Body Dump

by Fred Rosen

Details the disturbing true account of twenty-seven-year-old Kendall Francois, a middle-school hall monitor, known as "Stinky" due to his apparent disregard for hygiene, who murdered eight prostitutes and hid their decomposing bodies throughout his house. Reissue.

Genres: True Crime, Nonfiction, Crime, Serial Killer

303 pages, Paperback

Published July 1, 2002

About the author

American true crime author and former columnist for the Arts and Leisure Section of The New York Times.

Rosen's published works in the genre include Lobster Boy, There But For the Grace: Survivors of the 20th Century’s Infamous Serial Killers and When Satan Wore a Cross.

He is also the winner of Library Journal’s Best Reference Source 2005 award for The Historical Atlas of American Crime, and has written many other works of historical non-fiction including Cremation in America, Contract Warriors and Gold!.

Reviews

[Paul Bryant · Rating 1 out of 5]

- Scuse me, Fred Rosen - no, don't try to scurry away, I know it's you, I got your picture right here, see - "Fred Rosen, author of Lobster Boy and Body Dump", see, right here.

- Yeah look whaddya want kid, I'm busy. You want an autograph?

- No, I want my money back.

- What? huh?

- Because the only reason I read your damned revolting execrably written piece of shit was to find out how on God's earth a family (a mother, a father, two grown-up kids, that's a family right?) can live in a house, an ordinary house, which contains five human corpses in the loft and three more in the crawl space, having been put there by the son in the pursuit of his principal hobby, and they just don't notice when the stench of decomp overwhelms and pervades every pore of their lives like a jukebox which can only play Elton John, when awful effluvia remains curled up and nestled in every corner of their being, when they wake, when they sleep, when they eat, and this is how they live for a year as the bodies pile up because of the son's shall we say limited notions of what constitutes spring cleaning, and they, the father, the mother and the daughter (not the son, he knows whereof these noisome vapours, this dismal reek) never get the exterminator guy in for a complete fumigation, never complain to the council about the drains, and it's a complete surprise to these people when the authorities haul the eight by now skeletal but previously full of flesh remains from out of their happy home - I wanted to know what kind of people these were and you, you big Fred Rosen, you didn't tell me at all. At all.

- yeah well it's a good question.

- but that's why I read your rubbish book.

- well, nobody ever found out. They wouldn't talk.

- well that's not good enough, gimme my money back.

- well how much did you pay?

- 0.1p plus postage from Amazon.

- you cheap bastard

- yeah well, it's not Anna Karanina, it's Body Dump

- well here's your one penny and screw you

- plus postage, £2.75

- look I'm just trying to make a living selling other people's misery to nauseating voyeurs like you

- what, now you're insulting the only friends you've got? What are you, the Van Morrison of true crime writers?

[the encounter degenerates into frank name calling and unseemly shoving. Finally they walk away hurling lame insults.:]

What I learned from this book was that I should stop, I should really really stop reading trashy true crime. For a while, at least.
Also, that some people's olfactory sensibilities are a good deal different to mine.

**************

[I just reread this and I would like to say to Fred Rosen and his lawyers and members of his immediate and extended family that the persons represented in the review above are like really made up and fictitious and what I'd like to say is that any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, true crime writers or not, is purely coincidental, as is the remarkable co-incidence that the guy's name is Fred Rosen. So, you know, please bear that in mind. Don't hurt me. Don't kill my pets. My name is not really Paul Bryant. I could be anybody. Also, same goes for that stuff I wrote about Van Morrison, Mick Jagger and Richard Nixon. Wait - Nixon is dead, so I don't care about that one]

[Jill Bowman · Rating 3 out of 5]

One or two stars for the writing (“He strangled her until she was dead as a doornail”.) and for the factual errors around the location.
But - a solid 5 ⭐️ for the nostalgic appeal for a woman (me) who grew up a mile north of Poughkeepsie and spent quite a lot of time there. Reading about Marist and Vassar colleges brought back so many memories. Pleasant Valley where my grandparents and cousins lived. The Anderson School, owned by one of my mother’s bridesmaids and her husband. It was worth the money (well, library check out 🤫) just for this.

Francois was after my time or maybe I’d have met him in government class at Dutchess Community College. He’s a beast. I’m glad they got him off the street. (ps If you were to read it please note that the hospital mentioned is St FRANCIS, not St Francois as stated. )

I’m not sure I’d recommend this for anyone - except maybe my high school friends who, like me, moved away 40 years ago.

