Free Body Dump by Fred Rosen Page A

did come in to the cops. There were various kinds of weirdos, kinkos, deviants and other miscreants who were informed on by their neighbors. That made no difference either.
    Throughout the first three-quarters of 1997, the investigation bogged down because of a lack of real suspects and real clues. For some reason, their killer had gone to ground. Maybe the Beat article had one reader who had taken it to heart. Maybe the killer had stopped because he was afraid of further news coverage.
    Actually, nothing could be further from the truth. Kendall Francois had taken his respite from killing because he had a problem. A storage problem to be exact. By March 1997, Kendall Francois had a kill total of five women. Five corpses were rotting away in his attic. No one but Kendall knew they were there. His family would later claim they knew nothing about it, though Francois did become concerned that they might find out.
    While the winter had slowed down the decomposition of the five bodies in the attic, they still smelled terribly. The odor of death permeated the house on Fulton Avenue. It leached out to every corner of the house.
    “What is that smell?” McKinley Francois asked.
    “Oh, that’s just a family of dead raccoons in the attic,” Francois replied.
    He had gotten rid of them, he said, and was working on clearing out the smell. His mother, father and sister bought his explanation. Whether they really turned a “deaf” nose to the impossible smell is hard to say. If they did, they kept it to themselves. Apparently, they never complained again.
    Until the odor diminished, Kendall Francois went about his business of picking up prostitutes, having sex with them, but not killing them. It was a personally turbulent time for Francois. It was in January 1997 that he had left his job at the Arlington Middle School and went to work at the Andersen School. Not long after, he was fired. He didn’t give in to the murderous impulses raging inside him. He had to wait until the bodies didn’t smell as much. Finally, in late October, the odor had begun to abate.
    By then, the decomposition of the bodies was well along. Found at that stage, identification would have been difficult. But Gina Barone, Wendy Meyers, Cathy Marsh, Mary Healey Giaccone and Kathleen Hurley were a long way from being completely decomposed. They still had a lot of skin on their bodies. Kendall, though, didn’t care about any of that. Who they were as people didn’t matter.
    He wasn’t up nights having nightmares about them.
    People who know their victims commit over seventy percent of murders. Out of the remaining thirty percent, serial murderers are a fraction of that percentage. Some serial murderers actually express remorse or regret for their actions.
    The point is that purely evil men who kill with no heart or soul happens rarely. When it does, the killer is often possessed of an acute animal cunning that makes him able to escape detection until, and only until, luck plays a role in his capture.
    Sociopaths like Francois who do not feel guilt exhibit a rare psychiatric disorder. Such individuals are not listed in the DSM . While sociopathy is acknowledged among psychiatrists as a legitimate mental condition, such individuals come under the “Antisocial Behavior” diagnosis in the DSM .
    According to the DSM , the essential feature of Antisocial Personality Disorder is violating the rights of others. It is a condition that begins in childhood or early in adolescence and progresses into adulthood. The DSM does point out that this pattern of behavior is often referred to by other names, including “psychopathy” and “sociopathy.” Deceit and manipulation are considered characteristics of this diagnosis.
    People who exhibit this kind of behavior do not conform to social norms; far from it. They may exhibit unlawful behavior. Repeatedly, they may perform illegal acts, including property destruction. Harassment of individuals, robbery and illegal