Body Dump Read online

  She began taking classes at Dutchess County Community College. Her identification picture from there shows a chubby-faced woman with a long jaw leading up to a prominent nose, close-set blue eyes and a carelessly chopped pageboy haircut. She is smiling. It was a good pose, a sober pose. But her addiction was always there, lurking in the background, very sly, just waiting to take hold again.

  When addicts falls off the wagon, the time they have in rehabilitation does not mean they start the addiction phase from scratch. They return to the addict’s life at the point where they were before they got into rehab. If, before rehab, you were looking over an abyss ready to jump, you go back to that hell.

  Despite her best efforts to work her program, Cathy felt she needed coke to survive. She was desperate to plug up this hole inside herself and the drug could do that, at least temporarily, from fix to fix. Only the drug would do. What pushed Cathy off the wagon is unclear, but fall she did. The inevitable question confronted Cathy again: how to pay for the addiction? Cathy had no money. She could go to her family. But what could she say if she did?

  “Hi, Mom, please give me some money to buy the drug that’s killing me.”

  That wasn’t realistic. The alternative was clear. She turned to the streets again to support her habit. Again and again, when she needed a fix, she went to the street to pick up guys. There was one charge for giving head, another for a full “69.” Men liked her; she had no problem getting business.

  Kendall Francois was a repeat customer.

  November 31, 1996

  How many men who were the picture of normalcy drove north on Route 9 on their way to work and gazed to the left at Marist College, evaluating the school’s security? Actually, the place had no security to speak of. The campus gates had no guard posts. Anyone could get in at any hour.

  Fronting Route 9, not more than a few hundred feet from the road, but still on campus, were garden apartments where some of the coeds lived. Francois could see the kids going to and from class in front of these dorms. The place looked, and was, almost all white. There were a few people of color. If he went on campus, he would easily be taken for an older student, or a laborer. The girls were certainly pretty.

  They had young, taut, white bodies. He could fuck them like they’d never had it and then bring his hands up around their necks and squeeze. He’d feel the adrenaline rush as he crushed their necks in his hands, bare of gloves, wires, or any sort of strangling implement.

  He liked the feel of skin on skin. It gave him sexual power. But that was all dependent on the girls being his type. Sadly, the Marist coeds—well, they were attractive, he wanted them, but not enough to “do” it. Then he thought about the women at the end of his block.

  The block he lived on was Fulton Avenue. It might have been an avenue in the last century, but now it was just a narrow street. Walking out the front door of his house and turning left, a few hundred yards down at the end of his block was another campus. This one was full of even snootier white girls, but no less pretty. The place was called Vassar College. Formerly an all-girls’ school, it had long since become coed. Still, the place was known for the refined beauty of its female population.

  Francois liked looking at the girls. But “doing” it to them? It was sexual power that he craved, power and control. Something inside, that instinct for survival that the best jungle animals have, that told them which were the weak ones in the herd to pick on and which were the strong ones, told him that the coeds were too strong.

  Besides, they weren’t street people. Their relatives and friends would know they were missing and come looking for them. He needed women who were more … anonymous, compliant, controllable, who would do what he wanted. But definitely white girls.

  In matters of lust, Kendall Francois shunned his own race. Kendall Francois just loved white girls. They had to have a particular body type—small of frame, with thin, sometimes emaciated bodies. And they had to be impure; women of low self-esteem, desperate women who didn’t mind his body odor and sold their bodies to the highest bidder in order to get money for a fix.

  The women Francois craved most were white prostitutes. Like his English predecessor that the press had named “Saucy Jack,” forever more known by his more popular name, “Jack the Ripper,” he was attracted to prostitutes. There were a few girls in town who met his criteria. They weren’t expensive to have. What he liked to do was have them over to his house. When his mother wasn’t there.

  Kendall looked over at his mother beside him on the car seat. Like the dutiful son he was, Kendall Francois was driving her to work at the Hudson River Psychiatric Hospital, located on Route 9, right at the edge of the city’s boundary. A series of low-lying, institutional-looking, brick buildings scattered on carefully manicured grounds, it was there that Francois’s mother, Paulette, worked as a psychiatric nurse.

  That morning, like many others, Francois drove his mother up the hospital’s winding driveway and dropped her at the entrance. After exchanging “have a good day” pleasantries, he drove back down to the road and took a left.

  Passing Marist College, he couldn’t help a sidelong glance at the attractive women roaming the campus. He continued driving past the shopping center on his left, until the four-lane road became a highway within the city limits. Traffic speeded up. As the road came within the downtown section of the city, it widened into two fast lanes in each direction with one, main interchange near the center of the city. The sign to the exit on the left said CHURCH STREET. Francois took it and headed his Subaru around a sharp left curve that brought him back onto the same road, Route 9, only this time going north. It was confusing to out-of-towners, to have to go north in order to get off the highway from the south side. But Francois, being a local, was very used to Poughkeepsie’s vagaries.

  Still going north, he stayed in the left lane and went up the ramp labeled CHURCH STREET. The ramp climbed over and across the highway. It let him off onto Church Street, the four-lane, one-way street that looked more like a boulevard than a street.

