Kendall Francois spent years murdering women and hiding their bodies in the house he grew up in (and still lived with his parents and little sister). In the end, 8 bodies were found in the house and Francois gave an unapologetic confession.
The Escaped Woman
We begin this case on Tuesday, September 1st, 1998 at around 8:30 am in Poughkeepsie, NY (which is about 85 miles north of NYC). A young woman named Christine Sala was in a fight for her life. She had come to the home at 99 Fulton Avenue for sex. Christine was a sex worker and had done this numerous times with other men and many times with this specific man, but this time the huge man (6’4” and 350-400 lbs) that she had come home with wanted more than sex.
The two got into an argument about money when the man didn’t want to pay. He started choking her. Somehow the slight woman was able to break free and convince him to take her to get cigarettes- which is absolutely incredible. Whatever she said calmed him down enough and made him believe that she would not contact authorities or report him in any way.
They drove to a nearby gas station, all the while Christine trying to hold it together and pretend that she was calm, cool and collected. She went inside the gas station and told a man that she had just been attacked. This man went to some officers he knew who just so happened to have pulled up at that exact moment to get Christine some help. City of Poughkeepsie Detective Skip Mannain and Town of Poughkeepsie Detective Bob McCready pulled up to the station in their unmarked police car to begin handing out flyers looking for a missing woman, Catina Newmaster, or information about her disappearance.
The man that Christine had confided in told the detectives what she said about being assaulted. He also told the detectives that she was walking away. She initially did not want to report the attack to police, fearing prosecution for being involved in sex work. While Mannain was a little frustrated that he was being taken away from his probable serial killer investigation involving Catina Newmaster for another assault on a sex worker, the detectives caught up with the woman, and she willingly came into the police station and filed a report stating that Kendall Francois had been the man to attack her.
The detectives bring in Kendall Francois for an interview. Which was actually exactly what they needed. The whole situation happened by chance, but the detectives were already familiar with Kendall and wanted to speak with him. They’d been hearing his name come up time and time again in their serial killer investigation. Francois was familiar with this process as he’d been here many times for assaulting sex workers. But this time, he gave up and ended up asking to see pictures of the missing women and requested “talk to the chief prosecutor of the missing women and tell you what happened.”
When prosecutor Margie Smith came in, Francois would spend hours detailing what he knew about Catina Newmaster and other missing women they were looking for. It was reported that when Smith left the interrogation room, she collapsed into the arms of a police officer and began crying. Francois had given her a full confession to the murders of 8 women.
Kendall Francois
Kendall Francois was born on July 26, 1971 to Paulette and McKinley Francois in Poughkeepsie, New York. Kendall was the 2nd of 4 kids and the only boy. His older sister was Raquel and his younger sisters were Aubrey and Kiersten. When Kendall was about 4-years-old (1975), his parents bought the green colonial home at 99 Fulton Avenue in a middle-class neighborhood in Poughkeepsie for $11,500. Kendall and his sisters (specifically Kiersten) lived most of their lives in this house, and it would be the scene of his terrifying extracurricular activities.
Kendall had a rough time in school being bullied for his height and weight. He was very tall (6’4” and 250 lbs as a 14-year-old) and was obese even as a child. He was quiet and pretty much kept to himself because of this. Middle school was just as terrible as it is for most kids, but once he got to high school things were slightly better when he got into sports and was put on the varsity teams for football and wrestling as a freshman. Sports helped him find a place where he kind of fit in.
In 1989, he graduated from Arlington High School and the next year he joined the Army. Kendall went to Fort Sill, Oklahoma for basic training and then was shipped off to Honolulu, Hawaii. However, in 1992 or 1994 Francois was discharged from the Army for his weight. After being discharged, Francois returned to 99 Fulton Ave and never left. He enrolled at Dutchess County Community College and began pursuing a degree in Liberal Arts. He took classes off and on until 1998. Francois held several jobs, but none for very long. For about a year (1996-1997), he worked at Arlington Middle School (the same middle school where he was bullied) as a janitor before being changed to the “school monitor.”
