Kendall Francois AKA “Stinky” Show Notes and Transcript for Upstate True Crime Podcast
1/20/75 when he was 4 parents moved to 99 Fulton Ave in n Poughkeepsie NY Which is 70mi north of NYC. Where they will stay for the rest of his life.
Ages 5-12 was bullied by students at Arlington Middle School (it’s now closed permanently according to Google.) For his weight and height.
When he’s 13 & 14 he starts to play sports and joins the wrestling team for Arlington High School. It’s at this time he starts to fit in or feel like he fits in.
He graduates from high school, joins the army and is stationed I. Honolulu HI. But then returns home after being discharged from the army, and attends Duchess county Community College.
He was discharged for being obese - *it’s sad that no one could help him with his weight.* I’m not sure of anyone tried.
He then gets a job as a janitor/ custodian for Arlington School district but quickly gets promoted to hall and detention monitor
So he was just manning the halls making sure all the kids were in class. It’s scary to think that he was so close to children after we find out who he really was
For some reason, he makes the decision to start killing women.
October 24, 1996 (Kendall is 25)he picks up 30 year old sex worker Wendy Meyer’s. They negotiate a price and then had sex. During sex Kendall gets angry thinking that Wendy ripped him off. So he strangled her until her hyoid bone broke and she died. After, he washed her body and put her in a black garbage bag and put her body in the attic of his parents home.
2 days later on the 26th Wendy’s boyfriend reported her missing. she was also known to the police.
On November 29th Gina Barone and her boyfriend Richie get into a fight while driving. The argument got bad so she told him to let her out of the car and then told him to get lost. So he drove away, but when he came back she was gone.
Needing a fix, Kendall picked her up, and she did know him so she wasn’t afraid he was a regular client. They agreed on a price and he drove to a secluded parking lot, according to Kendall she started to say things to make him mad, so he choked her until she died. He then took her back to his house and hid her body under his mattress for THREE months.And then put her in his attic.
On December 9th Gina Barone is reported missing by her mother Patricia after Richie tells Patricia she is missing. This is the first time Patricia meets Gina’s boyfriend.
Gina had a good child hood despite the fact that her father wanted no part of being a father. Her mother was like, “that’s fine I can be both and raised Gina by herself. Gina was a great little girl and in Patricia’s words, “lovely.” Unfortunately when Gina turned 15 she fell in with the wrong kids and was negatively influenced, this is when her drug use started.
By the next year, when Gina was 16 she had dropped out of school and became too much for her mother to handle. Patricia would start finding her daughter on the streets, but it’s not clear at what age Gina started sex work. When Gina turned 21 Patricia told her she was going to move into a smaller one bedroom apartment. Gina told her mother that, that was fine and she would go live with her boyfriend.
Unfortunately the relationship didn’t work out for Gina so she bounced around from various homes from ages 21 - 24. At 26 Gina had a little baby girl named Nicole, Gina loved her so much but because of her drug use was unable to care for her. So Patricia ended up raising Nicole.
Fast forward to Gina’s disappearance, detective K. Skip Mannain of the Poughkeepsie Police Department, was in charge of Gina’s case. So of course they looked at Gina’s boyfriend Richie first. And he wasn’t a stranger to law enforcement, but he was only ever charged with crimes like theft or selling drugs, in the documentary that I watched they called him a, “street guy.” But he was also on and off on drugs, Det. Mannain said when he was off drug he was a nice guy but on them he was different. After investigating him they cleared him of any involvement.
Two days later on November 31st his thirst to kill is getting stronger. This day he brings his mother to work at the Hudson River Psychiatric Hospital (so ironic) and after dropping her off he goes off looking for another victim. Francois finds sex worker Cathy Marsh, they again negotiate a price and he brings her to his home. And guess what happens? He chokes and kills her, then washes her body before putting it in a black trash bag.
Look up why killers wash a body after killing the victim
I looked up why killers especially serial killers wash the bodies of their victims and found in a thesis called Male Serial Killers and Criminal Profiling Process by Jennifer R. Phillips from Eastern Illinois University:
“All serial killers make some sort of response upon seeing the reality of death ("The Split Reality of Murder", 1985). Some cover the body, wash wounds, or respond in a way that demonstrates remorse or concern for the victim. Other killers either hide or bury the victim's body to keep the murder secret, thus remaining in control of the situation”
They pulled into a parking lot but as they did that, a guy comes running out of a gas station yelling for the detectives saying a woman has just been raped. The woman who was raped was sex worker Christine Salah. Another source says her name was Diane Franco, but i’ll just use the name I saw in the documentary.
She was crying and had severe bruising especially around her neck. At first she was reluctant to talk to police because she thought she had a warrant, and i’m sure because of her job as a sex worker. But the detectives assured her that she was not in any trouble. But they kept asking who did that to her, she yelled out, “It was that big Stinky fucker Kendall.”
