Body Dump by Fred Rosen Page A

Journal published its first story about the missing women under the headline IS THERE A SERIAL KILLER LOOSE ?
    “She’s my daughter … my baby. I don’t think she’s ever coming back,” Barone’s mother, Patricia, was quoted in the piece.
    The article listed all the missing women: Wendy Meyers, Catherine Marsh, Gina Barone, Kathleen Hurley, Mary Healey Giaccone and Michelle Eason. Also mentioned was the lack of “public outcry” when prostitutes are murdered. The Nathaniel White case was cited to prove the point.
    “I fear the worst,” Siegrist was quoted in the article. “We have no bodies, no crime scenes, but we have six missing women. I can’t say we have somebody out hunting women. I don’t know what happened.”
    That was true. Also quoted in the piece was Gregg McCary, identified as “former director of the FBI’s elite behavioral sciences unit.”
    “This is, I mean, more than suspicious,” said McCary with classic understatement.
    More understanding came from a “woman on the street” comment.
    “We are all human, and no one deserves to get treated the way they’re [prostitutes] treated, the way they’re spoken about. If that were my child, I would love my child no matter what. Because it’s my child,” said Julia Simpson, a lifelong Poughkeepsie resident.
    “Look what happened there,” Simpson continued, referring to serial killer Nathaniel White. “I can’t believe these girls just disappeared; I’m sorry.”
    The case then went national. The Associated Press (AP) picked up the story and ran it on its national wire on November 21. The most intriguing paragraph of the story said, “Police are asking the FBI for help solving the cases of the women, who disappeared from the Poughkeepsie area from October 1996 to this month.”
    What the story was alluding to, which had not been made public, was that the Poughkeepsie Police Department had asked the FBI for a profile of the “bad guy.” In turn, at a special December meeting with the FBI, Siegrist promised to keep them abreast of developments. But for the next month and a half, there were none.
    In early January 1998, Bill Siegrist reported to work. The holidays were over and he had some paperwork to catch up on.
    Sitting down at his desk, he began to look over reports that his detectives had filed. The detectives had narrowed down the list of possible killers. Besides Francois, there was another suspect. His name was Mark King, a sexual predator. He liked getting rough with prostitutes. They’d have to look a little harder at him.
    Siegrist then came across a report filed by Detective Skip Mannain. In it, Mannain said that in the course of his routine interviewing of the area’s prostitutes, Kendall Francois’s name had come up yet again. The big man was up to his old tricks, Siegrist realized.
    Francois had had sex with a girl where he squeezed her throat just a little too hard. It had not only hurt; the girl had thought she was being killed. Then for some reason, he stopped, packed her up and brought her back to Main Street. Siegrist looked up, thought a minute, and then summoned Mannain into his office.
    “Kendall Francois,” said Siegrist. Siegrist then explained that he had read Mannain’s report. “What’s his pattern? During the day, I mean.”
    Mannain thought for a moment.
    “He gets up, drops his mom off at work at the psych institute, where his mother works as a psych nurse.”
    Perfect. She’d had an in-house patient.
    “What are you thinking, Lieutenant?”

PART TWO
    The Cop

Six
    January 18, 1998
    Paulette Francois and her son Kendall exited their house through the side door into the alley. They tramped through the snow to the rear garage where Kendall opened the wooden door. Watching from across the street in a late-model, unmarked green Ford Taurus, Siegrist saw the big man hold open the car door for his mother.
    Francois put his bulk behind the wheel of the midsize Toyota Camry. The car seemed barely able to