The absorbing documentary “Cropsey” — taking its name from a bogeyman who has figured in Hudson Valley campfire stories for decades — explores the creepy case of a homeless man convicted in two of many child disappearances on Staten Island in the 1970s and ’80s.
Andre Rand, now in his mid-60s, was a mentally disturbed former worker at Staten Island’s notorious Willowbrook State School. Rand had been convicted of a 1987 murder and was a couple of years away from release when he was put on trial for a 1980 killing. The second trial resulted in a conviction for kidnapping, and Rand remains in prison today.
Unlike the first case, no body was ever found. Nor has one turned up in a handful of other disappearances — all involving children with mental disabilities — in which Rand apparently remains the sole suspect. Many parents of the victims see him as their only chance for closure.
In all of the cases, the evidence against him is purely circumstantial. Rand, who lived for a time in a makeshift camp on the grounds of the closed Willowbrook, where the body was discovered, is said to have liked to hang around with kids, and was supposedly seen in the vicinity of some of the victims.
There are theories voiced here, by parents and authorities, that Rand abused the children (possibly along with other people living on the grounds), that he turned them over to devil worshippers — or that he believed he was doing his disabled victims a favor by killing them.
Filmmakers Joshua Zeman and Barbara Brancaccio also suggest Rand may have provided a perfect scapegoat for authorities under pressure to make arrests in the disappearances.
As they fruitlessly pursue an interview with Rand, they read strange letters from a man who believes he’s been unfairly persecuted for decades.
Certainly the many clips of hysterical TV coverage over the decades — most from Channel 7’s “Eyewitness News” — leave doubt about whether Rand could have ever received a fair trial on Staten Island, where many of the witnesses against him were alcoholics and drug addicts recalling events from years earlier.
“Cropsey” repeatedly returns to the ruins of Willowbrook, which was closed after Geraldo Rivera famously exposed horrific conditions in the early ’70s. On several levels, this film is a real-life horror story that puts most Hollywood movies to shame.