  Francois took a left and began zigzagging his way through the side streets. Finally, he came out on his favorite haunt, Main Street. He tooled his car down the two-lane blacktop, looking out the window at the fast food restaurants lining both sides, mixed in with pawnshops, groceries and dry-cleaning stores.

  It was late fall and there was a real chill in the air. If this was fall, winter was going to be a lot worse than anyone thought. The Hudson Valley had a tendency to see temperatures plunge in January and February. Even those who liked cold weather didn’t look forward to the cold snaps. However, the cold was good for something: it slowed down decomposition.

  Francois slowed down as he approached the intersection of Cannon Street with Reservoir Square. Looking out the windshield, he spotted her at the curb. He remembered her from their other times together. Her name was Cathy. There were a few other women out there, too, like that girl Cheryl, he’d also had, but for some reason that day—it really wasn’t important why to him—he wanted Cathy. She met his criteria; she was white and thin and a warm body to be abused.

  Francois pulled over and glided to a stop. He reached and opened the passenger-side window. Cathy looked over and saw it was Francois. She knew he stank. But his money was good and she needed it soon, and bad. They negotiated the price for intercourse. Soon, they agreed on a number and Kendall opened the passenger-side door.

  From past experience, Catherine Marsh knew that Kendall Francois liked to fuck at the big man’s house. She wouldn’t have been surprised, then, that he drove over to his house, parked in the garage out back, then walked the few steps from the garage through the back door of the house, then up the stairs, to his second-floor bedroom. Cathy followed him.

  Kendall’s room was a mess of filth. There was underwear strewn about the room, some of it smelling from strange pieces of a brown something. Cathy either held her breath against the stench or just took it and rationalized that it wouldn’t take long for her to make the m
oney.

  Francois passed over some bills. Cathy would probably have counted them up quickly and when she was sure she wasn’t being cheated, begin to undress. Francois would have gotten on top and pounded his penis inside her as hard as he could. Francois would later say that he suddenly became enraged.

  “You cunt!” Francois shouted.

  He shouted some more obscenities. He was still in her when he began to squeeze her throat with his powerful hands.

  Three

  Whether she fought or not is unclear, but knowing how hard she had fought to start her life, there is no reason to assume Cathy Marsh fought any less hard to stay alive. She would have summoned up all the strength she had built up over the years as an athlete. But much of that was gone. It had disappeared with her lifestyle. The addiction had sapped her of everything, including her life.

  Francois kept squeezing and heard a dull crack, the breaking of the hyoid bone. After a few more minutes, Francois was satisfied that Cathy Marsh was dead. He released his grip and she collapsed to the floor. Outside, he could hear the traffic and the wind. Inside, he heard nothing, save for his own breathing. He lifted the body off the floor and took it into the bathroom where he placed it in the tub. He turned on the water and bathed the dead woman and then later removed her to the attic.

  He threw Cathy Marsh in beside them. Wendy Meyers and Gina Barone now had company. He could tell from the stink that the first two were well on their way through decomposition. Still, they didn’t smell as bad as they might have because of the cold weather. Francois was storing the bodies in the attic, which was normally a place without proper ventilation. It kept in heat in the summer, cold in winter. If the weather continued to stay cold, the bodies wouldn’t rot as fast and smell as much.

  He closed the door to the attic and went down the stairs and back into the bathroom, where he washed his hands carefully and dried them. Then he went back downstairs and outside to his car.

  It was cold, yes, but a nice day. A very nice day.

  December 9, 1996

  Patricia Barone was worried. She knew about her daughter’s lifestyle, but it was unusual for her to lose contact for a prolonged period. She always kept in touch. Her boyfriend had told her about their argument, but that wouldn’t account for her daughter’s sudden disappearance. With a creeping dread filling her heart, the type of anxiety that any mother would feel when her child was missing, she called the police on December 9 to report her daughter officially missing.

  “If you have a routine, most normal people check in at various places throughout the day. If they don’t show up, people think there’s something wrong. But with a street person, they have no normal routine. They have no schedule. There’s no one there to backtrack from,” said Bill Siegrist. By 1996, Siegrist had worked his way up the Poughkeepsie Police Department ladder and become a lieutenant of detectives.

  “Street people have no concept of time and locality because their life revolves around making money to get drugs. That complete involvement. If not for Gina’s mom reporting her missing, no one may have. It’s essentially a cold trail.”

  It is a public misconception that random murder is more frequent that it is. When someone disappears and foul play is suspected, those closest to the missing person are always suspected first. Most murderers know their victims. It was only logical that when the City of Poughkeepsie Police Department picked up the cold trail, they suspected someone close to Gina: her boyfriend, Byron Kenilworth.

  If Siegrist had a nickel for all the times a relative who had reported a loved one missing turned out to have murdered that relation, he’d be rich. Kenilworth was the logical suspect. It was only logical then, that the cops suspected the boyfriend, Byron Kenilworth. It would be a lucky break if this case fit the pattern. Then there’d be no need for further investigation.

