Cropsey Documentary: SRA and Staten Island

[elfismiles]

My sweetie just saw this film at this year's FANTASTIC FEST going on here in Austin at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema.

Last night she related to me the many aspects of this story... all of which fit the RI forum focus areas.

http://www.CropseyLegend.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJKPvaNEVjs

Tribeca Film Festival's 'Cropsey' recounts horrifying Staten Island murders
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainmen ... rders.html

Tribeca Film Festival's 'Cropsey' recounts horrifying Staten Island murders
BY Robert Dominguez
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Wednesday, April 29th 2009, 11:19 AM


Photo by Chad Davidson
Filmmakers Brancaccio and Zeman walking near the ruins of Willowbrook.


Andre Rand is taken into custody.


Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainmen ... z0SPwokwNy


When a group of friends and neighbors from Staten Island ventured into Manhattan last weekend to watch a hard-hitting crime documentary at the Tribeca Film Festival, most had no idea just how gutwrenching the experience would be.

It's been 22 years since a creepy drifter who lived in the woods behind the abandoned ruins of a mental institution was arrested for the kidnaping and murder of a 12-year-old girl with Down's syndrome — a horrific crime that soon took on a more ominous tone when the man, 43-year-old Andre Rand, became a suspect in the disappearances of several other Staten Island children over the years.

The strange case of Andre Rand and the still-missing kids remains one of the biggest mysteries in the annals of New York criminal history, and is now the subject of "Cropsey," a gripping documentary that debuted at this year's Tribeca fest.

But for the friends and neighbors of the victims who attended Saturday's screening, sitting through a rehashing of Rand's crimes — both real and imagined — was almost unbearably painful despite the passage of time.

"It was very emotional, and very sad," says Donna Cutugno, a neighbor of Jennifer Schweiger, the disabled girl who was abducted and killed in the summer of 1987 and whose body is still the only one that was ever found.

"You tend to put things in the back of your mind over the years, but seeing the film brought a lot of bad things back," adds Cutugno, who spearheaded the neighborhood search for Jennifer's body when the little girl went missing.

"It's still very painful because there has been no closure for my family," says Rita DiMartino, the aunt of Alice Periera, a 5-year-old girl whose disappearance in 1972 has been linked to Rand, though never proven.

"Alice's mother passed away without ever knowing what happened to her. But even though they focused more on (Jennifer), on the whole (the film makers) did a great job, because this is something that should be shown everywhere to build awareness that you can't trust people like (Rand)."

The case didn't only deeply affect those who lived in the close-knit, working-class neighborhoods of Richmond and New Dorp, where at least three other children besides Jennifer and Alice were presumably abducted since the early 1970s. It touched the filmmakers, too.

Like most every kid growing up on Staten Island at the time, "Cropsey" co-directors Joshua Zeman and Barbara Brancaccio were well-versed in the details of the crimes. But what spurred them to make the film was how Rand's arrest in 1987 turned folklore into fact.

Rand, who had already served time for sexually abusing a Bronx girl in 1969, put a sinister face to one of New York's most enduring urban legends: The twisted tale of Cropsey, an axe-wielding maniac who lived in the woods and whose gory exploits were the subject of many a scary campfire tale.

Except that the Staten Island version had Cropsey being a mental patient who had escaped from Willowbrook, the massive state facility that was shuttered in the 1970s.

For Zeman and Brancaccio, Rand was the embodiment of their childhood Boogeyman. He had worked at Willowbrook for two years in the late 1960's, and after the facility was shut, he had lived in makeshift campsites in the thick forest of the Willowbrook grounds.

"We didn't know each other as kids, but we both knew about Rand and we both grew up with the cautionary tales of not going into the buildings and the woods around Willowbrook because of Cropsey," says Zeman, 37.

"When Rand was being re-indicted in 2000 for the disappearance of one of the children, we took this as a sign," adds Zeman. "So we picked up a camera and started shooting. We couldn't believe this story had never been told before."

