On May 18, 1989, Allison Dansby and her two-year-old son Christopher Milton Dansby went to the Martin Luther King Jr. Towers Playground in Harlem, New York. Allison hadn’t brought her son’s stroller so she left him at the playground under the supervision of his grandmother while she went to a nearby store.
When she returned, around 7 PM, Christopher was gone. According to the grandmother, he had been playing with a red ball and an older girl and boy. However, there were no signs of the ball or the children.
Allison immediately reported Christopher missing. A 7-year-old neighbor told the police he had seen Christopher with a man walking down west 111th Street, about ten minutes away from the playground.
He was described as an African-American man, between 25 and 30-years-old, thin and about 6 feet tall, with dreadlocked hair.
Three months later, on August 10, Rosa Glover and her one-year-old son Shane Anthony Walker were at the same playground in Harlem. An older girl and boy approached Rosa and asked if they could play with Shane on the swings. She agreed and sat down at a nearby bench.
While Shane played with the children, a man sat down next to Rosa and started a conversation. He talked about how bad things happen to kids whose parents don’t pay attention and proceeded to show her some of his scars he had gotten in fights.
When Rosa turned around to look at Shane, he was gone. Moments later, the boy and girl he had been playing with appeared through a hole in the fence. They said they had left Christopher by himself and hadn’t seen where he went.
Rosa went to the police station and reported her son missing. The kids Shane had been playing with were questioned by authorities — the ten-year-old girl and five-year-old boy were siblings. Interestingly, they were the same children who had been playing with Christopher Dansby when he vanished from the same spot a few months earlier. They denied knowing anything about either child’s whereabouts. The man who sat down next to Rosa was also questioned and ruled out as a suspect by authorities.
At first, police thought it was possible he had been kidnapped by a family member. They have since said Shane was most likely taken by a non-relative.
Authorities want to question an African-American man, 19 to 24-years-old, about 5″8, wearing a yellow shirt and acid-washed jeans.
A few days after Shane’s disappearance, Rosa received a call from someone saying her son was buried in an abandoned building. Authorities investigated the call but it led nowhere.
Though authorities were unsure if the disappearances were connected at first, the glaring similarities were not ignored by the toddlers’ families.
Christopher and Shane were both African-American and lived in the same apartment building. They went missing on the same day of the week (Thursday) around the same time of day (evening).
Their disappearances have been linked to the vanishing of another African-American child in March of 1989.
One-month-old Andre Bryant and his mother Monique Rivera were last seen getting into the car of two African-American women. Monique had met them recently and became friends after they took her shopping. On the day they went missing, the women invited Monique on a shopping trip and insisted she bring Andre. Monique’s body was found the next day but Andre was never seen again.
Though authorities pondered the possibility of the three boys having been abducted for a black market adoption ring, Monique’s mur*der suggests it was personal.
Rumors around Harlem blamed Christopher’s mother for his disappearance. Allison was open about her struggles with crack cocaine which led to people claiming she had either sold her son for money or he was taken to pay a drug debt. She was cleared of involvement by authorities.
It has been thirty years and both cases are still unsolved. If alive, Christopher Dansby would be 37-years-old and Shane Walker 36-years-old.
