Cropsey audio 100623

Megan: Hello and welcome. This is the I'm triggered podcast. 

I am Megan.

Jess: I'm Jess.

Megan: Thank you for listening today. We are just getting started with all of this and learning as we go.

Jess: Yes. But thank you for listening. We're trying and it'll get better. So that's the good part. 

Megan: Yes. It's a process of building mastery, right? 

Jess: We love the DBT. 

(laughter)

Megan: How are things in Austin these days? 

Jess: It is thankfully, like blessedly, a little cooler. I don't know. I'm just rolling with it.

It was a little unexpected, but it's like only in the 80s today, which I recognize is like very high for most people in other areas of the U. S., but in Texas, it has been, it was like 105 plus from June. Until quite literally like the middle of September and it only just recently started going down.

Megan: It'll hopefully keep getting cooler. I'm so sorry, though, that's... Way too hot. When it hits about 80 degrees, that's when I'm out. It’s too hot for me. I don't like it unless I'm swimming or something. Not a fan. 

Jess: You know, I've lived here for seven years, maybe, and you don't get used to it, but I am feeling hopeful, I'm feeling hopeful about it being fall, maybe in the next month.

I'm gonna feel, I'm gonna manifest that. Okay. I would imagine it's cooler, much cooler where you are. Thankfully. 

Megan: Yes. We had a very gloomy, rainy week last week, which was delightful. And then now it's a very nice fall Washington state weather time where it's sunny and the leaves are changing, but it's chilly.

It's probably like in the sixties. It's quite lovely. 

Jess: That sounds so nice.

Megan: So my dog got, neutered this week, that's my news I know. 

Jess: Sweet Bodhi! 

Megan: So I'm running a doggy recovery center. I've never done this.
All the cats and dogs I've had, have all been rescue animals. And so they're fixed when you get them. The breeder recommended we wait until he's two to get fixed because There's been some research done about how that can help prevent cancer, because older tubers are really prone to getting different kinds of cancers, 

So we waited, and they told me at the vet that he needs to really not move a whole lot for two weeks. So his stitches can heal. 

Jess: Good luck. 

Megan: And he is, yeah, he is a hyper dude. So I was like, alright can I get some sedatives or something?

Jess: Oh, he's sweet baby. 

Megan: I know he is taking the medicine, which he loves 'cause I put it in peanut butter and sleeping a lot and I can't wait until the two weeks are up and he can just be back to normal. It's sad. 

Jess: I think it is super sad when pets are like, they don't know why they're in pain, or they don't know what's going on, and they're just unhappy.

And it's for this once, could you learn English, or , could we just communicate, and I could tell you that it's gonna be alright? You're just going to get some more peanut butter, but we haven't learned, we haven't learned yet how to communicate. 

Megan: I just felt really bad for him. Yeah, that's the drama over here. 

Jess:  It's a pretty major drama.

That takes up a lot of your space and time. It's, yeah, poor guy. I hope he feels better very quickly. 

Megan: Thank you. Thank you. We're giving him lots of snuggles and everything. Speaking of drama, should we get into movie? 

Jess:  Yes. I have lots to say. Yes, it is dramatic. The movie we watched this go around was Cropsey, which is a 2009 documentary by Joshua Zeman.

I don't know if I'm saying that correctly and he had a co documentarian, but. Other future documentaries he did not include this person, but her name is Barbara. I'm going to butcher this, Brancacchio. I'm sure that is the wrong way to say that. And I'm Italian, so it's embarrassing,  

Megan: Brancaccio?

Jess:  Yeah, probably that.

 It was filmed entirely in Staten Island, which is where I hail from, so this is a particular interest to me. And I watched this initially several years ago and I can remember when I first watched it, I was like, I have no idea what these people are talking about because I'd never heard of.

This alleged Cropsey person. Staten Island doesn't have a whole lot of like really big crimes attached to it, which I think is interesting and probably a lie. But this was a pretty major, huge case for Staten Island and especially that it was related to Willowbrook made it even bigger.

So I knew about the names and the places, but I didn't know that there was like this urban legend, allegedly, which is Cropsey. So the reason that it's called Cropsey is there's like this urban legend of a human that comes and steals your children and it, I think there is some version of this, , maybe not that name, some version of this, throughout most places, I think most people can remember as kids, being afraid of something, I know in Staten Island, too, there was a period of time where there were killer clowns, around the island, but definitely, I know.

Yeah, this was I think I was in college at the time and I was like, absolutely not. I will just stay in my dorm room. But yeah, there was a pack of killer clowns. That was what was happening 

Megan: If they make a documentary about that. I don't want to watch it for our podcast. 

Jess: No, we do not have to do that.

But yeah, so the urban legend basically is There is this man with a hook and he's gonna come get your children. And I think in part it was created to keep people away from the, Willowbrook buildings. It was like, oh, there's some guy that haunts the Willowbrook area and, he will kill you.

I think that was like what the documentarians wanted to research was where did this like really strange urban legend come from? And as it turns out, it comes from a real person. Yeah, definitely a really intense Documentary.

And so many trigger warnings. 

