Abandoned Mental Hospitals, State Schools and the True Story of Cropsey

Grab your bolt cutters, your EMF detector, and your childhood trauma because today we’re getting a broader understanding of haunted hospitals, abandoned state schools, the horrors of Willowbrook and the one urban legend that turned out to be terrifyingly real: Cropsey.

CW: language, violence

Sources:

Committed - Danvers State Hospital
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Cropsey (2009)
https://youtu.be/FqUD6Uv-uXo?s...

Willowbrook: The Last Great Disgrace (1972) Geraldo Rivera, ABC News
https://youtu.be/5F7CrMAwCw4?s...

Willowbrook 51 Years Later: A look at history and modern advocacy
https://www.disabilityrightstn...
willowbrook-51-years-later-a-look-at-history-and-modern-advocacy/

Spooked: The Ghosts of Waverly Hills Sanatorium
https://youtu.be/a43YhaLM7SM?s...

Cropsey: The Terrifying Urban Legend Brought to Life
https://the-line-up.com/cropse...

An Apparatus for Lunacy
https://youtu.be/JuU4xejPlO0?s...

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/broads-next-door--5803223/support.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
About fifteen buildings here have been abandoned for quite some time.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
I did a lot of searching for the kids here.

Speaker 3 (00:08):
Specifically for Jennifer and I believe Holly am.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
Growing up on Staten Island, Barbara and I had often
heard the legend.

Speaker 4 (00:17):
Of crops were supposed to help an action the knife bolt.

Speaker 5 (00:19):
This bit props. He was the escape mental patient who
lived in.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
The tunnels beneath the old band in the Millbrook Meant Institution.
We'd come out late at night snatched children in the streets.

Speaker 4 (00:28):
I would have never guessed the the mighty around of
weirdose living on state Land.

Speaker 6 (00:31):
There might be somebody in a good book.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
They might be some pretty well you know, get this
guy going around picking.

Speaker 7 (00:36):
Off these kids, I can imagine how are the parents,
even a few kids going for an hour.

Speaker 6 (00:40):
I can imagine how they misfeel. You know, that's probably
the one of the last things that you have to
think about it.

Speaker 4 (00:44):
So money would pay you for it.

Speaker 2 (00:45):
Seemed like everywhere I went there were people out in
the woods looking for that little girl. It's no question
if we were going into Florenttow. We definitely were going
to Flintower should as Pid get that children's books I
just walked close to.

Speaker 5 (00:57):
Is that so? What was that something?

Speaker 8 (01:06):
It's scary because we have a boogeyman living here in
my stat and.

Speaker 9 (01:09):
Land all those here.

Speaker 6 (01:10):
An image forced a lot of people to say that
is the killer.

Speaker 2 (01:13):
There's no reason for him to exist anywhere else other
than joke. We have the same questions that you're asking him.

Speaker 6 (01:18):
Why did you do a business?

Speaker 2 (01:19):
What's second sort?

Speaker 4 (01:20):
Is like putting a puzzle together. If he likes to
be the center of attention, the keeper of the secrets.

Speaker 2 (01:25):
So I think it'd be great if you can speak
create safety.

Speaker 6 (01:28):
I will not know.

Speaker 2 (01:29):
So you think they're all around this, I think he's possessed.

Speaker 5 (01:36):
Hello, neighbors, lovers, friends, and anyone who's ever had the
urge to explore an abandoned building. I'm Danielli Scrima, and
this is Broad's next door.

Speaker 10 (01:48):
Grab your bolt.

Speaker 5 (01:48):
Cutters, you're EMF detector, and your childhood trauma. Because today
we're getting a broader understanding of haunted hospitals and one
urban legend that turned out could be true and terrifyingly real.

Speaker 10 (02:03):
Cropsy.

Speaker 11 (02:09):
I visited the State Institution for the Mentally Regarded, and
I think particularly a will of groups, that we have
a situation that borders on a state path, and that
the children live and build us, that many of our
fellow citizens are suffering tremendously because lack of attention, lack
of imagination, lack of adequate manpower. It's very little future
for the children or for those who are in these institution.

(02:31):
Both need to tremendous overhauling. They're not saying that the
who are the attendants there are the ones that run
the institution, or at all. I think all of us
are at fall, and I think it's just a long
overdo with something you've done about it.

Speaker 5 (02:54):
Hi, Hello, how is everyone? I hope your October is
off you a great start. I hope you're feeling cozy.
Maybe you have a nice hot beverage, maybe you've got
a pumpkin already. Today we are going to be talking
about abandoned mental hospitals and state schools, lots of places

(03:17):
that have been closed down at this point. Some of
that is really good because the conditions in these places
were horrible. But there's also another side of that where
a lot of people who had a place to go
now don't. So we kind of don't have a middle
ground anymore. We'll also be talking about some urban legends

(03:39):
that turned out to be true. One of my main
sources for this episode was the two thousand and nine
documentary Cropsy. You can watch it on YouTube or on
Amazon Prime. I highly recommend it. It's about the Willowbrook
State School, which will be a main focus, and also
a story of this man who lived in the tunnels,

(04:01):
this cautionary tale that kids were told, but then it
turns out there really was a man and he was
really killing children. But before that, let's talk about some
other infamous abandoned hospitals.

Speaker 10 (04:16):
Hospitals can be scary.

Speaker 5 (04:18):
We know that it's where people die, where people are born,
where pain lives, and where sometimes screams echo. But abandoned hospitals,
abandoned psycheatric hospitals, old sanitariums, state run schools that weren't
schools at all. That's another level. Those weren't places of healing.

(04:43):
Those were warehouses for the unwanted, and there's an energy
to those places. There's something about seeing cobweb covered hospital
beds that's a bit unsettling, to say the least. There's
something about the equipment used for a lo bottomy, sitting
covered in dust that tells the most primal parts of

(05:04):
ourselves that we're still in danger of losing our frontal lobe.
When I was younger, like a full blown teenage girl
living in Florida, my friends and I would drive around
at night, breaking into abandoned asylums. We weren't just looking
for ghosts or history or evidence. We were looking for proof.

(05:26):
We were looking for something else, that there was something else,
anything else, that this silence of our youth had to
mean something. I've been to some of the places in
this story, including Willowbrook. I've been to some places that
I can't remember the names of, which now feels vulgar

(05:48):
and disrespectful to say now that the frontal lobe I
got to keep is fully formed.

Speaker 10 (05:54):
But these were.

Speaker 5 (05:55):
Adventures I went on before I personally do new death, murder, suicide.
This is when scaring myself still just seemed like an idea,
and I always wanted to go inside. I always wanted
evidence of something, of anything, But all we ever found

(06:16):
were other teenagers with flashlights. But I swear to you,
sometimes the silence did mean something. Let's talk about the
most famous ones in Kentucky. We have the Waverly Hills
Sanatorium built for tuberculosis patients. Over sixty th eight thousand

(06:38):
people are estimated to have died there. They used a
body shoe to quietly remove corpses so other patients wouldn't panic,
and ghost tours still operate there.

Speaker 10 (06:49):
Today. People report cold.

Speaker 5 (06:52):
Spots, unexplained shadows, and doors slamming on their own. The
audio quality on this next clip is crap, and that's
because it's from nineteen thirty one, kind of a promotional
video for Waverly Hills.

Speaker 10 (07:07):
I'm not sure who this was made for.

Speaker 12 (07:11):
Let's have a look at one of these salatoria, or
tuberculosis hospitals as they are called today, real hospitals for
the tuberculous and not merely resting places. Here we are
in a large Southern sanatorium. This one has beds for
five hundred patients altogether. There are now ninety thousand such

(07:32):
beds available. Rest and more rest, as Trudeau discovered when
he himself took the cure as a young doctor. Yes,
and good food Nowadays, doctors don't stuff patients with more
milk and eggs than they can adgest, just good, well
balanced meals enough to.