[Sam Nagi · Rating 3 out of 5]

I give this book 2.5- 3 stars. I started this book with so much optimism but was failed. About 60% of this book is like reading the same thing from different views of different people involved in the case. I understand that this can be very important within the understanding of their perspective of the situation, but it was dragged on like a reconstruction of the incident from every angle possible or a badly scripted documentary. As I got to the point of giving up it improved and became the non - fiction, real life case I wanted to read in the first place and until the end was readable to a decent standard. I don't think I will read another Fred Rosen wrote book again though.

[Fishface · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wow, what a depressing story. Rosen did what he always does to me -- chose a fascinating case and didn't tell me enough about it. Left me with some fairly burning unanswered questions. Overall he handled the story well; it never bogged down and I did get some sense of who the victims were. I liked the cutting remarks Rosen had for the criminal-profiling process.

[Melissa LaFrate · Rating 1 out of 5]

Hated it to the point I didn’t bother to finish. I do not appreciate the explicit, sexual descriptions of the death of these women. It was unnecessary and off putting.

[Betty Stoneking]

if you like muder you will like this. it is good i would read more my him

[♥ Marlene♥ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Took this book with me while on a 3 days trip to Newcastle UK. (Well it was on my kindle)
Had not heard of this killer.It seems I have been hearing more and more lately about black serial killers. It is not just white guys as many say and think.
In this book there was mention of another black serial killer I did not know about namely Nathaniel White who admittedly confessed to stabbing and beating 6 women in New York during the 1990. Evil is in every colour.

This guy was so dirty (I have not yet finished the book I feel disgusted that those poor women had to be have sex with him so to get their fix. He apparently did not wash and smelled bad but not that,what shocked me most that he did not live alone but with his family.His parents and brother and or sister. Reading now that the cops are in the house and the filth they describe those people were living in I nearly puked. But sorry I do not believe they did not know 8 dead women or more were in his basement and attic and the smell was disgusting.

He used the excuse of having a dead family of squirrels there he needed to clean but they accepted that and just lived in that smell, not asking him to clean that up.
What filth.

Anyway I only knew about this creep because I picked Claudia Rowe's book The Spider and The Fly which I did not finish because it was so bad.

This book was written well and interesting.

[David Wright · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was a nicely detailed account of the murders committed by Kendall Francois - An African American serial killer, during the early 1990s.

I had never heard of him, and this book goes nicely into depth, detailing the history of not just the crimes, but the police and other departments involved that dealt with the differing aspects up to and including the trial. There are several descriptive elements from the killers perspective up to the murder of his victims, and this reads like the true crime documentaries that you watch on the TV.

My one gripe would be that certain things tend to be repeated during the ongoing case - I.E when he moves a body to an area of his house, no neighbours see anything / he goes a certain route etc. This to me seems like needless padding to an otherwise fascinating account of a truly horrible person.

Definitely recommended for fans of true crime / serial killers.

[Bri Barkley · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was entirely too long. The author went into so much detail of the route everyone drove, I get his theory but it was so boring to hear, "he then took a left on main and followed it until the light then took a right, then took a left towards town, then took the exit, then took the highway". As someone who never visited that town it was really boring to read and I couldn't follow because I had never been there. He also wrote so much redundancy. The amount of times he could have just said his Miranda rights were read to him instead of typing out the entire Miranda right several times. And towards the end there's an entire page of verbatim from the judge and Kendall about how he pleads. It's the exact same line copied and pasted for an entire page just with a different name. Just write out that he plead guilty to all counts! Other than the painfully long drawn out writing, it was an average true crime book.

[KrasnyeTeni · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not an enjoyable read by any stretch, but historically informative.
The work was fairly informative, though the sections graphically depicting the crimes used language that did not fit the tone of the rest of the book. Gratuitously depicting the acts of violence when the source is unclear (inferred or primary from the perpetrator's own words?), while using colloquial descriptive language rather than more sterile or academic language felt disjointed from the rest of the book.
I appreciated the portions of the book focusing on the lives of the victims and who they were, but I feel the book went too far in the descriptions of the crimes themselves without informing the reader if they were speculation or from the only living party present.

[Kristie · Rating 2 out of 5]

It took me awhile to finish just because...

Not my fave.. true crime story of the 1996-1998 Poughkeepsie NY prostitute murders.

I think the reason I’m not a fan of this book is there was no real story telling that most true crime stores take some liberties to do. We literally got a couple paragraphs about each murder but that’s it. I left feeling like the police didn’t do anything, the killer was meh, and the outcome was straight forward.....