Megan: Yeah let’s talk about the trigger warnings. Because what possible potential trigger warning isn't in this movie? Clowns. No clowns. 

Jess: Yeah, no clowns. There's no substance use. That's, they don't name any trigger warnings or anything.

And this was in, this was made in 2009. It's a pretty fast, turnaround from, hey, we're talking about this, urban legend to, Child killings. So definitely like big trigger warning for that, like violence against children, sexual violence, also just like talking about, like abuse of those with disabilities. So really like lots of checkboxes there. So if you are sensitive to quite literally anything, you might. Want to avoid this, or 

Megan: Just pass on it. 

Jess: Yeah, or just watch with a ton of caution, it's also not particularly well made.

So maybe better to just read about it even than watching it. Which Hey, I've never made a documentary. No shade. But it's definitely like I was watching it and I noted like this was definitely made in 2009. I have that just, underlined in my notes. 

Megan: Yeah, absolutely. I looked at IMDB about , what it says about the rating.

And so it says sex and nudity, profanity, alcohol, drugs, and smoking, which didn't come up too much, but they did talk about how, like anywhere where there's abandoned buildings, teenagers will go there and get up to their mischief, frightening and intense scenes, murder, child abuse. And I would also add on, I felt a lot of Gen X era trauma trigger type stuff of satanic panic warnings about kidnappings.

 How much that was in the news and how terrifying groupthink can be. And also Donna, I think is probably the biggest trigger for me. And I'm going to need to process this as we talk about Cropsey is, Donna and just what that is bringing up for me. 

Jess: Now, Donna is . It could too, could. No, I cannot say her name either.

I don't know what it is. I'm very Italian. 

Jess: Also, maybe that's a trigger warning in and of itself. The accents are atrocious and I feel like I can say that because I used to have a Staten Island accent that was, abhorrent.

It was so bad. And I'm very grateful I don't really have that happening anymore. But it was like making me twitch while I was watching it because I was like, this is just how everyone there talks. And I, it's so difficult to even explain it, but it's basically like people have marbles in their mouth and they like leave off letters and you can't really understand people. Sometimes that's kind of the, the extent of it. And I don't always clock it. If I'm listening to, if my dad calls and he leaves me a voicemail, my, partner will hear the voicemail and be like, Oh my God. And I'll be like, what are you talking about?

 It is very Staten Island coded, lots of accents, and lots of big Italian feelings. 

Megan: Yeah I kind of I love it.

And I was wondering how you would feel if I tried to imitate it throughout the whole time. Because it's going to sound like I'm trying to sound like Tony Soprano or something. Like the part where the guy goes, that kid, he looked like Mick Jagger.

 I can't really do it, but I love the accent.

Jess: Yes. Yes, that's so that and again, like I don't always catch it because it's just I'm so used to hearing it. For whatever reason, this documentary, I heard it so loudly.

Megan: The quality of this movie. I know we texted about it a little bit and it didn't really click with me. When the movie was filmed and when all this was taking place for some reason, actually, I know exactly why. And I will tell you, I thought that there was a footage taking place in the eighties about the kids disappearing and, and, um, Andre ran being arrested for that, which I know we'll get into.

And then there's the footage about the directors. interviewing people and trying to find out more information. And so there's a gap. And I thought the gap was a lot less than what it was. I thought that they were recording this and filming it in the nineties because number one, the, the film itself just looks. it's poor quality, and I don't know if they did that intentionally, maybe it's a budget thing. Also the way that Barbara Brancaccio dressed, and she had the two, bleached streaks in the front of her hair that is now back in style. That is a very 90s thing. It's very 

Jess: It's very early 2000s, so Iwonder if they, were filming it for a long time.

Or, were filming it over a number of years. Yeah. That would be my guess. 

Megan: Yeah, you're right, they might have been doing it for a long time. 

I appreciate how, for both the directors, this is such a personal interest because they both grew up hearing stories about Crop C and it sounds like they didn't really connect.the urban legend with what actually happened until the trial, the second trial was taking place, and they were making this film and talking to everybody about what was going on. I actually read an interview with Joshua Zeman, who's made a lot of things about that area.

He talked about how the whole Cropsey story started as an urban legend. In Boy Scout camps and also like Jewish summer camps around upstate New York and different areas where kids from the city would go and then come back with these stories and they would use this term Cropsey.

And then after a while, they use that term to talk about these alleged crimes that took place. Urban legends then become something that's real. 

Jess: The interesting part of this for me was I did not have any knowledge of, the Cropsey thing, but I was familiar with Willowbrook because Staten Island is not a particularly well known part of New York, and if it is known, it's not known for anything good…

Megan: Only Wu-Tang Clan! 

Jess: Yes, we do claim Wu Tang Clan. But other than that, not much good. And Willowbrook is like a really deep shame of the island because, it's known as like a very awful thing but it was effectively a like very large campus that was exclusively a, like a housing slash treatment facility for folks with children specifically with disabilities.

 I think it was opened in the forties, fifties, so the whole concept of disability was very broad and they didn't really understand that. Say people with cerebral palsy are not folks with intellectual disabilities, but all of these people were like, lumped into this 1 space and as early as I think, like the 60s, like early 60s, There were tons of complaints about how, the facility was way overpopulated, so it was only supposed to hold, 4, 000 people, and I think when they finally closed it, it was at, 6, 500 people.

