Kendall Francois and the non existant Poughkeepsie Tapes

After knowing the story of the Water Street butcher and watching the movie "The Poughkeepsie Tapes", I decided to see what was out there to learn about Kendall Francois that I hadn't heard before. From talking to a few people I know and reading an article from Tru Tv I had been enlightened on a few new facts.

1. I had learned that he was employed at Arlington Middle School from 1996 - 1997. It weird to hear that because a lot of my current friends went to Arlington Middle.

2. Kendall had also been employed at Arlington High School. When I first heard that I was pretty damn shocked. That is where I currently attend school so it was surprising to hear a serial killer had worked here. As fate would have it, my communications teacher actually met him when he was first employed at Arlington. He was the type of person who, "was pretty shy and kept to himself a lot or not constantly engaging in conversation with everyone".

3. I had learned that there were NO "Poughkeepsie tapes". Kendall Francois undoubtedly killed all 8 of the prostitutes but nowhere in my research or my conversations have I found that he had actually video tapped his killings.
This makes me wonder why John Erick Dowdle decided to base a movie off of the story of Francois.



4. The movie is very inconsistent. In the movie the killer is light skinned. Francois was actually a very dark skinned African American. In real life he had only slayed eight women who were all prostitutes. In the movie the killer, who is supposed to be Francois, kills at least ten people and it seems like he goes out of his way to be overly sadistic. For instance in the movie he kills a man and decapitates him then kills a woman and stuffs the mans head in her stomach, in a ritualistic way. The killer in the movie ran before the cops could try to get him. Francois never fled or really tried to avoid cops, he was an average everyday working and functioning American. He just tried to conceal his murders a little more by hiding all the bodies in his attic. Last but not least in the movie "The Poughkeepsie Tapes" the killer video tapes all his killings and torturous acts to all his victims. In real life there was no evidence that Francois had ever done that. Also, the movie wasn't even filmed in Poughkeepsie, New York.


Ill give "The Poughkeepsie Tapes" the benefit of the doubt by saying it wasa pretty disturbing movie. It dint make me cringe or be scared but I definitely know it will ave to power to scare others. If Hollywood really wants to make a good horror movie than make a movie about the truth. Sometimes the truth is scarier than anything we could ever imagine.