Speaker 5 (07:51):
Gain weight of.

Speaker 12 (07:53):
Smell those delicious loads. New ways of resting the lung
have been developed. This patient is getting numothorax treatment. Air
is led into the chest cavity and that rests.

Speaker 1 (08:07):
The luve so that it can leave.

Speaker 12 (08:09):
When the disease love is fully healed, it is allowed
to expand again. Life sable for many. Each patient has
helped provide his place in the workaday world when he
leaves the sanatorium. Here's a class in typewriting. In this sanatorium,
as in many others, children of tuberculous parents who cannot

(08:32):
be properly protected otherwise are cared for in a special
department of the sanatorium. All over this broad land of ours,
a bit of war is being fought against tuberculosis.

Speaker 7 (08:46):
Able warriors armed with modern.

Speaker 12 (08:48):
Weapons are on the firing k life.

Speaker 6 (08:50):
How goes the battle? Come with me on a journey
and let's see what is being done not.

Speaker 12 (08:56):
Only the specialist but the family doctor. Tool is I'm
simply on the alert, knowing that tuberculosis may disguise itself
as some other disease.

Speaker 5 (09:06):
This is from a documentary called Spooked The Ghosts of
Waverly Hills Sanitarium. Pretty much every ghost show has gone here.
Ghost Hunters unsolved. Right, they're taking pictures of shadows.

Speaker 2 (09:30):
Chasing goat chasing jumps.

Speaker 1 (09:33):
If you look over on the second floor you can
actually see shadow Stanner.

Speaker 6 (09:36):
It looks like keeping it does.

Speaker 13 (09:38):
But can't be in the building by myself, can't walk
around by myself.

Speaker 1 (09:41):
It's just you get that that sick feeling in your
body when you're by yourself, that it's something.

Speaker 11 (09:45):
You don't want to bear.

Speaker 1 (09:46):
The only people have ever got injured up here is
Keith and Jay through the Global Ghost Turners.

Speaker 7 (09:50):
They've had dry walks on that, they've had brickstone at all.

Speaker 12 (09:52):
Here.

Speaker 4 (09:52):
Thing's whizzing through the air, dug from several facts. Concrete
Waverley is made out of Concret's not past the walls.

Speaker 6 (09:58):
We're all made out of concrete.

Speaker 4 (10:00):
You have been on received the end of a few
times and it does not feel good.

Speaker 14 (10:03):
And as virtual world as Smark and knows and picks
up on it and while not tolerting kind of negatively.

Speaker 6 (10:08):
Cross on their paths.

Speaker 5 (10:11):
I mean I would be pissed too. You dive tuberculosis
and then this ghost Hunter show is going to come
film you. It's kind of rude Zach Beagins infuriates me
in this life, so I cannot I can only imagine
how I'd feel about him in the afterlife. Next, we
have Danvers State Hospital in Massachusetts, and this is like

(10:31):
near the location of where the Salem witch trials happened
in Salem Village. They were like, this is the ideal
place where we should build. Built in eighteen seventy four,
inspired Arkham Asylum and Baton Man also rumored to be
the birthplace of the prefrontal lobotomy, didn't close until nineteen

(10:53):
ninety two and now apparently is luxury apartments. This is
a snippet from a documentary called Committed Danver's State Hospital
on the YouTube channel The cess Pool.

Speaker 15 (11:06):
Now, Massachusetts already had several institutions, including Worcester, Tewksbury, Taunton,
and Northampton.

Speaker 2 (11:12):
However, these institutions were already crowded.

Speaker 15 (11:14):
With that mind, the five hundred acres of land on
and around Hawthorne Hill was purchased from an orchard farmer
named Francis Dodge, and the plants with the new facility
were drawn up by Ninthangel J.

Speaker 2 (11:22):
Bradley in eighteen seventy four.

Speaker 15 (11:24):
The hospital was going to be state of the art
at the time, following a plan of mental treatment known
as the Kirkbright Plan. Essentially, the doctor came up with
the plants Thomas story. Kirkbrider the Institute of Pennsylvania Hospital
believed in.

Speaker 2 (11:33):
What was known as moral treatment.

Speaker 15 (11:34):
If you put the patients in big, beautiful buildings with
lots of natural light and a sense of purpose, it would.

Speaker 6 (11:38):
Help them to be cured.

Speaker 2 (11:39):
This was a very innovative approach and it spread throughout
the country towards the latter half of the nineteenth century.

Speaker 15 (11:42):
The State Lutic Hospital at Danvers, better known later as
Danford State Hospital, was completed on May first, eighteen seventy eight.
It was a perfect example of kirkbrighte hospital. The administration
building would be front in sentiment, franching wings tiered back
like the wings of a bat. The most dangerous patients
would be at the far ends of the building, while
the most stable and closest to being released would be
the closest to the administration building patient's beautiful as emails
on the right. This was a standard throughout most Kirkbright hospitals.

(12:04):
The hospital, however, had much more than the kirkby building.
It had service buildings, a full power and water station,
and a working farm. Patients were intended to be independent
and growther around fresh food. The entire facility was essentially
a self sustaining city. When Danvers opened, it was immediately
met with pursis. The building was large and ornate, even
for a Kirkbright, leading to.

Speaker 2 (12:19):
The project going well over budget and understand. As the
turn of the century came and passed, Danvers moved along
with it.

Speaker 15 (12:25):
They built a number of additional utility buildings on the
property during this time, including the nurses' homes and the
TV wards, as well as additional farming facilities for the
hospital as they were trying to focus on more occupational treatments.
The farm was becoming so popular in fact, the hospital
purchased another one hundred acres of land for farm facilities.
This also included the additions the populent gardens tended to
buy the patients behind the Kirkbright building. The Kirkby building
itself was not immune to the changing times either, with

(12:45):
small additions to the awards and later on sun rooms
added to several awards to increase capacity during this time,
Straight jackets, hydrotherapy and drugs were being practiced at the
hospital to subdue the more excited patients as they were.
The first threat of closure for Danvers, as well as
few other similar institutes, came in nineteen ninety when the
Massachusetts Association of Mental Health began to consider them as
prime candidates for closure. When nineteen ninety one rolled around,

(13:07):
the Governor of Massachusetts, William Weld, put together in commission
to study the state hospitals.

Speaker 2 (13:11):
The study came back and.

Speaker 15 (13:12):
Determined that nine state hospitals, both psychiatric and general, needed
to be shut down. This was a political plan which
involved privatizing services that the state operated.

Speaker 2 (13:19):
At the time, Danvers was one of the facilities on
that list.

Speaker 15 (13:21):
But the next year, patients would slowly trickle out of
the Bonder building and were transferred to the nearby Tewksbury
State Hospital. The final patients were moved to Tewkesbury on
June twenty fourth, nineteen ninety two, which left it.

Speaker 5 (13:31):
So that's the thing with the closures, and they start
in eighties and go through the early nineties, But then
what happens to these people? A lot of them literally
ended up just on the streets.

Speaker 10 (13:44):
And so many of these.

Speaker 5 (13:45):
Places now are tourist attractions and have paranormal tours either
all year long in October. This is from the West
of Virginia Tourism website on the Transalgony Lunatic Asylum formerly
Weston State Hospital. The West Virginia Facility served as a
sanctuary for the mentally ill in the mid eighteen hundreds.

(14:06):
The history of the building holds fascinating stories of Civil
War raids, a gold robbery, the curative effects of architecture,
and the efforts of determined individuals to have better the
lives of the mentally ill. We offer daytime historic tours
including museum rooms, nighttime paranormal tours, overnight ghost hunts, photo tours,

(14:29):
festival flashlight tours, and a haunted House. Nearby attractions Jane
Lou Restaurants, Steer Steakhouse, Sunny Point Guesthouse, and the Quality Inn.
This is a place where people were held in horrible
conditions and where thousands and thousands of people died. And
there are several of these places in almost all of

(14:53):
the fifty States, maybe not Alaska and Hawaii. I don't
know if they, but in the con United States everyone
everyone had one or several, but none of them have
a history quite like Willowbrook, and here.

