Body Dump (25 page)

As far as the cops are concerned, it’s up to the sociologists and the psychologists to find the reasons why. They really don’t care. If they did, they couldn’t do their jobs. There are too many bad guys out there. Motive is a luxury. Their job is to catch ’em.

Likewise, the prosecutor does not need to prove motive to get a conviction. While motive, means and opportunity are the triumvirate of the criminal prosecution process, having a confession, bodies and other forensic evidence tying the killer to the victims is usually enough for any jury to convict without having motive.

But that still doesn’t answer the question burning in the minds of most people who studied this case: why did Kendall Francois kill eight women? What blood lust did he satisfy?

There were intimations from various sources in the writing of this book that there was a sexual component behind the crimes. That certainly made sense, considering his choice of victims. But what weird sexual urge Francois might have satisfied remains itself a mystery.

Seeking to resolve these questions, I wrote Kendall Francois at his prison cell in Attica State Prison in upstate New York where he currently resides. He never answered my letters.

The Francois family have drawn a complete circle of silence around themselves. To date, they have not talked about his motive to the press, or anything else, for that matter. They just want the public to forget the whole thing and let them live in peace. That might be hard.

Police suspect, and I concur, that Francois committed more murders. Seeking that route, I contacted the Department of the Army, U.S. Army Personnel Command in St. Louis, Missouri. A request was made for access to Francois’s military record under the United States Freedom of Information Act. Every citizen is entitled to look at it. The idea was to see if there was anything in Francois’s service record that might have indicated a predilection for this kind of violence. That could also show that the office of the Judge Advocate General had investigated anything, from some sort of disturbed, erratic behavior to actual allegations of sexual violence. After repeated vague army replies dated January 10 and March 29, 2000, the last one I received, dated June 6, says the following:

“Every reasonable effort is being made to locate the records needed to reply to your inquiry. Your patience is greatly appreciated.”

The letter is signed “Peggy Barton, Case Analyst.” That was two years ago! And still they have not responded.

Might there be something
really
interesting in Francois’s military record?

When I began writing true crime books nine years ago, I always probed for motive. I figured the answers always lay in the killers’ background, especially their childhood. In my naïveté, I always assumed a Freudian reason for the crime.

As I became more experienced as an investigator, I began to realize that it isn’t as cut and dried as all that. For every person abused as a child who becomes a killer, I could show you thousands who go on to lead worthwhile, productive lives.

Scientists are still trying to figure out if there’s a “murder” gene and who has it. In Francois’s case, I suspect his crimes were rooted in some childhood psychosis, plus a genetic factor. But one intriguing question that can be answered is this:

Why did Kendall Francois bathe the bodies? For the answer, I turned to investigative psychologist Dr. Maurice Godwin.

“Another way in which police attempt to deduce what occurred in a series of murders is to record those actions that are unique across the offense series,” he writes in his book
Criminal Psychology and Forensic Technology
.

For example, the unique behaviors that serial murderers repeatedly leave at their crime scenes are referred to, in the realms of forensic and criminal investigations, as the killer’s “psychological signature.” These unique patterns of behaviors have been explained by the FBI as traits, and they claim that the person variable repeatedly shows consistency across crimes. However … there lies danger in using the term “trait” as a cause of behavior.

To say that an offender left the victim nude after the murder explains nothing. Ressler [the famous FBI criminologist] and his colleagues argue that signature actions are revealed due to the offender acting out in fulfillment of his violent fantasies.

According to Ressler and his colleagues, fantasy may be manifested through particular verbal interaction with the victim, or through committing a series of actions on the victim in a particular order. However, an offender’s M.O. or signature is not always present in every murder due to agencies, such as disturbances during the course of an offense or an unanticipated victim response, or because the body of the victim has decomposed prior to its discovery; therefore the signature aspect has been destroyed.

But in Francois’s case, his signature behavior, bathing the bodies, is known because he said he did it. No deduction is needed. Godwin goes on to define signature behavior as:

… types of extraordinary violence similarities.

For example, the victim was beaten beyond the point needed to kill her, or the killer seemed preoccupied with the victim’s clothing or took some time to pose the victim’s body … in leaving his signature, a killer’s psychodrama is evolving. Although the scene is different, the act contained the same plot, same characters, and same dialogue which came to the same conclusion.

Francois’s bathing of the bodies was his distinctive signature behavior. Why did he do it? As Godwin cautions, more information would be necessary for a detailed analysis. But one possibility is that by bathing them, he was making the women, whom he clearly saw as impure, pure again in death.

However, determining the underlying structure of offenders’ signature behaviors requires extensive empirical analysis beyond any that is currently in use by police forces. By identifying the combinations of behavioral variables and background characteristics, which accounts for an offender’s individuality, is the most logical way forward in order to facilitate an understanding of consistency and development in offending behavior through time.

Understanding your quarry, as any hunter will tell you, is essential to the tracking process. Law enforcement’s continued reliance on the outmoded, ineffectual and unproven FBI serial killer organized and disorganized modality does nothing to help in catching these criminals. Had the FBI been able to provide real quality guidance, the kind Godwin is referring to, the investigation might have quickened.

Godwin also has a few things to say about the way the crime is committed by the serial killer.

The traditional use of Modus Operandi (M.O.), as a basis for linking offenses, is premised on the investigator’s deductive reasoning that the M.O. is static and uniquely characteristic to a particular offender. For example, traditionally M.O. is defined as distinctive actions, which link crimes together. As evidenced by this definition, many times the investigators confuse the offender’s M.O. with his signature, as if the two were the same.