[Philippe Yaworski · Rating 2 out of 5]

Lots of useless padding, Rosen constantly repeats and contradicts himself. (can't decide whether the killer is a genius or dumb as rocks, wants to pretend he thought about killing all the time yet also brings up that all the killings were spur of the moment and out of his mind the next day, which is how he beat a polygraph)

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Body Dump

I love the way this book was written and the way it expresses how politics get in the way of actually catching a serial killer. This killer could have been taken in to custody way before he murders more women but the refusal of a search warrant kept that from happening. This one is very sad and made me angry.

[Kim · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was OK - though as much as the author talked about drugs and prostitutes, you would think that's all there was in these women's lives. It was frustrating because he didn't delve into their past much, just they were druggies and sex workers and then they died. Not very compassionate and Rosen could have used a better editor.

[Nicole · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Fred Rosen walks you through the crime and case via the perspectives of victims, the killer and law enforcement. Shifting through the perspectives has a nice and even flow, you don't feel like the story is jumping from setting to setting.

[ADD · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good book, very well written. A must read!

[Karmen · Rating 2 out of 5]

The story was good but at times I feel they got off topic

[Jason · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading more like a digest joke. Ever less than enough positive motion binding you to the task of obsessing over "Americana".

[Roberta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Body Dump is actually much better than I expected for this kind of "true crime" book about the crime spree of serial killer, Kendall Francois, who murdered 8 women in Pougkeepsie and hid their bodies in a small home that he shared with his parents and his sister. The place and the people appear to be pretty accurately portrayed, although some people who are not portrayed sympathetically probably don't feel that way at all. The fact that so many murders were committed in a relatively small area without raising a big red flag makes a bold statement that the local newspaper is selective about its coverage. You won't find the police blotter in the Poughkeepsie Journal. The book also demonstrates how poor cooperation between police agencies can prolong a crime spree.

The book is not without shortcomings. Rosen's writing style is about what you'd expect; some combination of journalistic and cop-alistic.

From the New Paltz Diner it is exactly 5 miles to the stop light at the intersection of Route 299 and Route 9W, not 2 miles. Nitpicking, I know, but it's part of my commute.

Just about every author who mentions Poughkeepsie seems compelled to give at least a paragraph to Hooker Avenue. The truth is that Poughkeepsie's Hooker Avenue is named after prominent local citizen, James Hooker, and the "no overnight parking" signs are there because of the snow ordinance, not to inconvenience the johns.

Readers are also left wondering what was going on in Francois's head. Since Francois parents and sister pretty much went into hiding, we never found out how much they knew or suspected about Francois's criminal activities and Francois entered a plea of guilty, so there was no trial where this information might have come out. Letters written to him in prison by Rosen were not answered so what actually motivated Francois to kill is left to speculation.

[Shirley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have to start this review with feelings of anger towards a community and hopefulness towards law enforcement. A complete role reversal took place during this case. A community that did not care about the "Girls on the street and a police department that did. As I ponder what may have taken so long to bring justice to heartbroken families I guess I blame the judgemental attitude of a town that thought they were "Above" the victims. For a change from the norm law enforcement did not and treated these victims equal to any other victims regardless of class. I admire this department for their tenacity. As Edmund Burks once said, "All that is needed for the forces of evil to triumph is for enough good men to do nothing."

One of my strong dislikes are people who judge others. It is possible that is why this madman was able to commit these crimes. As womenan began disappearing from the streets even the new papers in the area would not pick up the story. It seems no one cared but the investigators and the families. I guess as long as it was not their loved one, just a stranger, just a name, they meant nothing. With the long standing attitude of police towards "Street women" even the victims who got away were afraid to come forward. The citizenship of this town should hang their heads in shame. Even the people who were co-workers or acquaintances of the victims lost the opportunity to humanize them. Remember this the next time you do nothing... You will damn sure take a stand when it is yours that is ravaged and thrown away like so much garbage. Or will you?

[Judy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was looking for one those sensationalized true crime books that are glossed over accounts of what happened without in depth research and thought. This sort of is that book , but truly it shouldn't have been. This wasn't just another ho-hum run-of-the-mill working girl serial killer. We'll start off with Francois Kendall's race. He was black. Black serial killers are rare. His race was hardly even alluded to the whole book. Next old Francois lived with his birth family--meaning his parents and some siblings, not a wife and children he had kowtowed into submission and taught to never question him. Yet how his family lived in a house with 8 rotting smelly corpses wasn't really explored. Lastly, it sounds as if the Kendall family were a bunch of hoarders since piles of trash, belongings and soiled underwear everywhere was frequently mentioned. It seems like more of the environment and family should have been better explored in this book.