Speaker 10 (15:10):
Enters an urban legend.

Speaker 5 (15:13):
Before he had a face, before he had a name,
before anyone called him Cropsy, he was already there in
the shadows of sleep away camps, in the whispers at playgrounds,
in the dares made by middle.

Speaker 10 (15:26):
Schoolers with too much courage and too little understanding.

Speaker 5 (15:30):
Cropsy as a legend is like slender Man's older, grittier
Staten Island cousin. In stories told throughout New York, especially
on Staten Island, he was the escaped mental patient with
a hook for a hand, or the disfigured former caretaker
of an asylum, or hermit who lived in the tunnels
beneath the island and came out only at night to

(15:52):
snatch children. Sometimes he carried an axe, sometimes he had
a blade. He was always terrifying, and what made him
scarier the fact that every kid swore it really happened
to a cousin, a neighbor, a friend of a friend.
But when none of them realized was just how close
that playground myth came to the truth. The story of

(16:15):
Cropsy cannot be told without Willowbrook. Willowbrook State School was
a nightmare factory masquerading as a facility for children with
developmental disabilities. It opened to the nineteen forties and by
the nineteen sixties was housing over six thousand residents, many of.

Speaker 10 (16:33):
Them and a children.

Speaker 5 (16:34):
Many of the children in a building decide for four thousand.
Conditions were beyond in humane, overcrowding, filth, deligens, physical and
sexual abuse. Children were left naked, tied to furniture covered
in feces. Medical experiments were performed, and all of it,
every single room of rought, was allowed to fester. The silence,

(16:57):
that is until a young reporter named Toroaldo Rivera broke
in with a camera in nineteen seventy two and exposed
horrors to the world. His documentary Willowbrook, The Last Disgrace
shocked to the nation. For the first time Americans saw
what happened when you shoved your most vulnerable behind concrete walls.

Speaker 10 (17:17):
And threw away the key. This is some of that report,
and I do just.

Speaker 5 (17:21):
Want to do a content warning for language. They use
words that we do not and should not say anymore.

Speaker 2 (17:34):
I visited the state.

Speaker 11 (17:35):
Institutions for the mentally retarded Robert.

Speaker 2 (17:37):
I think particularly a blobrook that.

Speaker 11 (17:38):
We have a situation that borders on the a stake pit,
and that the children live in bil But many of
our fellow citizens are suffering tremendously because lack of attention,
lack of imagination, lack of adequate manpower, a very little
future for the children or for those who are.

Speaker 6 (17:54):
In these institutions.

Speaker 11 (17:56):
Both need a tremendous overhauling. I'm not saying that those
who are the attendant there are the ones that run
the institution, are at fall. I think all of us
are at fall, and I think kiss jail. It's long
overdo that something again about it.

Speaker 16 (18:08):
It's been more than six years since Robert Kennedy walked
out of one of the wards here at Willowbrook and
told newsmen of the horror he'd seen inside. He pleaded
then for an overhaul of a system that allowed retarded
children to live in a snake pit. But that was
way back in nineteen sixty five, and somehow we'd all forgotten.
I first heard of this big place with the pretty
sounding name because of a call I received from a
member of the willow Brooks staff, the doctor Michael Wilkins.

(18:29):
The doctor told me he'd just been fired because he'd
been urging parents with children in one of the buildings,
building number six, to organize so.

Speaker 6 (18:35):
They could more effectively demand improve conditions for their children.

Speaker 16 (18:39):
The doctor invited me to see the conditions he was
talking about, so unannounced and unexpected by the school administration,
we toured Building number six.

Speaker 6 (18:46):
The doctor had warned me that it would be bad.

Speaker 11 (18:48):
It was horrible.

Speaker 16 (18:49):
There was one attendant for perhaps fifty severely and profoundly
retarded children, and the children lying on the floor, naked
and smeared with their own feces. They were making a
pitiful sound, the kind of more full wey all that
it's impossible for me to forget.

Speaker 13 (19:02):
This is what it looked like.

Speaker 6 (19:04):
This is what it sounded like. But how can I
tell you about the way it's smelled.

Speaker 16 (19:07):
It smelled of filth, it smelled of disease, and it's
smelled of death. We've just seen something that's probably the
most horrible thing I've ever seen in my life.

Speaker 6 (19:15):
Is that typical of ward life?

Speaker 13 (19:18):
Yes, there are three hundred patients at Willibrook, which is
the largest institution for the mentally retarded in the world.

Speaker 6 (19:25):
The ones that we saw were the most.

Speaker 13 (19:26):
Severely and profoundly retarded. There are thousands there like that,
not going to school, sitting on the ward all day,
not being talked to by anyone, Only one or two
or three people to take care of. Seventy people on
the ward, sharing the same toilet, contracting the same diseases together.
One hundred percent of patients at Wilbrook contract hepatitis within
six months of being in the institution. Most patients at

(19:49):
some time in their life have parasized.

Speaker 6 (19:51):
The incidents of pneumonia's.

Speaker 13 (19:53):
And is greater than any other group of people that
I think exists in this country. Trauma is because these
patients are left together on award, seventy retarded people, basically unattended,
fighting for a small scrap of paper on the floor
to play with, fighting for the attention of the attendants
who are over worked trying to clean them, feed them,

(20:14):
clothe them, and if possible, pay little attention to them
and work with them and develop their intelligence.

Speaker 6 (20:19):
But what in fact happens is that they go downhill.

Speaker 16 (20:23):
Two days after our first unofficial visit, a camera crew
was given an authorized tour of the facility while un announced.
We'd found the children naked and basically unattended.

Speaker 6 (20:31):
They were shown kids who were fully clothed and generously attended.

Speaker 16 (20:34):
It was to ensure that this sudden improvement in the
quality of life was permanent, that we returned without the
knowledge of the school administration and through a back door.
It was the first day all over again.

Speaker 13 (20:43):
So these people life is just one hour after another
of looking at the floor, and.

Speaker 11 (20:47):
There's no training a on here.

Speaker 6 (20:49):
Can the children every training?

Speaker 11 (20:51):
Yes, every child can be trained.

Speaker 6 (20:53):
You know these kids, there's no effort. We don't know
what these kids are capable of doing.

Speaker 13 (20:57):
Some training programs go on at Willibrook, but the state
provides a bare minimum, just.

Speaker 11 (21:04):
Enough so that they can call this place at school
the state.

Speaker 6 (21:08):
You know, clearly these kids aren't getting any training. I mean,
I don't think I even have to say that.

Speaker 11 (21:11):
They're just sitting here on the ward, that these are
the hours during which they should.

Speaker 6 (21:14):
Be in school and they're not job war is this now?
This is a building twenty seven. These patients do have
clothes on today, but that as you can see.

Speaker 13 (21:23):
The one thing they can't be hidden is that there
are no training programs.

Speaker 6 (21:25):
That all these patients do is sit during the day.
They're not kept occupied. Their life is just hours and
hours of endless.

Speaker 13 (21:34):
Nothing to do and no one to talk to, no expectations,
just an endless life of misery has built. Well, you see,
it makes you think that it's hopeless that they can't
be trained.

Speaker 6 (21:46):
But you know they only look this way.

Speaker 13 (21:48):
Because they haven't ever had opportunity for training. They You know,
if you or I were left to sit on a
ward surrounded by other mentally retarded people, we would probably
begin looking like this.

Speaker 16 (21:59):
Dobrook State School is this country's largest home for the
mentally retarded.

Speaker 6 (22:02):
It's called a school, but that's more a statement of
aspiration than a fact.

