Nightcrawler Read online

  “What happened next?”

  “I choked her.”

  “How long would you say that lasted, Kendall?”

  “About three or four minutes.”

  “Why’d that stop?”

  “I attempted to tie her up with duct tape.”

  “Why didn’t that work out?”

  “She struggled. She physically struggled and moved and kicked.”

  “What happened after you tried to tie her up?”

  “I punched her in the face a few times.”

  “Why’d you do that?” said Smith.

  “To get her to stop struggling.”

  “Did it work?”

  “No. So I continued choking her.”

  “What happened that time?”

  “She stopped struggling for a while.”

  “What happened then?”

  “I stopped for a minute. I don’t know… I was tired.”

  “What happened next then?”

  “I started again. She started breathing, gasping for air; I knew she was still alive.”

  “So what happened?

  “Well, then I tried to use my foot to choke her.”

  “So she was lying on the floor at that point?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what did you do with your foot?”

  “I put it across her throat. It didn’t work. My foot was too wide.”

  “Then what did you do?”

  “I started choking her again. Another five or six minutes. Um, until she was dead.”

  He said he rolled her into a corner of the garage and left the body there for a while. There was no one home at that time, he said, so he had some time to think about what to do.

  “Why’d you leave her there?”

  “Recover my strength.”

  “You were tired?”

  “Yes.”

  “After you got your strength back, what did you do?”

  “I, ah, put her into the crawl space.”

  Francois said he moved some of the other victims up to the second floor and then into the attic. If the murder took place in his room, he was more likely to bring that body up to the attic. After stuffing five bodies into that cramped area, he realized that he would soon run out of space. As Smith went through each of the victim’s deaths, Francois related what he could remember. He had obvious difficulties recalling details of some of the killings and wasn’t sure about two of the photos.

  Rear of Francois’ Home

  Photo Courtesy of Tom Martin

  “But you don’t remember anything particular about them?” she asked.

  “I don’t.”

  “They’re just prostitutes that you choked to death?”

  “Yes.”

  He said that he could have murdered them, but wasn’t sure. He was positive, however, that eight bodies in various stages of decomposition were hidden in his house and some had been there for more than 18 months. Smith then asked Francois if he had ever attempted sex with any of the victims during that time. He seemed indignant at the question.

  “No!” he said. “What do you think I am? Sick?”

  “Now, you’ve been living in the same home with your mom and dad and a sister over this period of time, right?” Smith asked.

  “Yes.”

  “And you’ve got five dead people in your attic?”

  “Yes.”

  “Has it smelled or had you noticed anything about that?”

  “Uh, sometimes the smell would seep out, but I told them that there’s a dead raccoon upstairs and I couldn’t find it.”

  “So there had been complaints about the smell?”

  “A few times.”

  “Can you still smell anything up there?”

  “If you go into the attic you can.”

  “Now, are they up there now?” said ADA Smith. “When we go up there and we look, what are we gonna find?”

  “Bones,” replied Francois.

  “Is that all that’s left?”

  “Umm, there’s maybe some, a little bit of flesh. I don’t know,” he said. “They’re all mixed together.”

  “How are they mixed together?”

  “Um, some of them are in a large bag together and some of ’em are in an old kiddie’s pool.”

  “A kiddie pool like the ones that you put in the back yard?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is it, are they in it or are they under it, or…?”

  “They’re in it.”

  “Are they wrapped in anything?”

  “Yeah,” Kendall said. “A garbage bag.”

  Police brought in mug shot books containing photos of known prostitutes in the Poughkeepsie area. Smith asked Francois to go through the books and point out anyone he recognized or might have attacked.

  One by one, he studied each photo carefully and said, “I tricked with her,” or “I brought her to my house a few times,” and “She was the best lay of my life.” Francois told cops he had been with so many prostitutes that he could not remember everyone’s name. Though he was tempted to kill when he had sex, he did not always yield to the temptation. Why he didn’t kill more, he couldn’t say. By the time he was finished reviewing the books, Francois had identified 54 women he had hired for sex.

  “And by the way,” he said, “you can tell the guy that gave the polygraph that polygraphs don’t work.”

  While Francois spoke with Smith and the detectives, the information was passed on to other investigators who prepared the affidavit for a search warrant. Because their department had limited resources for such an undertaking, they decided that the New York State Police Forensic Identification Unit should be called in to assist with the case. They had the latest technological advances, ample resources and the experience required to conduct what was sure to be a labor-intensive search. Both the town and the city police had worked with the unit before and had great confidence in their ability and its commander, Senior Investigator Tommy Martin.

  Martin was a veteran crime-scene technician for the state police. He had already worked many death cases, including the horrendous murder of an 8-year-old boy in an adjoining county, where he employed innovative computer technology to demonstrate the boy’s injuries to a jury. A gregarious man with a quick sense of humor, Martin, who joined the state police in the late 1980s, had processed hundreds of crime scenes by 1998 and kept pace with the expanding technology in the field. “I tried to keep up with the changes in crime scene processing over the years,” Martin said. “Especially in digital photography and computer science.”