"Cropsey," which has a final screening on Saturday at 8:30 pm at AMC Village 7, unfolds like a eerie episode of "CSI: Staten Island." Zeman and Brancaccio not only went to great lengths to interview victims' relatives, neighbors, witnesses and the cops who worked the missing children cases, they also bring their camera into the deserted buildings, underground tunnel networks and wooded areas around Willowbrook, where most people believe Rand's alleged victims are buried.

"It's unsettling to be there by day," says Branaccio, 38. "But it's even scarier at night. Walking through the rooms, it still has that mental institution feel. You can still see the hospital beds and tables, and part of the horror is knowing something bad happened there."

The co-directors didn't merely retell the story and revisit the crime scenes, however. They also played amateur sleuths — though Rand was twice convicted for the kidnaping of two of the children (but not the murders) there are still those who think he may not have had a hand in the other disappearances.

During the making of the film, they even managed to start corresponding with Rand, who sent them vast amounts of letters from Sing Sing professing his innocence, hoping to get the truth.

"When you're receiving that many letters and so many details, you want to find the clues," says Brancaccio.

There have also been whispers that a Satanic cult may have been reponsible for at least some of the abductions, which most people familiar with the case strongly discount.

"There have been all sorts of rumors about devil worship, but we never found anything to substantiate that," says Robert Jensen, a retired detective who worked the case.

Yet the biggest mystery that remains isn't who did it, but what he did with the bodies.

"The fact that no one's been missing for the 22 years since Andre Rand has been in prison means he is definitely the person responsible for the missing children," says Cutugno, who helped found Friends of Jennifer for Missing Children, whose goal is to get Rand, now 65, to reveal where the bodies are buried.

"The one regret about the case is that we didn't find that out," says Jensen. "It would give a closure to all the families."

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainmen ... z0SPwg8fLy

[elfismiles]

Secret surveillance vehicle hits Mid-Island's streets, will help crack down on quality-of-life crimes
By Peter N. Spencer / September 28, 2009, 1:26PM

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- It could be a van with a plumber logo on it or a yellow livery cab. Or maybe it's a generic gray sedan, driven by a man who looks like an accountant.

The only way you will really know what the top-secret surveillance vehicle that recently hit the streets of the Mid-Island's 122nd Precinct looks like is if you get busted in some criminal act.

Similar to the one launched by the Island's MTA police two years ago, the $55,000 high-tech ride was funded by City Councilman James Oddo (R-Mid-Island/Brooklyn) to help combat quality-of-life crimes. The "vehicle" has helped nab dozens of graffiti vandals on and around the Staten Island Railroad.

Oddo had a warning for others:

"People should think long and hard before they do anything wrong, because we are watching."

Advance sources are mum on the exact make and model of the vehicle, but did say it is equipped with a periscope, digital cameras, recorders and some "neat computer stuff."

http://www.silive.com/news/index.ssf/20 ... le_hi.html

[RomanyX]

For those in the SF Bay Area, this is screening on 10/25 & 10/29 at the Roxie in San Francisco (as part of SF Indie's DocFest).

[elfismiles]

Part of this story is that Geraldo Rivera had alread investigated and exposed the horrific brutal environment of the locale from which the suspect / convicted party was employed and from whence several (all?) of the victims had been housed.

Apparently when shown the Geraldo investigation the (at the time suspected and not charged, I think) alleged killer said something like, "you see, we were all abused" and then proceeded to lapse into this weird drooling coma state he often reverted to.

Forgotten Lives: Bernard

Bernard Carabello pioneered the deinstitutionalization movement in the 1970s with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Geraldo Rivera. As a former resident of New York State's Willowbrook Institution -- the largest institution for people with developmental disabilities and mental retardation at that time -- Bernard snuck Geraldo into the back gates to create the expose that would later cause Willowbrook's closure, along with a massive wave of institution closures throughout the nation. Hear his story.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZFTQ3_04i0

Geraldo Rivera was hired by WABC-TV in New York City as a reporter for Eyewitness News. In 1972, he garnered national attention and won an Emmy Award for his report on the neglect and abuse of mentally retarded patients at Staten Island's Willowbrook State School and began to appear on ABC national programs such as 20/20 and Nightline.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geraldo_Rivera

Willowbrook State School was a state-supported institution for children with mental retardation located in central Staten Island in New York City from the 1930s until 1987.

