I am taking a look at another dismal possibility here and am going to add lots of links to support it. Apologies to anyone who's raised this possibility before. I am just now seeing the strength of it.
(1) I went back to
Bessie's map in
Post 509. I don't know how to add a "balloon" to the map, or even if I'm allowed to, but if you look at the top of the Greenbelt, to the right of the only breach in the belt, you see Willowbrook Lake. Am I correct that the park that is now there is the site of the former state hospital? That's not terribly far from the site of the alleged fight.
(2)
This site provides a long bio and history of Andre Rand. In reading about him, a few things stand out:
(a) He was known to be living in the area since 1972, working as house painter and sign painter, and "living" in the abandoned buildings and tunnels of Willowbrook.
(b) In spite of claiming to be mentally disabled, he was extremely predatory, decisive, and methodical in committing his crimes. He left few clues behind. To date, many of his alleged victims have not been found. There is a long period of time -- 1969-1979 -- in which little is known or even suspected about what he was doing. But the overarching time that he was active suggests he was must have been doing
something, crime-wise, during this period.
(c) Most of his alleged victims are children, and he sometimes even boasted of his predilection for pedophilia, but he made exceptions. The text of a NY Daily News article printed on the above site says "In 1979, he was accused of raping a young woman and a 15-year-old girl, but neither pressed charges."
(d) Along the same lines, a
2011 article from the Staten Island Advance claims that at a sentencing hearing 7 years earlier, he "professed his love for older and lonely women and invited the female jurors to correspond with him."
(3) Rand (born 1944) would have been about 31 YO when SL disappeared. Could he have run into her when she was in the midst of emotional devastation? The above Daily News article also says, "People in the neighborhood described him as friendly, articulate and well read ..." Would he have been an attractive "knight on a white horse" to a distraught SL who may have thought she was out of options? Could he have offered her a ride in his trendy green VW beetle? In other places, he's referred to as a "the pied piper of Staten Island," so I think his charisma is well verified.
(4) One thing that really stands out to me is how successfully Rand hid his crimes. SL may have led her family to believe she would run away if pushed by her father (my speculation), leaving behind an unsettled family legend that she's alive somewhere (more speculation by me), but the silence about her fate after 1975 runs very parallel to Rand's "invisibility" during this period. As someone (epiphany? odyssey?) mentioned earlier, and as stated in the Daily News article, "Friends of Jennifer for Missing Children ... still searches Willowbrook's 385 acres twice a year looking for the other girls." Yet we hear nothing on them finding any remains.
(5) Just FYI, here's an
interesting first-hand account of what it was like to see same-age peers going missing during Rand's alleged later spree. Note this statement: "There is speculation that Andre Rand may be responsible for the disappearance of Audrey Lyn Nerenberg, an 18-year-old from Brooklyn (missing since 1977).")
Based on the MO of pedophilia, I initially dismissed Rand. I am now rethinking that. I wonder what the rest of you think?
Also, I am not finding a "Friends of Jennifer for Missing Children" website. Anyone have any idea if there's an Internet outlet for their findings?
(I almost lost this mammoth post when I had to login in the middle! Am learning to save posts to another document before clicking "Preview Post." Perhaps a message from above to "end it already!")
