The mystery of the “child from the box” found dead in 1957 is revealed

American police have publicly identified a boy found dead in a box in Philadelphia 65 years ago as four-year-old Joseph Augustus Zarelli, the victim of one of the oldest unsolved murders in the city.

DNA identification represents investigators’ biggest breakthrough in a decade-old cold case that dates back to late February 1957, when a dead child was found wrapped in a blanket inside a cardboard box with evidence of “recent and past” injuries, CNN reports. Philadelphia Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw said.

The case attracted “tremendous” public interest, but no one ever claimed the dead baby as their child, and his identity remained a mystery despite numerous attempts to identify him over the years.

That changed this week when police announced they had successfully identified the child through detective work and with the help of genetic genealogists, a field that has led to numerous breakthroughs in cold cases in recent years.

“For sixty-five years, the story of America’s Unknown Child has haunted this community, the Philadelphia Police Department, our country, and the world,” says Outlaw. “Despite the fact that the entire person of Joseph Augustus Zarelli and his legitimate right to exist were deprived, he was never forgotten.”

Officials hope the methods used to identify Joseph after so many years will help them with other cold cases in the future; the breakthrough “brings hope that the city of Philadelphia will never again have an unidentified murder victim,” notes Outlaw.

However, while officials are celebrating Joseph’s identification this week, the investigation into who was responsible for his death continues.

“We have our suspicions as to who may be responsible, but it would be irresponsible of me to share these suspicions as the criminal investigation remains active and ongoing,” said Capt. Jason Smith of the Philadelphia Police Homicide Squad. He hopes the news of the identification will spark “an avalanche of clues from the public” but acknowledged that the case’s long history puts investigators in an “uphill battle.”

“We don’t have to make an arrest,” Smith admitted. “We may never identify the killer. But we’re going to do our best to try.”

The story began on February 25, 1957, when Joseph’s body was found in a box off Susquehanna Road, in a wooded area in northeast Philadelphia. It then became clear, says Outlaw, that the child “experienced horrors to which no one, no one should ever be subjected.”

He had been “severely beaten,” Smith added, and had multiple bruises visible on his body. His hair was “roughly cut close to his head”.

An autopsy confirmed the child was between 4 and 6 years old and found that he had “multiple abrasions, bruises, subdural hemorrhage and pleural effusion,” Smith said, injuries that were essentially blunt force trauma.

The case generated a lot of public interest, and police received and responded to hundreds of reports from the area and across the country. “However, nothing would lead them to positively identify the child,” Smith said, adding that it becomes extremely difficult to solve a murder case and bring the killer to justice when the identity of the victim remains unidentified.

While DNA was discovered in the 1800s, DNA technology didn’t get very far by the 1950s, Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Constance D’Angelo explained on Thursday. Instead, “visual identification” was the main method of identifying people, she said, so authorities published photos of the child in the newspaper, put up posters around the city, and even included a photo of a gas bill sent out to residents. However, there was no breakthrough in the case.

The boy was originally buried in a potter’s field in Philadelphia, where he lay until 1998, when his remains were exhumed and then reinterred in Ivy Hill Cemetery, where today the headstone reads “America’s Unknown Child.”

Investigators have kept parts of the child’s remains for future research. But DNA tests at the time yielded no new leads.

Police exhumed the remains again in 2019 when it was determined that more modern forensic techniques could help in the case, Smith said.

This time, the DNA test results were uploaded to DNA databases, Smith said. And with the help of genetic genealogists from Identifinders International, a company specializing in forensic genetic genealogy, detectives were able to locate and contact the child’s maternal relatives.

Investigators identified the biological mother and obtained his birth records, which also include the father’s name. Further investigation led the detectives to an identity that was later confirmed in further testing as the child’s father.

Police declined to name the child’s parents, but Smith said both were dead. However, Joseph has siblings who are still alive.

Dr. Colleen Fitzpatrick, president of Identifinders International, said the case was the most difficult of her career, due in part to the degree of DNA degradation.

Meanwhile, the Vidocq Society, a Philadelphia crime-investigation club that has been one of the champions of the case for years, is preparing to finally put a name on the child’s grave.

“Joseph August Zarelli will no longer be that boy in the box,” Bill Fletcher of the Vidocq Society said Thursday, “and will no longer be unknown.”