The stench of death and decay had clung to 99 Fulton Avenue for months, a foul cloud that neighbors attributed to a family of raccoons supposedly rotting in the attic. For nearly two years, prostitutes and street dwellers in the small city of Poughkeepsie, New York, had been vanishing, their disappearances dismissed by some as the transient lifestyle of addicts and 𝒔𝒆𝒙 workers. But on a sweltering morning in September 1998, the truth exploded into the open, revealing a house of horrors that would shock the nation and expose the monstrous secret of a quiet, oversized man that schoolchildren called Stinky.
Kendall Francois, a 27-year-old former high school football player and Army enlistee, was finally behind bars after a desperate woman, a prostitute he had just tried to strangle in his second-floor bedroom, jumped from his white Toyota Camry at a gas station and fled. Within hours, detectives from the newly formed Missing Women’s Task Force had coaxed a confession from the seemingly cooperative suspect. He admitted to killing eight women, stashing their decaying bodies in the attic, crawlspaces, and closets of his family home, a nondescript green colonial house just blocks from Vassar College.
The investigation that led to that grisly discovery had begun two years earlier, in October 1996, when 30-year-old Wendy Meyers was reported missing from the town of Lloyd. She was last seen at the Valley Rest Motel in Highland, a small Hudson River community just south of Kingston. Described as a white female with a slim build, hazel eyes, and short brown hair, Meyers frequented the same downtown Poughkeepsie streets that would later become the hunting ground for a predator.
Two months later, in December 1996, Gina Baron, 29, vanished. Her mother, Patricia Baron, reported her missing after she was last seen on November 29th in Poughkeepsie, arguing with a man on a street corner. Gina had a small build, brown hair, and distinctive tattoos, an eagle on her back and the word pop on her arm.
She was a known figure in the city’s persistent 𝒹𝓇𝓊𝑔 trade and prostitution scene, a cycle of vulnerability that made her easy prey.
Detective Lieutenant Bill Sigrist of the Poughkeepsie Police Department, a 29-year veteran, took command of the detective division in January 1997. He immediately noted the striking similarities between Meyers and Baron, two women who traveled in the same circles and had simply vanished. It seemed more than coincidence, Sigrist said, and his instincts proved chillingly correct.
In January 1997, Kathleen Hurley, 47, disappeared after being seen walking along Main Street in Poughkeepsie’s downtown. She too was white, brown-haired, and small, with the letters CJ tattooed on her left bicep. The three cases, while superficially treated as missing persons, now formed a pattern that Sigrist could not ignore.
The detective division, frustrated by the lack of evidence of criminality, turned to the Neighborhood Recovery Unit, the department’s narcotics team, for street-level intelligence. The NRU reported a troubling lead: prostitutes working the downtown area had complained of a local man known for being violent and rough during 𝒔𝒆𝒙. His name was Kendall Francois, and he lived on Fulton Avenue, just minutes from the crime scene.
On January 1, 1997, Sigrist ordered surveillance on Francois’s home at 99 Fulton, but after weeks of watching from unmarked cars, no new information emerged. Police even wired a prostitute to meet Francois, instructing her to engage him in conversation without entering his vehicle. The meetings yielded nothing, a frustrating dead end in a case growing more urgent by the day.
On March 7, 1997, Catherine Marsh, 23, was reported missing by her mother. She had last been seen alive on November 11, 1996, in Poughkeepsie, four months earlier. Like the others, she was white, small, with blue eyes and brown hair.
Her clothes and personal items remained in her apartment, a haunting sign that she had not simply run away. Police checked teletypes from across the nation for unidentified bodies, requested rap sheets to see if the women were in custody, and canvased the neighborhoods where they were last seen. Cadaver dogs from the Ramapo Rescue Squad were deployed, but they found nothing.
The case had reached a stubborn standstill with no workable leads.
Still, the police were convinced something sinister had happened. In April 1997, they contacted the FBI for assistance, but federal investigators were limited by the absence of a crime scene and the lack of proof that a crime had even occurred. Without bodies or evidence of foul play, the FBI could only offer general profiling, a tool that required a starting point they did not have.
The suspicion of serial predation grew, but the investigation remained silent and secret, a pressure cooker that would soon explode.
In October 1997, Michelle Een, 27, was reported missing. Unlike the others, she was African-American, a break in the pattern of white victims. She had a small build, barely five feet two inches tall and 115 pounds.
One month later, on November 13, Mary Healey Giacone, 29, was reported missing, but this report was initiated by the police after her father, a retired New York State corrections officer, came looking for her to tell her of her mother’s death in October. Mary was last seen in February 1997 on the same Poughkeepsie streets, and she too was tiny at five feet four inches and 110 pounds. The similarities were striking: all the women lived in or near Poughkeepsie, all had the same physical build, and many had been arrested for prostitution.