 People were just, on top of each other, basically. Horrendous. And... Yeah. Yeah, really awful, really understaffed, really, not competent staff, and it, was often described as, just a warehouse [00:15:00] for... The dis disabled children, which is a really horrible thing to say, but that was effectively what it was.

And, again, I think Staten Island has a lot of shame about it because it took forever to close this place, forever. There was, I think Robert Kennedy visited in, I have the year somewhere, but in the 60s, I think he visited, and was like, this place needs to get shut down. The place did not close until 1987 and that's not even considering Geraldo Rivera's bombshell I guess his was a documentary as well about the facility.

Megan: Yeah, and that was in, what, 1972? He was very young and unknown when he did it, and they show clips from that. That are really horrible of the conditions that everyone is in. And he said it smelled of filth, it smelled of disease, and it smelled of death. He said there's one attendant for about 50 kids.

They're wailing, a lot of them were naked, they're in their own feces, just horrendous. And he came in to report on it because he was called by a doctor who worked there, right?

Called him in. And so a lot of the issues here were actually about, funding. I'm sure there were a lot of other things coming into it as well. Funding cuts and then not having any place to send anyone. 

Jess: They had to place 6, 000 people and there was nowhere to put them, because a good number of these folks, like their parents, their families had abandoned them.

So it was just a really awful. And I think a part of the story that was not mentioned in this but is probably a pretty important thing to mention about Willowbrook is it was the site of probably the most unethical, experiments with like with children. Like testing on the children, and infecting them with hepatitis. Which is just terrible. They basically had outbreaks of hepatitis. And so they had doctors on staff who were like, they're all going to get it. So may as well just give it to them and see what happens.

And through that, we did get the hepatitis vaccine. I think it was hepatitis A, but still, , not exactly the most ethical way to have done that. 

Megan: But that is why we have the IRB now for conducting scientific research so that people are not harmed throughout the course of figuring it out. 

Jess: Yeah, it was like late enough. I was like, I think in the sixties and I think this is like late enough where this probably should have been known that this was not going to be okay. But they proceeded because I guess they, a lot of the people, like a lot of the children couldn't necessarily consent or not consent.

Megan: They interviewed a lot of reporters in this documentary and also some detectives who had worked on these cases. And one reporter said about Staten Island that it was viewed as a dumping ground, that Staten Island has this huge landfill that takes all the garbage from the city, and that there's that you can supposedly see this landfill from outer space because it's so gigantic.

And then there's Willowbrook, and he said that, people were actually dumping kids that were unwanted into Willowbrook. And then also the farm colony is one of the old buildings there, which was for people who had tuberculosis. So it was helpful for me to feel oriented when they showed a map of Staten Island, which is big.

It's really big island. And there's a green belt across the middle of it. And that's where these buildings are. And then there's just woods all around. And that's where Willowbrook was, that's where the farm colony, and then there, and Seaview Hospital, I think is what it was called, and then there was also a Boy Scout camp that Joshua Zeman went to as a kid, so that's part of his interest in all of this, and a lot of the filming actually takes place in the woods around this, but that reporter said, you're dumping garbage, you're dumping kids, that's what people do on Staten Island.

Jess: Which it's so funny. Not funny, haha. But Set Island is so crowded. If you were to visit, it's like all of the worst parts of the city and all of the worst parts of the suburbs. It's just so crowded. Everything is on top of each other. So it's always interesting to hear people talk about Oh, this is there's lots of wooded area or it's like, where?

 Because it's not easily accessible anymore. I would not say that it's, , that Staten Island is known for its, parks or just, greenery. 

I guess Staten Island does have some wooded [00:20:00] area, but it was like, there was like a little lake. It was just, didn't feel like it was on the island. I think that there are still parts of Staten Island that are like that, but the majority of it is, very developed, very crowded. It was, nice to see this documentary in a way, and then it was like, oh there's, used to be a little bit more room on the island.

And that just is not so much the case anymore. And interestingly, Willowbrook, the campus, they converted it into, I think in the 90s, into the City College. The College of Staten Island is now on the campus of Willowbrook. Which is quite a large span of... Of area huge, lots of land although it's funny, because if you drive past it, you would never know.

It's pretty well hidden it's like, all walled off, but it's, they still do have like original Willowbrook buildings. They have a lot of, I think they opened a [00:21:00] museum to honor the victims of Willowbrook. And so there is like still a lot of Acknowledgement of what happened and not there's not really avoidance of naming the bad stuff that happened.

But it is just interesting because I took a few classes at the College of Staten Island and the buildings are just there. There's at least 1 or 2 that are just closed buildings. It's like abandoned buildings and they're just hanging out there. Did 

Megan: Did you ever as a teen? Go frolic around the campuses there?

Jess: No

Megan: you know people who did? 

Jess: Honestly, no. And I think in part it's because by the time I was in high school or even like middle school, it was like quite a ways from when this happened and it had already, like the campus had already been developed into the college.

