The Old Neighborhood

Alice Pereia

Missing Since: July 7, 1972 from Staten Island, New York
Classification: Non-Family Abduction
Age: 5 years old
Distinguishing Characteristics: Caucasian female. Black hair, hazel eyes. Some agencies give Pereia's last name as "Pereira."
Clothing/Jewelry Description: Blue shorts with gold buttons, a red polo shirt and sneakers.


Details of Disappearance

Pereia was last seen near her family's residence in Tysons Lane Apartments in the New York City borough of Staten Island on July 7, 1972. Pereia was playing in the lobby of the building on Tysons' Lane with her brother. She vanished after her brother left her alone for a brief moment. Pereia may have been sighted shortly thereafter in a park near the apartment building in the New Dorp area of the Island. She has never been heard from again.

Audrey Lyn Nerenberg

Missing Since: July 5, 1977 from Brooklyn, New York

Classification: Endangered Missing
Date Of Birth: September 24, 1958
Age: 18 years old
Height and Weight: 5'4 - 5'5, 115 pounds
Distinguishing Characteristics: Caucasian female. Light brown curly hair, brown eyes. Nerenberg has an olive complexion. She has freckles on her nose, cheeks, shoulders, and hands, and a gap between her upper front teeth about one-sixteenth of an inch wide. She smokes cigarettes. Nerenberg's hair was long, past her shoulders, at the time of her July 1977 disappearance.
Clothing/Jewelry Description: A blue tube top, cut-off bleached dungaree shorts or blue jeans, open-toed clear plastic sandals, and possibly a sweater tied around her waist.
Medical Conditions: Nerenberg was diagnosed with hebephrenic schizophrenia at age 15, approximately three years prior to her 1977 disappearance. She was taking the medication Torrozine and was under a doctor's supervision at the time she was last seen. Nerenberg has the mental capacity of a fourteen-year-old.
The day before her disappearance Miss Nerenberg was at the Jerry Lewis movie theater in Staten Island.

Holly Ann Hughes

Missing Since: July 15, 1981 from Staten Island, New York
Classification: Non-Family Abduction
Date Of Birth: January 23, 1974
Age: 7 years old
Height and Weight: 4'0, 50 pounds
Distinguishing Characteristics: Caucasian female. Brown hair, blue eyes.
Clothing/Jewelry Description: A beige bathing suit, blue shorts and beige and brown sandals.

Details of Disappearance
Hughes was last seen at approximately 9:30 p.m. on July 15, 1981 near Richmond Terrace and Park Avenue in the New York City borough of Staten Island. Her mother sent her to a deli two blocks away to purchase a bar of Ivory soap. Hughes arrived at the store and bought the soap, but never returned home and has never been heard from again.

Holly Ann disappeared 2.5 miles from where Audrey Lyn Nerenberg saw a movie on Staten Island.




Tiahease Tiawanna Jackson

Missing Since: August 14, 1983 from Staten Island, New York
Classification: Non-Family Abduction
Date Of Birth: October 5, 1972
Age: 10 years old
Height and Weight: 4'8, 90 pounds
Distinguishing Characteristics: African-Americn female. Black hair, brown eyes. Jackson has a burn scar on her left wrist and elbow. Her left eye is lazy and turns inwards.
Clothing/Jewelry Description: A dark blue ski jacket with white trim, a white sweater, blue jeans, blue plastic mesh shoes, a gold necklace with a butterfly charm, a silver bangle bracelet on her left wrist, and two purple combs in her hair.
Medical Conditions: Jackson is diabetic. She also has high blood pressure and Bright's Disease, a kidney disorder which requires medication and treatment.

Details of Disappearance
Jackson was last seen leaving the Mariner's Harbor Motel (now the Conca D'Oro Motel) on Forest Avenue in the New York City borough of Staten Island on August 14, 1983. She lived in the hotel with her mother and three siblings, the family having moved there after getting burned out of their apartment. The Jacksons planned to relocate to the southern United States. At 1:30 p.m., while Jackson's mother was asleep, another resident of the hotel sent Jackson out to purchase chicken wings from the Crown Supermarket in the 900 block of Richmond Avenue. Jackson never returned to the hotel and has never been heard from again. Her mother woke up at 4:30 p.m., and, discovering her daughter had been missing for three hours, immediately called police. Tiahesae disappeared one block from where Audrey Lyn Nerenberg saw a movie on Staten Island.