They shared a common bond, they had simply vanished into thin air.
Police tried everything to locate them. Helicopters searched Duchess County from above, state police scoured the Hudson River and shoreline, and confidential informants were pressed for any scrap of information. Hundreds of interviews were conducted, but with no hard evidence and no bodies, the investigation stalled.
Former FBI profiler Greg McCrary told the Associated Press that the situation was beyond suspicious, made worse because prostitutes or 𝒔𝒆𝒙 workers often enter vehicles with strangers. Suspects drifted in and out of the case, a transient man from the South who was a convicted rapist, a local man arrested for rape and assault, a boyfriend of one victim with an extensive criminal record. But through all the dead ends, Kendall Francois remained on the list, a constant shadow in the investigation.
Public criticism of the police grew, with street dwellers complaining the disappearances were not taken seriously because the victims were prostitutes. Lieutenant Sigrist rejected the accusations, explaining these girls did not have set schedules, and it took time for families to realize something was wrong. The public could not be told the details of the ongoing investigation, and the police bore the criticism in silence.
A prostitute told the Poughkeepsie Journal, We are lowlifes, thats what it comes down to. People dont care that we are missing because they think we dont belong on the streets.
In early July 1998, police decided to interview Francois directly. They staked out 99 Fulton Avenue and learned his routine, mornings spent driving his mother to her nursing job at a psychiatric center, then cruising the downtown streets in his white Camry. On a cold morning, Sigrist and his detectives pulled over Francois, who calmly agreed to come to the station.
Over several hours, he answered every question with a respectful demeanor, even leading a detective into his room for a brief tour. The detective reported the house was in horrendous condition, with garbage everywhere and an awful smell, but Francois made no admissions. By law, he was free to go.
Just weeks later, in late January 1998, Francois was arrested for assaulting a prostitute. The woman said he picked her up on Cannon Street, drove her to his home, and choked her with his bare hands after a dispute over money. She agreed to 𝒔𝒆𝒙 to survive, and he drove her back to the street.
She pressed charges, and Francois pleaded guilty to third-degree assault, a misdemeanor, spending just 15 days in jail. The slap on the wrist emboldened him, allowing him to continue his reign of terror.
On June 12, 1998, Sandra Jean French, 51, disappeared. She was white, five feet tall, 120 pounds, with a slight build and hazel eyes. Her car was found abandoned in Poughkeepsie, barely three blocks from the Francois home.
The Missing Women’s Task Force was officially formed in July 1998, a full-time investigative team from the city and town of Poughkeepsie and the New York State Police, operating out of a secret office on Market and Main Street. The team worked in secrecy, analyzing every tip and studying teletypes from the National Crime Information Center daily. The workload was enormous, and the pressure for discreet results was immense.
On August 26, 1998, Kina Neuanster, 25, vanished. She had a small build, brown hair, and was last seen on the familiar downtown streets. The city was gripped with fear, street people afraid to come outside, and the parents of the missing women numb with worry.
Patricia Baron, whose daughter Gina had been missing nearly two years, said prophetically, If they find one of them, they will find all of them. I am sure of that. She had no idea how right she was.
The house of horrors at 99 Fulton Avenue was a dark, gloomy two-story building set on a quiet residential block, virtually across from a funeral home. Neighbors and children, the mailman, and delivery drivers, everyone knew the house because it stank to high heaven. They had complained for months, but Francois blamed the odor on a family of raccoons that died in the attic.
On Tuesday, September 1, 1998, at about 8:30 in the morning, a young woman was being quietly strangled in Francois’s second-floor bedroom. He had picked her up for 𝒔𝒆𝒙, but when a dispute arose, he wrapped his massive hands around her throat. She somehow wriggled free and convinced him to drive her back to Main Street.
At a gas station, she jumped from the car and ran.
Detectives Skip Mannain and Bob McCready were in an unmarked car nearby, preparing to hand out flyers about Kina Neuanster’s disappearance. They saw Francois in his familiar white Camry and waved, recognizing him from previous contacts. Then a man approached the detectives at the gas station, pointing out the woman who had just fled the attack.
She was quickly located, taken into the station, and filed a complaint against Francois. That afternoon, police returned to 99 Fulton Avenue, asking Francois to come in for another interview. He agreed.
Over the next few hours, Francois finally cracked. He made admissions about the disappearance of the women, and was arrested and charged with a single count of murder in the death of Kina Neuanster. Police were elated.
A search warrant was drawn up, and shortly after midnight on September 2, 1998, a team of detectives, the district attorney, EMS crews, crime scene processors, and an army of officers converged on the house. They knocked on the door, and Francois’s mother answered. The family was taken to the town of Poughkeepsie police station while the search began.