You can go onto the college grounds without. It's not like trespassing but there are, like, what are they called? Public safety people who are paying attention. So it's a little harder, I think, to poke around over there now than it would have been maybe in the early 90s.

Yeah, definitely no, I don't think it was as much of a thing by the time I was, like, 12. People weren't doing it. Okay. So no not exciting. 

Megan: The directors noted that there was a shift from, Cropsey being an urban legend to then being real when a little girl named Jennifer went missing in 1987 and she was 12 years old and she had Down syndrome and people turned out to look for her, including Donna. So this is where Donna comes in, and they were looking around in the so the police would come and do their searches, and then when they would leave.

These groups of community civilians, yeah, civilians would come in the tunnels underneath these buildings because there was a tunnel system connecting everything. And so they were just looking around trying to find this kid, which I understand that. Not how terrifying. And as a parent, just even thinking about this kind of thing is horrifying and I don't even like to think about it. They were looking for this little girl's body and then somehow Andre Rand, they decided that he was the suspect, really without any evidence.

Jess: So he was a Willowbrook employee for a period of time. He was homeless and lived on the Willowbrook grounds, and he continued to live there even after he stopped working at Willowbrook. So I think there was, awareness of him from that. [00:24:00] And the area they were looking in was in the Willowbrook area. So that may have been part of it.

But also, because historically he had been Accused, I think even had gone to jail for a period of time for kidnapping of a minor and I think sexual misconduct with a minor. So that was why they looked at him in part because he was just like local creepy thinking of Occam's Razor, it's okay this guy, he's already done this stuff, he seems like the most likely suspect, 

Megan: Yeah, everyone just started making these connections and the media went nuts and they were posting things about Drifter arrested, he's guilty, and the court of public opinion took over and everyone decided.

He's a creep. He did it. He's a murderer. The perp walk when they arrested him was very interesting, wasn't it?  

Jess: That was so confusing. Yeah. And something I thought throughout the entire documentary that maybe I hadn't considered last time I watched it was that he was also intellectually disabled, potentially, and because I read a number of stories about how a good number of the people who worked at Willowbrook also were intellectually disabled, and that was like, almost like a background way that they could get some treatment, or they thought that they would be able to get treatment, that definitely stood out to me because as he's doing the perp walk, he's drooling and they make the argument that he's doing it intentionally to, set up for some sort of insanity defense Disturbing,

Megan: Very, and his eyes were really wide and he looked like he just wasn't there at all.

Completely checked out and disconnected. And I think if we saw something like that now, there would maybe be a little more nuance and how. We would interpret that. Back in the 80s, people just saw him as some kind of maniac. Oh, look, he's crazy. What is wrong with him?

He definitely did it. That was how that was really viewed. And the community of people who are following this case so closely latched on to the idea that it was him. When they started searching around. For where this little girl could have gone is they found all of these places where people were living.

And a lot of these people were folks who had lived at Willowbrook and or worked at Willowbrook and they had no other place to go. So when a place like that would close down, some people were sent to group homes, but there are not enough group homes for all the people housed in those facilities. So a lot of people lived on the street or lived in the woods.

And that was also my take from how this was filmed and the clips that we saw is that people really interpreted it as they're bad. These, the people who live in the woods are bad people without really recognizing the people who live in the woods are living there because that's probably all they can really do.

They don't really have a lot of other choices here.

Jess: And I do think that was a public shame because Technically through the court system, all of the Willowbrook residents were supposed to be replaced. There were laws enacted and everything, where it's this needs to happen. And it took 20 years for all of these people to be replaced, and some of them never were.

I think at the end, there were like, 250 people left at Willowbrook without anywhere to go. I think many of them... Ended up being homeless and living in these communities, which, of course, this person who worked at the facility was going to be part of these communities, if that makes sense to me, I don't know that they interviewed anyone who lived in any of the homeless encampments [00:28:00] around Willowbrook or what they were looking at.

Megan: They did, the guy, what was his name, Bob Rand, he looked like Christopher Walken. Yes, okay, yes, I remember. I gathered that they were in some of these encampments together, and maybe not really friends, but acquaintances, and he, at one point, had been a suspect in one of the kidnappings, , and he'd been pulled in a few times by detectives and was questioned by them.

And he talked about how bizarre those interviews were and what his take on Andre Rand was. They had a circle of friends and that makes sense. People are looking out for one another. That's what happens in these encampments. That's how people survive. 

Jess: I forgot. Yeah. I am remembering that now.

And I'm remembering too, like that the interviews were weird in part because they were. I guess examining a a cult angle like that was a pretty major part of this case timing wise that fits because it was very [00:29:00] close to when son of Sam happened. So I think there was a lot more just expectation that these like serial killings or kidnappings, et cetera were linked to cult behavior.

So there was like a lot of asking about Satan and things in that arena. One of the theories is that Andre Rand was part of a cult and killing on behalf of said cult, even though I think that's a bit far fetched. That seems like the least likely theory that was actually true.

Megan: And yeah, one of the theories was that he was kidnapping children and taking them to the cult. Another one was that he was more of the leader and there was a lot of stuff about worshiping Satan.