[April Warner · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's always interesting to read how criminals are caught. Especially those who commit murder. Not just any murder but violet murders. Even more interesting is diving into serial murder cases. I think it's just human nature to be curious about such things.

Fred Rosen, in my opinion, did a great job in this book putting you inside the case of Kendall Francois. He also succeeded in doing what many people can't by showing you that prostitutes are still women, still humans, still people with lives, families, hopes and dreams. He also explains very well, the details of how it really happens in real life. The details that classify a serial murderer and how they determine everything in their profiling and prepare and execute trials.

If you enjoy true crime, I recommend this book. With the details of the case, Rosen puts you IN the lives of everyone who had to deal with what Francois did, including those who didn't survive his horrible crimes.

[Teri · Rating 3 out of 5]

Prostitutes were vanishing off the streets of Poughkeepsie and there were no traces of them being found. With no bodies found, the police did not have anything to work from and began looking at past reports of abuse by johns. The police had brought in Kendall Francois in for questioning and let go. The body count for the vanishing prostitutes continued to rise and still no leads. A closer look at Kendall Francois would lead them to the murderer. Once they had their man, he would later reveal that he had strangled them and hid their bodies in his house where he resided with his parents and his sister. No one had suspected anything because the smell of decaying bodies were masked by rotting food and trash that had littered the house that they had become accustomed, but soon the horror was revealed.

The book was good but at times I had gotten bored but then got interesting again.

[Aliyah (Barbellsnbooks) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I listened to this book via Audible and I was done in practically two days. I thought it was a decent read. Easy to follow, and disturbing (as expected). I still cannot fathom how Kendall Francois' family did not know about his crimes, while in the same house. That was the biggest mystery for me. The book didn't cover that very well, I thought they could have gone into more detail. However, I did like how Rosen gave a back story of each victim, my heart sank knowing that these were real women who had to suffer this way. I wouldn't recommend this to just anyone, if like reading about real life serial killers and criminals, so I would recommend it if someone likes this sort of genre.

[Karen · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is a true-crime book about Kendall Francois, who killed 8 prostitutes outside Poughkeepsie, NY in the late 80's.

This is another example of neighbors & family standing idly by while someone OBVIOUSLY disturbed is in their midst.

Of course, the cops got the blame in this one - but their hands were tied. It's not like w/Dahlmer where the cops had legal reasons to investigate Francois and didn't follow thru. The cops were in the dark.

Not that well written, grisly subject. Only for those w/strong stomachs.

[Juli · Rating 3 out of 5]

Being very interested in what makes people tick, especially those with criminal inclinations, I looked forward to reading this book for a peek inside the mind of the killer.
I did not find that here. I'm not sure if it was due to the writer's style and lack of insight or the actual circumstances of the murders and the murderer himself.
I gave this book a 3 because it is the first that I have read by this author and I will reserve further judgement unitl I am more familiar with his style. Overall, I prefer Ann Rule and this insight she brings to her true crime stories.

[Tiffany · Rating 1 out of 5]

First off, I love true crime books. It is the majority of what I have read for the past ten years. I really wanted to read this book to see how it was possible that this killer could hide bodies in his attic for so long while other people lived in this house and nobody do anything about it. Unfortunately, this book was so horribly written and so trashy that I could not even finish it. Even after I realized how bad it was, I kept on reading to give it a chance and hoped it would get better. Bad idea. Worst true crime book I have ever.

[Ronnie Cramer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read two Fred Rosen books almost concurrently, 'Body Dump' (about Poughkeepsie, New York serial killer Kendall Francois) and 'Deacon of Death' (about erstwhile family man Sam Smithers, who regularly hired prostitutes and ended up killing several of them). My thoughts and comments about both books are virtually the same: I found them to be solid, straight-forward accounts with just the right amount of detail. My one recommendation to the author would be to summarize and paraphrase the psychological profiles he quotes at great length.

[Adrienne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book. I had never heard of the case before and being an avid True Crime reader I found this interesting read. I would recommend it, I also found more headlines about the case and it helped me to know more on the case.
Good job Mr. Rosen, you've been added to my favorite writers/authors list.

[Eevie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nothing real different from your typical True Crime novel. Either the author or the editor needs to either go back to English class. There are many flaws in the writing, from misspelled words to really bad grammar.
The photos aren't great, but they help to tell the story.