NY Brenda Crowley (16) - New York NY, 1980

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aussiegran

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Missing Since: March 1980 from New York City, New York
Classification: Endangered Missing
Date Of Birth: October 5, 1963
Age: 16 years old
Height and Weight: 5'4 - 5'6, 110 - 130 pounds
Distinguishing Characteristics: Dark blonde hair, blue/green eyes. Crowley's eyes may appear to be hazel. Her teeth are crowded. Crowley has a small scar on her nose. One of her arms was fractured during her childhood. She may wear eyeglasses or contact lenses to correct strabismus (cross-eye). Her blood type is believed to be O positive, but it could also be A positive or negative.
http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/c/crowley_brenda.html
 
http://www.silive.com/news/advance/index.s...6310.xml&coll=1

Still a painful mystery
Cops probe a tip on Island girl who vanished in 1980
Thursday, January 10, 2008
By JEFF HARRELL
STATEN ISLAND ADVANCE
STATEN ISLAND ADVANCE -- The last time her loved ones saw her, she was a fresh-faced 16-year-old, whose pretty smile masked deeper family problems.

On Tuesday, police dug up a Long Island backyard searching for the remains of the Staten Island girl who went missing 27 years ago.


All they found was dog bones, but the dig in Suffolk County "stunned" older sister Dorothy Schall and resurrected a question she has been asking since her sister disappeared in May 1980.

What happened to Brenda Crowley?

"It leaves a hole in your heart, having her gone and not knowing what happened to her," Ms. Schall told the Advance last night.

Sources claimed an unidentified relative approached police recently with an allegation that Miss Crowley had been killed by her father and buried in the yard of a house in East Islip.

A swarm of cold-case NYPD detectives and Suffolk County police converged on the property at 28 Melanni Pl. Tuesday morning with backhoes and shovels, digging and searching throughout the day.

No body or human remains were found and by sunset, cops gave up the search, packed up their equipment and left.

A Staten Island law enforcement source yesterday said the yard was not marked as a crime scene, nor is there an open case under investigation.

"They found dog bones, that's it," the source said. "This is still being treated as a missing person's case."

Brenda Crowley was 16 when she was last seen at 116 Harbor Rd., a house in Mariners Harbor that later burned down.

"Every single one of us ran away," Ms. Schall told the Advance in 1995. "Everyone came back except Brenda. Brenda is nowhere to be found."



A TROUBLED LIFE

Brenda Crowley was born in Brooklyn on Oct. 5, 1963. Her family ancestors hail from County Cork, Ireland.

Because she was last seen in 1980, her profile is a snapshot captured in time: She stood between 5-foot-4 and 5-foot-6, weighing between 110 and 130 pounds. Dark blond, straight hair; blue-green eyes that sometimes appear hazel. Brenda may also wear glasses/contacts due to a slight cross in her left eye. Her teeth has some crowding. She has a small scar on her nose.

One of eight siblings growing up in difficult circumstances, she had bounced with them among several Island addresses and her absences from Curtis High School had caused her expulsion in February 1980.

There also may have been an outstanding "PINS" (person in need of supervision) warrant issued for her in Family Court.

But a police source said yesterday that, while records indicate family members reported Brenda missing 27 years ago, no formal "missing person" report was filed and no foul play was suspected at the time.

When Brenda disappeared, Ms. Schall remembers her mother, Theresa Crawley (she used a different spelling than her children), saying she had filed a missing persons report with police. But during the 1995 interview with the Advance, Ms. Schall said she'd learned that was not the case and she had filed a report herself in the summer of 1994.

The case took a deadly turn on March 8, 1981, when Ms. Crawley, then 40 and living in Stapleton, was found strangled to death at an intersection in Castleton Corners.

She was listed at first as a Jane Doe, but her identity became known later when a casual acquaintance from Castleton Corners who she'd met at a local bar pleaded guilty to attempted manslaughter in connection with her death.

FAMILY GROWS CLOSE


Ms. Schall said she and her other siblings, most of whom are now in their 30s and 40s, had grown close over the years and rebuilt what was a very fractured family when their sister disappeared.

"As we grew up we stuck together," Ms. Schall said in 1995. "We went through a lot, but now we're very close. Brenda has nieces and nephews she never knew."

Yesterday, a man answering the phone at her home and calling himself Ms. Schall's nephew said neither she nor her sister, Theresa Crowley Sanchez of Massachusetts, were the relatives who tipped off police to the alleged burial site on Long Island.

Reached by phone last night, Ms. Schall said she and her sister, Theresa, had nothing to do with the tip, adding she was stunned when news reporters began calling to ask her about the police search for her sister's remains.

Real estate records show the East Islip home was bought in 1960 by a Louis Hajek, who died in 2001.

Ms. Schall said Brenda's father, Peter Crowley, lived at the home in East Islip until he and his then-wife divorced. He moved to Brooklyn and remarried, she said, but the ex-wife still lives at the Melanni Place home.

Ms. Schall said her only hope was that Brenda would someday, somehow, turn up alive and be reunited with the brothers and sisters who miss her dearly.

"It just never goes away," she said of the hurt. "It just never goes away."

Police ask that anyone with information regarding Brenda Crowley call their confidential hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS.

Jeff Harrell covers courts for the Advance. He may be reached at harrell@siadvance.com.
 
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