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Real Name: Andre Terrence Bryant
Nicknames: No known nicknames
Location: Brooklyn, New York
Date: March 29, 1989

Bio[]

Date of Birth February 17, 1989
Height: 1'7"
Weight: 10 lbs.
Characteristics: Black male with black hair and brown eyes. He was wearing a gray sweat suit with two horizontal red lines, white tights, a beige knitted hat, a white and beige sweater, and white socks.

Case[]

Details: Andre Bryant is the son of Timothy Bryant and Monique Rivera. In 1989, Timothy was twenty-four and Monique was twenty-two. Her sister, Simone, says she was a warm person; everybody that knew her loved her. Her children were her world. She had three boys: six-year-old Timothy Jr., four-year-old Thomas, and one-month-old Andre. They lived in an apartment on Madison Street in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn, New York.
Simone remembers that Andre was a sweet little baby. He was quiet and had a lot of hair and a big face. She remembers him lying down and smiling at her. She says that Monique was a good, protective mother. Her children came first. She made sure they were safe. She was always happy and laughing. She loved her music. She listened to it and danced with her kids.
On March 28, 1989, Monique and her sons left their apartment and went for a walk. While walking, they encountered two women in a car. The women got out and approached Monique. They talked with her about her sons and asked to hold Andre. They invited her and her sons to come with them to lunch at McDonald’s. She happily accepted.
The women drove Monique and her sons to McDonald’s. While there, the women seemed very interested in Andre; they each took turns holding him and talking to him. After that, they convinced Monique to go shopping with them at the Green Acres shopping mall in Valley Stream, Long Island. The group went to a store called Canadian’s, where Monique bought herself an outfit. They then went to another store, where the women bought her a pair of pants and a shirt. They then took her and her sons home.
Timothy was concerned when Monique came home and said she had been out shopping with the two women. He was uncomfortable that she was getting clothes from them. He did not understand why they were buying her clothes, since she had her own money. He asked her what she was doing with them. She said she knew them from middle school. It is not clear if she actually knew them or not.
Monique told Timothy that the women used fraudulent credit cards to make their purchases. She did not seem concerned about it. She also told him that they invited her to go shopping with them at the Galleria mall in White Plains, New York, the next day. He was concerned about her going with them again, but she told him not to worry. His sister, Patricia, agreed to watch the children while Monique shopped.
At 2pm on March 29, the two women called Monique from a payphone around the corner and asked her to come out and meet them. When she got to their car, which was parked in front of her building, they said to her, "Go back in and bring Andre; we want him to come." Monique went back into the house. She told Patricia that the women only wanted her to bring Andre. So, she picked him up and took him to the car. That was the last time Monique and Andre were seen by their family.
At 10pm that night, Timothy called Monique’s mother and asked her if Monique and Andre were at her house. They were not. Her family knew she would not stay over in an unfamiliar place without letting them know. They knew automatically that something was wrong. Timothy called the police and reported Monique and Andre missing.
The next morning, March 30, a jogger found Monique’s fully clothed body at the bottom of a wooded embankment, about thirty feet from City Island Road, near the Eastchester Bay Inlet in the Bronx. She had been struck in the head and then strangled to death with a scarf. She had numerous defensive wounds, including bruises and broken fingernails. No identification was found with her body. There was no sign of Andre at the scene. Police were unable to identify her at that time.
A few days later, Timothy put an ad in the Sunday newspaper, asking for information on Monique and Andre’s whereabouts. A Bronx detective recognized her as the woman found near Eastchester Bay. Later that day, a detective arrived at Monique’s mother’s home and gave her the tragic news. Simone says she will never forget that day.
Divers searched the nearby waters for Andre’s body. However, nothing was found. Simone says they could not understand what was happening. Monique was dead, but where was Andre? The fact that the women did not want Monique to leave the house without Andre led the police to believe that he was the target. He was the one they were looking for, and when she did not go along with their plan, they killed her.
NYPD Inspector Ken Lindahl says infant child abduction is really uncommon, and when this case hit, everybody took notice of it. Unfortunately, the two suspects, the two women, had vanished, along with Andre. No one in the family knew their names and they have never been identified. Simone says she has no idea why they wanted Andre.
Authorities believe that the women may have taken Andre to raise him as their own child. They also speculated that the women used him as a "prop" in their credit card scam. They noted that women with infants were less likely to be scrutinized by sales clerks when using stolen credit cards. It is possible that they tried to recruit Monique for their scam as well. When she refused, they killed her and kept Andre.
Authorities have also suspected that Andre may have been sold into a black-market adoption ring. His disappearance may be connected to two other children who vanished from Harlem, New York, in 1989: Christopher Dansby and Shane Walker. Christopher and Shane both vanished from the same park just a few months apart. All three children were young Black boys.
Andre’s family hopes that he is alive and will someday come home.

Burgundy Pontiac

Monique and Andre were last seen entering a Burgundy Pontiac similar to this one

Suspects: The two women last seen with Andre and Monique are the prime suspects in this case. One of the women was Black, between thirty and thirty-five (in 1989), heavyset, with a dark complexion. She was wearing sunglasses. The other woman was Hispanic or Black, between twenty-two and twenty-five (in 1989), with long red or bushy orange hair, and a light complexion. She was wearing a red leather jacket and white pants. She was most likely the woman that Monique knew from school. Both women were about 5'7" tall. Neither have ever been identified.
The women were driving a Burgundy (or maroon) late-model 1988 or 1989 Pontiac Grand Am Sports Edition with tinted windows. It may have had Maryland license plates. Monique’s son reported seeing a gun in the car.
Two days after Monique’s body was identified, a woman calling herself "Joan Walker" called her apartment. She asked to speak with Monique. When told that she was dead, "Joan" said, "Monique can't be dead. I was just shopping with her the last two days." During the call, "Joan" also gave an address. Police said it did not "check out." The woman has never been identified and authorities have never been able to link anyone with that name to the case. They are not sure if she was one of the two women seen with Monique and Andre; if she was, they theorize she may not have participated in the actual murder.
Extra Notes:

  • This case was first released on October 19, 2020 as a part of the second volume of the Netflix reboot of Unsolved Mysteries. It is featured at the end of "Stolen Kids" as a part of a long-term missing children roll call along with Cherie Barnes, Amber Crum, Corey Edkin, Desiree Carroll, Ke'Shaun Vanderhorst, Aaron Anderson, and Christopher Abeyta. It is also featured in a web exclusive video released by Netflix via Google Drive.
  • It was also featured on The Trail Went Cold podcast.
  • Similar cases of infants missing after their mother's murders include: Shannon Verhage and Le-Zhan Williams.
  • Some sources state that Timothy was Monique's boyfriend; others state that he was her husband. Some also state that Monique knew the two women from high school.

Results: Unsolved
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