The school which was designed for 4,000 and had a population of 6,000 in 1965. At the time it was the biggest state run institution for mentally retarded in the United States.[1] Conditions and questionable medical practices and experiments prompted Robert Kennedy to call it a "snake pit." [2]

Public outcry eventually led to its closure in 1987 and civil rights legislation protecting the handicapped.

Its grounds are now the College of Staten Island.

Contents [hide]
1 History
1.1 Construction
1.2 Hepatitis Studies
1.3 More Scandals and Abuses
1.4 Closing the School
2 See also
3 References


[edit] History
[edit] Construction
In 1938, plans were formulated to build a facility for children with mental retardation on a 375 acres (1.52 km2) site in the Willowbrook section of Staten Island. Construction was completed in 1942, but instead of opening for its original purpose, it was converted into a United States Army hospital and named Halloran General Hospital, after the late Colonel Paul Stacey Halloran. After the war, proposals were introduced to turn the site over to the Veterans Administration, but in October, 1947 the New York State Department of Mental Hygiene opened its facility there as originally planned, and the institution was named Willowbrook State School.

[edit] Hepatitis Studies
Throughout the first decade of its operation, outbreaks of hepatitis were common at the school[citation needed], and this led to a highly controversial medical study being conducted there between 1963 and 1966 by medical researcher Saul Krugman, in which healthy children were intentionally inoculated, orally and by injection, with the virus that causes the disease, then monitored to gauge the effects of gamma globulin in combating it. A public outcry forced the study to be discontinued.

[edit] More Scandals and Abuses
Further problems plagued the institution: In early 1972, Geraldo Rivera, then an investigative reporter for television station WABC-TV in New York City, conducted a series of investigations at Willowbrook (on the heels of a previous series of articles in the Staten Island Advance and Staten Island Register newspapers), uncovering a host of deplorable conditions, including overcrowding, inadequate sanitary facilities, and physical and sexual abuse of residents by members of the school's staff. Rivera later appeared on the nationally televised Dick Cavett Show with film of patients at the school.

The school was originally intended to house 2000 students, but around the time the scandals at the institution gained attention there were almost 5000 residents. This resulted in a class-action lawsuit being filed against the State of New York in federal court on March 17, 1972. A settlement in the case was reached on May 5, 1975, mandating reforms at the site, but several years would elapse before all of the violations were corrected. The publicity generated by the case was a major contributing factor to the passage of a federal law, called the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act of 1980.

[edit] Closing the School
In 1975, a Willowbrook Consent Decree was signed. This committed New York State to improve community placement for the now designated "Willowbrook class".[3]

In 1983, the State of New York announced plans to close Willowbrook, which had been renamed the Staten Island Developmental Center in 1974. By the end of March 1986, the number of residents housed there had dwindled to 250 (down from 5,000 at the height of the scandal exposed by Rivera), and the last children left the grounds on September 17, 1987.

After the developmental center closed, the site became the focus of intense local debate about what should be done with the property. In 1989 a portion of the land was acquired by the City of New York, with the intent of using it to establish a new campus for the College of Staten Island, and the new campus opened at Willowbrook in 1993 (at the same time, one of CSI's two other existing campuses, located in the island's Sunnyside neighborhood, was closed and that site became the home of a new high school, Michael Petrides). At 0.8 square kilometres (200 acres), this campus is the largest maintained by the City University of New York.

The remaining 0.7 square kilometres (170 acres) of the state school's original property, at the south end, is still under the administration of the New York State Department of Mental Hygiene, which maintains a research laboratory facility there called the Institute For Basic Research in Developmental Disorders.

