Convicted kidnapper Andre Rand sends Mother's Day letter to 'all the ladies' Published: Sunday, May 15, 2011, 7:27 AM
By
Frank Donnelly
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- At his sentencing seven years ago for abducting a Port Richmond girl two decades earlier, Andre Rand launched into a rambling, half-hour monologue in which he denied guilt, professed his love for older and lonely women and invited the female jurors to correspond with him. Rand, a twice-convicted kidnapper, who is, perhaps, the borough's most notorious criminal, recently reached out again to borough women -- this time in bizarre, Advance File Photo Rand, seen at trial in October 1988, is currently serving consecutive 25 -years-to-life sentences for the kidnappings of Holly Ann Hughes, 7, in 1981 and Jennifer Schweiger, 12, in 1987. He is not eligible for parole until 2037.
handwritten missives sent to the Advance. Printed in a meticulous, draftsman-like hand on ruler-drawn lines, Rand, 67, wished a "Happy Mother's Day" to "all the ladies on Staten Island who supported
'prosecutorial vindictiveness' against an innocent person!" "Should I become a millionaire, it would be my true nature to grant all of you with each, an envelope full of seeds, to plant and cultivate a rosebush (shrub) that produces roses every season, as a token of my heartfelt forgiveness (year after year), rather than bouquets of rosebuds which blossoms and shortly diesout," wrote the drifter and one-time handyman. At that point, Rand took a sharp, mystical turn. He invoked, in both rhyming and non-rhyming lines, the "Spirit of God" to guide him along life's path. "It is only a tiny 'rosebud' -- A flower of God's design; But I cannot unfold the petals with these clumsy hands of mine," Rand wrote. "The secret of unfolding flowers is not know to such as I -- The flower, only the Page 158 of 201