Killer Stories with Harvey Guillén - "The Poughkeepsie Killer" Kendall Francois

Episode Date: August 8, 2022

As an overweight Black kid growing up in a white suburb, Kendall Francois dealt with his fair share of bullying. His parents were hoarders, so he wasn't even allowed to have friends visit. The shame he felt as a child turned to rage as an adult, and he took it out on local sex workers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Due to the graphic nature of this episode, listener discretion is advised. This episode contains discussions of murder and sexual assault. Extreme caution is advised for listeners under 13. In September of 1998, a flood of police swarmed an unassuming suburban house in Poughkeepsie, New York. The officers were used to gruesome crimes, but they'd never seen such wretched living conditions. Garbage covered every surface. The stairs were clogged with decaying chicken bones. and broken baby furniture.

Cat fur and soiled underwear caked the kitchen floor, and the bathroom sink writhed with maggots. From the squalor alone, 99 Fulton Avenue was a house of horrors, but then the cops opened the door to the attic. Inconceivably, that's where it got so much worse. An overpowering stench crawled down the officer's throats

as they slog through a mysterious sludge that caked the ground. It all seeped from a pile of lumpy wet trash bags. They approached slowly, not knowing what was inside. Through the clear plastic sacks, it was hard to tell exactly what they were looking at. It looked like meat, rotting meat, dripping from the edges of hard porcelain white sticks. Then it dawned on them. They were looking at the decaying remains of human bodies.

Hi, I'm Greg Folson. This is Serial Killers, a Spotify original from Parcast. Every episode, we dive into the minds and madness of serial killers. Today, we're entering the world of Kendall Francois, the Pekipsy Killer. I'm here with my co-host, Vanessa Richardson. Hi, everyone. You can find episodes of serial killers and all other Spotify originals from Parcast for free on Spotify. In the first part of this episode, we'll explore how Francois was influenced by his childhood in

Poughkeepsie, New York, where he grew up as one. one of the few black kids in a white suburb. Later, we'll see how Francois stowed his secrets, just inches from where his family slept, and examine how his loved ones, the police, and the town, turned a blind eye to the eight women who went missing during the late 1990s. We've got all that and more coming up.

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That's ziprecruiter.com slash killers. Meet your match on ZipRecruiter. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Bonnie and Clyde, the Lonely Hearts Killers, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. These are infamous criminal duels. But you don't need to break any laws to find your perfect business partner

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resentments that we've carried with us for years, shame that punches us in the gut, hard truths that, if acknowledged, would upend our lives. oftentimes instead of confronting them, we keep them secret. We bury them. The lies we tell to keep them hidden can stack up like a landfill until the stench makes it hard to breathe. But the problem is that denial can't last forever. Eventually, our defenses crumble and the things were most ashamed of spill out into the light.

Kendall Francois had many insecurities amassed from a life of being an outsider. As one of the few black kids in his neighborhood, he was isolated and different from everyone else, even in his own town. Francois grew up in the 1980s in Poughkeepsie, New York. Every day he walked past the prestigious Vassar College, where students lounged on sweet-smelling grass under the shade of maple trees. But his home life was a different world entirely. From the outside, the modest seafoam greenhouse seemed like a perfectly nice place to live. but once inside, it was clear something was very wrong. Francois described it as a, quote, messy house, but that was an understatement.

Vanessa is going to take over on the psychology here and throughout the episode. Please note, Vanessa's not a licensed psychologist or psychiatrist, but we have done a lot of research for this show. Thanks, Greg. While it's unclear who created the mess, the Francois House showed signs of hoarding, Surringes and tear gas canisters laid among family photos, exposed wires hung from the ceiling, and feces were smeared over the carpet since the toilets were already clogged.