On February 25, 1987, the Federal Court approved the Willowbrook "1987 Stipulation", which set forth guidelines for OMRDD that required OMRDD community placement for the "Willowbrook Class".[3]

[edit] See also
New Jersey State Hospital at Trenton
Walter E. Fernald State School
Developmental disability
Tuskegee Syphilis Study
Geraldo Rivera
[edit] References
^ The Praeger Handbook of Special Education - by Alberto M. Bursztyn - Praeger Publishers; 1 edition (December 30, 2006) ISBN 0313332622
^ [http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/archives/WillowbrookRG.htm A GUIDE TO WILLOWBROOK STATE SCHOOL RESOURCES AT OTHER INSTITUTIONS - csi.cuny.edu - Retrieved August 25, 2009
^ a b Milestones in OMRDD's History, OMRDD, (2001-09-19). Retrieved on 2007-09-05.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willowbrook_State_School

[elfismiles]

Rand in 2004

After Andre: A Review of Cropsey (2009)

As children, Joshua Zeman and Barbara Brancaccio were among many who scared others and themselves with an urban legend given fictional life with the name of Cropsey - a maniac living in the woods who, with hook or meat cleaver or knife or machete, depending on the teller and the region, would emerge from the shadows to lure kids to their deaths in gruesome fashion. On Staten Island, where Zeman and Brancaccio grew up, Cropsey took on extra resonance thanks to the lingering ghosts of the Willowbrook State School, where mentally ill and developmentally disabled children resided and whose oft-horrific treatment was uncovered by Geraldo Rivera's 1972 expose for WABC-TV.

Such is the groundwork laid for CROPSEY, Zeman and Brancaccio's documentary on where fact meets fiction, where legend meets truth, and where the whispered-about bogeyman came to life in the form of Andre Rand, convicted of kidnapping two children - one murdered, one whose body was never found - and long suspected in the disappearances of several others. And while I exited the screening room tonight in a state of deep thought, I was troubled less by the case and of Rand than of the film's framing and presentation.

When Zeman and Brancaccio stuck to source material and primary interviews, CROPSEY was riveting. Whether showing clips of the filthy squalor of Willowbrook - long abandoned to decay in the woods - depicted in Rivera's documentary, current-at-the-time television coverage of the investigations into what happened to the missing children, or talking with family members, former law enforcement agents and those who had some tenuous connection to Rand, the film's power was unmistakable. These were children who disappeared and whose remains may be buried deep in the ground below and surrounding Willowbrook, and chances remain strong we're never going to know the whole truth of what happened.

But by framing Rand's alleged crimes in the context of an urban legend, CROPSEY unwittingly shoots itself in the foot. The real story has enough open-endedness and troubling questions that asking the audience to view it akin to a horror movie cheapens the entire concept when if anything, more investigation was necessary. And while I admit my own biases probably come into play, CROPSEY spent a little too much time going down blind alleyways. Raising reasonable doubt about Rand's guilt is perfectly fine, in light of the lack of physical evidence to tie him to the kidnappings and (probable and actual) murders. But the minutes spent theorizing about a connection to some sort of Satanic cult - especially in tossing off a reference to "Son of Sam" when David Berkowitz all but admitted it was a crock of shit devised to augment what was a more typical motive for serial murder rooted in insecurity, sexual dysfunction and outsized rage - could have been better spent on a litany of questions that ran through my mind.

For example: Zeman and Brancaccio's need to frame their movie around the urban legend that brought them to the cases came at the expense of unearthing who, exactly, Andre Rand is. It's not his real name: that is Frank Rushan, and while we're privy to a clip of the name-change document, no explanation is given as to why (or even a comment that "no explanation was given as to why.") They do track down his sister - obscuring her face from the camera in an understandable need to protect her identity - but what of school records, old yearbooks if they exist, or even the original record of arrest from 1969, when Rand was picked up for sexually assaulting a 9 year old girl in the South Bronx? Perhaps there's a deliberate metaphor to obscure Rand's background since Staten Island's general public never got to hear him speak in open court, and there is a single recording of Rand's voice left on Zeman's answering machine - the net result of a months-long letter-writing campaign by the filmmakers to secure an interview - but that seems like speculation.