Speaker 16 (22:06):
Fewer than twenty percent of the five two hundred and
thirty people who were kept here attend any.

Speaker 6 (22:11):
Kind of classes. When the State of New York.

Speaker 16 (22:13):
Entered a period of economic retrenchment two years ago, a
hiring freeze was clamped on this and other institutions in
the Department of Mental Hygiene. In the intervening months, Willibrook
lost six hundred.

Speaker 6 (22:22):
Employees through attrition.

Speaker 16 (22:24):
For the budget for fiscal seventy one seventy two, the
Governor recommended a hold the line appropriation of six hundred
and thirty million for the mental hygiene Department. The legislature,
seeking to trim the waste and fed from the budget,
cut it down to about six hundred million.

Speaker 6 (22:37):
Then the governor decided that even six hundred.

Speaker 16 (22:39):
Million was too much and cut it even further, all
the way down to five hundred and eighty million. Willobrook
lost another two hundred employees and a situation that two
years ago was.

Speaker 6 (22:47):
Bad became hopeless.

Speaker 16 (22:48):
The attendants tried to care for their wards but was
simply overwhelmed.

Speaker 6 (22:52):
The attendant to patient ratio, which should be.

Speaker 16 (22:54):
About forty one, dropped to thirty and forty to one,
and the average feeding time for patient, which should be
twenty or thirty minutes, when down to two and three minutes.
Many of the profoundly retarded chidren uncapable of feeding themselves
in my building, we had no staff to train them
in a systematic way to use utensils to feed themselves.
That can be done, but what's necessary.

Speaker 15 (23:13):
Is to feed them.

Speaker 13 (23:14):
You take a bowl of food that you've made into
a mush like substance with a big spoon, and you
ladle it out into their mouth. And the buildings where
the kids can't feed themselves. There are so few attendants
that there is only an average in time three minutes
per a child for feeding.

Speaker 16 (23:29):
How much time would be needed to do a job adequately.

Speaker 13 (23:31):
The same amount of time that your children and my
children would one to have tea breakfast.

Speaker 6 (23:36):
What's the consequence of three minutes per meal per child?

Speaker 13 (23:39):
The consequence is death from pneumonia.

Speaker 16 (23:41):
North of the city, on the way to Bear Mountain
is a lovely looking place called the Letchworth Village Rehabilitation Center,
set among the hills and woods of suburban Rockland County
of Passervoy.

Speaker 6 (23:50):
Could easily mistake the place.

Speaker 16 (23:51):
For a country club or a college campus, but the
early morning myst gave the place an eerie feeling like
I set from a horror movie, and once inside, that
feeling became suddenly appropriate. Congressman Mario Biaji had planned an
official tour of.

Speaker 6 (24:03):
The facility for ten o'clock in the morning, but by
this time, wary of what I.

Speaker 16 (24:06):
Felt were attempts on the part of the Department of
Mental Hygiene to make the situation look better than it
really was, my camera crew and I got there two
hours before that, as the hour of the official tour
approach bundles of clothing were brought in for the children,
and the process of cleaning up was begun. Even so,
none of these cosmetic changes could do much to improve
the place and Chad children.

Speaker 9 (24:26):
Missus Nixon, I'm kindress from Yaji.

Speaker 6 (24:31):
Tell yah one of these w are these infulations on
the troth.

Speaker 5 (24:36):
I will link to the full the full video. I'm
going to play a bit more of the audio. The
visuals make it a million times more upsetting. You can
see the true horror on the people seeing it for
the first time spaces. You can see the shame on
the nurses' faces, and you can see the absolute suffering

(24:57):
of these children.

Speaker 2 (24:59):
It is just, it is beyond. We don't have enough clothing.

Speaker 4 (25:04):
We don't have the proper health to keep clothing on them.

Speaker 6 (25:08):
We have a few notice that will not keep clothes down.

Speaker 7 (25:11):
They work for a month.

Speaker 11 (25:12):
But most of all, we don't have the help to
keep the kid's property chest. We're talking about the more
money for.

Speaker 13 (25:17):
Them for the institution, well that because it is because
then we will have more out.

Speaker 6 (25:23):
I'll understaff value.

Speaker 9 (25:24):
I understand there are days we have four or five
attendants to take care of a hundred and condition in a.

Speaker 6 (25:30):
Very beautiful ground, very well built buildings. Well inside, we
have housed the children of many of.

Speaker 9 (25:36):
Our citizens who are subjected to what appears to be
the worst possible conditions.

Speaker 5 (25:42):
I've never seen in my life.

Speaker 9 (25:43):
I've visited pen institutions all over the country.

Speaker 11 (25:45):
I visited hospitals all over the country.

Speaker 15 (25:47):
I visited the worst brigs in the military.

Speaker 6 (25:50):
Nothing's like I've never seen anything like it. About twenty
five percent of the funding.

Speaker 10 (25:55):
He has tears, tears in his eyes, as he should.

Speaker 5 (25:58):
I mean, there's children half naked, pulling at their own hair,
slamming themselves against the wall. It is just it is
unlike anything that could even be put in a horror movie,
because if it was, it would just seem too exaggerated
and extreme.

Speaker 16 (26:16):
Letchworth Village comes from the federal government, and one of
the requirements for continued eligibility is that there be eighty
square feet of space per patient. Here they get only
thirty five square feet.

Speaker 6 (26:24):
In the face of this terrible overcrowding.

Speaker 16 (26:26):
There was a war there that stood empty because they
hadn't the funds to hire the thirty eight people that
would take to staff them.

Speaker 11 (26:32):
How can ast say, I think we need thirty.

Speaker 9 (26:35):
Eight additional positions, and we would be able to staff
this area and reduce overcrowding.

Speaker 6 (26:41):
Overcrowded dents that's.

Speaker 16 (26:42):
A sin, like a sin it is on earth.

Speaker 6 (26:47):
Might be getting them, and then we'll be able to
reduce silver clouding. It said.

Speaker 11 (26:50):
There is.

Speaker 16 (27:04):
There's at least one more horrifying aspect of life at Letchworth,
more than three hundred able bodied patients, both physically and mentally,
able to work outside the institution and not being allowed to.
They're being used to fill the places of the too
few employees.

Speaker 6 (27:16):
They get paid two.

Speaker 16 (27:17):
Dollars a week for their efforts about what they'd make
each ower on the outside.

Speaker 6 (27:20):
And there was another development on the day we visited Letchworth.
It was eight days after our investigation had begun.

Speaker 16 (27:25):
Governor Rockefeller, amidst a growing public outcry over the conditions,
that Willowbrook made an announcement it.

Speaker 6 (27:31):
Was restoring the twenty million dollars he.

Speaker 16 (27:32):
Had stricken from the budget Department of Mental Hygiene. Willowbrook,
it was said, would be able to rehire three hundred
of the nine hundred employees it had lost since November
nineteen seventy.

Speaker 6 (27:41):
Letchworth build.

Speaker 10 (27:42):
I have to rewind that. Did you just see a Rockefeller.

Speaker 16 (27:45):
They're being used to fill the places of the too
few employees. They get paid two dollars a week for
their efforts about what they'd make each ower on the outside.
And there was another development on the day we visited Letchworth.
It was eight days after our investigation had begun. Governor
Rockefeller amidst a growing one is going to.

Speaker 6 (28:01):
All of these people.

Speaker 10 (28:02):
I hope they're in hell.

Speaker 16 (28:03):
It was restoring the twenty million dollars he had stricken
from the budget the Department of Mental Hygiene Willowbrookie.

Speaker 5 (28:09):
So they struck twenty million dollars from the budget. They
put this place in the condition, and there's public outcry
and they're like, okay, now that this is beyond fixing,
you can have the money back.

Speaker 16 (28:20):
Said would be able to rehire three hundred of the
nine hundred employees if it's lost since November nineteen seventy.
Letchworth Village would be able to hire about two hundred,
but the additional employees, while perhaps slowing the downward course
of these two institutions, would not be able to change
the basic nature.

