Willowbrook State School remains one of the darkest chapters in New York institutional history. Located on Staten Island, the former state facility became infamous for overcrowding, neglect, abuse, and the horrifying conditions exposed to the public in the 1970s. Its history later became intertwined with the urban legend of Cropsey, a story that blurred the line between childhood fear, local folklore, and real-life tragedy.
Photo: New York Public Library Digital Collection. See the article below for the full citation.
Before the advent of Creepypastas, the online horror stories whose name came from the phrase copy and paste, urban legends were passed along the old-fashioned way. They were told around campfires, whispered in schoolyards, and repeated by kids trying to scare one another. City dwellers who went off to camp or moved to the suburbs no doubt heard some version of the story about the man with the hook. He lived in the woods. An escape had happened from somewhere. He was out there waiting.
The story usually began with some improvised setup about a man who committed terrible crimes and was locked away. Then one night, he escaped. As many facilities that housed people with mental illness and developmental disabilities were built on remote rural acres, it was easy for children and teenagers to attach the legend to whatever institution stood nearby. The man with the hook, the ax, the knife, or whatever terrifying object the storyteller chose, had no proper name in my area.
When my family moved from the Bronx up to the country, we lived near Harlem Valley State Hospital. For us, the escaped figures of our nightmares came from there. Driving down Route 22 through Wingdale at night, you could imagine checking the rearview mirror and seeing someone hiding in your back seat. The story seemed to gain traction as more city kids were transplanted into suburban and rural areas, where instead of museums and streetlights, they had old institutions looming across the green landscape.
Staten Island, Willowbrook, and the Legend of Cropsey
Despite being New York’s smallest borough, Staten Island had more than its share of institutions. The New York Farm Colony, once a home where the indigent could earn their keep, and Sea View Hospital, a facility for tuberculosis patients, stood near Willowbrook. Acres of aging and abandoned buildings carried long histories. Once some of those buildings were deserted, kids, ghost hunters, and thrill seekers made their way onto the grounds.
The 1980s were also marked by the Satanic Panic, and abandoned sites such as Willowbrook became magnets for rumors. Stories circulated about devil worshipers, hidden rituals, and secret gatherings among the ruins. Staten Island, however, had a more personal and terrifying version of the old legend. Their local maniac had a name. He was called Cropsey.
The children of Staten Island also lived with the depressing legacy of Willowbrook State School in their own borough. During the 1970s and 1980s, the area was shaken by a series of mysterious child disappearances and murders. Staten Island had the eerie combination of abandoned institutions, local folklore, and real-life crimes that allowed a legend to take on an even more frightening shape.
How Cropsey Became Part of New York Folklore
How Staten Island came to attach the name Cropsey to its local legend is not entirely clear. The 1981 film The Burning helped bring the name to a wider audience through a slasher story about a disfigured camp counselor seeking revenge. New York filmmaker Harvey Weinstein was one of the original story writers, likely drawing inspiration from campfire tales he heard as a child. There were many versions of the story, but Cropsey seemed to belong especially to New York.
The name later became even more closely associated with Staten Island through the documentary Cropsey, made by two Staten Island filmmakers who grew up hearing the legend. The film explored the story of Cropsey in connection with convicted kidnapper Andre Rand, who had worked as an orderly at Willowbrook from 1965 to 1966.
The History of Willowbrook State School
Willowbrook State School opened in 1938 and was originally intended to serve children with developmental disabilities. During World War II, the facility was used as an army hospital. After the war, it reopened as Willowbrook State School, and the population of residents grew far beyond what the institution could properly handle.
Although it was called a school, Willowbrook became known as something far more troubling. It was widely criticized as a warehouse for people with developmental disabilities. In 1965, Robert F. Kennedy described Willowbrook as a snake pit, yet the institution remained open for many more years. It was renamed the Staten Island Developmental Center in 1974, and it took another decade before all of the residents were discharged.
In 1972, a doctor who worked at Willowbrook and was deeply disturbed by the treatment of residents gave reporter Geraldo Rivera access to the facility. Rivera entered the institution, filmed what he saw, and broadcast the conditions to the public. Viewers saw residents, many of them children, living in filth, neglect, and overcrowded conditions. The images shocked the nation and became an important moment in the fight for the rights of people with developmental disabilities.
There were also claims that hepatitis experiments had been conducted at Willowbrook, including studies that involved children in the institution. These allegations became part of the larger horror surrounding Willowbrook’s reputation and deepened public outrage over what had happened there.