Within an hour, detectives found the first body. The house was immediately surrounded and secured. New York State Police decided to process the scene at daylight, so they waited.
In the morning, officers in sterile white suits and anti-putrefaction masks entered the home. Garbage was strewn everywhere, clothes piled high, and sheets pulled over windows. The stench of decomposing human flesh was overpowering, seeping out into the street like a toxic cloud.
Dozens of media personnel and hundreds of spectators gathered, some gagging on the oppressive smell of death.
A woman’s body was found in the attic, then another, and another. District Attorney William Grady told the press, Based on what the suspect told us, the eight bodies are inside that house. Grimly, over five days, the bodies were removed.
The corpses were in advanced states of decomposition, with insect activity and signs of rodent presence. The New York Daily News reported that when officers entered, they were nearly bowled over by the stench of rotting flesh. Patricia Baron stood among the crowd, prepared for the worst.
In my head, I had come to terms with it, she told the New York Times. I had a feeling she was gone all this time.
On September 5, the last body was removed. Kina Neuanster was identified first, followed by Gina Baron, Sandra French, and Catherine Marsh. Then Wendy Meyers, Kathleen Hurley, and Mary Giacone.
There was an eighth victim, 34-year-old Audrey Pugliese, from New Rochelle, New York, who had not even been reported missing. How she ended up in the house, Kendall Francois refused to say. He was charged with second-degree murder on September 2, represented by an attorney who said his client would make no further statements.
Francois was born in Poughkeepsie, raised on Fulton Avenue, and attended Arlington High School, playing football until his 1989 graduation. He joined the Army in 1990, training at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and later attended Dutchess County Community College as a liberal arts major, studying on and off until 1998. He worked as a school monitor at Arlington Middle School from 1996 to 1997, where teachers complained about his inappropriate behavior toward female students, touching their hair and telling sexual jokes.
Children called him Stinky.
His family, parents and a younger sister, lived at 99 Fulton throughout the killings. They denied any knowledge, despite the overwhelming stench that neighbors said was impossible to ignore. Francois had told them a family of raccoons had died in the attic.
His mother, a nurse at the Hudson River Psychiatric Center, apparently accepted the explanation. In a statement through their attorney, the family said, We find ourselves plagued by unimaginable circumstances. We have virtually lost everything, been dispossessed of our home, and cast into the street with only the clothes on our backs.
The story of Kendall Francois is a dark chapter in the history of Poughkeepsie, a small city of 28,000 located 90 miles north of New York City, with a long history dating back to the Revolutionary War. The city had long struggled with a persistent 𝒹𝓇𝓊𝑔 trade centered downtown, where prostitutes worked openly and shootings were not uncommon. But this was different, a predator hiding in plain sight, operating from his own home.
The investigation was praised for its dogged determination despite the public criticism. Lieutenant Sigrist noted that even without evidence of criminality, the detective division was convinced something had happened to these women. The task force worked in secrecy, processing thousands of hours of work, and the coordination between city, town, and state police, along with the FBI, was monumental.
The recovery of the bodies was a forensic nightmare, but the identification process was aided by the detailed descriptions police had painstakingly gathered from families over the years.
Patricia Baron’s prophetic statement echoed as the bodies were pulled from the house, one by one. Her daughter Gina, gone for nearly two years, was among them. She stood bravely, as did the families of the other victims, holding vigils outside the barricaded home.
The community reeled from the sheer scale of the horror, a quiet residential street transformed into a crime scene of unimaginable proportions.
As the families mourned, the legal system began its slow process. Kendall Francois, the 6-foot-4-inch, quiet man who had been a shadow in the investigation, now sat in custody, charged with eight counts of murder. His confession had led police to the bodies, but he refused to explain the details of his crimes.
The house at 99 Fulton Avenue was sealed, a monument to the grotesque, a reminder of the eight women who had simply vanished into thin air.
The case is a stark illustration of how vulnerable populations, particularly 𝒔𝒆𝒙 workers, can fall through the cracks of society. The initial dismissals of the missing persons reports as routine were tragically wrong, and the police faced criticism for the time it took to link the cases. But the tireless work of Lieutenant Sigrist, Sergeant Michael Harkin, and the entire task force eventually brought the killer to justice.
The formation of the task force, while late in the course of the disappearances, was instrumental in finally cracking the case.
The horror of 99 Fulton Avenue will forever be etched in the memory of Poughkeepsie. The smell of rotting flesh, the piles of garbage, the decaying bodies hidden in plain sight, a family living with a serial killer in their own home. The community is left to grapple with the aftermath, the families of the victims to bury their loved ones, and the police to ensure that this kind of tragedy never repeats.
The legacy of Kendall Francois is one of the darkest in the region’s history, a testament to the evil that can lurk behind the most ordinary of facades.
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