The Unsolved Murder of Monique Rivera and Abduction of Andre Bryant
On March 28, 1989, 22-year-old Monique Rivera decided to take her three sons on a walk around the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY. The two older boys, 7-year-old Thomas and 4-year-old Tim walked alongside their mother who was carrying her youngest son, 6-week-old Andre Bryant.
According to the Charley Project, a burgundy Pontiac Grand Am pulled over to talk to Monique and her sons. The car was occupied by two women that Monique may have known from middle school.
The women cooed over Thomas, Tim, and especially Andre. They invited Monique to go shopping with them, and she obliged. After buying an outfit, Monique and the kids were dropped off at home. The women invited Monique to go on another shopping trip the next day, insisting she bring along baby Andre. Monique agreed and asked her sister-in-law to watch Thomas and Tim for a few hours, assuring her she’d be home later that evening.
That was the last time Monique Rivera was seen alive. Her body was found along the shore of City Island in the Bronx. She had been beaten and strangled to death. Broken fingernails and defensive wounds on her body suggest that she fought back against her attacker(s).
There was no sign of 6-week-old Andre Bryant, and 32 years later he has still not been located.
Andre Bryant’s abduction is eerily similar to the abductions of Christopher Dansby and Shane Walker, two toddlers stolen from the same Harlem playground in May and August of 1989. All three boys were Black, under the age of 2, and abducted in the same year. While investigators believed the disappearances of Dansby and Walker may be connected, they did not think Bryant’s case was related.
In an interview with the New York Times in 1989, the Deputy Chief of the NYPD at the time, Ronald Fenrich, stated that Dansby and Walker’s cases were “completely different from other missing-children cases of recent months.”
The family of Andre Bryant and Monique Rivera seem to agree to that assessment. In 2017, Monique Rivera’s sister, Simone Rivera, reached out to PIX 11 News after she had a series of dreams where she claimed Monique spoke to her and asked her to help solve her and Andre’s case.
Rivera told PIX 11 that she never believed her nephew’s disappearance was related to a baby-selling ring: “I think it’s something personal. They know us. It’s no stranger.”
Monique Rivera’s killer or killers have never been identified, and the disappearances of Andre Bryant, Christopher Dansby, and Shane Walker remain unsolved.
