NY CULTURE


MAY 28, 2010


Staten Island Boogeyman Haunts Anew New Film Probes 'Real' Urban Legend


By STEVE DOLLAR


As a kid growing up on Staten Island in the late 1970s, Joshua Zeman often wandered through the woods in the center of the island. His summer camp was the destination. But the dense brush and shadowy paths held other, darker fascinations. It was notorious as the site of the Willowbrook State School.


The institution for mentally disabled children was labeled a "snake pit" in 1965 by Sen. Robert Kennedy and it was shuttered in 1987, 15 years after a young TV reporter named Geraldo Rivera broke his first big story in an exposé about it. Here also were the grounds of the abandoned Seaview Hospital and its crumbling tuberculosis wards.


And here was Cropsey.


Staten Island's own boogeyman—the escaped mental patient of lore with a hook for an arm who, after the tragic death of his son, snatched up wayward children in a vengeful rage. He was an urban legend that Mr. Zeman and his childhood friends used to scare each other.


"Our counselors would lead us through the woods, past Seaview, and we'd beg to go in there," Mr. Zeman, now 38, said. "Inevitably, one of them would come out with an ax yelling that he was Cropsey. That had a big effect on us."


Mr. Zeman never shook it. Years later, the film producer and documentarian met Barbara Brancaccio, another Staten Island native. They quickly began sharing their "Cropsey" stories. These dovetailed with the memories of multiple cases of children who had vanished on Staten Island during Cropsey's supposed rampage, including the 1987 disappearance of Jennifer Schweiger, a 12-year-old with Down syndrome. After a 35-day search involving some 5,000 volunteers, her body was found on the Willowbrook grounds near the campsite of Andre Rand, a homeless man, ex-convict and former Willowbrook employee who was later convicted of kidnapping her. Rand was serving a sentence of 25 years to life when, in 2000, he was newly indicted in the 1981 disappearance of another girl, Holly Ann Hughes. Suddenly, Mr. Zeman and Ms. Brancaccio had a real-life embodiment of the Cropsey legend—and a big story to tell.


"Cropsey," which opens next Friday at IFC Center as well as at the Staten Island Film Festival (held at the College of Staten Island, which occupies the same site that Willowbrook once did), is less an argument for or against Rand's guilt than it is a study in how a community creates a narrative to deal with tragedies that can't be explained. Through a decade of amateur sleuthing and countless interviews, the filmmakers found a pattern that linked Rand to several other abductions. But the film, which builds steadily into a forensics thriller, also explores how mysteries mushroom.


Page 15 of 155


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100  |  Page 101  |  Page 102  |  Page 103  |  Page 104  |  Page 105  |  Page 106  |  Page 107  |  Page 108  |  Page 109  |  Page 110  |  Page 111  |  Page 112  |  Page 113  |  Page 114  |  Page 115  |  Page 116  |  Page 117  |  Page 118  |  Page 119  |  Page 120  |  Page 121  |  Page 122  |  Page 123  |  Page 124  |  Page 125  |  Page 126  |  Page 127  |  Page 128  |  Page 129  |  Page 130  |  Page 131  |  Page 132  |  Page 133  |  Page 134  |  Page 135  |  Page 136  |  Page 137  |  Page 138  |  Page 139  |  Page 140  |  Page 141  |  Page 142  |  Page 143  |  Page 144  |  Page 145  |  Page 146  |  Page 147  |  Page 148  |  Page 149  |  Page 150  |  Page 151  |  Page 152  |  Page 153