Francois didn’t make friends at this job. Teachers complained that he was inappropriate with female students. They said that he would touch their hair and told them jokes about sex. The children didn’t seem to take him seriously anyway and called him “Stinky” as a nickname because along with being generally a gigantic dude, Francois didn’t have great strike that- ANY hygiene and tended to smell bad. Francois was still living at home with his parents and his little sister Kiersten (who all deny knowledge of his murders) in October of 1996 when he began his murders.
Francois Begins His Murders
Ok- let’s get to his first victim. Kendall took 30-year-old sex worker, Wendy Meyers back to his house. She was his type – a white woman with short dark hair, hazel eyes, and slim figure. Francois had employed Meyers multiple times in the past. Twice she left with his money without having sex, and the one time she did complete the sex acts, she ended up giving him HIV. On October 24, 1996 Kendall Francois had had enough. He brought her back to his house where they had sex. Then his anger took over and he choked her, breaking her hyoid bone. He said that she fought hard and “wouldn’t die.” When Meyers finally stopped fighting and flailing (still not dead), Francois took her to his bathroom and dropped her face down into the tub and turned on the water. Wendy Meyers finally died, and Kendall carried her body to the attic. She was reported missing 2 days later by her boyfriend.
Just a month later on November 29, 1996 while everyone else was Black Friday shopping and recovering from the food comas of Thanksgiving, Kendall brought home another woman. 29-year-old, Gina Barone. She had been a good, but shy child until she was about 15 when she fell in with the wrong crowd and became impossible for her mother to handle. She began doing drugs and selling herself for money. When she was 26, she gave birth to a baby girl, Nicole, but couldn’t care for her so Gina’s mother took over.
One night, Gina and her boyfriend, Richie got in a huge fight and Gina got out of the car and told him to leave. He did as she asked, wanting to give her some time to cool down, but when he returned, Gina was gone.
Gina had gone with Kendall Francois. She had sex with him in the car in a parking lot. But Kendall said she was in a bad mood and complaining about how heavy he was, and that he was taking too long to finish. He got annoyed with her and began choking her so she’d be quiet and he could finish. This didn’t kill her though. She woke up and he strangled her again and threw her body in the trunk to drive home. He initially put her body under a mattress for THREE MONTHS, eventually putting her in the attic as well.
Richie went to Gina’s mother, Patricia Barone to see if she had seen Gina. She hadn’t and knew that Gina didn’t leave Poughkeepsie so she reported her missing in December. She gave a description of Gina and the eagle tattoo on her back and “POP” tattoo on her right arm.
Lieutenant Bill Siegrist had just been appointed to head the City of Poughkeepsie Police Department Detective Division on January 3, 1997 after a 29 year career with 20 of those years as a patrol cop. He knew the area and the people and said that Wendy Meyers and Gina Barone’s disappearances felt like “more than a coincidence.” They set up surveillance in the area and talked to the sex workers but didn’t come up with anything helpful.
Another month passed and a new year rang in before 47-year-old Kathleen Hurley disappeared. She was last seen on Main Street (a popular drag for the sex workers of Poughkeepsie). She, too, was a small, white woman with brown hair. She had a tattoo on her left bicep that said “CJ.” Hurley’s disappearance was investigated, but they were unable to find her alive or dead and they felt like her disappearance was related to the other women.
There were now 3 cases of women that were all similar in appearance, all sex workers in the area, and had disappeared. The police reached out to the Neighborhood Recovery Unity (NRU) that was described as “a narcotic unit that had confidential informants, drug dealers, convicted criminals, prostitutes, and other street dwellers.” They reported back about any “Johns” that the women reported as being rough during sex. The name Kendall Francois came up multiple times.
City of Poughkeepsie police, Town of Poughkeepsie police, New York State police and the Town of Lloyd police (where Wendy Meyers was reported missing) were all on this case trying to find out what was going on. They were pretty sure that the women were dead, but they had no bodies or evidence and were being pressured to be budget conscious in regards to manpower. The community wasn’t in fear as a whole because this was “only” happening to the “street people/dwellers.”