Andre Rand and the Real-Life Horror Behind the Legend
Where the legend of Cropsey and real life diverge is in the details. Andre Rand was not a patient at Willowbrook. He was a former employee. In earlier decades, municipal employers did not always conduct the kinds of background checks and screenings that are standard today. Due to budget cuts, difficult working conditions, and institutional neglect, many facilities struggled to maintain proper staffing.
Rand’s first conviction for sexually molesting a nine-year-old girl came after he left employment at Willowbrook. Later, his name became linked to a series of Staten Island disappearances that terrified the community.
Rand’s mother had struggled with mental illness and had lived at Pilgrim State Hospital, which adds another complicated layer to his history. Rand had no formal training on record, and despite claims that he was a physical therapist, he worked as an orderly. After leaving Willowbrook in 1966, he reportedly remained around the grounds. Many others, including some former patients and people experiencing homelessness, also lived in or around the abandoned buildings and underground tunnels connected to Willowbrook, Sea View Hospital, and the New York Farm Colony.
Some of the land was later sold to developers, and since 1993, the College of Staten Island has occupied more than 300 acres. Still, some abandoned buildings remained as grim reminders of the site’s past. Many people continued to believe that the grounds held more secrets than had ever been uncovered.
The Victims and the Community’s Pain
What all of the Staten Island victims had in common was their innocence. The only body found in a shallow grave on the Willowbrook grounds was that of 12-year-old Jennifer Schweiger, a child with Down syndrome whose remains were discovered after an exhausting 35-day search following her disappearance in 1987. Andre Rand was convicted of kidnapping Jennifer, though he was not convicted of her murder.
Rand was later tied to other disappearances, including 5-year-old Alice Pereira in 1972, 7-year-old Holly Ann Hughes in 1981, 11-year-old Tiahease Jackson, and 21-year-old Hank Gafforio, a well-known and friendly neighborhood man with developmental challenges. Rand was later convicted in connection with the kidnapping of Holly Ann Hughes, but not her murder. Several of the bodies were never found.
The victims also differed from the Cropsey legend. They were not patients, and they were not scouts on a camping trip. They were children and young people taken from neighborhoods where families and loved ones desperately searched for them. Staten Island pulled together as a community, and many people have continued to search for answers and for the remains of those who were never found.
As for Rand, he has not provided the answers families have long sought. He has engaged in strange correspondence with filmmakers, law enforcement, and newspapers, while refusing to clarify what happened. Some believe he acted alone. Others have raised theories involving other suspects, former patients, people living in the tunnels, or unnamed cult members. The stories became wilder as more people weighed in, but the pain suffered by the families remained painfully real.
Cropsey, Slenderman, and the Evolution of Urban Legends
The whispered stories of Cropsey and the documentary of the same name raise as many questions as they answer. How many people lived in the tunnels and on the surrounding grounds? Were any still hiding in the ruins long after the institutions closed? How long did Andre Rand remain near Willowbrook? Why did he change his name from Frank Rushan? Did he act alone? Will the missing ever be found?
Some have claimed that Rand’s experience working at Willowbrook launched him into a twisted belief that he was ending the suffering of children, particularly those with disabilities. If true, that possibility is among the most disturbing pieces of the story. A man once employed to help vulnerable children became linked to crimes that devastated families and scarred Staten Island.
The mystery surrounding the missing residents of Staten Island did not invent the story of Cropsey. It added fuel to an already terrifying legend. In later years, online horror culture produced new figures such as Slenderman, a mysterious child-killing monster spread through Creepypasta stories across the web. Slenderman was updated for the digital age, while the older escaped maniac story lost some of its power.
Cropsey may not have been real in the way children imagined him around campfires, but the legacy of Willowbrook, institutional abuse, and the Staten Island disappearances was all too real. That is what makes the story so disturbing. The legend was fiction. The suffering was not.
More New York Psychiatric Center History
Willowbrook State School was one of several major institutions that shaped New York’s complicated history of mental health care, developmental disability treatment, and institutional life. Readers interested in this history may also want to explore our articles on Pilgrim Psychiatric Center, Rockland State Psychiatric Center, and what it was like performing at Kings Park Psychiatric Center.
We also look at another haunting chapter in New York institutional history in our article on Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center, a former state hospital in Wingdale that operated for 70 years before closing in 1994.
Article updated June 24, 2026.
Photo: Irma and Paul Milstein Division of United States History, Local History and Genealogy, The New York Public Library. “Willowbrook State School” New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed March 24, 2017. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47d9-ca69-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99
