Ethel Louise Atwell, a 42-year-old Black female, arrived for her early morning shift as a physical therapy aide at the Staten Island Developmental Center, formerly known as the Willowbrook State School, on October 24, 1978. The parking lot was dark as she pulled in around 6:00 a.m. and parked her car. She never made it into the building. Two of her coworkers, already inside, heard a commotion from the parking area. They reported hearing a man's voice say, "Come on, come on," followed by Atwell's pleading response, "No, you'll beat me." Her words were followed by a scream that cut through the early morning quiet.
When authorities arrived at the scene, Atwell was gone. Beside her locked car, they discovered a disturbing collection of her personal belongings scattered on the ground: her tan purse, one black shoe, an earring, three buttons torn from her coat, and half of her dentures. The search for Atwell began immediately. Her car keys were soon located in a wooded area approximately 75 feet away from her vehicle. Police and civilian volunteers conducted an exhaustive search of the sprawling grounds by foot, on horseback, and from the air, but found no further trace of the missing woman. Her four sons, desperate for answers, even reached out to police in New Jersey, where their mother lived, hoping for additional help as the investigation in New York seemed to stall.
While no arrests have ever been made in Ethel Atwell's disappearance, suspicion has long focused on Andre Rand, a convicted kidnapper and suspected serial killer. Rand had ties to the Willowbrook State School, having worked there as an orderly in the 1960s. Years after Atwell vanished, Rand was convicted of kidnapping 12-year-old Jennifer Schweiger in 1987, whose body was found buried on the grounds of the same institution where Atwell was last seen. He was also convicted for the 1981 kidnapping of 7-year-old Holly Hughes and is a suspect in several other disappearances on Staten Island. Despite the circumstantial connections, no direct evidence has ever surfaced to definitively link Rand to Atwell's case.
The unsettling nature of Atwell's disappearance was compounded by the fact that just two months prior, in August 1978, another employee of the facility, a nurse named Shin-ae Lee, was found raped and murdered, her body buried in a shallow grave on the school's grounds. The proximity in time and location of these two violent acts against women working at the same institution has led to speculation that the cases might be connected. However, like Atwell's case, the murder of Shin-ae Lee also remains officially unsolved. To this day, Ethel Louise Atwell has never been found, and her case remains a haunting mystery.