Police even put a wire on a sex worker named Catina Newmaster. The detectives needed more evidence to prove or disprove that Francois was their guy. They told her not to get in Francois’ car. Just talk to him. Catina didn’t listen and multiple times she got in the car with him. Catina had been helping the police with more than just Francois’ case and the police knew her. They kept an eye on her.
In most places, sex workers would not have been looked for if they had gone missing. We’ve heard it a million times that they are the “less dead” because they put themselves in danger and no one cares that they are missing. Plus in this area specifically, so many men came from all over to engage these women so the field of men to check was huge.
In March of 1997, 31-year-old Catherine Marsh (who, once again matched Francois’ type) was reported missing by her mom who hadn’t seen her since November 11, 1996. Her clothes and other personal belongings were still in her apartment. But since it had been months since she disappeared, the trail was cold. In April, the local authorities decided it was time to call in the big guns and contacted the FBI. Unfortunately, despite their interest in the case, the FBI’s hands were tied and they couldn’t help. They had to have a crime scene and currently that wasn’t possible.
They also tried to expand their search by accessing the National Crime Information Center (NCIC – they report every single unidentified body in America every single day of the year) database so they could see if their missing women were any of the unidentified DOAs from across the nation. They requested all the rap sheets for all the missing women to see if maybe they had been arrested elsewhere, and they canvased all the neighborhoods. They were taking the disappearances seriously.
The FBI’s lack of evidence of a crime didn’t deter the local police. Typically, bodies and a crime scene were required for a task force to be created, but in this case, a task force would be created later in spite of that. One detective said that on the surface, these were missing persons cases. He said, “We have no evidence of criminality.” But they were convinced that this was more than that.
Despite having Francois on their radar, the detectives were still slightly pulled away from him as a suspect because they assumed that they were looking for a white man. Statistically, it’s more rare for an African American man to be a serial killer and it’s even more rare for a serial killer to cross racial lines. Francois was a large African American man killing white women . He also didn’t fit many of the markers profilers attributed to serial killers.
Other than being bullied in middle school like just about everyone else, he didn’t have any known traumatic experiences. There were no significant head injuries, no known abuse, his parents were married and had good jobs so they lived a middle-class life (Dad – factory worker and Mom – a registered nurse at Hudson River Psychiatric Hospital), and no animal torture or fire setting or bed wetting. None of the hallmarks of a serial killer. During one of his arrests, Francois was even hooked up to a polygraph which he passed.
There wouldn’t be any media coverage of these disappearances until the fall of 1997. Almost a year after Gina and Wendy disappeared, the Poughkeepsie Journal finally ran an article. Despite this, there was no new information.
On October 9, 1997, 27-year-old Michelle Eason was reported missing. She also fit the type for Francois’ victims: 5’2” 115 lbs. The biggest difference was that Michelle Eason was African American, and that was outside of Francois’ pattern. Also in October of 1997, 29-year-old Mary Healey Giaccone’s mother passed away. However, her father, a retired New York State corrections officer, couldn’t locate Mary to tell her. In November a report was filed when he finally asked for official help. Police found that she was last seen alive in February of 1997 in the same area as the other women who’d gone missing. Mary was 5’4” and 110 lbs. Another smaller woman.
The police were searching the Hudson River, deploying helicopters, questioning informants, and interviewing hundreds of people, but they were still coming up with no bodies and no evidence. They didn’t have tunnel vision on Francois and actually suspected a few different men from the area who were known sex offenders and reportedly rough during sex with sex workers. Richie, boyfriend of Gina, had been considered a suspect for a bit because of his relationship to Gina and his sizable police record including assault on women.
One man who was arrested back in June of 1997 for assaulting a woman was questioned and looked into, but he would end up being in police custody when the first 3 of the women vanished. While the detectives were able to cross off many of the men they suspected, the one person who stayed on the list was Kendall Francois.
