The Spider and the Fly: A Reporter, a Serial Killer, and the Meaning of Murder

Winner of the Washington State Book Award for Memoir

“Extraordinarily suspenseful and truly gut-wrenching. . . . A must-read.”—Gillian Flynn, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Gone Girl

In this superb work of literary true crime—a spellbinding combination of memoir and psychological suspense—a female journalist chronicles her unusual connection with a convicted serial killer and her search to understand the darkness inside us.

"Well, well, Claudia. Can I call you Claudia? I’ll have to give it to you, when confronted at least you’re honest, as honest as any reporter. . . . You want to go into the depths of my mind and into my past. I want a peek into yours. It is only fair, isn’t it?"—Kendall Francois

In September 1998, young reporter Claudia Rowe was working as a stringer for the New York Times in Poughkeepsie, New York, when local police discovered the bodies of eight women stashed in the attic and basement of the small colonial home that Kendall Francois, a painfully polite twenty-seven-year-old community college student, shared with his parents and sister.

Growing up amid the safe, bourgeois affluence of New York City, Rowe had always been secretly fascinated by the darkness, and soon became obsessed with the story and with Francois. She was consumed with the desire to understand just how a man could abduct and strangle eight women—and how a family could live for two years, seemingly unaware, in a house with the victims’ rotting corpses. She also hoped to uncover what humanity, if any, a murderer could maintain in the wake of such monstrous evil.

Reaching out after Francois was arrested, Rowe and the serial killer began a dizzying four-year conversation about cruelty, compassion, and control; an unusual and provocative relationship that would eventually lead her to the abyss, forcing her to clearly see herself and her own past—and why she was drawn to danger.

Poughkeepsie, New York, 1998

Eight women had gone missing over the past two years, but few were looking for them. Other than ragged flyers taped to downtown telephone poles, there was barely a sign they were ever here. Most were women who had walked the streets, sold themselves for drugs. But they were also daughters, sisters, and in many cases, mothers. In death, as in life, it was easier for this small upstate city to ignore them.

The police had leads, including many about Kendall Francois, a large, awkward African American man repeatedly reported for attacking women whom he paid for sex. But Francois fit few of the familiar serial killer stereotypes, and detectives had largely written him off. One evening, seeming almost bored with the topic, Francois asked to speak with a prosecutor. Then, in a monotone voice just above a whisper, he shook the region to its core by pointing to mug shots of numerous women and announcing that he had killed them all. The bodies, he explained, were at home—in the house he shared with his mother, father, and teenage sister.

Claudia Rowe, a young reporter living in Poughkeepsie, had heard chatter about the missing women. She mentioned it to her editors in New York City, despite the fact that the local paper acted as if the women didn’t warrant much ink. A serial killer couldn’t be on the loose in Poughkeepsie. It wasn’t that kind of place. But after Kendall Francois confessed, the entire town became consumed with a desire to understand how a man who’d grown up there, whom many had known, could have committed such brazen crimes. Even more perplexing, how could a family live seemingly unaware of rotting corpses in their home? Rowe wanted to understand those things, too, with a desperation that eventually stunned her. Over five years and through a series of letters, phone calls, and visits that consumed her life, Rowe engaged with a killer in a dizzying conversation about cruelty, compassion, and control, digging down to the roots of her own need to understand evil. Because the case never went to trial, many of the details she uncovered about Francois, his past, and his victims have never before come to light.

A search for the origins of the darkest parts of human nature, a sticky narrative that skips back and forth through time, a beautifully written tale of a reporter’s relationship with her subject, a coming-of-age story that forces a deep reckoning with ourselves, a sociological dissection of class, race, and crime in an upstate New York town, The Spider and the Fly is a multifaceted reading experience that will chill you to the bone.