And that was what Bob Rand was saying. He was questioned by the detectives . And they just started asking him all sorts of stuff about worshiping the devil and he was just responding. I, what? What are you talking about? I should have figured it was about halfway through the film. And then all this, all the devil worshipping stuff came up. It was like, of course, this was the time when The media was talking so much about kidnappings and so much about devil worshipers , and I think that we've seen this come up again with QAnon stuff where the more that we're talking about family values and purity and religion there's the save the children mentality and then these Myths start to come up .

And then it's this really bizarre game of telephone where somebody has a story, they tell it to someone else, they change it a little bit, they tell it to someone else, and no one is standing back and questioning, is this actually true? 

Jess: Not a lot of, not a lot of critical thinking. And, something I can say about Staten Island is like, there are these very large pockets of very conservative Italian families. That's a pretty big part of the island.

And, if you look at the interviews, Obviously, I can't make a complete assessment of if someone's Italian, but looking at some of the names and it's just seems very much like that was guiding a lot of this just this very conservative mob mentality of we've decided it's this guy and he's a creep, or we think he's a creep, and clearly he did it, and, It was so interesting watching the trial footage or them talking about the trial because they quite literally had nothing to go on.

It was all eyewitness testimony and it was eyewitness testimony that was, like, old. Because the second case was, like, well after the child had been abducted. And, someone came forward and they had been like 5 at the time of the abduction and she had some very convoluted story.

It was just very surprising. I don't know that would happen today. Maybe. But, I think at the time I witnessed. Testimony was viewed as reliable both of his convictions are based on eyewitness testimony. They had no physical evidence, really 

Megan: No other evidence at all.

And they were even giving examples of how the detectives were in full on creative storytelling territory. They were the ones who were really talking about, this is a cult, this is related to Son of Sam, this is about the devil, things like that.

So they would spin some kind of story, and then all of a sudden, someone on the witness stand would be talking about how what they supposedly saw was related to something the detectives had said. There are two trials. There was one in the 80s and one around the time that they made this film in the 2000s and the two trials are very similar and that it was eyewitness testimony, like you said, 

Jess: The second trial was, I don't even know what prompted them to retry him. I, it just seemed very random. 

Megan: So the second trial, that started when they were making this film was for another little girl who'd been missing for a long time. And the only body that was ever found was the first girls with Jennifer's and I do feel like it's worth saying that her body was found after they arrested Andre Rand, they found her body right near his campsite in the woods.

They had already searched that area before her body was not there. When they found her body, the blood had pooled in her feet. And so it showed that her body had been moved after she had died. And so it's very likely that someone had framed him, that they actually put the body there because they had already searched that area.

But that reality was not ever really connected. It was just very simply, he did this because her body was found right there. 

Jess: We've got the guy. 

Megan: That's it. Yeah. We have decided that's it. We got him. And then the second trial was actually pretty close to the time. That he would have been eligible for parole, right?

Jess: In 2008. Yeah. 

Megan: Holly Ann Hughes the second girl who disappeared all the way back in 1981. Her brother was a police lieutenant, and he was very instrumental in pushing this along and actually getting it to trial, and they were convinced that they had enough evidence now to bring him to trial, and they didn't before, and it was actually the friend saying, I saw her go in the car, and that friend's story didn't make any sense, she said he had a mask, No, he didn't have a mask.

I'm not really sure. 

Jess: She seemed very pleased with herself too, which was very unnerving. It just seemed like she was.

I don't know, like not, I don't want to say like attention seeking. It's, it seemed just more like she convinced herself that this was the truth and she was saving the day. There were so many holes in the story and this is not to say I certainly want to be clear.

I have no idea if this person did it. It is very possible, especially there were a number of things that pointed to him potentially being a predator and just someone that really either needed some significant help or just, needed to not be near children. But there really is just nothing that.

Indicates that this was him, there was really no evidence and, that's unfortunate because if this was really a case of this person did it, they could have done more probably to try to find evidence instead of just this man did it. That's it. We've decided, but they didn't, they really did not do a whole lot of looking [00:36:00] around.

It was just. We've decided on this. He's the person. You see that all the time like on cop shows, if you watch like Law and Order SVU, that is something that happens all the time. They have just determined and decided this guy seems like a creep.

So he's clearly the one that did it. And then they find out it's not him. It's not that person. Not actually him. Yeah, like that is based on reality because law enforcement, they're people they're. Quad, and they're in a position of power. So of course they can just pick someone and that's it for them.

If that is what they're determined as okay we think this guy is good for this. 

Megan: And the second trial I don't think that this would fly now just with what we understand about substance use and memory. But I thought this was really strange that a lot of the witnesses, yeah we're recovered drug and alcohol users.

Because they got clean, they all of a sudden have memories of what happened.[00:37:00] A lot of the eyewitness testimony was people who back in 1981 witnessed something didn't have any information to share back then. But all these years later, miraculously remember things.

I'm pretty sure that's not how memory works. 

Jess: But also, even if that were true, which hey, I don't know, it very well could be, that's not valid enough. I don't think the law would view that as actually admissible. That does not seem, it doesn't seem like that would fly 

in most cases.