The DSM-5 defines hoarding disorder as a persistent difficulty in getting rid of possessions, no matter what their actual value is. This condition seems to be genetic, since 50% of people with the issue have a relative who hordes. So if one parent had the disorder, François might have a problem. also experienced the urge to keep things he didn't need and surround himself with items from the past. A study from 2017 showed that hoarding disorder is also associated with self-criticism and shame, and these emotions may work as a negative feedback loop. Those with more shame feel a heightened need to hold on to possessions. Then the disturbing state of their home amplifies that embarrassment,

causing further isolation from society, and isolation plays a, big part in this story. Francois lived with his mom, Paulette, his dad McKinley, and his younger sister, Kirsten. But Palette didn't allow anyone to visit the house, not even her son's friends. She was likely ashamed of the squalor.

It was so bad that the only way to cope was ignoring it altogether. Growing up in the messy house, Francois probably learned to separate his interior from the exterior. He let his resentments build inside, then plastered over them with a normal, happy facade.

This was no mean feat either. Poughkeepsie wasn't the easiest place to grow up as a heavyset black kid. In 1990, white residents outnumber their black neighbors nearly 10 to 1 in the city, and roughly 18 to 1 in the surrounding area. The lone black detective in the city called the discrimination in the town damn intense. Given that, it's hardly surprising that Francois spent his childhood struggling to make friends. Kids bullied him for his weight and his race. they teased him singing,

How Now Brown Cow? It was definitely cruel, but the racism and hatred wasn't just directed at Francois. The white suburban families from Arlington High School despised the city of Poughkeepsie as well. In the mid to late 1800s,

this area had been a hub of black social life. But a century later, the Baptist churches were joined by strip malls, drug users, and sex workers. Kids of Francois High School mock the unhoused people downtown and the people of color. In later interviews, even Francois talked about his disdain for black people in Poughkeepsie, whom he called trash. A 2021 review funded by the National Institute of Mental Health suggests that black people who enforced negative stereotypes

of other black people reported higher psychological distress. So Francois was likely impacted by the strain of straddling two worlds, black Poughkeepsie and white suburbia. In fact, his house at 99 Fulton Avenue sat right between those two worlds. On one side, the aspirational suburbs and just a few hundred yards away, downtown. During his teenage years, Francois didn't dare set foot on Main Street. He did anything he could to distance himself from other black people in the city. After graduating high school in 1989, Francois joined the army, probably hoping to escape his hometown. But not long afterward, he was honorably discharged.

for obesity. He returned to Poughkeepsie humiliated, and without job prospects, he moved back in with his family, a failed soldier living with his parents. It probably felt like his personal hell. He was nearly broke, but in 1993, Francois enrolled in community college in the hopes of getting a well-paying job as a science teacher. Eventually, he did get a job at a school, but it wasn't as an instructor. He was a custodian, and he was placed at Arlington Middle School, his alma mater. He'd ended up right back where he started, reliving his childhood memories on a daily basis. Author Claudia Rowe, who covered Francois' crimes in her book, The Spider and the Fly, wrote that his memory recall was astounding.

He could quote nearly every cruel word and every slight, dating all the way back to kindergarten. For him, they weren't just vague recollections. He could probably hear the taunts of the taunts of if it were yesterday. As a child, Francois let his anger build up inside of him, always keeping a cheerful exterior. However, now that he was in his mid-20s, he found those feelings impossible to keep bottled up. And soon, he found a new target for his rage. For years, Poughkeepsie's downtown area had disgusted him, but now he cruised Main Street every day. He'd pick up a chocolate crawler from the donut store, then pull up to a petite,

Keith's sex worker in his white Toyota Camry. He'd flash her a sly smile and introduce himself as Kenny. It was the start of a familiar act. The sex workers in the area knew all about Francois, and one even called him a real Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, with good reason. For instance, in the spring of 1996, Francois asked Kimberly Beale if she'd like to join him for a drink. As Road describes in her book,

when Kimberly stepped into Francois' house, she realized she'd made a mistake. Sipping wine in his kitchen, surrounded by the squalor of his home, she tried to make an excuse to leave. But Francois's ego was thin, and once he felt the slightest rejection, he snapped. He hauled her to his childhood bedroom and sexually assaulted her, keeping one eye on the window to make sure his mom didn't come home early and catch him.