Speaker 6 (28:35):
Of the two places. Mere depositories for the retarded. You
think what we.

Speaker 9 (28:41):
Shared on television in the past week is an accurate
reflection of the problem of the situation. I think it
focused and made given the problems at will of book
because it was an honest portrayal. I think it was
an honest portrayal of the problems that there wrest. It
may not tell the whole story of Willowbrook, certainly doesn't
tell the whole story of the retarded, but it does

(29:02):
describe unmistakably the kind of problems that we've seen, and now,
thanks to the coverage, many.

Speaker 6 (29:10):
People have seen.

Speaker 9 (29:11):
It's a public guy leaves Willowbrook and all of the
other places, and we once again find ourselves.

Speaker 11 (29:19):
We and direct the involved parents trying to go it alone.

Speaker 9 (29:23):
But I think we struggle to maintain our few games,
and we struggle slowly to get ahead. And perhaps if
you were to come back a year from now and
look again, you might see that we've made headway.

Speaker 6 (29:34):
I expect you would, but you won't see it all
solved in two weeks. I wish you would go back in.

Speaker 9 (29:38):
Two weeks, and in two weeks and in two weeks,
because I think they let the window on these conditions
and maybe even allowing to begin to see what not
only what is, but what it could be, and even
what it is already in some places. So to reinforce
the sense of hopefulness, and to re establish in people's
minds that we're talking about.

Speaker 6 (29:58):
Human beings but potential.

Speaker 9 (30:00):
I would hope that you would see continued change, and
if you didn't see it, you'd say so.

Speaker 16 (30:06):
Two weeks after that interview, I took doctor Miller up
on his invitation to revisit Willowbrook. I found no meaningful
change in the quality of life for the two hundred
and thirty people who live here. The attendants are trying
their best, but the staff is just too small to
do anything more than just try and keep the place clean.

Speaker 6 (30:21):
When there's only one person to.

Speaker 16 (30:22):
Take care of thirty or forty, nothing good can possibly happen.

Speaker 6 (30:25):
No rehabilitation, no training, nothing.

Speaker 16 (30:27):
The attendants are as much the victim of the conditions
here as the patients are. And this visit has heard
of prisons in the hospitals. The way we care for
I'm mentally retarded is the last great disgrace.

Speaker 5 (30:39):
Again, I will look link to the whole documentary, the
whole expose. If you'd like to watch it. This was
before Geraldo became evil. This deeply, deeply impacted him, and
it did have an influence. But this place does not
get shut down until nineteen eighty seven. This is nineteen

(31:00):
seventy two. Conditions never improve. This is from Disabilityjusice dot Org,
a watershed case in the evolution of the legal rights
of people with disabilities to live in dignity. Arose out
of public awareness of the horrific conditions under which children
and adults with disabilities were living at the Willowbrook State

(31:21):
to Developmental Center in New York. The case set important
presence for the humane and ethical treatment of people with
developmental disabilities living in institutions. This in turn served as
the impetus for accelerating the pace of community placements for
people with developmental disabilities, expanding community services, increasing the quality

(31:42):
and availability of day programs, and establishing the right of
children with disabilities to a public education. Willowbrook was a
complex of buildings on Staten Island housing children and adults
with developmental disabilities. At its highest population, sixty two hundred
residents were living in buildings meant to house four thousand.

(32:05):
Understaffed overcrowded and underfunded, Willowbrook was little bit more than
a human warehouse. According to William Bronston, a physician at Willowbrook,
the institution's overcrowding fostered abuse, dehumanization, and a public health crisis.
Hepatitis was so rampant that several researchers took advantage of

(32:25):
this situation to use residence as participants in a controversial
medical study in which residents were intentionally exposed to the
deadly virus without their consent in order to test the
effectiveness of various vaccines. In nineteen sixty five, Senator Robert
Kennedy paid an unannounced visit to Willowbrook So it closes

(32:48):
twenty two years after his visit, he found thousands of
residents living in filth and dirt, their clothing and rags
in rooms less comfortable and cheerful than the cages in
which we put animals in the zoo. Kennedy went on
to describe the institution as a snake pit. The visit
put conditions at Willowbrook into the national spotlight, and the

(33:09):
state of New York responded by developing a five year
improvement plan. However, after making minor adjustments. Conditions at the
institution quickly reverted to the inhumane conditions that had thrust
it into public consciousness. In nineteen seventy two, an ABC
News investigative reporter Heraldo Rivera again drew national attention to

(33:31):
Willowbrook with a television expos that was watched by millions.

Speaker 10 (33:36):
I can if I would have saw something like this
as a kid, it would have destroyed me.

Speaker 5 (33:41):
I just played for you maybe fourteen minutes of audio
from it, but the visuals from it are.

Speaker 10 (33:49):
Just it is beyond, It is beyond.

Speaker 8 (33:51):
And that was.

Speaker 10 (33:52):
Willowbrook, the last disgrace what we just listened to.

Speaker 5 (33:55):
It exposed the institution's serious overcrowding, dehumanie practices, dangerous conditions,
and regular abuse of residents. The public was again outraged. However,
this time the outrage served to spur parent advocacy groups
to take action in federal court the Willowbrook Lawsuit. Following

(34:16):
the Rivera expose, parents of Willow books Brook residents, I
cannot imagine being one of those parents where you're told
the best thing for your kid is to have them
taken away because they need full time care, and then
they end up in a place like that parents of
Willow Book residents filed a class action lawsuit in US
District Court for the Eastern District of New York on

(34:38):
March seventeenth, nineteen seventy two. The lawsuit alleged the conditions
at Willowbrook violated the constitutional rights of the residents. Parents
outlined multiple violations, including confiding residents for indefinite periods, failing
to release residents eligible for release, failing to conduct periodic
evaluations of residents to assess probus regress and refining goals

(35:01):
in programming, failing to provide a habilitation for residents, not
providing adequate educational programs or services such as speech, occupational
or physical therapy, overcrowning, lack of privacy, failure to bride
protection for theft of personal property, assault or injury, inadequate clothing,

(35:22):
meals and facilities, including toilet facilities, confining residents to beds
or chairs or to solitude, lack of compensation for work performs,
inadequate medical facilities, understaffing and incompetence and professional staff. The
lawsuits sought immediate injunctive relief to improve conditions at Willowbrook,

(35:42):
including hiring more staff, providing adequate medical care, prohibiting the
use of seclusion and improper physical and chemical restraints, and
providing adequate and appropriate clothing and physical conditions for residents.
The plaintiffs alleged that the existing conditions violated the residents
constitutional rights to treatment under the due process clause of
the Fourteenth Amendment, and their denial of a public education

(36:06):
violated the Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In
April nineteen seventy three, US District Court Judge or In
g jud rejected the plaintiff's argument that the due process
clause guaranteed a right to treatment and the denial of
public education violated the equal protection clause.

Speaker 10 (36:24):
However, he did find that.

