1-month-old Andre Terrence Bryant’s mother, Monique Rivera, had been taking Andre and her two older sons for a walk in their Brooklyn, New York neighborhood on March 28, 1989 when she encountered two women driving a 1988 or 1989 burgundy Pontiac Grand Am Sports Edition with tinted windows and possibly Maryland license plates.
One of the females was African-American, approximately 30 years old and heavyset with a dark complexion; she wore sunglasses. The other woman was Hispanic or African-American with long red hair and a light complexion; she wore a red leather jacket and white pants, and was approximately 22 years old at the time. Both women were about 5’7 tall. Rivera may have known one of them from back when she was in middle school.
The women engaged Rivera in conversation about her children and asked to hold Andre, and they convinced her to go shopping with them. Rivera bought herself an outfit from a store called Canadian’s, and the women bought her a pair of pants and a shirt. Then they took her home.
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Rivera told her husband, Timothy Bryant, that the women used a fraudulent credit card to make their purchases and that she planned to go shopping with them again in White Plains, New York the following day. Timothy’s sister, Patricia, agreed to babysit the children while Rivera shopped. On March 29, Patricia went to Rivera’s apartment on Madison Street to babysit.
The two women did not pick up Rivera outside her apartment, but called her home from a pay phone around the corner and asked her to come out and meet them. They insisted that she bring Andre with them on the shopping trip, so Rivera took the baby with her and left her other children with Patricia. She was last seen getting into the women’s vehicle outside her apartment at 2:00 p.m.
On the morning of March 30, Rivera’s body was found in the woods by the Eastchester Bay, near City Island Road in the Bronx. She had been struck on the head and strangled, and had numerous defensive wounds such as bruises and broken fingernails, indicating she fought back against her attacker(s). There was no sign of Andre, Rivera’s companions, or their vehicle at the scene. The police were able to identify the body a few days later after Timothy published an ad in the paper appealing for information on her whereabouts.
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A few days after Rivera’s murder, a strange woman calling herself Joan Walker called her apartment. Joan asked to speak to Rivera, and when told she was dead, said this was impossible because they had just gone shopping a few days earlier. The caller has never been identified and authorities were never able to link anyone named Joan Walker to the case.
Andre has never been heard from again. The two women who accompanied him and his mother on the shopping trip have never been identified. She was twenty-five when she died, and left behind her husband and two other sons besides Andre.
Authorities believe Andre may have been sold into an adoption ring. At the time of his disappearance they thought his presumed abduction might be connected to the disappearances of Shane Walker and Christopher Dansby. Both boys disappeared from the same Harlem park three months apart in 1989. All of the missing children are African-American.
All of the cases remain unsolved and it is unclear what happened to the children.
Investigating Agency: New York Police Department 718-574-1605.
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