Monique Rivera & Andre Bryant
On March 28, 1989, 22-year-old Monique Rivera took her sons for a walk around their Brooklyn neighborhood. While the family was walking, they came across two women sitting in their car. The woman got out of the car and approached Monique and her sons. They made friendly small talk and asked if they could hold newborn Andre. The meeting concluded with the women inviting Monique and her children to have lunch with them at Mcdonald’s. Monique accepted the invitation.
Monique and her sons got in the group’s car and were driven to a nearby Mcdonald’s. While eating, the women were still very interested in Andre. They continued to take turns holding him and playing with him. After eating, the women were able to convince Monique to accompany them on a trip to the Green Acres Shopping mall on Long Island. The mall is located in the nearby town of Valley Stream. The women and Monique all went shopping together before Monique and her sons were driven home.
When Monique got home, she told Timothy about her shopping trip with the women that she met. Timothy was very concerned. It turns out that the women had bought clothes for Monique at several of the stores they visited. Timothy didn’t understand why these strangers would buy clothes for someone they just met. He felt uncomfortable with that because Monique had her own money to purchase clothes. When Timothy asked Monique why she was with them for such a long time, Monique told him that she knew the women from middle school. However, it has never been verified if that was even true.
Monique then told Timothy that the women used fake credit cards to purchase their items. Curiously, she wasn’t concerned by that at all. In fact, she planned to go shopping with the women again. This time, they were going to the Galleria Mall in White Plains, New York. Timothy was concerned, but Monique told him not to worry. Timothy’s sister Patricia would watch her kids that day.
On March 29 at 2 pm, the women called Monique from a payphone and told her that they were outside. When she came out and got into the car, the women told her to go back inside and get Andre. They wanted him to come too. Monique did just that. She went back inside, grabbed her newborn son, and got back into the car. This was the last time Monique and Andre were ever seen.
At 10 pm that night, Timothy started calling around for Monique. He called her mother and asked if Monique and Andre were there. They were not. After not being able to find her anywhere, the family as a whole began to worry. Timothy called the police to report both of them missing. Sadly, Timothy would start to get answers the next day. On the morning of March 30th, a jogger came across Monique’s body in the Bronx. Her body was fully clothed and was laid at the bottom of an embankment. She had been struck in the head and then strangled with a scarf. She had several defensive wounds including bruises and broken fingernails. At the time, the police were unable to even identify the body because there was no ID. There was also no sign of Andre.
Since their family lived in Brooklyn, Timothy had no idea about the body in the Bronx. He was actually putting an ad in the Sunday newspaper asking anyone for information on Monique and Andre’s whereabouts. A detective in the Bronx saw the ad and recognized Monique as the jane doe found in Eastchester Bay. They informed her family of the unfortunate news later that day.
A team of divers searched the nearby waters for any signs of Andre. But they came up with nothing. Once the police heard the story of the women and their insistence on having Monique bring Andre, they believe they knew what happened. Andre was the target all along. Monique was killed so that they could take him as their own. Ken Lindahl, a retired inspector for the NYPD, expressed his frustration with locating the suspects. No one in the family knew the names of these women. No one outside of their family was ever able to identify them either.
Investigators believe that the women may have taken Andre to help with their credit card scam. Women with infant children were less likely to be questioned by sales clerks when using stolen credit cards. They floated the possibility that they were looking to recruit Monique for their scams but killed her when she refused to go along with it. They kept Andre so they could go through with their plan regardless.
If you’re a listener of True Crime Black, Ken Lindahl, the retired NYPD inspector mentioned earlier should ring a bell. He was also part of the team investigating the disappearances of Shane Walker and Christopher Dansby. They were two kids who were abducted from a Harlem park in 1989. Those 2 children — along were Andre Bryant — were all black children in New York whose abductions were just months apart.
The women last seen with Monique and Andre are the prime suspects in this case. One of the women was Black, between 30 and 35, and had a dark skin complexion. The other woman was either Black or Hispanic. She was between 22 and 25 years old at the time. She had a light skin complexion with long red hair. They were seen driving a Burgundy or Maroon late model 1988 or 89 Pontiac with tinted windows. Neither woman has been identified.
There is one last tidbit that was very strange. Just two days after Monique’s body was found, a woman called her apartment asking to speak with her. She referred to herself as “Joan”. When she was told that Monique had died, Joan responded by saying that she couldn’t have been dead since they were shopping together for the past 2 days. Joan gave an address on the phone, but the police said it was a dead end. That caller has never been identified and the name “Joan” has never come up again.
To this day, Andre Bryant has never been found.
On March 28, 1989, 22-year-old Monique Rivera took her sons for a walk around their Brooklyn neighborhood. While the family was walking, they came across two women sitting in their car. The woman got out of the car and approached Monique and her sons. They made friendly small talk and asked if...
original.newsbreak.com
