Franklin Sr., a 51-year-old firefighter, was arrested for first-degree murder.³

The family background mattered to what came next. George Franklin’s son described him as an abusive alcoholic who beat his children. Eileen’s older sister Janice accused him of sexual abuse. Author Harry MacLean, who investigated the case at book length, called the Franklin household an example of “every form of dysfunction.”⁴

The 1990 Conviction

The trial was held in Redwood City before Judge Thomas Smith. There was no physical evidence connecting Franklin to the crime scene. The prosecution’s case rested almost entirely on Eileen’s testimony, supported by family members who described Franklin’s violence and by expert testimony from Dr. Lenore Terr, a San Francisco psychiatry professor who told the jury that traumatic memories can be preserved intact for decades and reliably recovered.⁵ Prosecutors emphasized details Eileen mentioned, including the ring found near Nason’s body, arguing that only someone present could have known them.⁶

Defense attorney Douglas Horngrad countered that Eileen’s account was reconstructed from 1969 news coverage that had described the rock, the ring, and the mattress. He asked to put those newspaper and television reports before the jury. Judge Smith refused.¹ University of Washington psychologist Elizabeth Loftus testified for the defense on how post-event information contaminates eyewitness accounts, and Stanford psychiatrist Dr. David Spiegel told the jury that recovered memories are difficult to distinguish from false ones.⁵

On November 30, 1990, the jury convicted Franklin of first-degree murder. Judge Smith sentenced him to life in prison, calling him “a depraved and wicked man.”¹ It was the first murder conviction in the United States built entirely on repressed memory testimony.

Why the Case Fell Apart

The story Eileen told changed as the case moved forward. At the May 1990 preliminary hearing, she moved the time of the murder from morning to late afternoon and revised her account of who was in the van, at one point placing her sister Janice there and then dropping that claim.²

The bigger problem came after the trial. Janice Franklin eventually stated that both sisters had been hypnotized to “enhance” their memories and that both had lied under oath when they denied it. Janice said Eileen knew California law bars testimony from previously hypnotized witnesses. In June 1996, testifying under a grant of immunity, Janice said Eileen had told her in an August 1989 phone call that the memory of Nason’s murder had only returned through hypnosis, and that the therapist who conducted the session had confirmed as much to Janice directly.⁷

Eileen then accused her father of a second killing: the 1976 rape and murder of eighteen-year-old Veronica Cascio, part of what became known as the Gypsy Hill Killings. She said she remembered witnessing it. DNA testing excluded George Franklin, and defense attorneys established that he had been at a union meeting at the time. In 2018, DNA linked Rodney Lynn Halbower to the murders of Cascio and seventeen-year-old Paula Baxter; Halbower was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.⁸

The Conviction Overturned

On April 4, 1995, U.S. District Judge D. Lowell Jensen vacated the conviction, finding the trial was not “fundamentally fair.”⁹ He identified three constitutional problems.

The first involved Franklin’s silence. During a December 1989 jailhouse visit, Eileen urged her father to confess while he pointed to a sign warning that conversations might be monitored. Prosecutors told the jury his silence was a tacit admission of guilt. Jensen ruled that violated the Fifth Amendment.¹⁰

The second concerned that same visit. Prosecutors and jail officials had facilitated Eileen’s access to her father in custody, effectively using her to question him outside the presence of counsel, in violation of the Sixth Amendment standard from Massiah v. United States.¹⁰

The third was Judge Smith’s exclusion of the 1969 news coverage. Keeping the media reports from the jury deprived Franklin of the chance to show that the details Eileen said only a witness could know had been publicly available for twenty years.¹⁰ Jensen wrote that he could not determine beyond a reasonable doubt that the jury would have convicted on Eileen’s testimony alone.⁹

Charges Dropped in 1996

A retrial was set for October 1996. On July 2 of that year, San Mateo County District Attorney Jim Fox announced the prosecution would not go forward. He said prosecutors still believed Eileen but added, “we do not believe we could meet our burden in a jury trial.”¹¹

Fox cited Janice’s testimony about the hypnosis as particularly damaging under California’s rule barring testimony from hypnotized witnesses, the collapse of the Cascio accusation, and the fact that Leah Franklin, the sisters’ mother and a prosecution witness at the first trial, had begun doubting her daughter’s story.¹² George Franklin was released on July 3, 1996, after roughly six years in custody.¹³

What the Case Changed

The 1990 verdict arrived at the start of what came to be called the Memory Wars and lent public credibility to the idea of repressed memory, helping spark similar accusations across the country.¹⁴ The collapse of the case pushed the other way. Defense attorneys pressed harder against the admissibility of recovered memory testimony, courts began demanding stronger scientific footing, and many jurisdictions adopted rules requiring corroborating evidence before criminal or civil claims could rest on recovered memories alone.¹⁵ Elizabeth Loftus went on to publish studies showing that entire false memories could be implanted through suggestion.¹

Where Things Stand

George Franklin maintained his innocence, both of the murder and of the sexual abuse allegations, until his death in 2016.⁴ Eileen Franklin-Lipsker changed her name and moved to another state. According to the 2021 Showtime docuseries Buried, she has been widowed twice and has sought anonymity; she consulted with the filmmakers off the record but did not appear on camera.¹⁶

Susan Nason’s murder has never been solved. No physical evidence ever connected George Franklin to the crime scene, and as of 2024 there are no publicly known cold-case reviews or new DNA testing in her death.¹

1
Los Angeles Times. The George Franklin Repressed Memory Murder Case
2
University of Washington. Eileen Franklin Case Analysis
3
Justia Law. Franklin v. Fox
4
Harry MacLean. A House of Hell – Docuseries Examines the Trial of George Franklin
5
Boston College Law Review. Repressed Memory and the Law
6
University of Washington. Buried Memories Many Are Works of Fiction UW Professor Says
7
San Francisco Chronicle. Sister Says Hypnosis Brought Out Repressed Memory
8
CBS News San Francisco. Showtime Buried Repressed Memory George Franklin Susan Nason Cold Case
9
Los Angeles Times. Murder Conviction in Recovered Memory Case Overturned
10
Oxygen. Why Was George Franklin’s Conviction Overturned
11
Los Angeles Times. Prosecution Drops Murder Charges in Repressed Memory Case
12
San Francisco Chronicle. Memory Case Put to Rest
13
Washington Post. Murder Charges Dropped in Recovered Memory Case
14
Vanity Fair. True Crime Documentary Buried
15
Courtroom Sciences Inc. The Evolution of Memory Science in Civil Litigation
16
Oxygen. Where Is Eileen Franklin-Lipsker Now