ID Films

Cropsey: True Crime, Urban Legend or a Mixture of Both?

Special report by David Lohr, Author of ID's Criminal Report Blog

Urban legends and tales of the unknown and unexplained are good fodder for any campfire. Often, these stories are chalked up to fictional tales, made up by parents to protect their children from wandering into dark alleys or unmarked streets. Other myths, such as the Mothman and the Jersey Devil, are propagated as living mystical beasts that prowl the night -- perhaps in search of a taste of your human flesh -- or so the tellers of those tales would have you believe.

But what happens when an urban legend meets reality and there are undeniable similarities between fact and fiction? The spine-tingling documentary "Cropsey: The Urban Legend" seeks to do just that by examining the alleged tale of a deranged killer in New York who is believed to be responsible for the disappearance of at least five children. Was a real-life boogeyman truly responsible?

Watch a preview of the film here:

On August 13, 1987, the body of 12-year-old Jennifer Schweiger was found buried in a shallow grave on the grounds of the long-abandoned Willowbrook State School for mentally disabled children.

"When we dug it up [we] found a little foot there," Bob Devine, one of the search volunteers, said in an Aug. 14, 1987 interview with the New York Times. "It's something that's going to stick with you the rest of your life."

The discovery marked the end of a 35-day search for the handicapped child, who had mysteriously vanished during a walk near her home.

The abduction and murder of Schweiger piqued the interest of many local residents, who were familiar with the tale of Cropsey -- the name given to the man behind the tale of a mental patient who was said to live in the tunnels under the abandoned Willowbrook State School.

The facility had gained fame in the 1970s, when a young Geraldo Rivera took a camera crew inside and revealed the horrific conditions the patients were living in. The hospital was later shut down.

Legend has it that Cropsey would emerge from the tunnels at night and prey upon unsuspecting children and teens. Some say he was armed with an axe; others claimed he had a hook for a hand.

Whatever the case, he was certainly not someone you wanted to run into on a dark night, the folklorists said.

So, while some suspected Cropsey was responsible for not only Schweiger's homicide, but also those of at least four other children -- none of whom have ever been found -- police focused their attention on Andre Rand, a 43-year-old homeless man and former employee of the hospital who lived on its grounds. While they were lacking solid evidence in the homicide, authorities did arrest Rand on kidnapping charges after witnesses reported seeing the little girl with him on the day she went missing.

"You know me and [Ted] Bundy are alike in many ways. We both used Volkswagens," Rand once said according to a Sept. 8, 2002 article in the New York Daily News. "Bundy's thing was women. My thing is kids ... Do you think the police could figure that out?"

For his alleged misdeeds, Rand was ultimately sentenced to 25 years to life in Sing Sing. Thus far, he has served nearly 20 years of that sentence.

Rand was later indicted in the disappearance of another young girl -- an indictment that caught the attention of filmmakers Joshua Zeman and Barbara Brancaccio. The two former Staten Island residents came to realize the cautionary tales of their youth may have come true and decided to do a story on Rand and the mythical child killer, Cropsey. Were the two one and the same?

In their documentary, Zeman and Brancaccio delve into the mystery surrounding the missing children and the real-life boogeyman linked to their disappearances. The spine-tingling documentary peels back the layers of fact and fiction behind one of New York's most disturbing unsolved mysteries.

The documentary seeks the answers to multiple questions. Was Rand the actual killer? If so, what did he do with the bodies? Were there others involved -- were the children's disappearances related to Satanism? In addition to exploring each of those questions, the filmmakers give a tour of the broken-down Willowbrook property -- buildings that remain standing to this day.

The film is, according to the Ottawa Citizen, "Part personal history and part sociological mystery."

For more information on CROPSEY, visit cropseylegend.com.

About ID Films

Investigation Discovery, America's leading investigation network, has launched an all-new independent documentary strand, ID FILMS. ID FILMS will program quarterly premieres, providing a new outlet for independent documentary filmmakers seeking a television home for projects that shine a light on important, overlooked aspects of our justice system and showcase compelling stories of mystery, intrigue and determination.

The first ID FILMS documentary is Cropsey, a spine-tingling documentary that peels back the layers of fact and fiction behind one of New York's most disturbing unsolved mysteries.

The second 2010 title is the world television premiere of Roger Weisberg and Vanessa Roth's riveting film No Tomorrow, which explores the role of media in the criminal justice system and provides a contemporary commentary on the use of the death penalty in the United States, one of the only developed nations still to use capital punishment. The film will air on ID on October 8 under the title Final Judgement.

In 2005, Weisberg and Roth created a fascinating documentary, Aging Out, which explored what happens to teenagers who have to fend for themselves after leaving the foster care system. Tragically, Aging Out also became a chronicle of the last year of the life of one of its central characters, Risa Bejarano, who was murdered shortly after the film was released. Weisberg and Roth's follow-up film, FINAL JUDGMENT, looks at how the original documentary unexpectedly became the centerpiece of a dramatic trial in Judge Lance Ito's courtroom that would determine whether the alleged killer would live or die.

"Created by some of the top independent filmmakers in the country, the documentaries featured in ID FILMS are, by their very nature, intensely personal," said Henry Schleiff, president and general manager, Investigation Discovery. "We are proud to provide an outlet for documentaries like Cropsey and FINAL JUDGMENT. This is the perfect way to kick off this initiative in that the first is an incredibly compelling true story of one of New York's most infamous unsolved crimes while the second is an example of ID's commitment to bringing attention -- as well as informed and articulate debate -- to important issues such as those that surround the controversial subject of capital punishment."