Every Town - Staten Island's Nightmare: The Urban Legend That Turned Out to Be Real

Episode Date: February 2, 2024

Today we’re diving deep into the legend of Cropsey…the boogyman for lack of a better term, that haunts the woods of Staten island. His story is one that everyone who lives there has heard…it varies a bit in details depending on who you hear it from but all the tales about Cropsey share the same base about an escaped mental patient who now hides in the woods and only comes out to prey on little children. But unlike many Urban legends, this one has a lot of hard evidence behind it. 👀 Watch This Episode On Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/scarymysteries 🎧 Our Other Podcast Scary Mysteries: https://open.spotify.com/show/3ZooEZMoZ421WdsOVJhVkT 💀 Exclusive Content & Perks: https://www.patreon.com/scarymysteries  👁 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andrew.fitzg 👁 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@andrewfitzgerald 👁 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/scarymysteriesofficial 🗣 Business Inquiries, questions and comments hit us up at [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you love true crime, grab your favorite mug and pour yourself a dose of creepy true crime every single morning with a morning cup of murder. This short daily show is the perfect podcast to incorporate into your morning routine because in less than 15 minutes, you'll hear about a true crime that took place on a day's date in history. Each day's dark history lesson will kickstart your morning with intriguing tales of murder, abduction, serial killers, cults, and everything in between.

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specific to a region and so the legend is able to endure through the generations and sometimes these legends cover stories of real people that died under strange or tragic circumstances and so now their spirits haunt a building a town or rose Sometimes they're about creepy creatures that lurk in the woods, having been seen by many, but yet the hard proof remains as elusive as them. And then there's the scariest kinds of urban legends, the ones that revolve around real life missing persons cases and murders. That's exactly what the story of Crompsie is all about in our focus today.

Hey guys, it's Andrew, and thanks so much for tuning in to this week's episode of Everytown where today we're looking deep into the legend of Cropsey, the boogeyman, for lack of a better term, that haunts the woods of Staten Island. His story is one that everyone who lives there is heard. It varies a bit in details depending on who you hear it from, but all the tales about Cropsey share the same base about an escape mental patient who now hides in the woods

and only comes out to prey on little kids. But unlike many urban legends, This one has a lot of hard evidence behind it, and it was created in real time over the course of several decades as a way to try and help explain away the strange vanishings and serve as a warning for young kids not to wander too far from home. Not only is this urban legend completely real, but surprisingly the stories that people tell about this man around their campfires is nothing in comparison to what actually happened in real life.

This is a story behind the urban legend known as Cropsey. The New York City metropolitan area is a population that's hovering around 8.5 million people. Those individuals live in one of the five boroughs, the Bronx, Queens, Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Staten Island. Each has its own identity, own unique neighborhoods and cityscapes. The Staten Island is the southernmost borough, and part of the city-oen-yland. what makes this place unique, other than being the hometown of Pete Davidson, is that right in the middle is a huge swath of woods, a nature preserve known as the Staten Island Greenbelt. It covers 2,800 acres, making it one of the largest natural areas within the five boroughs,

and it essentially wraps around the city streets in a full circle, just like a belt, hence the name. Many houses and apartment buildings run along the edge of this wooded area. And so you could be on a densely populated street one moment, and then just walk a few blocks over and you'll find yourself in the woods among a seemingly endless stretch of trees, swamp lands, and open fields. And I bring this up because it's from this setting where the forests, a butt city street, and more importantly, the old Willowbrook School

that the urban legend of crops he grew out of. And every single one of us, there's an instinct we have, and it's been put in place to help us survive. It's an evolution in biology, that is, as simple as it gets, that gut feeling, warning us not to go out into the woods alone. And it makes a lot of sense because you can get lost out in the woods or injured from falling. And of course, there's wild animals out there, too, that can kill people. And there's also the most dangerous animal of them all. other humans, possibly with bad intentions. So when looking out into that vast void, our brains tell us to stay put.