Speaker 5 (36:25):
The conditions in Willowbrook violated the constitutional rights of person
living in state custodial institutions to be protected from harm.
According to Judge jud the plaintiff's constitutional right to protection
from harm in the state institution meant the residents of
Willowbrook were entitled to at least the same living condition

(36:46):
as prisoners. Real piece of shit you are, Judge jud.
Hope you're in hell now too. He's probably still fucking alive.
This right, he continued, May rest on the eight Amendment,
the due Process Claw of the Fourteenth Amendment, or the
equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, based on a
rational discrimination between prisoners and innocent. Mentally, they used the

(37:12):
hard ard word to people with developmental disabilities. Accordingly, Judge
jud granted much of the requested injunctive relief, including prohibiting
the use of seclusions and restraints, increasing medical, therapeutic and
recreational staffing, requiring maintenance, and requiring regular progress reports. With
the injunctive order in place, the case proceeded to trial

(37:35):
on October first, nineteen seventy four, with parties continuing negotiations
for months afterwards, the case was settled on April thirtieth,
nineteen seventy five, when Judge Judd signed the Willowbrook Consent Judgment.
The Willowbrook Consent Judgment was set forth guidelines and requirements
for operating the institution and established new standards of care

(37:56):
for all Willowbrook residents at the time of the settlement.
These standards of care were not optimal or ideal standards,
nor just custodial standards. They were based on the recognition
that people with developmental disabilities, regardless of the degree of handicapping,
conditions are capable of physical, intellectual, emotional, and social growth,

(38:17):
and upon the further recognition that a certain level of
affirmative intervention in programming is necessary if the capacity for
growth and development is to be preserved and regression prevented.
The consent Judgment outlines specific procedures and instructions for treatment
of residents, covering issues such as resident living, the environment,

(38:39):
programming and evaluation, hiring of personnel, education, recreation, food and nutrition,
dental and medical care, therapy services, use of restraints, conditions
for residents to provide labor to the facility, and conditions
for research and experimental treatment. Significantly, the consent Judgment also
declared as the primary goal of the Institution and New

(39:02):
York Department of Mental Hygiene to ready each resident for
life in the community at large, and called for the
placement of Willow Book residents in less restrictive settings. The
consent Judgment set a goal of reducing the number of
residents living at Willowbrook to no more than twoin fifty
by nineteen eighty one, although this did not prove feasible.

(39:24):
Although the parties ended up in court many more times
in disputes over the ongoing implementation of the consent decree.
It was, in a sense fully implemented in nineteen eighty
seven when the Willowbrook State School and Hospital officially closed.

Speaker 10 (39:39):
What happened next?

Speaker 5 (39:41):
The political reaction to this case led to the enactment
of legislations such as the Protection and Advocacy System in
the Developmental Disabilities Assistance Bill of Rights Act, the Education
for All Handicapped Children Act, the Civil Rights of Institutionalized
Person Act, the Developmental Assistance and Bill of Rights Act,

(40:04):
and KRIPPA were the first federal civil rights laws protecting
people with disabilities, leading to the enactment enactment of the
Americans with Disabilities Act. You can see how under the
midst of this, from nineteen sixty five to nineteen eighty seven,
how urban legends could be born, how the horrors of

(40:26):
this could turn into.

Speaker 10 (40:28):
A literal boogeyman. But what if the boogeyman was real?

Speaker 5 (40:34):
That is the story of Cropsy, And here we will
be focusing strongly on the two thousand and nine documentary Cropsy.
We're going to hear a little bit of that. All
of this is very, very disturbing because it's an urban
legend the kids hear from their parents. Everyone has kind

(40:56):
of a different version. It gets spread around in school.
I mean, when I was in middle school, our rumor
was that Marilyn Manson had his ribs removed so he
could suck his own dick. It wasn't that there was
a man living in tunnels underneath our city who was
abducting children with developmental disabilities and would kill you if

(41:19):
you went into the woods. But here's the thing. Kids
were going missing, kids with developmental disabilities, and someone was
living in the tunnels underneath the city.

Speaker 4 (41:32):
About Crops.

Speaker 2 (41:35):
Is that patch camporth book, Now that's j C. C.
Campfloriks had left, and right here this is CV at
the TV boards.

Speaker 1 (41:41):
Camp counselors would lead us down this path and they'd.

Speaker 4 (41:43):
Come out of the billings and scarce.

Speaker 2 (41:48):
You know, this is where we thought that Crops.

Speaker 1 (41:49):
He lived in the basement's down in here in these
other buildings, and you know, we used to walk through
here and you'd find beds and papers to people who
have died here, So you know, it kind of made
sense to us.

Speaker 8 (42:03):
Cropsy, for some reason, became the generic term for a
maniac in boy Scout camps.

Speaker 2 (42:09):
Up and down the the Hudson River.

Speaker 5 (42:12):
Regional doctor Bill ellis perfect.

Speaker 8 (42:15):
Sex for a story about a maniac who was hiding
out in the woods and who abducted and killed little children,
to be called Propsy.

Speaker 2 (42:22):
Of first learned about Cropsy in summer camp.

Speaker 4 (42:25):
He was he was a doctor. He wasn't a book
with a knife about this big.

Speaker 6 (42:28):
And he was an axe wielding mad man. The wife
was killed, he was being chased or taunted. You wanted kids,
and you would find him in he would pack you out.

Speaker 4 (42:39):
Chocolo. Don't go behind the sherwood punks. Cropsy's out there.

Speaker 6 (42:43):
Did sure you get off with the male. Don't continue
to go any further.

Speaker 2 (42:45):
Don't go down by the lake at night.

Speaker 6 (42:47):
Croxy's down there.

Speaker 2 (42:47):
No, don't go to Wilver pol Glover Park is dangerous.

Speaker 8 (42:50):
There are many communities that have a subterranean history. A
house where unspeakable things are said to have happened, an
institution where people were segregated from the rest of society.

Speaker 5 (43:05):
Did the place you grew up and have something like this,
something like a cropsy. I didn't go to summer camp,
but I did volunteer at a summer camp for kids
with developmental disabilities and terminal illnesses. When I was a
teenager and into my early twenties, Camp Boggie Creek. It

(43:26):
was one of Paul Newman's camps. It's still there, and
we had a story about a man up a lake
that we told these damn kids, which.

Speaker 10 (43:34):
Is insane, like some of these kids were literally dying.

Speaker 6 (43:39):
It was.

Speaker 5 (43:39):
It was a pretty it was a pretty soft story
you'd go on like a scavenger hunt and an adventure thing.
But it was one of these urban legend scary stories.

Speaker 17 (43:50):
Nonetheless, go choose Seve you is like all the long
or I view of the you know, the hospital this
included to Bucalo's asition included and also on this property
here we're a hospital for contagious diseases.

Speaker 3 (44:06):
And then they've got from more again the cemetery, well,
this was across the street in the long Colony, which
was like a different part of the hospital.

Speaker 2 (44:13):
They called it the poor Farm. Okay, yeah, we have
the Holland Hospital in Willowbrook.

Speaker 1 (44:18):
Bright was Howard and then it became the Willbrook State
School exactly.

Speaker 2 (44:21):
Wilbrook was strictly further mentally youth.

Speaker 1 (44:23):
Yes back in nineteen seventy two, the Willowbrook State School
was a subject of a famous expose by a young
reporter looking for his big break.

Speaker 16 (44:32):
I first heard of this big place with the pretty
sounding name because of a call I received from a
member of the Willowbrooks, doctor Michael Wilkins. The doctor invited
me to say the conditions he was talking about so
unannounced and unexpected, you know, unlisted.

Speaker 1 (44:43):
Anyways, Despite Herald's report, still took more than ten years
before authorities began shutting down Willowbrook. Many patients were transferred
to group homes, but others were left to fend for
themselves through those who believed that some patients, out of
confusion and habit, returned to the three hundred and sixty
five acres of Willibroom to roam the abandoned buildings and

(45:04):
leaving the tunnel system that lay underneath. Out of this,
our own version of the crops e legend was born.

Speaker 3 (45:11):
What point them in your life did you start to realize, Hey,
maybe crops he is real?

Speaker 2 (45:15):
When a kids started disappearing from sant him.

Speaker 11 (45:17):
You're watching tunnels seven. I witness you, hi, guys, and
we need all to hope we can to help wine.

Speaker 18 (45:23):
Jennifer The relentless search for a twelve year old girl
with Down syndrome continues.

Speaker 6 (45:27):
Today as it has for the last three weeks, with.

Speaker 18 (45:29):
The hope that this will be today they find Jennifer Schweiger.

Speaker 5 (45:36):
Jennifer Schweiger, doesn't hear July nineth Big nineteen eighty seven, very.