And though the only fleeting reference was someone held up an old newspaper clipping about the "Unlucky Seven" children who went missing in New York City during the 70s and 80s, it was impossible for me not to compare Andre Rand with Jose Antonio Ramos, the longtime prime suspect in the disappearance of Etan Patz 30 years ago last month. Both Rand and Ramos lived transient lives, setting up makeshift camps in out-of-the-way places that were still well within reach of urban dwellings. Adults viewed their respective physical appearances and demeanor with suspicion - the drooling perp walk from Rand's 1987 arrest for Jennifer Schweiger's kidnapping and murder remains an indelible image, as is Ramos's mug shot from roughly the same time period - and yet somehow, they attracted kids to them with some degree of charisma and favors (one witness who testified at Rand's 2004 trial on kidnapping Holly Ann Hughes in 1981 described seeing Holly being enticed by a man with his face covered, holding out candy from his green Volkswagen, and never seeing the girl again after that.) And both Rand and Ramos are fond of playing games, whether dancing around their alleged crimes in letters, inviting people up to come interview them only to turn them down at the last minute, and generally maintaining some illusion of control over those who desperately want to know what happened to these children. And most importantly, the likelihood of physical evidence linking them to their alleged crimes turning up is exceedingly slim at best.

As a film, I view CROPSEY as a victim of its intentions, felled by the need to fashion a narrative that fuses fact and fiction. As a way of getting more and deserved attention about the lost children of Staten Island - Alice Pereia, Holly Ann Hughes, Tiahease Jackson, Jennifer Schweiger and especially 22-year-old Henry Gafforio, whose 1984 disappearance has been hardly written about anywhere (shockingly little information is available online), even as he made an eerie appearance in a newsclip when Holly disappeared three years before - and providing even a cursory glimpse into the unfathomable mind of Andre Rand, CROPSEY is mandatory viewing, even as it raises far more questions than can possibly be answered.

Photo credit: Jin Lee/Staten Island Advance

http://www.sarahweinman.com/confessions ... andre.html

Andre Rand

Born Andre Rashan, in 1943, the "Pied Piper of Staten Island" employed various pseudonyms to cover his movements and criminal activities through the years. Between 1966 and '68, using the last name "Bruchette," he worked as a physical therapy aide at New York's Willowbrook State School - later renamed the Staten Island Development Center. On May 5, 1969, he was arrested in the South Bronx for kidnapping and attempting to rape a nine-year-old girl. Pleading guilty to a lesser charge of sexual abuse, he served sixteen months in prison, winning parole in January 1972. Back on the street, Rashan legally changed his name to "Rand," logging three more arrests by the end of the decade for "minor" offenses, including burglary.

Along the way, his name was linked with disappearances of several children. Rand was working as a painter at a South Beach, Staten Island, apartment house when five-year-old Alice Pereira vanished from one of the flats in 1972, but officers were short on solid evidence required for an indictment. Nine years later, in July 1981, Rand was hauled in for questioning in the disappearance of seven-year-old Holly Hughes, from Port Richmond, and once more he was released for lack of evidence.

On January 9, 1983, Rand collected eleven children from West Brighton, loaded them into a van, and set off on a five-hour jaunt into Newark, neglecting to ask parental permission. They spent the day eating hamburgers and watching planes land at Newark airport, and while none of the children were harmed, Rand was arrested on charges of unlawful imprisonment, convicted in March and sentenced to ten months in jail. He was back on the street by August, listed as a suspect when ten-year-old Tiahese Jackson vanished on Staten Island.

No trace of the three missing girls had been found by July 9, 1987, when 12-year-old Jennifer Schweizer disappeared from her home at Westerleigh. A victim of Downe's syndrome, Jennifer was traced to the grounds of the deserted Staten Island Development Center, where Rand had been living for several years in a makeshift shelter of his own design. Witnesses reported seeing Rand with Jennifer the day she disappeared, and after some preliminary questions, he was charged with her kidnapping on August 4, held without bail pending a psychiatric evaluation. Eight days later, Schweizer's body was unearthed from a shallow grave, within sight of Rand's lean-to, and a charge of murder in the first degree was added to his file.

