Man at Site Where Body Parts Were Found, Court Told

A Valencia resident identified a California State University, Fresno, professor Friday as the man he saw parked on a freeway on-ramp just three days before a teen-ager’s body parts were discovered nearby.

Max Bernard Franc, 57, a professor of public administration who maintained an apartment in West Hollywood, is accused of shooting Tracy Leroy Nute, 18, and dismembering his body with a rented chain saw.

A former Inglewood police officer, Franklin Jones, testified that as he was entering the Golden State Freeway from the McBean Parkway on-ramp last August, he noticed a parked gray car with the driver’s window rolled down. Inside was a man wearing a “rather funny” hairpiece, Jones said.

“Someone was sitting in the car, just looking in my direction,” Jones said during Franc’s preliminary hearing in Los Angeles Municipal Court. “In my opinion, he was watching me. He was looking right at me.”

Three days later, Jones, now a manager for a private security company, learned that the legs and arms of a man later identified as Nute were found by sheriff’s deputies in the same area.

Nute’s torso and head were found along a rural Madera County highway.

In other testimony Friday, two employees of Jack Rents in Hollywood identified Franc as the customer who rented a chain saw from them last Aug. 21 but had difficulty learning how to operate it.

William Sheppard, a salesman, testified that he was reluctant to rent the tool to Franc because “I knew he didn’t know what he was doing.”

The store’s assistant manager, Robert Michael O’Brien, told the court that he taught Franc how to use the saw but ended his work shift before the item was returned. The next day, O’Brien said, he “noticed a bad odor” and traced it to the chain saw.

When he examined the saw, he found “little dried blood spots” on the muffler and “blood and some stuff hanging down from” the oil chamber, O’Brien testified.

Outside the courtroom, Franc’s attorney, Deputy Public Defender Mark Kaiserman, said his client “rented the saw on behalf of the person who committed the murder and that was his only involvement in this crime.”