Kendall L. Francois was born in Poughkeepsie on July 26, 1971, served briefly in the Army, and worked as a hall monitor at the middle school he had himself attended. He was six foot four, over twenty stone, and known to the students as a friendly presence. He lived at 99 Fulton Avenue with his parents and his sister.
Between October 1996 and September 1998 he killed eight women: Wendy Meyers, Gina Barone, Kathleen Hurley, Catherine Marsh, Michelle Eason, Sandra French, Mary Healey Giaccone and Catina Newmaster. All worked as prostitutes on Main Street, and all had drug dependencies. He strangled them at the house and carried the bodies to the attic and the crawl space, where they remained. The New York press called him the Poughkeepsie Killer.
The house was notorious in the neighbourhood for the smell, which the family attributed to plumbing. Police had been to the door. Francois had been arrested in 1998 for assaulting a sex worker and given fifteen days. Missing persons reports were filed by families and by other women working the street, who told police repeatedly that a large man in a Toyota was hurting people.
He was caught when a woman escaped from the car in September 1998 and went to the police, and under questioning he took detectives through it and told them where the bodies were. Eight were recovered from the house and its grounds.
He pleaded guilty in August 2000 to eight counts of second degree murder and was sentenced to life without parole; the death penalty was taken off the table in exchange for the plea and for information about a possible ninth victim. He died in prison on September 11, 2014, aged forty-three.