Megan: Andre Rands attorneys they were very reasonable they said, there's not enough evidence here. And I agreed with them. There's something here about, there are a lot of creepy people out in the world and people who have all sorts of problems. And that doesn't necessarily mean that they're murderers.

And so I don't really know either. I did not come away from that film with a really strong opinion about if I think Andre Rand did this or not. One of the most alarming things I took away from it was the strong opinions of everyone and the confirmation bias that everyone had.

There's one part where the two detectives that they interviewed, who were just 

Jess: Yeah, I have that written down. 

Megan: Oh god, they were full of all sorts of stories about things. They talked about these four kids that disappeared over a span of 15 years and they think that Andre Rand was responsible.

And only one of the bodies was ever found. And actually one of the people wasn't even a kid. He's, he was 21. But they said that he was intellectually disabled and had the IQ of a 15 year old is what they said. He was the one that looks like Mick Jagger and they showed pictures of him. 

Jess: And he does

Megan: Yeah, he does look like Mick Jagger. So there's one part where it shows a news interview with the mom of Hollyanne Hughes, and she's saying, we want our daughter back and. And this kid, his name is Hank Gaffario, and he looked like Mick Jagger, he's in the background because there's all these people from the neighborhood in the background.

And so what the people are saying in the film is, Look, and there's one of the other victims and he's in the background and the detectives are like, you just can't make this stuff up. That's a coincidence. Yeah. And it's can you connect the dots for me of how that actually shows that Andre Rand is responsible, what this is showing me?

Yeah. What, I thought that was really strange that he was in the video, but more than anything, it might show that. It's a tight knit community a lot of people are turning out for these news interviews and they're really curious about what's going on. 

And also maybe that Hank Gafforio, the bit they said about him was that he was a person who was out and about a lot. And people just saw him around in a lot of different public places because he was hanging out in the neighborhood and hanging out with people and talking and whatnot.

So I did not understand how the detectives were viewing that as this really strong evidence. 

Jess: Also should be noted, like this all happened in the same area. So like you had said, Staten Island is a very large place and but there are like, it's like cities within cities. So there's certain areas that have names.

So I think like where this happened was like Greenbelt, Willowbrook area. And I believe that there were a number of housing projects in that area. So there were just a lot of children Running around and that they're all in the same area. That makes sense that this person is in the video because it's like a crowded [00:41:00] area.

It's the same community. They're all maybe aware of each other. That didn't surprise me that there were people in the video that we're also linked to and end this. One of the people who was actually potentially abducted. Also something I noticed was a number of people involved, including police detectives were people who had children with intellectual disabilities.

So the stakes were higher for them, of course, because it's a personal thing, and they feel personally motivated to remove this person from the streets. And that just, that felt like an area of bias that was not really noted, I think both of the detectives shared that they, or at least one of them shared he had two autistic children.

Megan: And Donna, it even shows Donna's son. Okay I gotta talk about Donna. 

Jess: She was a lot. 

Megan: She was a lot. She was, and she was in the [00:42:00] videos starting in the 80s, and then they talked to her a lot while they were filming for the documentary. She put together this grassroots organization that would go out into the woods and look for the bodies.

And she was there when they found Jennifer's body and she talks about it. And of course that was a really horrendous experience for her. And what she did after that was she just kept going out into those woods and digging around. It sounded like from that span of time, which is 15 years.

That was her thing. That was Donna's hobby. She was doing that. Yeah. He was going out in the woods with a shovel. She had a friend who I think was a retired detective with a retired police dog, . And they would go out in the woods and the dog would sniff around. They were convinced that they were going to be finding things and this was just, Donna's pastime. Somebody else might do [00:43:00] scrapbooking and what Donna does is she goes out in the woods and digs holes looking for children's bodies that may or may not be there.

And that's just what she does. 

Jess: Yeah, 

I had looked her up actually, because I was super curious. Like, where did this person even come from? That she suddenly was at the helm of all of this. I believe that she was the child of a police officer who was shot in the line of work.

And that, that put her in a position to be very close to a lot of law enforcement, and really involved in. Law enforcement adjacent things. So I thought that was just an interesting part of her story. Clearly, this is, potentially trauma fueled that had a lot of loss and has seen a lot of things that maybe are not great.

And she's trying to find some good or at least do some good. I thought that was just like a really interesting kind of part of her [00:44:00] lore that of course is not mentioned in the film because it's not so super relevant, but thought it was worth noting. 

Megan: She's definitely on a mission to find these bodies and to make sure that Andre Rann is convicted of all of those kidnappings and murders.

And she even said towards the end of the film that it was time to move on to the next one. So now that he got time for Holly and Hughes, it was time to, start to gather evidence. For the third missing child and take him to trial for that. And that was part of what I found alarming, is that, oh, this is just gonna keep going.

The, this man is gonna be in prison until he dies. 

Jess: He already is, so it's not, yeah.

Megan: Yeah He's locked away. He's got two sentences, 25 to life. So he's not going anywhere and [00:45:00] she's going to keep it going. This is the trauma of a community that has lost children time doesn't heal that, and it's just, you just keep coming back to the same well over and over again, trying to.