Afterwards, he switched back to his regular, overly remorseful facade. He drove Kimberly downtown, apologizing the whole time. Then for months afterwards, he followed her around, offering her food and money, begging for her forgiveness. If his remorse was genuine, it didn't stop Francois from continuing his violent behavior. Not long after Kimberly, he punched Debbie Dimitro unconscious in a parking lot, threw her in his car, and brought her home. When he stepped out to get a condom, Debbie fled the house, still half-clothed. She banged on the neighbor's doors asking for help. The police took her statement, but when they filed the report, they typed in,

no action taken at this time. Exactly why they didn't follow up on the assault is unclear, but it seems that Francois was a joke to the local cops. They called him Fat Albert, reducing him to a goofy cartoon. But the women on Main Street knew different. He was so dangerous that when he pulled up, some sex workers would take his money and run. In the mid-1990s, Wendy Myers nabbed his cash.

and Francois took off after her trying to catch up. She did this twice, leaving him in the dust both times. Making things worse, the sex workers who Francois had long looked down upon just laughed as they watched it happen. It was just like high school. He was humiliated yet again. Only now it was by the people he deemed the sludge of society. So he made a promise to himself.

The next time that Wendy ripped him off, she'd be the one to pay. Coming up, Francois hordes more than garbage. Hi listeners, it's Vanessa from the podcast series mythology. Every Tuesday, join me on a wondrous journey back in time. Exploring the most epic battles, sweeping love stories, and harrowing adventures ever told. Heroes, gods, monsters, mayhem.

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Now back to the story. By October of 1996, Kendall Francois had been ripped off twice by a sex worker named Wendy Myers, and he'd had enough. One day that month, he brought her into his home, leading her through the trash and up the stairs into his bedroom. Before they got started, though, Wendy had second thoughts. She told 25-year-old Francois she had to leave for a probation appointment. That's when Francois snapped. Rage filled his mind, and he wrapped his head. hands around her throat. Once he started choking her, there was no turning back. With his 350-pound body, he easily overpowered Wendy's small frame. But to Francois' surprise, it wasn't like the movies. Sufficating her was a lot more difficult than he thought it'd be. After a couple of

minutes, she was still gasping for air. However, once Wendy finally lost consciousness, Francois carried her body to the upstairs tub, the only one with a working faucet in that. house. He dumped her face down, turned on the water, and drowned her. When he was sure she was finally dead, he carried her body into the attic. Just another thing to discard in a house already teeming with garbage and rot. The murder didn't seem to change Francois's life in the slightest. He felt nothing for Wendy once she was gone. And after he killed her, he slipped back into his usual routine, dropping his mother off at work, then heading to Main Street to pay for and rough up the sex workers.

One woman reportedly told Poughkeepsie police that during this time, Francois assaulted her, but stopped midway through. He took his hands off her neck and said, Oh my God, I almost did it again. The woman reported the incident to the cops, but it seems that they didn't follow up at all. Had they taken the complaint about Francois seriously,

they might have saved Gina Barone. On a cold November night in 1996, Francois picked Gina up downtown. She directed him to a vacant lot and climbed in the back seat. They began having sex, which was difficult because of Francois's size. He was very large and the car wasn't. Gina complained he was taking too long and he was too heavy. At this, Francois flipped out.