Just stay near your home and your chances of survival increase exponentially. So stories can be found in every single culture covering this idea. A legend of Cropsey is no different. It's essentially parents, uncles, and older siblings passing down the story to not go into the force of Staten Island because a boogeyman lives there, and if you're not careful, well, you might get you. The story of Cropsey came into existence in the early 1970s. It centers around a deranged psychopath that lives in the woods

only to come out at night to pray upon unsuspecting children. It was a warning to not play alone on the playground. Never talk to strangers, because if you do, it may become the next in the long line of Cropsey victims. This man was said to have been a patient at the only one. old Willowbrook mental institution before he escaped, only to settle down by himself in the woods. And Cropsey has scars on his face and unkempt hair, and often will be seen carrying an axe. If you wander in the forest and you come across him, then it's likely already too late.

Cropsey would drag you back to the now abandoned asylum and torture and then kill you in horrific ways. In some versions, there is more of a refined story about a man named George. Cropsey, whose own son was kidnapped, never to be seen again. This incident sent him into a dark spiral where he lost his mind completely, retreated into the woods and would come out to steal kids off the streets as sort of a replacement of the child he had lost. So if you lived on Staten Island around the 70s, 80s, and 90s, you no doubt heard some version of this urban legend.

But the truth is, this was much more than just a story. It went much deeper than our inherent fears of the dark woods and the unknown. This entire thing was based in reality, as there were several missing persons cases on Staten Island that cropped up over the years that remained unsolved. It would take years for a good chunk of the truth to come to light when it was discovered that the real-life boogeyman haunting the community of Staten Island was just a man named Andre Rand.

And his story is one of the more insane we've ever come across. As this guy was weird and sadistic, and his story reached every tip of the island. As it would be revealed later, Rand strategically set himself up to be able to pull off his crimes in many locations, making it hard for police to hone in on him. And the expansive Staten Island Greenbelt was Rand's dumping ground, where many of the bodies are still believed to be hidden to this day. Born Frank Rostom Roshin, on the island of Manhattan on March 11th of 19th, As a side note, he later changed his name, so don't get confused later on.

Frank's father passed away when he was 14, and right after that, his mother was committed to the Pilgrim Psychiatric Center in Brentwood, New York, which is located in the middle of Long Island. Frank and his sister would visit her when they could, but they also had to essentially grow up on their own and make ends meet as teenagers. While Frank's childhood clearly wasn't the best, He wasn't abused or mistreated by his parents in the typical way you find with many criminals. Oftentimes the darkest of madmen were formed that way, coming from backgrounds that would be devastating to any young developing child.

But Frank, it appears, was just broken. A bad egg, if you will, and from time to time in this world, that's just how they come out. There's no rhyme or reason behind it. By the time he reached his early 20s, between 1966 and 68, Frank got a job working as a custodian and orderly at the Willowbrook State School. This school catered to educating and taking care of children with intellectual disabilities. It was a large facility and at the back of the school grounds you could find a portion of the Staten Island Greenbelt Forest. This school was open in 1947, shut down for good in 1988.

With regards to the Crops the Urban Legend, and many retellings of this school was the same. setting, what they called in their stories the Willowbrook Mental Institute. At 25 years old in 1969, Rand was up in the South Bronx up to no good. And there he enticed a nine-year-old girl to get in his car, at which point he took her to an isolated parking lot. And once there, he undressed himself and while in the process of removing the child's clothes, luckily a cop car drove by and stop what was happening. For that crime, as he was clearly caught red-handed, Frank pled guilty and was sentenced to four years,

for which he ended up serving 16 months. Once he got out, he wanted a fresh start, and so this is when he legally changed his name to Andre Rand. By his late 20s, he was working odd jobs, handyman-style work, like painting houses and cleaning up schools, anything that he could grab quickly and then leave behind easily. And he chose to do all this on Staten Island. One of the first missing persons cases came in the summer of 1972.