People in the community were doubtful that the police were actually working the disappearances. They assumed that the detectives were not looking for them because of their chosen profession. Lt. Siegrist told the Albany Times Union, “These girls don’t have set schedules. It took time for the families to realize something was wrong, and then they even thought for a while they might turn up.” Basically, it’s not that they aren’t investigating, it’s that the women were living a lifestyle where they weren’t seen by their families often making it hard for a family to realize their loved one is missing and that they need to be concerned. Not to mention, the public can’t know everything that is going on in an investigation and all the details.
Finally they had to try and get more information and possible evidence from Francois.
In January of 1998, they began surveillance on him and his house. They found out his routine and where he frequents for some adult fun. Francois would often take his mom to work in the morning and then swing over to the downtown area and pick up a lady. So, one morning after he dropped off his mom, the detectives pulled him over and casually asked him to come to the station. Francois agreed and was unflustered by the request.
The detectives had specifically decorated the interview room with a murder wall with Francois’ house circled. They hoped that this would rattle him, but it was said that he was “calm” and “respectful” while answering questions for a few hours, but they didn’t have anything to go on other than their suspicions and Francois’ generally sketchy vibe and lifestyle.
They brought up the accusation from one woman that claimed Francois had attacked her with a knife once. Francois was like, “(scoff) No. I didn’t attack her with a knife. It was a nail file. You’re welcome to come see.” Detectives took him up on the offer. They didn’t have a search warrant so they jumped at the invitation, but only Mannain was allowed in the house. Francois took him to the bedroom, but on the way there Mannain had to carefully negotiate the terrain. He remarked that the house was disgusting. There were no doors on cabinets, dishes piled in the sinks, roaches, maggots, clothes everywhere, and it smelled god awful but nothing “criminal.” Mannain did see the door to the basement and he wanted to get down there.
Francois led him to his bedroom, but would not let him enter any other rooms. After Francois couldn’t find the nail file in his room, he got agitated and decided it was time for the detective to leave. When they were on their way out, Mannain had managed to get in front of Francois and tried to play dumb and started down the basement stairs. He said that Francois grabbed him by the collar and told him that wasn’t the way out. They left and detectives still had nothing to go on.
That same month, Francois was arrested for the assault of a different sex worker. The woman he attacked was reluctant to make the report and press charges, but she did. She told the police that Francois had picked her up on Cannon St. in Poughkeepsie and taken her to his home. In the 2nd floor bedroom, she and Francois got in a tiff over money, and he punched her in the face. He knocked her on the bed and climbed on top of her. Francois began choking her. She agreed to have sex with him in an attempt to save her life. Once he was done, he took her back to Cannon Street.
After she filed her report, the police arrested Francois and in May of 1998 he pleaded guilty to 3rd degree assault. This misdemeanor got him 15 days in jail. Just after he was released, he picked up right where he left off. On June 12th, 1998 51-year-old Sandra Jean French was reported missing from Dover (20 miles east of Poughkeepsie). She was 5’ and weighed 120 lbs. She had hazel eyes and dark hair…just like the rest of Francois’ victims. Then on June 15th, her car was found abandoned…3 blocks from Francois’ house. One source said that Francois left her body lying on his Mickey Mouse comforter while he got dressed and went off to school.
The aforementioned task force was created in July of 1998. It involved 2 investigators from the City of Poughkeepsie, 1 detective from the Town of Poughkeepsie, 1 investigator from New York State police, and was commanded by Sgt. Michael Horkan from the City of Poughkeepsie. It was not advertised to the public.
A fellow sex worker told a reporter on July 26th, 1998, “We’re low lifes, that’s what it comes down to. 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.”
The public wasn’t aware of all the steps the police and authorities were taking to solve these disappearances. They had been working on the case for 22 months with thousands of hours of work.
A month later on August 26, 1998, detectives were doing a press release about the Sandra French case when their beepers started going off. Catina Newmaster’s luck ran out. They had spoken with her 2 days before, and now she was missing. Catina had been getting into Francois’ car despite police warnings and this time she wasn’t seen again.
On September 1, 1998, they set up a roadblock to stop cars and hand out flyers about Catina. They were near a gas station when they saw the one and only Kendall Francois pulling away. This is when the customer came out to tell them Christine Sala said she was attacked.
