When I was growing up there was one woman we never took candy from on Halloween because everybody knew she poisoned kids and put razor blades in her apples.
Of course we didn't have any evidence and no one we know had been poisoned. I don't even know how this woman got that rep. It was an urban legend, a story probably created because some kid thought the woman was mean or creepy.
Yet, urban legends can be powerful and based in truth. That's the terrain covered in Cropsey (Investigation Discovery, 9 tonight), an eerie and thoughtful documentary that tells the story of Staten Island, NY's urban legend and the real-life events that fueled it.
Filmmakers Joshua Zeman and Barbara Brancaccio grew up on Staten Island and heard stories of Cropsey, a boogeyman who killed children. The two go back home and investigate the basis of the Cropsey tales, the disappearance of five children over 15 years.
They start with an overview of Staten Island's history; in the 70s, it was basically the suburbs for fleeing Brooklynites, a place with lots of land. That land also made it a dumping ground -- for garbage, for bodies of folks offed by the Mob, and for the mental incapacitated.
That last category gets exposed when a young aggressive reporter named Geraldo Rivera (yes, him) gained fame by exposing the horrors of Willowbrook, a mental institution. (And I do mean horrors. It's the best thing Geraldo has ever done.) Later, when a girl with Down Syndrome disappears, her body is found buried in a shallow grave near Willowbrook. The seeds of Cropsey begin.
Zeman and Brancaccio follow the cases of the missing children and the trial of Andre Rand, the man who was convicted in the death of one of them. Later, after he does his time for that crime, he faces another trial for the death of a second child. Rand is definitely a sketchy character; he might have been a cult leader among the homeless, he might have been a devil worshipper, he might have abused children and dead people. Or not. The evidence is flimsy, leading to doubt and more questions.
While the case and the mystery surrounding it is compelling, "Cropsey" is really about fear and loss and how we make sense of the world. Our need to understand is human, but it can be dangerous, this film shows. Boogeymen may scare us, but we need them.
Assistant Features Editor Adrienne Johnson Martin would like to have her life turned into an animated cartoon. 