Jennifer Lynn Schweiger

Missing Since: July 9, 1987 from Staten Island, New York
Found murdered on August 12, 1987

On the hot afternoon of July 9,1987, Jennifer was restless as her mother did house work. Mrs. Schweiger told the child to take a walk, assuming that Jennifer would stay within the three-block radius where she was allowed to wander unsupervised but was well known to all the neighbors. The child vanished sometime after that. She was never seen alive again. In the days following Jennifer's disappearance, a homeless man and a child sex offender with a criminal record involving children, named Andre Rand, was arrested and charged with Jennifer's abduction. Andre Rand is also suspected in the disappearances of several other children on the Island prior to Jennifer's disappearance. Including, Tiahease Jackson (missing since 1983), Alice Pereia (missing since 1972) and Holly Ann Hughes (missing since 1981), whom he was convicted of kidnapping in October 2004. There is speculation that he may be responsible for the disappearance of Audrey Lyn Nerenberg (missing since 1977) as well. In the meantime, many volunteers, friends, family and even strangers to the Schweiger family joined to search for their long lost handicapped daughter.The 35-day search ended when Jennifer's body was discovered buried in a shallow grave on the night of August 12,1987 behind an abandoned mental facility. A cause of death could not be determined, but it was clear she had been murdered. A couple accounts stated that she was sexually abused before she died, but it is unknown to me if this has ever been confirmed. Andre Rand was found guilty of Jennifer's abduction and sentenced to 25 years in prison. He was not charged murder. A grand jury could not reach a verdict on that charge. However, Andre Rand is greatly suspected by many to be responsible for Jennifer's death. A search team was established by Charles and Donna Cutugno, a couple who assisted in the search for Jennifer, in honor of the child called "Friends of Jennifer" - an Island-based group that searches for missing people.Jennifer was a student at Public School 22 and had recently graduated from a special-education program there. She enjoyed dancing. She is greatly missed by her family,friends and neighbors.
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Andre Rand

Born Frank Rashan, in 1943, the "Pied Piper of Staten Island" employed various pseudonyms to cover his movements and criminal activities through the years. Between 1966 and '68, using the last name "Bruchette," he worked as a physical therapy aide at New York's Willowbrook State School - later renamed the Staten Island Development Center. On May 5, 1969, he was arrested in the South Bronx for kidnapping and attempting to rape a nine-year-old girl. Pleading guilty to a lesser charge of sexual abuse, he served sixteen months in prison, winning parole in January 1972. Back on the street, Rashan legally changed his name to "Rand," logging three more arrests by the end of the decade for "minor" offenses, including burglary. Along the way, his name was linked with disappearances of several children. Rand was working as a painter at a South Beach, Staten Island, apartment house when five-year-old Alice Pereira vanished from one of the flats in 1972, but officers were short on solid evidence required for an indictment. Nine years later, in July 1981, Rand was hauled in for questioning in the disappearance of seven-year-old Holly Hughes, from Port Richmond, and once more he was released for lack of evidence. On January 9, 1983, Rand collected eleven children from West Brighton, loaded them into a van, and set off on a five-hour jaunt into Newark, neglecting to ask parental permission. They spent the day eating hamburgers and watching planes land at Newark airport, and while none of the children were harmed, Rand was arrested on charges of unlawful imprisonment, convicted in March and sentenced to ten months in jail. He was back on the street by August, listed as a suspect when ten-year-old Tiahese Jackson vanished on Staten Island. No trace of the three missing girls had been found by July 9, 1987, when 12-year-old Jennifer Schweizer disappeared from her home at Westerleigh. A victim of Downe's syndrome, Jennifer was traced to the grounds of the deserted Staten Island Development Center, where Rand had been living for several years in a makeshift shelter of his own design. Witnesses reported seeing Rand with Jennifer the day she disappeared, and after some preliminary questions, he was charged with her kidnapping on August 4, held without bail pending a psychiatric evaluation. Eight days later, Schweizer's body was unearthed from a shallow grave, within sight of Rand's lean-to, and a charge of murder in the first degree was added to his file.

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In 1976, the body of 13-year-old Beth Ann Sweeney was found in the woods behind the Prince's Bay train station. The Great Kills girl had been beaten, strangled and stabbed. Police found no motive for the killing and no arrests have ever been made. Andre Rand has not been publically implicated.