He felt slighted, belittled, and he wasn't going to stand for it. He grabbed Gina by the throat and squeezed until she stopped breathing. For most of us, ego checks are a facet of life, and yet when it came to women, a whiff of rejection caused Francois to fly off the handle. In the early 2000s, forensic psychiatrist Dr. Stuart Kleinman gave an interview about Francois. He believed that Francois had borderline personality disorder,

and one of the characteristics of the condition is difficulty controlling anger, but it's also correlated with dichotomous black and white thinking. Francois viewed the world in absolutes. There were good people and bad people. This would explain why he would kill women he also seemed to fawn over, because to him, once someone complained or spoke back to him, she switched from friend to foe, from saint to sinner instantaneously,

before she even knew what she said to set him off. When he killed Gina, Francois likely felt that she deserved punishment. But of course it wasn't just borderline personality disorder that caused Francois to take his anger out on women in particular. Some young boys are socialized to expect sex. Philosopher Kate Mann, author of Entitled How Male Privilege Hirts Women, says that this makes it permissible for men to, quote, lash out at women who don't deliver those goods.

Francois didn't just feel entitled to pleasure. He also felt permitted to punish women when he didn't get the sex he thought he deserved. After killing Gina that day, he drove her. her to his house. Then he dragged her body out of the back seat and dropped her into the trunk. The next morning, he drove Paulette to work and his sister Kirsten to school. Neither of them knew Gina's body lay concealed, just feet away from where they sat. Other killers might have meticulously hid their victim's body, not Francois. After returning from driving his family around, he tossed Gina in a corner of the garage and pulled a mattress over top. He treated her remains with

no more care than the broken dishes on the floor of the house. And just like the detritus and the family home, the bodies kept piling up. Francois didn't stop with Wendy and Gina. On November 13, 1996, he hauled his third victim, Kathy Marsh, to the attic and placed her next to Wendy. Over the next four months, Francois murdered two more sex workers. The women all shared the same features. They were petite, which made them easier to overpower, and they were wife. Later, Francois claimed that he wasn't interested in dominating black women. This is likely due to his own internalized racism. Because he believed negative stereotypes, women who shared his skin color didn't represent anything special, and he didn't desire them.

White sex workers, on the other hand, were the real prize and worth dominating. But that might not have been the only factor at play. In the past, we've discussed how and why serial killers often target sexes, workers. Many see them as disposable and unimportant. They hope that no one cares if they go missing or are found dead in the woods. But that wasn't the case here. Francois' victims' loved ones were livid that nothing was being done. People on Main Street saw the women every day, and now they were just gone. Some of their friends accused the cops of ignoring the victims because of their profession. One former sex worker told the Bekipsy Journal,

people don't care that we're missing because they think we don't belong on the streets in the first place. It's not just the police, it's the community. In response, the authorities argued that the missing women were simply harder to track down. Many didn't have set schedules or permanent addresses, and without a crime scene to investigate, they had no clues to follow. Lieutenant William Seagrist, a by the book, Poughkeepsie detective, felt at a loss. He said, we were hunting a ghost. But Francois wasn't a ghost.

He was a well-known local menace with a history of assaulting sex workers. It should have been easy to make the connection. But even when they started investigating the disappearances as the possible handiwork of one person, the cops didn't get it right. They were looking for the serial killer stereotype, a, white man.

Not Francois, the black man who they mocked for his oafish body and size. As we've seen several times over the years, race and serial killer fallacies, often blind investigators to the truth. It seems the local authorities subscribe to the popular notion that someone with multiple murders under their belt must be cunning, calculating, and white. Someone like Francois just didn't fit that mold, at least not according to harmful and incorrect historical stereotypes about black people. These unconscious biases allowed Francois to continue killing undetected.

But that could only last. so long. It's not clear exactly why investigators finally zeroed in on their suspect, but on January 18, 1998, Lieutenant Segrist knocked on Francois's car window. Seagris brought Francois to the police station and hooked him up to a polygraph. In the interrogation room, photos of 99 Fulton Avenue were tacked on the walls. File cabinets with the victim's names occupied much of the space. Piles of paper and photographs stacked high on tables. It must have been intimidating. The problem was the police had nothing. There was no evidence. It was all for show.