· Posted by Joe on February 17 2005

http://www.skcentral.com/articles.php?article_id=286

[elfismiles]

'HANNIBAL LECTER OF STATEN ISLAND' Sex fiend trial revisits '80s case
By HEIDI EVANS DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Sunday, September 8th 2002, 8:06AM

"You know me and [Ted] Bundy are alike in many ways. We both used Volkswagens. Bundy's thing was women. My thing is kids. . . . Do you think the police could figure that out?"

- Andre Rand, convicted child kidnapper and suspected serial killer in conversation with inmates.


As America agonizes over a wave of horrific child abductions and murders this summer, prosecutors are targeting a Staten Island deviant suspected of killing at least four young girls and two women.

Andre Rand, a 58-year-old drifter and sex offender, is serving 25 years to life for kidnapping 12-year-old Jennifer Schweiger, whose nude body was found in 1987 in a shallow grave near Rand's campsite on the abandoned grounds of the Willowbrook state mental facility.

Although Rand has been in prison for 12 years, he still casts a large and disturbing shadow over the borough.

"I call him the Hannibal Lecter of Staten Island," said Donna Cutugno, president of Friends of Jennifer for Missing Children, a volunteer group that began the community search for Schweiger and still searches Willowbrook's 385 acres twice a year looking for the other girls.

"He terrified a whole community. He still haunts us."

New trial

Tomorrow, pretrial hearings are scheduled to begin in a Staten Island courtroom, where Rand will stand trial for the kidnapping of Holly Ann Hughes, who disappeared 20 years ago when she was just 7.

Prosecutors and detectives have reinterviewed witnesses from two decades ago - some under hypnosis - and say they have pieced together key evidence that eluded them in 1981 when Holly was last seen at a local deli buying a bar of soap on the night of July 15. Police said witnesses saw Rand's green Volkswagen circling the area on that night. Although he was questioned by police and his car was searched at the time, he was not arrested or charged.

"There has always been a nagging thought about the other allegations about him and the other missing children," said Staten Island District Attorney William Murphy last week. "I thought it was important enough to take a deeper look at these cases and do another prosecution."

Law enforcement authorities have long suspected Rand in the kidnappings of two additional girls: Tiahease Jackson, 10, who disappeared Aug. 13, 1983, in Mariner's Harbor after buying chicken wings at a store 2 miles north of Willowbrook; and Alice Pereira, 5, who disappeared on July 10, 1972, near her apartment in the New Dorp section, several miles southeast of Willowbrook. He also has been linked to the disappearance of Ethel Atwell and the rape and murder of Shin Lee, both Willowbrook aides.

But Murphy said only the Hughes case got stronger in recent years, and prosecutors won an indictment from a grand jury last year.

At least 10 people are expected to testify at his trial about seeing him with or near the outgoing and smiling girl who lived with her mother at the time. Moreover, officers and inmates from Auburn Correctional Facility are expected to testify they heard Rand tell fellow inmates: "Kids entice me"; compare himself to Ted Bundy, the notorious serial female killer who was executed in 1989, and ask another inmate who was looking at a pornographic book, "How could I get a book like that with kids?"

Just 'boasting'

In court papers, Rand's lawyer, Duane Felton, dismissed his client's comments as "vague utterances more in the nature of pretentious prison boasting."

"Why would anyone boast about such things, let alone while incarcerated?" said Staten Island Assistant District Attorney Mario Mattei, the lead prosecutor in the Holly Ann Hughes case. "He's a pedophile who abducts young girls to have sex with them."

Mattei, whose hurdle at trial will be the 20-year time lapse, said he couldn't let the case rest.

"When you look at Rand's past, and there is a fresh case to be made against him, I couldn't imagine letting him get away with what we believe he did to this innocent little girl, Holly Ann Hughes. We think he should be accountable."