Speaker 6 (45:41):
Loving, Yeah, that's Down syndrome.

Speaker 4 (45:45):
Child's rangel.

Speaker 6 (45:46):
Instead of lying in the sun today, I figured it
come out and just help.

Speaker 2 (45:48):
Could be one of our own children. You know, it
was kidnapped her, you know, unlested.

Speaker 18 (45:53):
Anyways, maybe it's Jennifer's added vulnerability of having Down syndrome,
or possibly the closest feelings of Staten.

Speaker 2 (45:58):
Islanders and having one of the chill were missing.

Speaker 18 (46:00):
But every day more and more volunteers turn out, searching
through the woods and hitting the streets, hoping to put
an end to the Schweiger family ordeal.

Speaker 14 (46:07):
So many people turned out for this search. Everybody felt
that this was one of their own that had disappeared.

Speaker 6 (46:14):
They would show up at the.

Speaker 14 (46:15):
Firehouse with flashlights, ready to go into Willowbrook, willing to
go into the forest, into the tunnels underneath. There was
one family in particular, Bundy Contuna, and some of our
friends and neighbors who had stepped forward to organize searches.

Speaker 7 (46:28):
Today we're concentrating on Willowbrook Park. The police went in
there yesterday and we're just continuing with the police left Orf.
This is what Woolbrook looked like when we were in here. Well,
never forget the first time I went to one of
these buildings. It was really blood curdling because he was
the first time I was actually in these buildings that
he heard these horrible stories about. And as you walk
through completely empty, you still get you feel it. You
could almost feel the children's presence there, or the adult's

(46:51):
presence there, and.

Speaker 4 (46:54):
Something you never get used to.

Speaker 2 (46:56):
When you're looking.

Speaker 7 (46:56):
Make sure you look down on the ground, look up
in the tree.

Speaker 10 (46:59):
Anything can be Calling the police can get.

Speaker 6 (47:01):
A lot of information, you know, searching.

Speaker 7 (47:03):
What we found was a number of people that actually
lived here when Willobrook was up and running.

Speaker 2 (47:08):
And in full swing.

Speaker 6 (47:09):
Come back here.

Speaker 2 (47:10):
So there was a whole underground of people.

Speaker 7 (47:12):
That still lived to you, even though all the buildings
were closed, and Andrei Ran was definitely one of them.

Speaker 3 (47:17):
Andre Rand worked as an orderly at the Willowbrook State
School from nineteen sixty six to nineteen sixty eight. For years,
he lived in numerous makeshift campsites in the woods surrounding Willowbrook.
He was also the lead suspect in the Jennifer Schweiger case.

Speaker 19 (47:28):
There was two witnesses that stated that they saw her
walk hand along the street with a middle aged gentleman
and he had a female green bike with a baske
gron on from the week before. I was in shop
right and I saw a Rant.

Speaker 6 (47:41):
I recognized him from a prior cage.

Speaker 19 (47:43):
He purchased maybe for me, and he got on a
green female bike with a baskeground front. At that point,
Dan Ressi's Andre's home.

Speaker 3 (47:51):
Last week, Rand was immediately brought in and questioned in
the girl's disappearance, but released for lack of evidence. After
four weeks of surveillance in hopes of finding Jennifer a lot,
he was arrested. Rant had been familiar to police after
pleading guilty to sexual misconduct with a nine year old
girl back in nineteen sixty nine, a crime which he
denied good after that.

Speaker 13 (48:10):
Here's what's happening almost May at a forty three year
old Andre Rand is under arrested.

Speaker 11 (48:13):
He is charged with a kidnapping a twelve year old
Jennifer Schwiger.

Speaker 18 (48:16):
So something was picked up last night here at the
Church of the God Within.

Speaker 3 (48:19):
He has a question as early as the.

Speaker 6 (48:20):
Second day into an investigation.

Speaker 16 (48:22):
And after four weeks of making a chiuse against the man,
they finally decided they had enough to get a conviction.

Speaker 6 (48:26):
I've never seen a purple walk like that.

Speaker 14 (48:28):
Watching him coming out looking like lost his mind further
angered people in the community. That image forced a lot
of people to say, that is the killer. Batman is
not right? Look at him there, drooling, And it certainly
caused me to ask a lot of questions, who is
Andre Rand? Did they get a crazy man and just
say he's the guy, or did they really have good

(48:49):
evidence against.

Speaker 6 (48:50):
Him and that would stick in the court.

Speaker 7 (48:51):
I used to teach the the Andre Rand story in
my journalism quest coming down the steps of the courthouse
with a headline drifter arrested.

Speaker 6 (48:58):
But what does that mean, right, whether he is or not?

Speaker 1 (49:01):
I don't even you know, I don't know the whole
story either, But it's a lot easier.

Speaker 2 (49:04):
To do it that way then to say, you know what,
it might be somebody on good block. It might be
somebody you work with. Did you ever think that anybody
else was involved?

Speaker 14 (49:11):
Well, we always had to think there was somebody else
until we could just rule it out, you know, you always.

Speaker 4 (49:14):
Have to keep that in the back of your mind.

Speaker 6 (49:16):
And plus by looking going by all witnesses, if you
consider our witnesses.

Speaker 2 (49:19):
Credible, it was only Andre and Jennifer.

Speaker 6 (49:22):
There was no other person.

Speaker 4 (49:23):
Of course when we had him for the twenty six hours.
Where should did you leave her with somebody else?

Speaker 3 (49:27):
With Rand's arrest, to search for Jennifer turned desperate. Rumors
were spreading that someone, maybe even one of Rand's friends,
was hiding Jennifer and moving her late at night through
the tunnels underneath Willowbrook.

Speaker 7 (49:36):
I don't remember what I want demand to talk if
I want him to control.

Speaker 3 (49:42):
Despite constant threats by state officials to stay away from Willowbrook,
Donna and the friends of Jennifer kept going back.

Speaker 7 (49:47):
This area had been covered two thousands of times by
volunteers like pods by bogs, but in that time, one
gentleman him across in the area that he noticed had
playboles up on top like someone pat it down.

Speaker 2 (49:58):
And then this was old, you know, pushed back over
with the trees.

Speaker 7 (50:02):
It was just a little spot that he noticed the
claybels and that's what made us go back, or made
him go insist that we go back, and George showed
us the locations.

Speaker 16 (50:09):
If you thought you needed to be looked at, smell
start digging so totally and everybody stop.

Speaker 5 (50:17):
Find Jennifer's body and it is a few feet away
from the camp of the man who will be known
as Cropsy. But she's not the only child that goes missing.

Speaker 1 (50:29):
Bilding is where Holly and Hughes used to live, Andrey
RAN's and used to live on the second floor of
that building as well. Holly was outside playing one evening
and Andre Wren was here to visit, and then got
into his folkswagon.

Speaker 3 (50:41):
Apparently then Holly walked down this street to at Delhi.

Speaker 2 (50:45):
Right down there.

Speaker 6 (50:46):
Holly was lasting at this Delhi, just down the street
from her home.

Speaker 2 (50:48):
A clerk says she came in at nine thirty Wednesday
night with twenty seven cents and bought a bar soap.

Speaker 19 (50:53):
She's quiet, you know, she didn't say not to nobody,
as she sky think a lot.

Speaker 4 (50:56):
I really don't know what happened after that. I waked
in the deli.

Speaker 2 (50:58):
The girl comes in to Holly and Hall.

Speaker 1 (51:00):
Yeah, yeah, she came in one with this pactice was
in nineteen eighty one, eighteen eighty one.

Speaker 4 (51:03):
Shouldn't body bought a soap? And I bought as it
was thirty one? Since why do I remember?

Speaker 17 (51:07):
Because she was short for what says that the old
man worked with behind cat and let we'll give him thought.

