The Boy in the Box

On 25 February 1957 a boy’s body was found beside Susquehanna Road in Fox Chase, Philadelphia, naked, wrapped in a plaid blanket, inside a cardboard bassinet box. He was malnourished and badly bruised, his hair had been recently cut and his fingernails trimmed. Cause of death was blunt force trauma. Philadelphia kept the case open for sixty-five years and buried him under a stone that read simply America’s Unknown Child. On 30 November 2022 police announced that DNA and genealogical databases had identified him: Joseph Augustus Zarelli, born 13 January 1953, four years old when he died. A cousin’s upload to a public database was what broke it. It is still an open homicide investigation with no suspect named.