Holly Ann's father, Peter Hughes, a retired dockworker, still carries a photo in his wallet of the precocious little girl who loved singing Billy Joel's song "My Life" and going out for pizza.

"There is not a day that goes by . . . " he said, choking back tears. "She was just a beautiful little child."

Hughes said he was surprised when detectives came to his home in 1998 saying they had new leads in his daughter's disappearance.

"It's upsetting to go through again, but it was a good thing to happen. Andre Rand is an evil, evil person. I don't think he will ever say where her remains are so we will never be able to put my daughter to rest. But hopefully he will be convicted and put in jail for the rest of his life. The best we can hope for is that he will die in there."

He has one demand of Rand: "Let me know what you did with her!"

If Rand is not convicted in the Hughes case, he is eligible for parole in just under 10 years, on July 30, 2012, for the Schweiger kidnapping.

Rand was also charged with Schweiger's murder but in the absence of physical evidence jurors deadlocked on that charge.

Authorities at the time described Rand as a meticulous and fastidious person, who took great pains to leave no clues behind.

How he started

Rand was born Frank Rushan in Manhattan on March 11, 1944. He grew up in Ithaca, N.Y., served in the Army during the early 1960s and worked as an attendant at Willowbrook from 1966 to 1968, after which he changed his name to Andre Rand.

He had odd jobs, including his own sign-painting business on Staten Island, and lived in roominghouses, shelters and makeshift campsites on the Willowbrook grounds. People in the neighborhood described him as friendly, articulate and well read, not the retarded, drooler he feigns to be when questioned by police.

His first brush with the law was on May 25, 1969, when he enticed a 9-year-old Bronx girl into his car and drove her to a vacant lot. He removed his clothes and hers, but a passing police car interrupted the crime. Charged with attempted rape, Rand pleaded guilty to sexual abuse and was sentenced to four years. He served 16 months.

In 1979, he was accused of raping a young woman and a 15-year-old girl, but neither pressed charges.

In 1981, Rand offered a 9-year-old girl a lollipop and tried to entice her to ride in his Volkswagen. When she refused his offer, Rand followed her to her home and searched for her while she hid under a rug. No charges were filed.

And in January 1983, Rand drove to a Staten Island YMCA, enticed 11 children into his van and drove to Elizabeth, N.J., where he treated them to White Castle hamburgers. He then took them to Newark Airport, where they watched planes arrive and depart. On return to the YMCA five hours later, Rand was charged with unlawful imprisonment and served 10 months in jail.

Experts say Rand's criminal history is an anomaly because his victims are generally random strangers. Fewer than 100 cases of child abductions by nonfamily members were reported in 2001 among a population of 59 million children, according to the FBI.

With renewed national focus on these crimes, Rand offers a window into the dark psyche of criminals like himself, their methods and their madness.

"These people are typically loners and losers," said Kenneth Lanning, a retired 30-year veteran FBI agent and national expert on missing and sexually exploited children. "They prefer children to adults but lack the interpersonal skills to become a Little League coach, a teacher or a clergyman - people who easily befriend children. So they abduct young children because they are vulnerable and easy prey for them."

Lanning said at least 95% are unmarried men who have few friends, and that even in this small population of child molesters who abduct children, only a tiny fraction of those will kill their victims.

"These are the most vile and cruel of this sick population," he said.

Felton, Rand's court assigned lawyer, did not return several phone calls from the Daily News. But in court papers, he argues that his client is innocent.

His side

In an April 7 motion trying to prevent prosecutors from obtaining blood from Rand for a DNA sample, he argued that his client was "thoroughly investigated at the time. . . . His photograph was shown to persons who had seen Holly Ann Hughes shortly before her disappearance and none of them have identified [him] as having been near or with the child on July 15, 1981."

And in an affidavit filed with the court protesting press coverage of his arrest last year, Rand wrote on his own behalf - in meticulous and flowery handwriting - that he has been the victim of "a slanderous/scapegoat article resurrecting [so-called] 'notoriety,' thus encouraging hostility against plaintiff. Focusing and arousing public attention toward plaintiff from so-called 'missing persons' old cases - such persons plaintiff has never met!"

