Chainsaw Killer Sentenced

Max B. Franc, the Cal State-Fresno professor who described himself as a “moral homosexual,” today was given a 25-year-to-life prison sentence for the 1987 first-degree murder of a Hollywood transient. Franc, 59, was convicted earlier this summer by a Los Angeles Superior Court jury that also found that he later cut up the victim, Tracy Nute, with a rented chainsaw, for disposal.

Despite many letters appealing for leniency, including from Franc’s elderly parents in Wisconsin, and a personal plea from the defendant’s 56-year-old sister, Judge John H. Reid gave Franc the maximum sentence, saying his crime had been unusually “heinous, cruel and callous.”