The five-year-old Alice Pereira was playing with her brother in the lobby of their apartment building, which was located on the 600 block of Tissons Lane. It was around 3.30 p.m. when the brother went upstairs real quick to grab something. When he came back down, his sister was just gone. The family searched the neighborhood. for a few hours, figuring she had wandered off, but by 6 p.m. her mom reported her missing to the police, and since then, Alice has never been seen again. I thought he's thought maybe it was the dad at first because he was divorced from the mom, but he was cleared as a suspect pretty quickly.

There were no other suspects because there was never, and still isn't any evidence, pointing to anything happening. But interestingly, it would later be found out that our boy, Andre Rand, previously known as Frank, and so happened to be doing one of his paint jobs in the exterior of that exact apartment building during that summer. Another interesting tie in this story is that of 18-year-old Audrey Nirenberg, who lived in Brooklyn and was last seen on July 5th of 1977 after heading out to the store to grab a pack of smokes. Audrey suffered from a condition called hebraphrenic schizophrenia. So she had been dealing with that all while growing up,

spending brief stints in various hospitals and taking medications to control it. An interesting side effect of the disorder is that sometimes it can cause the sufferer to get disoriented. And, as was the case with Audrey, repeat actions or tasks they had already done. So for example, a person with this condition may go to the store then as they're heading back home get disoriented, forget that they were going home and

head back to the store to repeat the task again. Well, the very night before she vanished, Audrey and her family had headed to the Jerry Lewis Theatre on Staten Island to catch a movie. That theater just so happened to be located adjacent to a campsite that Rand was known to visit fairly often. It's believed that if she had in fact retraced her steps as she had done before, back to the theater. Then, it's possible, she crossed paths with Rand,

at which point he had his way with her. And Rand by this time was known around town as being a bit of a transient. Despite having a home, he would camp often at makeshift sites he had set up in and around the woods. In 1979, he was accused of having some unwanted relations with a 15-year-old girl, but charges were never pressed, so it was a he-said-she-said type of situation. So while there were rumblings about him and people may have kept their distance, he was viewed more as a town oddball. His aunt lived on the island, and like I mentioned, he worked odd jobs around there,

so for better or for worse, he was a part of the community. But his main camping site, and he had set up, was one that nobody knew about for many years. And it was located out in the back of Willowbrook State School, somewhere in that expansive forest. It was as if he liked to keep his eye on the place ever since he had worked there all those years back. Had authorities known about his spot earlier, they probably could have caught him, but they didn't. And as a result, Rand literally got away with murder from several of them.

In the summer of 78, 44-year-old Shin Lee, who worked as a nurse at Willowbrook was last seen leaving the property of the school. He was headed home at around midnight. Around three weeks later, her body would be deceased. discovered in a shallow grave right on the edge of the facility's property. She'd been strangled to death, and because of her age and because a body was found, this killing looked random, as if it wasn't connected to any of the other missing persons cases. That is, until around two months later. In October of that same year, 42-year-old Ethel Atwell, who was a physical therapist at Willowbrook,

was headed into work early one morning at around 6 a.m. She parked behind Building 47 and while on the way in two female employees inside the building, said they heard a man's voice say, Come on, come on. Followed by Atwell saying, No, you'll beat me. And was the man asking for a race of some sort or was she saying he'd literally beat her up? We don't know.

It was still dark out and the street lights were off, But right after that conversation, the women heard Atwell scream, and then she was gone. They called the police who came to the scene where on the driver's side of her car. They found Ethel's pocketbook, three buttons from her coat, an earring, and one of her shoes. And then, about 75 feet away along the edge of the woods, they would find her car keys laying on the leaves. While there was an extensive search for her throughout that area, no sign of Ethel. was ever found. Both of these cases were at the time an unsolved mystery to authorities. They never had a suspect. It was only in hindsight after Rand was finally caught for a separate crime

that authorities connected the dots. Iran's next act would be something he ultimately paid the price for, but this too took a few decades before it could be pinned on him. And it happened on July 15th of 1981. And that day, seven-year-old Holly Ann Hughes was sent by her mom to a local deli just two blocks away from her apartment complex so she could pick up a bar of ivory soap. And she was last seen at around 9.30 p.m., but she never made it home, and no one knows for sure what happened to her. But eyewitnesses said they saw Rand driving around the same store Holly was in before she disappeared. Rand had a noticeable green Volkswagen, so he sort of stuck. out. Police would go on to question him and search his car, but they found nothing inside that