  Cops depend on certain things in their investigation of crime, not the least of which is the lie detector. Despite the fact that it can’t be used as evidence, cops have so much confidence in the machines that they regularly use them to rule out suspects in homicide cases. The first to take a polygraph in the Barone case was Kenilworth. He had agreed to take a lie detector test to prove he was not a suspect.

  A polygraph, or lie detector as it’s commonly called, is actually a series of measurements taken in response to a series of questions. Pneumographic tubes measure respiration. There are two plates that record galvanic skin responses. A blood pressure cuff records relative blood pressure and pulse. Essentially, what the specially trained lie detector operator has done is tap into the body’s autonomic nervous system, whose activity an individual has no control over. Questions that make them want to lie create an emergency to their psychological well-being. This fear of detection causes the sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system to react. That reaction produces palpable, recordable changes in the nervous system. Those changes signal deception. At least, that’s what the police think.

  In their heart of hearts, cops believe no one can lie to and beat a polygraph test. They have to believe that because they rely on them. In most instances, they’re right. But there are the rare times when the person sitting in the chair can lie about an event and the machine will not record that lie. Instead, their responses are recorded as truth.

  According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the standard diagnostic textbook among psychiatric professionals published by the American Psychiatric Association, someone suffering from dissociative amnesia, for example, would have “an inability to recall important personal information, usually of traumatic or stressful nature, that is too extensive to be explained by normal forgetfulness.”

  Therefore, if the killer simply blocked out the event in his mind and forgot about it, and was subsequently asked about it during a polygraph, his response that he didn’t kill someone, even though he had, would be correct because he had forgotten about it. His response would be measured as truthful by the test.

  Or, a person might be suffering from schizophrenia, which the DSM defines as “a mixture of characteristic signs and symptoms.… that have been present for a significant portion of time.… These signs and symptoms are associated with marked social or occupational dysfunction.

  “While the diagnosis should always be by a trained medical professional, if an individual has trouble keeping a job, having relationships, plus has hallucinations, feels they have to give in to some irresistible impulse, such as to kill, a positive diagnosis for this disorder can be made.”

  In such an individual, there would be no feeling of guilt when a criminal act was committed because the act itself isn’t real. It’s part and parcel of the psychosis. Such an individual would have no problem beating the lie detector.

  “When was the last time you saw Gina Barone?” the polygraph examiner asked Kenilworth.

  “The night before she disappeared,” he answered.

  “Did you have an argument?”

  “Yes.”

  He had previously admitted that to police, but they wanted the question put to him while hooked up to the machine.

  “Have you seen her since?”

  “No.”

  “Did you have anything to do with her disappearance?”

  This was a very important question. In the case of Susan Smith, she had told the nationwide media that her missing children had been kidnapped. The nation bought her story, which, as it later turned out, was false. She had drowned them in order to take up with a rich and handsome man.

  “No,” Kenilworth answered. He’d had nothing to do with Cathy’s mysterious disappearance.

  “Do you know anyone who had anything to do with her disappearance?”

  “No.”

  The test over, Kenilworth was allowed to cool his heels while the operator went over the results and consulted with detectives. It didn’t take long for the operator to determine that all the squiggles that had shown up as a result of the questioning proved decisively that Byron Kenilworth had ha
d nothing to do with his girlfriend’s disappearance.

  Byron Kenilworth was what he seemed—an anxious and worried stricken boyfriend. He had passed the lie detector test with flying colors. The following day, December 10, was Gina’s twenty-ninth birthday. Unless she suddenly reappeared, it didn’t look like she would be around to celebrate it.

  January 4, 1997

  It was an absolutely ugly, low-lying building. Everybody in Poughkeepsie knew it as the headquarters of the Poughkeepsie Police Department. As you walked in the lobby there was a reminder of times past, the old green globe that had adorned the doorway of the old precinct. The globe had been lovingly restored to its former glory.

  Next to the globe were letters in gold leaf spelling out CITY OF POUGHKEEPSIE POLICE DEPARTMENT. The letters had adorned the door of the old police station, too. Like the globe, the letters had been restored and repainted to their former glory. History was important to the Poughkeepsie Police Department.

  The detective division was in the back of the building. The lieutenant of the squad shared a narrow, fifteen-by-fifteen-foot office with his sergeant, Raymond Horgan. Bill Siegrist remembered when he had been the sergeant. That had been in the early 1990’s, when he had been promoted to detective sergeant and transferred to the detective bureau. But that hadn’t lasted long. His record was so good in the detective bureau that he was needed elsewhere.

  On November 15, 1995, he was promoted to lieutenant and went back to patrol as the head of that unit. Then, once again, the department needed his help, which was how Bill Siegrist found himself transferred back to the detective division as the lieutenant in charge.

  He noticed, as he looked around, that his office still had blue walls, battered tan filing cabinets and two institutional-style desks. The lighting was overhead fluorescents that gave everything a washed-out, yellowish tint. Siegrist looked around the room again. He had to smile. It had taken him a mere twenty-eight years to get this promotion.