Speaker 2 (51:11):
That's why I remember. When I seen his picture, I said, yeah,
I've seen that guy before. I was just like, God,
why guy too soft?

Speaker 5 (51:17):
You don't look right.

Speaker 2 (51:18):
Yeah, I think he told your speech at better, but
I'm not sure. And did anybody else every.

Speaker 4 (51:21):
Disappear from that neighborhood?

Speaker 1 (51:22):
Yeah, I had Kafourio looked just like Mick Jagger disappeared
that neighborhood how long afterward?

Speaker 9 (51:27):
At the same time, it was a little slow hang
because his brother swears that Audrey Man killed off.

Speaker 1 (51:36):
They came to me all those years ago, but that
was eighteen years ago, and they said, you need some He.

Speaker 7 (51:40):
Was supposedly at the diner like three four o'clock in
the morning with rand a handful of pain fold a
handful handful, and again he was older and.

Speaker 6 (51:48):
The whole lot to do with it. He was twenty one.

Speaker 1 (51:51):
We were watching this reporter standing in front of Holly
and Hughes's house and right up her shoulders had Kafoorio.

Speaker 4 (51:57):
It's funny it seeing too many coincidences, you know.

Speaker 19 (52:18):
And like I said before I die, I would let
this guy who's talk to me because once and all
he's going to do is just give somebody a note
and say, this is where the.

Speaker 20 (52:26):
British he sent us. I think I guess the view
from his window. This is the decision in order from
the judge and the.

Speaker 2 (52:37):
Case of Jonathan Twin.

Speaker 4 (52:38):
No, no, no, this isn't the case of Holleyenn.

Speaker 3 (52:40):
So he's basically responding to each of the witnesses.

Speaker 2 (52:43):
In the last free trial hearings, it.

Speaker 1 (52:46):
Says detective Latito asked the defendant if you noticed anything
unusual about Holly and Who's at the time.

Speaker 2 (52:51):
The defendant said she was very, very dirty. Her legs
were dirty, her hands were dirty. He gave her money
and sent her to the grocery store to buy a
bar of soap.

Speaker 1 (52:59):
The courtiers get to amouly quoting the detective's own invented statements.
The defendant never met or saw Hughes at any time,
nor did the defendant admit these things.

Speaker 5 (53:08):
Center of all of these disappearances we have Andre Rand
born Frank rush On. Rand was a former willow Brook
employee and local drifter who lived in the abandoned tunnels
beneath the facility after it closed. He was a convicted
sex offender in prime suspect and the disappearance of multiple

(53:30):
children in the area from the nineteen seventies through the
nineteen eighties.

Speaker 10 (53:35):
As you just heard, in nineteen.

Speaker 5 (53:37):
Eighty seven, the body of twelve year old Jennifer Schweiger,
who had Down syndrome, was found buried in a shallow
grave near Willowbrook. Rand was convicted in connection with her abduction,
and later in two thousand and four, convicted again for
the nineteen eighty one disappearance of Holly Ann Hughes. To
this day, several other children remains, no bodies, no answers,

(54:03):
just speculation, gossip, and a lot of fear. We heard
a bit from the two thousand and nine documentary Cropsy,
which was directed by Joshua Zeemon and Barbara Broncaccio, and
they dive headfirst into this story, blending true crime and
a horror that makes it hard to separate the monster

(54:24):
from the man. Rand is now serving two consecutive twenty
five to life sentences, But the real story isn't just him.
It's the legend that the institution created, the rot that
became the myth, the horror we tried to bury that
still whispers through broken windows and rotting floorboards. Then there's

(54:46):
the psychological aftershock. There's something uniquely haunting about abandoned as silence.
We break into them, take selfies, whisper to each other
about ghosts. But what we're really haunted by is the
knowledge that people suffered there, every spray painted wall and
willow broke as a tombstone and cropsy. He's the story

(55:08):
we tell ourselves because we're too ashamed to say what
really happened, because we don't want to believe that society,
that we in society let children rotten filth, that a
man like Andre Rand could exist for as long as
he did. That we built our urban legends out of
very real, very preventable tragedies. We like our horror fictional

(55:32):
tidy safe. The monster under the bed, not in the
tunnels beneath your childhood hospital, not in the name you
pass every day on a road sign. But Cropsy reminds
us that monsters are often man made and abandoned hospitals.
They're not haunted just by spirits. They're haunted by the truth.

(55:53):
What's scarier a made up monster who snatches kids from
the woods or a real man who did exactly that
and lived in the ruins of a place built to
protect them. We tell urban legends to explain away that darkness,
to keep it out there in the forest, in the tunnels,
not here, not in the mirror. But Cropsey wasn't fiction.

(56:16):
He was a man, and the institution that failed those
kids still exist, just under different names, under different laws.
So if you ever find yourself walking near the ruins
of an old hospital, if you feel a cold breath
on your neck, if you think you hear a voice
calling your name from this starewell, don't worry.

Speaker 10 (56:38):
It's probably not a ghost.

Speaker 5 (56:40):
It's probably just the building trying to tell you its story.
Next time you hear a creek in the woods or
an old story about a guy with a hook, ask
yourself what real life horror might that story be trying
to mask? And what do we lose when we bury
those truths under the floorboards.

Speaker 10 (57:01):
Thank you for.

Speaker 5 (57:02):
Walking with me into this darkness tonight. Don't forget to
close your eyes tight and your door's tighter. We'll be
back tomorrow with more cursed films, ghost stories, and true
crime nightmares. Because October doesn't sleep, and after this episode neither.
Thank you so much for listening to another episode of

(57:25):
Abroad's Next Door. I hope I did an okay job
with this one. Again, it was kind of like a
heavier subject. I've been obsessed with the Cropsy story since
I saw the documentary in two thousand and nine. I
went to Willowbrook even before that, when I first moved
to New York, when I was still very much in

(57:45):
my abandoned Places thing. I think I went in two
thousand six or two thousand and seven. I was twenty
one or twenty two, so just crazy to learn that
there was more to the place than I ever new.
A lot of this is deeply sad. I will link
to my resources in the show notes. If you enjoyed

(58:08):
this episode, or any of my episodes, please rate, review, subscribe,
Send this episode to a friend still pushing through one
trying to do my thirty one episodes for October so
I can get that week off in November.

Speaker 10 (58:24):
And I am a one woman team over here.

Speaker 5 (58:26):
So this is all written, research to edited, recorded by me.
Still struggling on the video. Nothing new there and video
would have been good for this one. I don't know
if it would have been allowed because the footage was
just so disturbing, but I will link to that Willowbrook
x pose in the show notes just content warning if

(58:50):
you want to watch it, it's so much brutal, more
brutal than just listening to it. Tomorrow we have a
found footage or episode be talking about the Blair Witch,
paranormal activity, some of my favorite found footage films, how
the genre kind of exploded and what it's transformed into.

(59:13):
Have lots of stuff lined up, and I would love
to hear your scary stories, whether they were urban legends,
you grew up with something spooky that happened to you,
serial killer story, survival stories, anything you've got to wrap
for a listener episode at the end of the month.
You can reach me online at social media at Danielle

(59:36):
Screama or Broad's next Door on all of the things.
You can email me at Danielliscreama, at gmail dot com,
Broad's next Door at gmail dot com or broadsnextdoor dot com.
I love getting your messages. I love reading your gms
and getting your feedback.

Speaker 10 (59:56):
Did you have an.

Speaker 5 (59:57):
Abandoned mental institution hospital state school where you grew up?
Did you have any kind of cropsy legend? Did you
ever break into abandon mental institutions too, or do you
watch television programs where they do or is this just
not you're scene at all? Let me know.

Speaker 10 (01:00:20):
Thank you again for listening. I love you very much.

Speaker 5 (01:00:24):
I'll see you tomorrow. Bye.

Speaker 10 (01:00:47):
I think that's going to come out. I think that's
going to come out.