In the Francois case, the investigators concentrated on neither. They were just too overwhelmed in catching the guy. Godwin continues:

An M.O. accounts for the type of crime and property used to commit a crime. The offender’s M.O. includes the victim type, the time and place the crime was committed, the tools or implements used, the way the criminal gained entry or how he approached or subdued his victim, including disguises or uniforms, and ways he represented himself to a victim.

Clearly, Francois’s M.O. was the type of victim he chose, always consistent; choosing to kill with his hands, always consistent; and where he picked them up, again always consistent. He never deviated, which is why the police’s hope that he was responsible for Eason’s death is just that, hope, and not based on scientific fact.

Eason’s only relationship to the other victims was that she, too, was a prostitute. She was, however, African American. If Francois had suddenly decided to target African Americans, why weren’t more of the victims black?

An offender’s M.O. can and does change over time as he discovers that some things can be done more effectively. The M.O. of a killer is only those actions which are necessary to commit the murder. However, using M.O. to classify or link crime scene behavior is rather unreliable as it does not take into account the many offense dynamics which can affect an offender’s change in behavior due to such influences as changing victim reaction from offense to offense.

The offender’s M.O. can change over time as a result of a number of factors, such as experience, which when committing crimes such as rape or murder, leads to refinements or changes in his conduct so as to facilitate the completion of the crime. These refinements in criminal actions can have a number of causes, for example, the result of being arrested or, as a result of victim response, causing the offender to change his way of dealing with the victim, including any future victims.

Note that Francois’s murder of Audrey Pugliese differed from the other victims: he stomped her viciously, but only after his arrest and incarceration on the misdemeanor assault charge. Eason’s disappearance, however, occurred before his arrest.

“The change in behavior could be attributed to factors, such as maintaining control over the victim by the use of a weapon or, for example, a rapist progressing to murder in order to avoid identification.”

In Pugliese’s murder, Francois was clearly punishing her for trying to escape from him. He knew he didn’t have to use his feet to kill her; his hands, used repeatedly in the past, would have been up to the task. Yet none of this can truly explain the enormity of Kendall Francois’s crimes. I’ve lived with them for the past two years it has taken to put this story together. My informed conclusion is this:

Kendall L. Francois is evil, pure evil, and he is where he belongs, behind bars, where he can no longer create tragedy. What do you think?

Fred Rosen can be reached at
crimedoesntpay.com

Acknowledgments

This book could not have been written without the cooperation of three men who, between them, lived every minute of this case—Bill Siegrist, Jimmy Ayling and Tommy Martin. It was Jimmy who first clued me into what was really going on and provided entry into the law enforcement apparatus that was utilized in catching the killer.

Bill gave generously of his time to sit for interviews by the Hudson River. With painstaking honesty, he described every facet of the investigation, including what he perceived as his foibles and what I perceive as his humanity. It is the kind of unprecedented access every writer hopes for and rarely gets.

Tommy Martin not only told me, but showed me, how he and Kevin Rosa worked the crime scene. It’s a far cry from what you see on television, and that much more fascinating.

Jim DeFelice gave generously of his time and cigars when explaining to me the ins and outs of Poughkeepsie and Dutchess County.

Paul Dinas, the former editor-in-chief of Kensington Books, deserves credit for seeing the commercial possibility in this story and the fact that readers would want to know what really happened. Karen Haas, my former consulting editor, helped me make this a better book.

I hope that in some way I have managed to bring some humanity to the lives of the women who were so maligned in the press as nothing more than prostitutes and drug users. Their deaths will have an impact on their sons and daughters, their mothers and fathers, for the rest of their lives and, in the case of the children, into future generations. It is my hope for all of them that they move on.

While the type of revenge fantasies that were evident at the sentencing are normal for the victims’ families, what I have seen in the numerous murder cases I have investigated is that those who adjust best are those who actually forgive the murderer and move on. All revenge will do is corrode from the inside out.

There are worse things than a quick death by needle, including, I believe, confinement to a cell for the rest of your natural life. Every time Kendall Francois feels like killing someone and can’t, and turns those emotions inside out, the eight women will be getting their revenge.

An old Sicilian proverb says it best:

“Revenge is a dish best eaten cold.”

—Fred Rosen

April, 2002

Appendix

KENDALL FRANCOIS AS LEGAL PRECEDENT

The precedent that the New York State Court of Appeals set in the Kendall Francois case may very well be the defining piece of law when it comes to pleas in cases regarding serial killers.

What the New York State Court of Appeals said in the matter of law was that a capital defender representing a serial killer might not cop to a lesser plea before the district attorney has even had the opportunity to ask for death. The New York state courts’ opinions are frequently used as precedents in other states looking for guidance in this area of jurisprudence.

What the court of appeals said is best read in their own words. Here is the actual text of their decision.

2 No. 46

In the Matter of

Kendall Francois
,

Appellant
,

v.

Thomas J. Dolan, &c., et al., Respondents
.

2000 NY Int. 64

May 18, 2000

Barry Fisher, for appellant.

Bridget Rahilly Steller, for respondent District Attorney.

LEVINE, J.:

The issue in this case is whether mandamus lies to compel County Court to entertain petititoner’s offer to plead guilty to all counts of the indictment charging him with capital murder, before the filing by the District Attorney of a notice of intent to seek the death penalty and prior to the expiration of the statutory period within which such notice may be filed. We agree with the Appellate Division that mandamus does not lie in this case because petitioner had no unqualified statutory right, let alone the required “clear legal right” for mandamus, to plead guilty under these circumstances.