Arrest and Conviction
After Francois was brought in, he actually admits to attacking Christine. Then police tell him that they have a search warrant, and they are headed to his house. Francois knows the jig is up and asks to speak to a prosecutor, he lays out all of his misdeeds for her. He asks to see pictures of missing women and when they bring him the photos, they said he went through them like family photos. He would flip through nonchalantly, see a girl he knew, put it aside and say, “I killed her.” Flip – “killed her” flip – flip – “killed her” – flip – “killed her” – flip – flip – “killed her” Patricia Barone (mother of the missing Gina Barone) told the Albany Times almost prophetically, “If they find one of them, they’ll find all of them. I’m sure of that.”
On September 2, 1998, by midnight, all of the investigative bodies involved in this case (Town of Poughkeepsie police, City of Poughkeepsie police, New York State Police, Town of Lloyd police) as well as the district attorney, EMS, crime scene investigators, and eventually media and neighbors descended upon the 2-story, green, colonial house at 99 Fulton Avenue that Paulette and McKinley Francois bought in the 70s planning to live out their days in.
Detectives let McKinley, Paulette, and Kiersten know that they were going to enter the home and the family would have to leave. The Francois family was taken to the police station for questioning. While it would seem like hiding at least 8 bodies in a house would be pretty obvious and like you’d walk in and be like, “Yup. There’s bodies in here.” The Francois house was in no way that straight forward.
The team took photos that night, but they were forced to put the investigation on hold until daylight. Like Mannain saw on his brief visit, the Francois house was nasty making it very hard to maneuver safely.
It was reported once again that the house was full of garbage. It was on every inch of the floor along with the furniture! It was noted that clothes were also piled up and covering the floor as well. Sheets were on the windows instead of curtains and the kitchen was covered in rotting food, old newspapers, broken furniture and still more garbage. It was reported that there were syringes laying out, maggots in the sinks, and that Kiersten slept right below maggot casings that were dropping from the ceiling. 🤮 According to one article, one of the detectives noted that in all the years he’d been a detective, he had never seen anything like the Francois house and the “wretched living conditions.”
The total crime scene investigation would end up talking almost a month. With all the trash and rot, it’s not surprising that the smell of dead bodies was masked by the overall stench of the house. Whenever his parents would mention the smell of the bodies, Francois would tell them that there was a dead racoon that he couldn’t find. The authorities entering the house had to gear up in suits and masks.
The investigation found 3 bodies wrapped in plastic in the attic by 3 pm. It appeared that he had begun to dismember them. The district attorney, William Grady, told the throng of media that showed up, “Based on what the suspect told us, the 8 bodies are inside that house.” And they were.
The 4th body was found in a kiddie wading pool – one of those plastic ones you get at Wal-Mart in the summer that you can roll to your car… And the 5th body in the attic was in a can.
The bodies were covered in clothes and blankets and it took detectives and crime scene people days to find all 8 bodies in a 2 story house. One of the investigators told a newspaper on September 3rd, “It was a nightmare! When cops went to the green, aluminum-sided house at 99 Fulton Avenue, they were nearly bowled over by the stench of rotting flesh.” Special x-rays were used to scan the walls and floors of the house to see if Francois had hidden bodies there as well.
Patricia Barone came to the house as a bystander to watch as 8 bodies were removed from the house. One of them was her daughter. She told the New York Times, “In my head, I’d come to terms with it. I had a feeling she was gone all this time. I always felt if when the good Lord thought I was ready to hear it, I’d hear it.”
Finally, on September 5th, they’d found all 8 women’s bodies – 5 in the attic and the 3 most recent were in the crawlspace. It took 3 days to carefully remove the bodies from the house. The first to be identified was Catina Newmaster. Then Gina Barone, Sandra Jean French, Catherine Marsh, Wendy Meyers, Kathleen Hurley, and finally, Mary Giaccone. However, while they had expected to find the body of Michelle Eason, they didn’t and instead found the body of 34-year-old Audrey Pugilese from New Rochelle – she had never been reported missing. Michelle Eason, the only African American victim, was never found. She didn’t really fit Francois’ type and since the rest of his bodies were in the house it’s thought that maybe she wasn’t one of his victims.
