Cropsey- The real-life Boogeyman
The Boogeyman does exist and he lived in Staten Island, New York City. Now he remains locked up.
Many moons ago, the parents of Staten island and I’m sure elsewhere, would warn their children of the Boogeyman. It was a tactic used to scare the kids into not straying too far from home. Siblings would torment the young ones with stories of the Boogeyman kidnapping children and taking them to a faraway land. That was the general storyline, shared across the world. But Staten Island had their version. They would say that a homicidal man, an escaped mental patient with a hook for a hand, would hunt children. Drag them to the tunnel system under the abandoned Seaview hospital and keep them there. However, it was always known as a campfire-type tale until…1987, when a man made the story come to life.
Andre Rand (photos below) was a janitor at the Willowbrook State school, Staten Island. It was a school for intellectually disabled children. In the 1970’s it turned into a nightmare institution, it was eventually closed down in 1987 after it came out that the children there had been abused. They were sexually abused and practised corporal punishment and there was a major overcrowding issue; the school was also generally unsanitary. The janitor was too busy doing other things… Willowbrook was home to one of the most unethical medical experiments- Hepatitis research. The staff would inject healthy children with the virus, making them extremely ill. The public was not aware of the torment the children were going through, for a while. Most of the children were abandoned by their parents or the foster system. In 1972 the institution was exposed by Geraldo Rivera, a journalist, leading the school to be shut down fifteen years later. The year it closed down for good was the year Andre Rand, the former janitor was arrested in connection with a disappearance.
Jennifer Schweiger was a twelve-year-old girl with down syndrome. She went missing in 1987 and was suspected to have been kidnapped by Andre Rand. She had last been seen with him. At the time, Rand was living in a makeshift campsite on the abandoned school property, not far from the Seaview hospital. There’s a connection to the original urban legend. A month after Jennifer’s disappearance, a body was found in a shallow grave on the desolate school grounds. Rand was charged with murder. There’s a second SNAP with the Boogeyman tale. By this time Rand had a long list of offences against children on him. A few years prior, Andre Rand was sentenced to sixteen months for attempted sexual assault against a nine-year-old. That’s one of his offences, from a very long list of them.
Going back to the year 1987, Rand was sentenced again for the kidnapping of a bus full of children. The police force of Staten Island suspected him of the disappearances of four other people, that go back as far as a decade.
Alice Pereira was a five-year-old girl who went missing in 1972.
Holly Ann Hughes was a seven-year-old girl who went missing in 1981, she was last seen with Rand.
Tiahease Jackson went missing in 1983.
Hank Gafforio was a twenty-two-year-old man with a learning disability, he was last seen with Rand in a diner before he went missing.
These four people have still not been found.
The jury did not have enough evidence to charge Andre Rand with the murder of Jennifer Schweiger, the girl with down syndrome, but they did manage to send him down for the kidnapping of her, for twenty-five years. This real-life Boogeyman was eligible for parole in 2008 but in 2004 he was convicted of a second kidnapping, the kidnapping of Holly Ann Hughes. He was sentenced to another twenty-five years in prison. An inmate noted down a conversation with him where Rand was discussing the abduction of Ann Hughes in much detail, this is how he was charged again.
So there we have it. A harmless urban legend to spook kids turned into a real-life tale of evilness. The photos below show you what Andre Rand looked like at the time of his convictions, missing posters, the abandoned school grounds and a shot from inside the abomination of a school.
