Scholar Faces Murder Count in Saw Case

California State University professor Max Bernard Franc was accused of murder with special circumstances Wednesday in a Los Angeles County district attorney’s complaint charging him with the slaying and chain-saw dismemberment of an 18-year-old Kansas City youth.

If convicted, Franc, 57, a bachelor who resided in Fresno and taught political science at the campus there, faces a possible death sentence in the slaying of Tracy Leroy Nute, whose head and torso were found on a rural Madera County road near Fresno last week. Franc was arrested Saturday in West Hollywood, where he maintained a small apartment.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Sterling Norris said prosecutors sought the capital murder charge because the killing of Nute was especially heinous and because some of the victim’s personal possessions were stolen in the crime.

“We believe the motive to be homosexual rage (and) robbery,” Norris said.

Norris, responding to questions outside the courtroom, said investigators are examining the possibility that other young men whose photographs were found in Franc’s car and home might also have been murder victims.

But he discounted reports that a second suspect might have been involved in Nute’s murder. He said there is “substantial evidence” that Franc returned a chain saw to a local rental agency, not a younger man with shoulder-length blond hair, as reported earlier.

Norris declined to discuss details of Nute’s murder. According to a Madera County coroner’s autopsy report, the teen-ager had a gunshot wound in the head.