Hoping he was suitably nervous, they grilled him about Wendy, Gina, and the others. But he remained calm and collected. He insisted he knew nothing. Desperate Detective Skip Manane took the lead with a new tactic. He started trash-talking the women, agreeing with everything Francois said about them. The ploy worked. Perhaps sensing a kindred spirit, or maybe just figuring he was smart enough to fool the cop, Francois invited him to visit 99 Fulton Avenue. When Detective Manane stepped inside the home, the stench of urine filled his nostrils. And though Francois let the cop inside, Francois was careful.

He told Manning not to go wandering off. His mother didn't like visitors, which was true. He led Manane to his bedroom where so many of the assaults happened. The officer had no idea that just a few feet above his head, five bodies lay rotting. Unfortunately, he was a fairly young detective, and he didn't recognize the smell, or maybe he couldn't parse it from the other odors in the house.

That meant that Manane left, none the wiser, and Francois was free to continue his campaign of brutality against the working women of Poughkeepsie. Later that month, he picked up another sex worker and brought her to his bedroom. He started to strangle her like the others, but the woman managed to wriggle free. She demanded to be dropped off downtown, and for whatever reason, Francois obliged. She immediately told the other women what happened and later reported the incident to the police.

They charged Francois with assault. In May of 1998, Francois sat in a Poughkeepsie courtroom. He pleaded guilty to assault in the third degree, a mere misdemeanor, and was sentenced to just 15 days in jail. But the pitiful judgment wasn't the most important detail of this chapter. A phonetic young woman named Katina Newmaster sat in the courtroom that day. She was a pixie-like sex worker with a sharp girlish voice, and she was the best informant Poughkeepsie police ever had. She'd recently helped local authorities nab drug dealers along Main Street.

In exchange, some charges against her were dropped. But Detective Manane had recently approached Katina about a special assignment, something more important and more dangerous than drug busts. She could help him find the murderer terrorizing Main Street. When she saw Francois sitting at the head of the courtroom, Katina squirmed excitedly in her seat, unable to help herself. She knew Francois's reputation and had her suspicions. She leaned over to a friend and said,

That's him. That's the killer. And so her dangerous dance with Kendall Francois began. Coming up, investigators launch a sting. Snoring, gasping during sleep, feeling fatigue, ask your doctor about Zepbound, terseptite. The first and only FDA-approved prescription medicine for moderate-to-severe obstructive sleep apnea, OSA, and adults with obesity. Zep-bound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced calorie diet

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Only at Yamava, celebrating its 40th anniversary. You win? Details at yamava.com must be 21-20. Please gamble responsibly. Monopoly is a trademark of Hasbro. Hasbro is not a sponsor of this promotion. Now back to the story. By the beginning of 1998, Kendall Francois had killed five women and stowed their remains in his attic. But though police suspected he was responsible for the disappearances, they had nothing to link him to the missing women. That's where Katina Newmaster came in. She was an energetic, enthusiastic, and seasoned informant. and her chirping voice came in crystal clear over a hidden mic. Her task was simple. The investigators wanted her to chat Francois up,

get as much information out of him as she could, and never under any circumstances get in his car. With the honey trap laid, investigators just had to wait for Francois to take the bait. It was inevitable. Katina was exactly Francois' type, petite and white, so they didn't have to wait long. One day that spring, Francois pulled to the side of the road and flashed the young woman a smile.

Detectives watched as she chatted with him for a little while, though he didn't reveal anything incriminating. But then he asked her to hop in the car, and Katina, she had trouble saying no. Nearby, the cops watched as she got into Francois Camry and it pulled away from the curb. That's when the officers left into action. They tailed Francois as he headed toward his home on 99. Fulton Avenue. They pulled him over and made up a reason to get Katina out of there. They weren't deterred, though. They tried again and again. Each time Katina got in the car with Francois, and though there was a chance she might find out something useful if she spent some more

time with him, it was just too risky. It was decided that the careful sting hadn't worked, so the investigators were back where they started. And Francois continued his spree. On June 12, of 1998, he murdered Sandra Jean French, his sixth victim. If there was going to be a final straw, that was it. Two months later, authorities formed the missing women's task force, which was devoted to catching what they called the Poughkeepsie serial killer. Not that Francois seemed worried. Shortly after, he killed Audrey Paglisi in his bedroom. Even as investigators ramped up their efforts, no sex worker was safe, not even Katina Newmaster. On August 25th, Francois, Francois picked her up and finally made it all the way home with her. This time, Katina wasn't wearing a wire.