On Wednesday, September 9th, Kendall Francois entered a plea of not guilty. The families of the victims were fucking PISSED. The courtroom busted out in yelling, crying, and screaming. One mother screamed, “He killed my daughter.” Under general circumstances, the people causing the commotion would have been escorted out of the courtroom. However, Judge Thomas Dolan allowed them to stay.
Kendall Francois made no more confessions and gave no more information after his indictment. His parents pleaded for their privacy from the media and neighbors saying through their attorney, “We find ourselves plagued by unimaginable circumstances. Our youngest son is suspected of committing grave offenses from which his life hangs in the balance. We have virtually lost everything, been dispossessed of our home and cast into the street with only the clothes on our backs…The family requests that under these extraordinary circumstances, the public and media respect the only two items we have now, our privacy and personal respect.” The Francois family moved far away from Poughkeepsie in the aftermath.
Kendall Francois was back in court on October 13, 1998 where he was formally charged with 8 counts of 1st degree murder and 8 counts of 2nd degree murder and 1 count of attempted assault for Christine Sala – the one that got away.
There are 2 versions reported of the sentencing. The first version was that in New York state a suspect being charged with 1st degree murder (including serial murder) could receive the death penalty, but this could only be imposed by a jury and confirmed by a judge and Francois wasn’t willing to risk it. NY state law states that prosecutors have 120 days from the indictment to decide if they are going to pursue the death penalty. Once they decide that, they have to inform the defence. So before they could announce that they were going to go for the death penalty, Francois attempted to plead guilty on December 23rd. This meant that he couldn’t receive the death penalty since he wouldn’t see a jury trial.
Judge Dolan wasn’t pleased with this and in February 1999, he ruled that the law stating that if he pleads guilty before the proseuctors announce their intentions and gets out of a trial by jury didn’t apply to this case, but the State Court of Appeals disagreed and Francois was spared the death penalty.
The second version was that a plea deal was made where Francois could plead guilty and receive life without parole instead of the death penalty. In this version, it made it sound as though Francois had somehow grown a conscience and was doing this to spare the families the added pain of a trial and spare the state the cost of a trial. This deal would also remove the possibility for appeal. Patricia Barone said that she never wanted to see the man again and prosecutors told her if they didn’t offer this deal, she’d have to see him in court and he’d have appeals where she’d have to see him. If they offered the plea, it would be done. Patricia said she was happy with the deal so she didn’t have to see him and he could never get out and hurt anyone else,
When families gave their victim impact statements Francois giggled. I repeat. He. gig. gled.
During the statements, Christine Sala told Francois (and the court), “If I had the chance, I’d cut you up into little bitty pieces. I hope they kill you in prison.”
Sandra Jean French’s mother, Heidi Cramer said, “I would like to see you die eight times over.”
On August 11, 2000, Francos was sentenced to 8 consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole and was placed in Attica Correctional Facility. According to officers at the prison he was an “average prisoner.” They said, “He’s been no problem. He gets along with other inmates and does go outside into the yard on occasion.”
Francois spent his time in prison talking to a journalist turned author. Claudia Rowe previously worked for the New York Times and developed a professional relationship with Francois. They exchanged letters and phone calls and she came to visit him over the course of about 4 years. She would use these correspondences to write a book The Spider and The Fly: A Reporter, A Serial Killer, and the Meaning of Murder.
He would tell Rowe, “Killing seemed easier than getting into a relationship.” He also gloated that if he hadn’t confessed “I could have kept going. It would have gone on and gone on, and they never would have found a thing.” A Poughkeepsie police officer she interviewed said the same thing. So, when asked why he even confessed if he was so untouchable, Francois said, “It just came to me when I was sitting there by myself.”
On her final meeting with Francois he told her, “I was thinking, I want to throw you down on this table and fuck your brains out.”
Unfortunately (or fortunately – depending on your viewpoint), in September of 2014 after serving 16 years, the then 43-year-old Kendall Francois died in prison reportedly of natural causes.