In a jailhouse interview with The News in 1987, Rand repeatedly lied to a reporter, saying he had never met Jennifer Schweiger.

He changed his story at trial only after his defense lawyer learned there were several witnesses who saw Rand with his bicycle leading the trusting little girl with Down syndrome by the hand away from her house toward the woods at Willowbrook.

http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/new ... ten_i.html

[elfismiles]

HOMELESS MAN SEIZED IN CASE OF MISSING S.I. GIRL
By TODD S. PURDUM
Published: Thursday, August 6, 1987

A 43-year-old homeless man with a record of crimes involving children has been arrested and charged with kidnapping a 12-year-old handicapped Staten Island girl who has been missing since July 9, the authorities said yesterday.

Witnesses had earlier reported seeing the man, Andre Rand, walking hand in hand with the girl, Jennifer Schweiger, on the day she disappeared near her home in Westerleigh.

The police acknowledged yesterday that he had been the prime suspect in the case from the start. But the authorities refused to disclose their precise reasons for only now charging Mr. Rand with kidnapping and unlawfully imprisoning Jennifer, who has Down's syndrome. They said none of the girl's clothes or belongings had been found and there was still no trace of her. Police officials said it was impossible to know whether Jennifer was still alive.

Law-enforcement officials, speaking on the condition they not be identified, said that detectives were also looking into the possibility that Mr. Rand was involved in the disappearance of two other Staten Island children since 1981. They would not elaborate. Psychiatric Evaluation Mr. Rand, who the police said made no statements and appeared dazed, was arrested late Tuesday and ordered held without bail for 30 days for psychiatric evaluation in Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn after his arraignment in Criminal Court.

A ranking police official said the suspect, who pleaded guilty in 1970 to sexually abusing a 9-year-old girl in the Bronx, was arrested based on the witnesses' earlier statements placing him with the girl and because his alibi about his whereabouts on the day she disappeared had not been substantiated.

The official said detectives had spent part of the day Tuesday driving Mr. Rand to New Jersey, where he asserted he was on the day the girl disappeared and that he could not susbtantiate the claim. The official would not elaborate.

''There's no new evidence,'' this official said. ''They could have taken him before. It's going to be a tough case.''

District Attorney William L. Murphy of Staten Island said only that the reason for Mr. Rand's arrest was ''just an accumulation of things, the ultimate of which occurred last night and which I am not at liberty to disclose.''

Since Jennifer disappeared after she set out on what her mother thought would be a short walk, scores of police officers and private citizens have combed areas near her home, including the 384-acre Staten Island Developmental Center, formerly known as Willowbrook, where Jennifer was last seen.

Until recently, the police said, Mr. Rand, who was unemployed, had been living in a makeshift campsite on the grounds of the center. For the past several weeks, they said, he had stayed at a shelter for homeless men run by the Brighton Heights Reformed Church at 320 St. Mark's Place in St. George. Ex-Willowbrook Attendant

Law-enforcement officials said yesterday that Mr. Rand, who has also used the name Frank Rushan, worked as an attendant at Willowbrook in the mid-1960's. In 1969, he was arrested in the South Bronx and charged with attempting to rape a 9-year-old girl after officers in a passing police car saw him attack her.

He pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of sexual abuse and served 16 months in prison before being paroled in 1972. The authorities said he was later arrested on several other charges, including burglary and petit larceny, but was never convicted.

In 1983, while working for a school bus company in Staten Island, he was charged with unlawful imprisonment for taking several elementary schoolchildren on an unauthorized outing to New Jersey, officials said. He was convicted and sentenced to 10 months in jail.

Law-enforcement officials said investigators were trying to determine whether Mr. Rand might be linked to the disappearances of two other missing Staten Island children, Tiahease Jackson, last seen in 1983, and Holly Ann Hughes, missing since 1981.

Photo of Andre Rand (Charles Arrigo)

http://www.nytimes.com/1987/08/06/nyreg ... -girl.html