No cops followed them from Main Street, so when he started to strangle her right there in the car, there was no one around to save her. After she was dead, Francois carried Katina's body to the basement. In the very back, there was a crawl space running the length of the house. It was just feet away from where his father McKinley liked to relax at night. He pushed Katina into the small opening, alongside the bodies of two other women. By this stage, Francois was running out of space. The house was crowded with his victims, and he needed to perform upkeep.

When the remains of the bodies upstairs began to leak, he sawed them into pieces and stuffed some into plastic bags and a suitcase. Then he tossed the skulls into his sister's kitty pool that they stored in the attic. It was a nightmare, and the stench of decay even bothered the rest of the family. who had ignored it for so long.

Paulette, Francois's mother, finally asked him about the smell. Francois told her a family of raccoons died in the attic and that he hadn't had a chance to remove them. That's all it took to assuage her curiosity. After that, you might think that Francois would have made a more concerted effort to actually dispose of his victim's bodies. But all he did was buy some bleach and pour it around what was left of the bodies to try to hide the smell.

That was the only moment the family questioned Francois about what was going on. Given what we know, it's hard to understand how they could be confronted by so much evidence that something wasn't right and not ask more questions. However, we often underestimate the power of denial. An MIT study found that people sometimes don't remember committing small offenses if it doesn't match their ideas of themselves. Lead researcher Dr. Dan Ariely said that we can fool the conscience and make small transgressions without waking it up. It all goes under the radar

because you are not paying attention. And sometimes we might not want to pay attention to things that are right in front of us. We've evolved to prioritize relationships above all else, and a little bit of denial helps us keep those bonds, even if it means ignoring gruesome truths. Denial is particularly dangerous in a group setting, like a family. As more people conspire, the veil of silence around the subject grows. Anything related to the problem becomes off limits for discussion. Family members walk on eggshells and keep their mouths shut so that the issue at hand is never even acknowledged, let alone dealt with.

In the Francois House, the literal walls of refuse probably made it easy to avoid discussions about the disgusting stench wafting down from the ceiling. But in the end, it didn't matter how much denial permeated 99 Fulton Avenue, because even the most submerged secrets eventually come to light. During the warm summer nights of 1998, Francois started visiting 19-year-old Christine Sala at her hotel room. He and the long-haired redhead liked to talk about their hopes and dreams. He brought breakfast for them both and fantasized about one day marrying her,

and then on September 2nd, he was ready to make a move. But of course, he didn't have a firm grasp on the concept of romance. He invited Christine back to his house to hang out. They pulled into the garage, but before they could go in, Francois demanded sex. This caught Christine off guard, and she told him to take her back to Main Street. But instead, he grabbed her by the throat and said, You are not going anywhere. She tried to wiggle out from under his massive hands,

but he held her throat tightly, even while he pulled his pants down. That's when Christine realized she was going to die. Just then, Francois's sister banged on the door from inside the house. She asked what Francois was doing in the locked garage and told him she needed to use the car to get to school. At that, Francois finally loosened his grip on Christine. He couldn't let his sister see what he'd almost done. So he hopped back in the driver's seat and peeled out of the garage while Christine caught her breath. As he gunned it back toward Main Street, a stream of apologies flowed from his mouth.

He didn't mean to hurt her, he said. He only wanted to take care of her, but it didn't matter. Once he stopped at a stoplight, Christine stumbled out of the car, dazed and just barely alive. At that very moment, Detective Skip Manane was handing out missing persons posters for Katina Newmaster around the neighborhood. It was an old-school method, but the Poughkeepsie police didn't know what else to do. A short while later, the detective heard someone calling his name. Looking around, he saw that it was Christine standing at a name. nearby gas station.