  Martin was apprehensive but not intimidated when he was first notified that he would be in charge of a search that would most likely uncover a number of corpses. He had processed multiple-death scenes before and was prepared for the worst. Like everyone else in the Dutchess County area, Martin was well aware of the missing-women case. He also knew that Kendall Francois had been considered a suspect for many months, and when he learned that he confessed to murder, he was not surprised. “Word had spread throughout headquarters that Francois admitted to the killings,” Martin said. Later that night, he received word that a local judge had signed the warrant giving police the legal right to search, and even forcibly enter, the home of Kendall Francois.

  Martin and the crime-scene team began to prepare for what was likely to be a job that might take days to complete. They asked headquarters for several vans loaded with evidence suits, lights, gloves, boxes, radios, shovels, axes, saws, and dozens of other items that might be used during the search. “Everything I could think of, I asked for,” Martin said. “I knew from experience that it’s better to have an abundance of equipment than come up short when the stuff is really needed.”

  After 22 months of anxiety, denial, and frustration, the end seemed to be in sight. At 11:15 PM, while Francois was still talking with investigators at police headquarters, Senior Investigator Tommy Martin, Lt. Bill Siegrist, Detective Skip Mannain, a dozen radio cars from the Town of Poughkeepsie Police, the state pol
ice evidence van equipped with searchlights, battering ram and shotguns and an army of police left the side yard, headed over to 99 Fulton Avenue and into the depths of a living nightmare.

  www.crimescape.com

  Chapter 10: Gruesome

  “The house is garbage-ridden… it’s rancid, it stinks!”

  —District Attorney William Grady

  The convoy pulled directly in front of the home. It was almost midnight and the street seemed quiet and peaceful on a cool, breezy September evening. No pedestrians were on the sidewalks, and because it was a weeknight, most people in the neighborhood were asleep in their beds. One detective and one uniformed officer exited their police unit, walked to the front entrance of 99 Fulton Avenue and knocked firmly on the door. After several moments, McKinley Francois, Kendall’s father, appeared.

  “What is it?” he said. “What do you want?”

  “Police! We have a search warrant to search your home!” the detective replied. Before McKinley could respond, police quickly entered the house, ushered the father aside and announced their presence loudly so that other family members would be alerted. Within moments, the police located Kendall Francois’ mother and adult sister and escorted them out of the home. Afterward, they conducted a cursory search to ensure no other occupants were present, while Investigator Martin organized his staff and planned for the long night ahead.

  Front of Francois House

  Photo Courtesy of Tim Martin

  Outside, police set up yellow crime-scene tape around the entire property, positioned searchlights and established a command center. The team also set up additional tape in the middle of the block to further restrict access to the general public and unauthorized police personnel. It was critical to bar entry to the crime scene by unwanted or unnecessary personnel, which could later damage the case at trial. As the search team slipped on the white Tyvek suits, a few curious neighbors wandered outside. Within minutes, the word began to spread on the block that the police would be searching for bodies in the Francois home.

  “It’s like a freak show,” said one neighbor to the press. “It’s shocking that something like this would happen so close to home.”

  As police began to examine the interior of the home, they saw for the first time the dreadful living conditions Detective Mannain had observed months before. There was garbage everywhere: under the beds, in the hallways, along the steps and in the closets. In some places, the wooden floor could not be seen because it was obscured by so much trash. The windows were so filthy, the street in front of the house appeared as a blur. Some of the windows were covered with sheets or towels that hung on nails around the window frame. In the kitchen, the sink and stove were covered with dirty dishes and pots that looked as if they hadn’t been used in months. The refrigerator was rusted, moldy, and contained rotting food.

  “The so-called living room on the ground floor was not even a functioning room,” said Senior Investigator Tommy Martin. “It was filled to the brim with garbage and junk so you couldn’t even walk into it. There was only one working bathroom in the house and the sink in that bathroom didn’t work and looked as if hasn’t worked in years. It was stuffed with trash.”

  The smell inside the building was so overpowering, it made some officers gag. Each man who searched the interior had to wear special masks. “Before we responded to the scene,” Martin said, “I asked for a dozen respirator masks. Actually, I did not anticipate it being as bad as it was. But thankfully, we had state-of-the-art masks, which allowed us to breathe while we were inside.” The putrefying odor was as bad as anything the officers had ever experienced before.

  Martin and his team descended a short flight of steps into the basement for a quick look. Trash and junk blocked their way. Pushing some of the obstacles aside to get by, they cautiously approached the furthest part of the room, where a 4-foot high concrete-block ledge indicated the beginning of a crawl space that ran the length of the house. Using their powerful flashlights, they pointed a beam into the darkened space. A few feet away, the light reflected off the smooth surface of a black garbage bag. They could easily see skeletal remains near and around the bag. For the time being, they left the items untouched.

