Woman May Not Testify in Father’s Retrial in Repressed-Memory Case

A woman who accused her father of murder after she recalled the incident decades later says she does not want to testify at her father’s retrial, defense lawyers said.

Eileen Franklin-Lipsker told investigators during interviews that she did not want to take the stand in her father’s Sept. 16 retrial, said Dylan Schafer, one of George Franklin’s lawyers.

Schafer said the statements were included in discovery evidence his office received from prosecutors.

Lawyers in the San Mateo district attorney’s office did not return calls Tuesday. Franklin-Lipsker can be subpoenaed or can testify voluntarily.

In a 1990 trial that focused debate on repressed memory and its use in criminal cases, Franklin was convicted of killing his daughter’s 8-year-old friend.

But a federal judge last spring threw out Franklin’s conviction and life sentence because of judicial errors. The decision did not address the validity of repressed memory.

Franklin, 56, a retired firefighter, was convicted of killing Susan Nason, who disappeared from her Foster City neighborhood in September 1969. Her body was found in a ravine near Half Moon Bay, but her murder was unsolved for two decades.

Franklin was charged after his daughter came forward, saying she suddenly remembered the crime while looking at her own daughter, who resembles her childhood friend.

She has since written a book, “Sins of the Father,” that became a television movie. Franklin remains behind bars on $1 million bail.