She had bright red marks around her throat, her hair was tangled, and her t-shirt torn. She told them that it was Francois's handiwork. Detective Manayn't sighed. He wasn't surprised. Police arrived at 99 Fulton Avenue later that day, and Francois agreed to go to the station for questioning again. He didn't seem worried. He'd been interviewed before, and it had all worked out for him.

There was no reason this time would be any different. But it was. it was. The detective led him to interview room 112, a small gray carpeted box. Once they sat down, they clicked on the tape recorder. They asked Francois about the assault on Christine, about whether he knew what he did was wrong. They knew he'd almost just killed a woman, and yet after just eight minutes of questions, they stopped the tape and left the room.

It's not clear why, but that decision seems to have been a pivotal one. It's hard to know exactly how Francois felt in that moment, all alone in the small drab room. He had to know that if he stayed silent, the cops would just give him a slap on the wrist and let him go. But perhaps he was tired of keeping his secrets, his family acting like everything was fine. Maybe he imagined a day, months, maybe years later, the Poughkeepsie police would be back at 99 Fulton Avenue. Perhaps he pictured his mother answering the door, the police rooting through decades. of garbage and refuse. The mess would be revealed,

the family secret thrown open to the world. Francois would be unmasked. Paulette would be mortified. If that's what was going through his mind, it was enough to loosen his tongue. He called the detectives back into the room and announced that he had something to say about the missing women.

Then he told them everything. After he was done, it was time for investigators to retrieve Francois' victim. Inside 99 Fulton Avenue, officers wearing head-to-toe hazmat suits tried to ignore the stench and the larvae clogging the toilets. They found discarded resumes, gas masks, Christmas stocking still hung from some previous winter, and the decomposing bodies. Outside, Fulton Avenue filled up with neighbors wondering what was going on. They had smelled the stink emanating from number 99.

Now they finally knew the truth. It didn't take long for word to spread. Kendall Francois had been charged with murder. Over the next three days, crime scene processors explored the home and removed remains from the basement and the attic, eight bodies in total. But after nearly two years of decomposition, there wasn't much left. Still, it was enough to take to trial.

In the courtroom, Francois sat passively, listening to the cries from the families of his victims. He didn't know how to explain himself so he didn't even try, but others had plenty to say, and it was more of the same. One person lobbed a derogatory racial slur, and some called him fat. Instead of focusing on his monstrous acts, people took aim at his size and the color of his skin. That said, like the world's opinion of him, Francois himself hadn't changed either. He remained entitled to the end and wanted the death penalty.

but his wish was ignored. On August 7, 2000, he was sentenced to life without parole, though in the end he served only 14 years of the sentence. In September of 2014, he died of HIV-related illnesses at the age of 43. While he was alive,

Francois and his family hid from the things they didn't want to reckon with, burying it under heaps of garbage and layers of silence. Resentments and secrets festered for years ignored and allowed to grow bigger. But as we mentioned earlier, Francois' childhood was free of the abuse many people associate with serial killers.

Author Claudia Rowe interviewed forensic psychiatrist Dr. Stuart Kleinman about Francois's upbringing. She summarized, quote, What did the most damage was a home life of such disconnection and neglect that if abuse had occurred, no one would have done a thing to stop it. That's the problem with keeping emotions buried. If Francois had been allowed to share his feelings of ostracization with his family, things might have been different. But like so much refuse piling on the countertops,

the problem was totally ignored, and the consequences were deadly. Thanks again for tuning into serial killers. We'll be back soon with a new episode. For more information on Kendall Francois, amongst the many sources we used, we found Claudia Rose Book, The Spider and the Fly, extremely helpful to our research.

You can find all episodes of Serial Killers and all other Spotify originals from Parcast for free on Spotify. We'll see you next time. Have a Killer Week. Serial Killers is a Spotify original from Parcast. Executive producers include Max and Ron Cuddler,

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