Find some closure and it's tragic that things are not going to have that kind of concrete closure that anyone in that position would crave. 

Jess: 1 of the 1 of the detectives talks about there's obviously there is nothing positive about finding a dead child, but there is something profoundly worse about never finding them.

Because that just gives the parents hope, it gives the family hope that they may never, it, nothing may come of that hope and they may just sit with that for the rest of their lives and that just does not allow for closure. I think that's true. 

All of these people are still missing. All of these children are still missing. And their parents [00:46:00] never got justice, and they probably never will, especially with this having happened now. It's so interesting. I always want to say 20 years ago. It's not 20 years ago. It's 40 years ago now. 40 years, I know.

Yeah, it's like the likelihood of this being actually solved is minimal. Granted, it still happens, we see all the time with improvements in genealogy and things like that, but there's no evidence, like there's nothing 

even 

Megan: They didn't gather any To work with. Any physical evidence that they could even work with.

Yeah, and that actually makes me think of this, a theme here is that discomfort of ambiguity. Because there's the real discomfort and pain and suffering of these families not knowing what happened to their children and not having remains that they can bury that they can visit, that they can honor.

And then also the ambiguity of not really knowing who did this [00:47:00] and how so many people need to have that scapegoat and they need to have that boogeyman. Rand so that they can explain it and I really appreciate how the filmmakers just let this ambiguity ride throughout all of it. 

Did he really do this? 

Jess: He, writes the documentarians very strange letters, they tried to contact him, they tried to meet with him, and he refused, and he was like doing a lot of game playing with them, but the letters based on what they were reading, it did sound like he was not well, not emotionally well, that there some sort of perhaps like mental illness happening and I just Thought that was also a component of this our law system is not particularly thoughtful about those things, and they don't, I don't think it mattered they didn't care, they did not investigate if he was mentally ill or intellectually disabled.

It was like, he's just the guy, he did it. 

Megan: He's creepy, he did it.

And again, at the [00:48:00] time if there is something going on with him and he is intellectually disabled and or mentally ill, then all the more reason that he would be right. That just, and he would've done this, that just further 

explains it that Yes. Makes it even more true.

Jess: Yes. That, yeah, that's true Actually. 

Megan: Those two detective guys, which almost seemed like cartoon characters to me. They said at one point that they showed Andre Rand when they were questioning him, the Willowbrook documentary that Geraldo made, they said, Do you want to see this?

And he said, Yeah, I want to see it. And so they showed it to him. And they said he had this really intense response to it, which they interpreted as him getting really close to confessing to what he did. And he said, See, Yeah. We were hurt there too. The people who worked there were hurt there too, and they said that his response was much like when he Was arrested and he was drooling and his eyes were, really large and he [00:49:00] looked really detached and so they said, Oh, we were so close.

He was about to confess. And then he completely checked out and he didn't talk for 3 days. Something like that. And. That actually sounds like a pretty profound trauma response . 

Jess: That was my thought. I was like, this man is having a full dissociative episode in response to watching this film.

Megan: And then it comes back to Willowbrook and what might have happened to him there, too, we were talking about this with one flew over the cuckoo's nest it's not just people who are being housed in these terrible institutions that are harmed by it.

It's also people who are working there. And then we think of something as just horrendous as Willowbrook, how are they actually even getting people to work in a place like that and to stay in a place like that? Two years is a long time to work in a place. that disturbing and just full of abuse and [00:50:00] trauma and filth 

and perhaps he was even in a position where that's the only place he could work, so he's stuck there. So lots of things that could have been considered here about him and about the situation that weren't. And it's a real shame because maybe what really happened to those kids could have been uncovered.

But maybe it was, and then there was all these tall tales spun around it too. Again, it's ambiguous. We don't really know. 

Jess: And like I said, I don't know that at this point. That we will know in part because of the, you're right, like the confirmation bias it's very clear that it is still active.

I can't imagine that. Things have changed I doubt for example, Donna had some recent change of heart where she thinks differently about Andre Rand. I don't see that happening. . I want to hope that maybe 1 day there will be an answer or there will be something different that [00:51:00] comes out.

But unfortunately, I think this is not super surprising, but these children actually were further hurt by. Our legal system not doing its job or really, it did its job, but it did it in a very broken way.

Megan: The legal system, like all systems, it's a reflection of what's happening at the time. Same with the detectives and what was going on with the policing is that they're taking in. The influence of, huge case like the son of Sam and also the satanic panic going on.

These were the Reagan years where there was so much focus on family values and protecting the children. And so there was. Paranoia about that, and I often thought as a kid hearing so much about kidnappings there was this mix of being afraid of doing things, but also being a kid in the 80s where [00:52:00] we were running around without supervision all the time anyway.

But then, if an adult came up to you and asked a question, you'd run away going stranger danger and be really terrified by that. I really believed that there were so many more kidnappings and so much more crime and violence then. And I don't actually think that it was. 

It was just that there was so much more focus on it and so much more worry about it. Of course the media is a huge part of a story like this too, how they reported things, and that was a big part of the influence on that confirmation bias, saying that this person is creepy and a maniac the newspaper said it, so now I'm going to have to believe it.