would lead them to believe that Holly had been inside it. Rand's aunt, you see, lived in the same building complex as Holly, and so that was his reasoning for being there, so he covered his bases. He also said that he had played hide-and-seek with Holly earlier in the day, but that he had no idea what happened to her or why she vanished. About a month after the girl disappeared, her mother, who was also named Holly, received a phone call from a man who called himself Sal. Sal told her that he had her little girl and that if she wanted her return safely, then she'd need to do some lewd acts in front of a camera in order to get her back. Sal and Holly set a date to meet up at Penn Station.

She brought with her two detectives, but Sal, of course, was a no-show. But when Holly was given an audio recording of Rand's voice for comparison, She said, I was definitely the same man that it called her, but again, this was not enough evidence at the time for police to arrest him. Around this time, another layer was being added to the urban legend of Cropsey. Around the U.S. was a wave of people being concerned about Satanism entering the fabric of our culture. And Cropsey, it was said, maybe into that too, using children for sacrificial purposes. Also, underneath the expansive plot of land that the Willowbrook school sat on were a series of tunnels that some said Cropsey would use to pass around his victims to other homeless and mentally ill individuals living there. About a year and a half after Hawley disappeared, Rand then did something very strange.

He got his hands on a school bus and pulled up to a local YMCA where he picked up a random group of 11 kids. He fed them a meal and then drove them to Newark Airport. He was caught there and while none of the kids were harmed, you have to wonder what his whole plan really was. He never told anyone, but for this crime, he would serve 10 months in jail. And then, just 12 days after he got out, 11-year-old Tia Heise Jackson,

who was living with her mom and three siblings at the Mariners Harbor Motel because their house had caught fire, headed out to the Crown Supermarket to run an errand. It was at around 1.30 that afternoon, and Tia He's mother was taking a nap when a neighbor gave her some money and sent her to pick up some chicken wings. When her mom woke up around 4 p.m., and there was no sign of her daughter, she called the police, but the little girl was never heard from again. And wouldn't you know it, Rand, one of his campsites, set up at the Baron Hirsch Cemetery,

which was less than a mile from the Mariners Harbor Motel. And went on to be interrogated for this, but ultimately no charges were filed. But his luck was finally about to run out in the same place that all this started, Willowbrook State School. Rand seemed to like those summer months. On July 9th of 1987, 12-year-old Jennifer Schweger, who attended the school was reported missing. No one saw her leave, or knew where she went, so police searched the area around the school.

And eventually, 35 days later, they stumbled upon some freshly moved dirt in the woods out back. Underneath it was the body of Jennifer. A further search for evidence around the body then brought authorities across Rand's makeshift campsite. And suddenly, it all clicked. And they had found the man who had been victimizing the island for decades.

They had found their boogeyman, and they got Cropsey. Ran was charged with the kidnapping and first-degree murder of Shweger, for which he received 25 years to life. It opened the door to all the other cases against him, but without the bodies, none of them could be pinned on him. The easiest one to get him on was the kidnapping of Holly Hughes, and in 2004 they got him on that, and so he spent the rest of his life in jail.

And right now, at the age of 70s, that's where he sits. And so, while urban legends always have some bit of truth in him, this one has a whole lot of it. And Cropsey was much more than just an urban legend, which is why I freaked out so many people that heard the story of the man who was taking people at will. It was based around Andre Rand,

a bad man whose true story is much darker than anything anyone could ever create. So that's it for this week's episode. episode of Every Town, and hope you guys enjoyed it. Go check out this episode and video form over on our YouTube channel called Scary Mysteries. And for more podcasts from us, check out the Scary Mysteries podcast. Thanks for tuning in today. Remember to come back next week for another episode for with Scary Strange and Mysterious Stories, because you never know. Maybe your tag will be next.