Her story was, That she was picked up in the morning and he drove her to his house. They had sex multiple times but he got mad when he finally had to pay her, That is when he started to strangle her. While he strangled her she was able to talk him out of killing her and to take her yo get cigarettes. And he did, but when he got close to the gas station she ran out of his car into the station and never came back out. That is also the same time the detectives spotted him. wow Fate!
Christine was the break in the case that they needed. On September 1st, 1998 with her statement an arrest warrant was issued for Kendall he was brought in. Kendall spoke refusing a lawyer and admitted to assaulting Christine. He said he did get upset but then calmed down, and that he was only trying to give her a ride into town, but she ran away.
The detectives then told him that they were getting a search warrant for his house, Kendall was shocked and just told them to give him all the pictured of the missing sex workers and the head prosecutor. According to Detective Mannain he said Kendall was flipping through the photos like he was looking at a family album. He then confessed to all the women he killed, by pointing to the photo’s and saying, “killed her, killed her…” He also explains how he killed each woman without any emotion.
Police are now thinking they are going to be searching the woods and city for the bodies, but Kendall tells them the bodies are in the crawl space of his house. New York State Police, City of Poughkeepsie police and Town of Poughkeepsie police all went to the house where Kendall lived. They all surrounded the house before going to the door with a search warrant. The entire family was taken to the police station for questioning,
When searching the house with hazmat suites on, it smelled so bad that the smell of decomposition just blended in with all the other smells. They searched the attic and they found decomposing bodies.
The investigation on the house lasted for 29 days, looking on the outside and inside and combing through like and archeological dig. But the house was so dirty that if you leaned on the wall there would be a film of dirt left on your clothing along with a stench. There were even animal feces on the floor, what the fuck!!.
In the Attic they found 5 bodies, three bodies are found together wrapped in plastic, one of them Kendall started to dismember one of them. Another body is found in a child’s pool, and the fifth body was found in a can. One of the officers had to leave the scene because the smell of the body in the can was so bad.
They then checked the crawl space where they found three bodies of the most recent women who went missing. It took three days to find all the bodies and transport them for an autopsy.
While all this was happening Detective Mannain went to visit Gina Barron’s mother, to let her know that they might have found Gina’s body in the house, but wouldn’t know until the medical examiner identified her.
The 8th body found was unknown, she was a 34 year old woman who moved to Poughkeepsie 6 months prior to gong missing, and she was also a sex worker. But was the only one who wasn’t reported missing. Her name was Audrey Puglisi.
Michelle Eason was not among the bodies found nor did Kendall say that she was one of his victims.
From September 2nd to the 5th all the bodies were removed from the house and kept for 2 weeks for further investigation.
On September 4th he is indicted in Dutches County Court House for the murder of Catina Newmaster. And has the nerve to enter a Not Guilty Plea.
On October 13th 1998 he is formally charged with 8 counts of 1st degree murder, 8 counts of 2nd degree murder and one count of attempted assault.
While in Jail he tests positive for HIV
And on August 7th 2000 he confess to all the crimes in a plea deal to avoid the death penalty and is sentenced to life w/o the possibility of parole. Although back then HIV was almost a definite killer.
irritating though he becomes a welder and is paid $30 a week, I have an issue with someone like him being able to have any privileges. Him along with so many others should jus be put into a dark hole and be able to live just exist.
In one of the articles that I read from psychologists from Radford University, they wrote this about him and its verbatim:
Kendall Francois is an individual that does not display the characteristics one would normally expect of serial killers. While most serial killers are white males, Francois is an African-American, making him very unique. When examining his childhood, it is interesting to see that there is no detectable history of abuse, head injuries or brain abnormalities. However, this did not guarantee a wonderful childhood for Francois, as he grew up impoverished and did not enjoy the comfort of a large group of peers while in school. Children would make fun of him and ridicule him for his large size at such a young age. In addition to lacking criteria that is commonplace to many serial killers, Francois was also not involved in any of the components of the triad of a killer as he grew up. There were no known instances of animal torture, bed wetting, or fire setting. Although common criteria is lacking, something triggered psychologically in Francois on October 24, 1996, the date of his first kill. Whatever it was that caused Francois to kill a prostitute on that day replicated inside the mind of Francois seven more times. The tragic result was the murder of eight prostitutes by this unique and bizarre killer. There are a variety of factors that may have been influential in triggering the multiple killings committed by Francois. The large man, physically unattractive, demonstrated hostile aggression on numerous occasions. His body odor and lack of hygiene contributed to the ridicule he faced in school. It was not the only time he would experience ridicule however, as many of the prostitutes that he killed had made fun of or ridiculed Francois just prior to their very own death. It is hard to determine what the final event in Francois’ life was that drove him to commit eight murders. Nonetheless, the African-American serial killer, with mixed components of organized and disorganized killing, is a very different and unique type of serial killer.
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