Just like with QAnon, okay, the internet said this, so now I'm going to believe it. 

Jess: And Staten Island newspaper is the one newspaper that used to exist. I don't think it does anymore. Because it closed down, but it's very, [00:53:00] it was a very biased news source. I'm not sure in which direction, but it was a very biased news source.

I lived in Staten Island, even while I was in college and would laugh at the newspaper because some of the stories were just so absurd. I would not be surprised if that absolutely played into it. In today's world, if someone is abducted, or if there is a kidnapping, there is a lot of.

Information that gets leaked immediately if a person is viewed as a person of particular value in our world. As an example, the Gabby Petito case where you could not go on your computer or your phone without seeing something about her. And, that's a terrible thing that happened awful but the.

Complete wild intensity around that case that is never really given to a lot of other cases, I think it just speaks to, it's not that kidnappings are not happening, it's just that we are [00:54:00] maybe not as discerning as a culture about who deserves to be saved or who deserves to be saved.

To have attention and I thought that this particular case was interesting because it's clear. This was a very big case and a very big situation, but these we're not children or people who like in today's world, maybe would have caught the public attention. 

But I think speaking to the Reagan era and the values where it's oh of course these are children and they're disabled children and we need to save them. And they had a scapegoat and a pretty good one. 

Megan: So we talked a lot about the ongoing triggers of this. Did you have any glimmers from it?

Jess: I appreciate when there's any media about Staff Island. This is maybe not the media you would want because it's very... Depressing and disturbing, but I really appreciate that they were not talking about Staten Island in this very negative way, which I feel like is unfortunately how most people talk about it.

It's how I've even [00:55:00] talked about it throughout this. Time, it was actually nice. It felt like seeing bits of home and I thought that was interesting because I didn't take that from it the last time I watched it. But this time I was like, Oh, look, I recognize where that is. I know that deli and it just, reminded me not every bit of home has to be perfect. 

Megan: And it's always a mixed bag, right? I think anytime we're looking at an insular community and how people can influence one another, there's going to be components of this.

 And there's also comforting things about being at home . They definitely gave a cool history of the island. I know way more about Staten Island than I ever learned before from taking a ferry there once to see the Statue of Liberty and then being a Wu Tang fan.

Jess: I 

mean, I do love the ferry. The ferry is the greatest. The fairy is pretty cool. And it's free, so can't complain. Did [00:56:00] you have any glimmers? 

Megan: Definitely not Donna. That brought up a lot of emotions for me. I really liked the way that it was made. The poor quality of the film .

aside, I really am interested in seeing more things that Joshua Zeman has made . One of his more recent films is a documentary about the 52 Hertz whale that emits a sound that's at a different frequency than other males. 

Leslie Jamison has a really beautiful essay about loneliness, about 52 blue. And so I want to see that it's called the loneliest whale. And then you had talked about the killing season, which sounds like it's really good. A series about the Long Island murders. And it looks like he also made something called the Sons of Sam looking at the theory that David Berkowitz did not act alone, so I'm really interested in seeing more of the things that he made.

I'm a big fan of things that [00:57:00] end in an ambiguous way, where you as the viewer or the reader, get to bring your own interpretations and there's really not an easy answer to something. I'm a big fan of that because I think we don't do that enough and we don't appreciate that enough, especially this day and age there's so many things that we don't know and we need to continue to observe and take in more information.

And that is a lot of what was missing here is

that they stopped taking in information and the way that they made the film questioned that. And I really appreciated that. So I'm definitely going to be watching more of his stuff. I thought it was really smart, really interesting. And I hope it was helpful for both of them that made it coming from this community, hearing these stories.

Making a personal story like that. Has gotta be such a journey, so I hope that it was helpful for them when they did that. 

Jess: I hope so 

too. And [00:58:00] yes, the, I watched the Killing Season around when I first watched this, and it's the same vibe, very well done, like the quality has definitely improved, they got, they must have gotten funding.

More of a 

budget for that one. 

Yeah. 

And it, it did end very ambiguously it hadn't even really come to a head that there was like a theory of a singular Long Island serial killer. I think there was like more of a what's happening vibe. So it definitely ends off on a very ambiguous note.

And I think that was from 2016 and he actually came out recently and was saying like, he did not anticipate that. The crimes would ever be solved and they recently arrested somebody. So we shall 

see. 

Megan: Yeah, maybe he'll do an update. 

Jess: Yeah, I hope so. 

Megan: Okay. So do you want to keep going on this institution focus that we're doing?

Jess: It's a good question. I don't know. Because yeah, because I'm like, what would we watch? What do we watch next? I guess we could watch Girl Interrupted, the iconic. 

Megan: [00:59:00] More of a well known movie that probably a lot of people have seen, versus an indie documentary, although I loved seeing that.

Yeah, I think it was a great pick. Yeah, we could do Girl Interrupted next. 

I haven't watched it in so long, so I am curious. 

We'll have plenty to talk about. Okay. 

Thank you for listening to the I'm Triggered podcast.

Make sure that you like, rate, and review us on Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcasts. 

Jess: Thanks so much for listening. 

Megan: Okay, bye !