Detective work and DNA analysis helped officials learn the identity of a 4-year-old boy whose beaten body was found inside a cardboard box in Philadelphia in 1957. The killing remains unsolved.
On a cold day in February 1957, a college student found a boy’s body inside a cardboard box in a wooded area of northeast Philadelphia.
The student waited a day to call the police, who immediately went to work to figure out who the boy was, who had killed him and how his body had ended up in a box. It was a mystery that would endure for decades.
The boy, then believed to be between 4 and 6 years old, had been beaten to death, an autopsy later revealed. But clues were scant, and copious efforts over decades to solve the crime proved futile. The unknown victim became known as “The Boy in the Box.” Others called him, more gently, “America’s Unknown Child.”
His name is now known: Joseph Augustus Zarelli. Born on Jan. 13, 1953, he was 4 when he died, Philadelphia police officials said Thursday, at a news conference where they described a breakthrough using DNA and genetic genealogy techniques that have revolutionized cold case work in recent years.
Capt. Jason Smith said officers did not yet know who killed the boy or the circumstances of how he had died, and that investigations would continue.
“We have our suspicions as to who may be responsible, but it would be irresponsible of me to share these suspicions as this remains an active and ongoing criminal investigation,” Captain Smith said.
The steps that ultimately led to Joseph’s identification began in April 2019, when a court granted investigators approval to exhume his body and apply modern DNA analysis. This helped them track down relatives, including his mother and father, who are now deceased, investigators said. He has living siblings, but the police declined to release their names, in order to protect their privacy.
The genetic genealogy technique worked where the use of hair comparisons, footprints, X-rays and other methods had failed over the years. At the news conference, law enforcement officials also pledged to use the genetic genealogy techniques for other unidentified remains and unsolved cases in Philadelphia.
In an interview with The New York Times published in 2007, Elmer Palmer, the first officer to arrive at the scene on Feb. 26, 1957, said he thought at the time that the case would be solved quickly. But many of the investigators who worked on the case over the years died themselves without seeing it solved, officials said Thursday.
The boy was thought to have been dead for a few days, and was believed to be malnourished, National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.