  Francois’ Refrigerator

  Photo Courtesy of Tom Martin

  From the basement, Martin and his partner climbed the staircase to the ground level and then continued up to the second floor where Francois’ room was located. As they ascended the steps, they were careful not to move any of the garbage strewn everywhere. It was best not to disturb anything until evidence technicians completed their work. Martin was aware that in a crime scene that has a large quantity of debris, officers could not immediately judge the importance of every item. Therefore, the prudent thing to do was treat everything as potential evidence.

  Investigators quickly located the access to the attic which Francois had described. Martin opened the narrow door, which revealed a short set of steps that led upward.

  The officers first noticed the rancid smell. They were accustomed to the odor and had encountered it many times before: The smell of decomposing human flesh. Though the stench was noticeable throughout the house, it was the most intense in the attic. “That house smelled like death,” Martin said. They climbed the rickety wooden steps using the flashlights to see the way ahead. When they reached the attic floor, Martin had to crouch down to avoid hitting his head on the rafters above. There was only enough space to kneel. As he scanned the room with his light, he saw the trash on all sides. Bags of ragged clothes, suitcases, broken chairs, and old furniture pieces lay all around him. His attention was immediately drawn to a corner of the attic, where he noticed an oddly colored item. As he moved closer, he saw that it looked like a child’s swimming pool, just as Francois had described it. When he was close enough to touch it, he grabbed the top part of the pool and bent it over slightly to see inside. He placed the flashlight over the side and aimed the beam inside the pool. The light fell directly onto a human foot, which jutted out of a mass of bones.

  “Christ!” he said.

  “Everything all right over there?” yelled another cop from the other end of the attic.

  “There’s a body here. Maybe more than one!”

  After they confirmed bodies were in the house, police decided to safeguard the location, post officers along the perimeter and return at daybreak. “It was just too dark,” Martin said. “Collection of evidence is a meticulous process that requires patience and care. And it wasn’t safe in that house at night. We were sure to trip over something or disturb evidence.”

  The next morning, Martin organized search teams and assigned them to different areas of the property. The exterior team consisted of 11 officers, clad in white Tyvek suits and gloves, who went over the entire grounds inch by inch on their hands and knees. “We collected hundreds of articles from the rear yard alone, most of which was unusable and meaningless,” he said. “We also used ground-penetrating radar for the yard. This radar is designed to measure ground density. Undisturbed soil has a different density than recently excavated soil, and the radar is able to distinguish the difference. The only problem was the soil was disturbed when the Francoises had the garage replaced the year before, so the radar beeped during the entire examination.”

  The garage was searched from the rafters to the floor, photographed and then taken apart. The concrete floor, which had been recently installed, was totally removed by jackhammers and the ground underneath was then completely excavated. “That was a no-brainer,” Martin said. “Since it was new, it had to be ripped up. Who could know what was underneath?”

  In the crawl space, police carefully removed the stuffed garbage bags from the ledge. They knew what was inside. The team had already observed human limbs near the bags, and they had removed a number of bones from the same location. “We found three bodies there, all in a very advanced state of decomposition,” Martin said. “You know, every cop during his career comes across a house that when he leaves it, he sa
ys to himself: ‘How can people live like that?’ With the Francois house, it wasn’t the bodies that made us feel that way; it was all the other things.”

  Despite the horrendous conditions, the search team had to complete the task according to professional and legal standards. They tagged and cataloged every item recovered at the scene. Each day, Martin crawled through the house, pushed through the garbage and the filth, pulled apart the walls, and examined every fragment of material. When he was finished, he started the process all over again in the next room. “It was tedious, time-consuming and labor-intensive,” he said. “And there was so much useless crap in our way. One of Kendall’s most favorite things in life was Whatchamacallit candy bars. We found those wrappers throughout the house.” All the while, Martin wondered how the Francois family could have lived under those conditions.

  “His mother was a psychiatric nurse; his father worked in manufacturing for a local company,” Martin said. “They had a decent combined income. They were intelligent people. Kendall’s brother had a BA, a graphic artist with a good job. But when you think about what the mother must have seen and ignored in that house. Filthy, soiled clothes all over the place. Rotten, half-eaten food. No real bathroom. Animal droppings were everywhere. And the bugs! There were insects, living and dead, in the dresser drawers. Hundreds of them. It was incredible. Everywhere we went there were more surprises.”

  In the attic, police removed five bodies. Some of the remains were mingled together in the kiddie pool, as Francois had described. One body was found stuffed into a suitcase. All were in an advanced state of decomposition. Police slid out the pool in one piece and made efforts to keep it intact as much as possible for transportation to the medical examiner’s office.

  “Kendall was inherently lazy,” explained Martin. “It was part of who he was. He would get a plate of food from the kitchen and if he didn’t finish it, he would just leave it wherever he happened to be at the time. In other words, it was easy for Kendall to just take a body and dump it in the basement or the attic and forget it because he was just too lazy to do anything else about it.”