The Boy in the Box

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Original poster for the "Boy in the Box" case, with which the police tried to identify the unknown victim.

The 4 to 5 year old murder victim who died on February 25, 1957 next to Susquehanna Road in the Fox Chase area in the northeast is known as Boy in the Box or America's unknown child - Philadelphia ( Pennsylvania ) was found and was never identified. The case shocked Philadelphia in 1957. In order to determine the boy's identity, leaflets with his face displayed were posted all over the area. After more than 50 years, the investigation is still ongoing.

The victim

The victim was a to date unidentified white boy between the ages of four and six, whose naked body was found in a field next to a country road. The body was wrapped in a cheap blanket and faced up in a large cardboard box . The boy's arms were carefully crossed over his stomach, and the body was dry and clean. The fingernails and toenails had recently been cut and looked clean. His hair was also shortly before, very close to the head and cut in a coarse and hasty manner (possibly to disguise the boy's identity). Small clumps of his hair were found all over the boy's body. This was taken as a possible indication that someone cut his hair shortly before or immediately after the boy's death .

There were bruises all over the boy's body , all of which must have been inflicted at the same time. The boy had seven scars on his body, three of them possibly as a result of surgery . The palm of his right hand and the soles of both feet were coarse-skinned and wrinkled by what the police called what the police called the "washerwoman effect". This suggests that the right hand and both feet were in the water for an extended period of time shortly before or after the boy's death. When ultraviolet light was shone on the boy's left eye, it fluoresced a blue color, which could indicate that a specialty diagnostic dye was being used to treat a possible chronic eye condition . The autopsy revealed that the boy hadn't eaten in the last two or three hours before he died. X-rays showed no current or past fractures . The cool weather made it difficult to determine how long the child had been there. It could have been two to three days, or two or three weeks. A mysterious brown residue was found in the boy's stomach . He could not be identified, but it could indicate that the boy vomited shortly before he died . Fingerprints and footprints were taken and compared with local hospital files with no results.

Foster families and institutions in the vicinity were checked by the investigators. All children housed there were found, which meant that it could be ruled out that the boy could have come from one of these foster families or institutions.

In 1998 the boy's body was exhumed . Despite the advanced stage of decay could still mitochondria - DNA obtained from the teeth of the boy. This can be used to determine a possible relationship .

proofs

The box

The cardboard box the boy was found in was originally used to carry a baby cradle . The cradle, which was transported in the exact box in which the boy was found, came from a dozen that were delivered to a JC Penney store on November 27, 1956 and between December 3, 1956 and February 16 1957 was sold. There were no business records showing the buyers' identities. Nevertheless, the investigators managed to identify all but one of the cradles and their associated boxes. The box the boy was found in was in relatively good condition, with streaks of white paint on the inside, indicating that the cradle it was carrying was also white. No fingerprints were found on the box.

Man's cap

A blue man's cap was found near the crime scene . A beaten path led directly from the crime scene to the cap. It turned out that the cap was one of 12 that were made and the seller could still remember it due to a special request from the buyer. In her opinion, he looked like the child. The man was alone, in working clothes, didn't speak a foreign accent, had blonde hair, and was possibly in his late twenties.

Witnesses

• Frederick J. Benonis : A 26 year old student. He called the police just after 10 a.m. on February 26, 1957, and reported that he had found the body of a young boy the day before. He said he drove down Susquehanna Road around 3:15 p.m. on Monday afternoon. He saw a hare jumping into the undergrowth, stopped the car and followed the animal. He saw some muskrat traps and then came to a large cardboard box. He looked inside and found what could possibly be a doll or a little boy. He decided not to report the incident, but reversed his decision the next day. Police later learned that Benonis had a habit of spying on young women at a nearby school. This could explain why Benonis didn't call the police right away. Benoni made voluntarily a polygraph - "Test" and insisted him.
• In March 1957, an amateur artist volunteered and identified the boy as the same one she had seen on a bus from Philadelphia to southern New Jersey . The boy slept in the arms of a man with whom he got on the bus in Camden . The woman submitted a drawing of the man's face to investigators, but investigators were unable to verify her story or identify the bus passenger.
• In March 1957, a waitress from Wilmington , Delaware , answered and identified the boy as the child she saw walking hand in hand with a man at work a few months ago. The man talked about catching a train to Philadelphia. The woman's testimony could not be confirmed.
• Shortly after the boy's body was found, a man told the police about a strange incident on Sunday, February 24, 1957, about 60 meters from the place where the victim was found. The witness said he was driving along Verree Road when he saw a car parked along Susquehanna Road. A woman and a boy were standing by the trunk of the car. The woman seemed to be reaching for something in the trunk. That woman was between 40 and 50 years old, of medium stature and height, and wore a plaid winter coat. The boy was between 12 and 14 years old and about the same size as the woman. The witness said he thought the two had a flat tire. So he drove to Susquehanna Road, slowed down his car and asked if the two needed help. According to his statement, both of them turned their backs on him and remained silent. They seemed to be trying to hide the license plate from him. The man found this strange, but decided that the two of them did not want to be disturbed by him and drove on again.
• Max Schellinger , a Philadelphia hairdresser, told police he was "almost certain" that he cut the boy's hair just a week before he was found. The boy told him he had five brothers and a sister and lived in the Strawberry Mansion area of ​​the city near the Schuylkill River . Two investigators accompanied Schellinger on a door-to-door tour in the area to identify possible witnesses who could provide more information about the boy and his family. The search was fruitless.
• John Powroznik was an 18-year-old boy who told police that he had found the murdered boy's body on the weekend of February 22-23 , 1957, but was too scared to tell anyone about it. His home was near the crime scene, and Powroznik owned several muskrat traps nearby. Powroznik was unsure of the exact day the box was found, but told investigators it was drizzling at the time. According to the weather forecast, there was light rain on Saturday, February 23 at around 1 p.m.

Theories

The foster family

A foster family living nearby at the time was suspected by the private investigative coroner Remington Bristow of having something to do with the boy's death. Bristow suspected the boy to be a biological child of the foster family. When the house was sold in 1961, Bristow looked around and found both a duck pond, which he suspected might have been the boy's hand and feet, and a cradle of the type that had been transported in the box . In 1988, Bristow found the name of a doctor who had looked after the children of the foster family and had never been interviewed. Bristow suspected the unknown boy's medical records were in the doctor's possession. He found the doctor's wife, but she told him that she had destroyed all of her husband's documents when he died five years ago. Bristow never stopped suspecting the foster family until his death in 1993.

The police investigators never suspected the foster family to have anything to do with the murder. All foster children who were in the care of the foster family were found and despite several interrogations of the foster family, including one in 1984 and one in 1998, no trace was found that could incriminate the foster family.

Ms story

In February 2002, explained a woman who is referred to only by the letter "M" or the name "Martha," her mother had the unknown boy in 1954 by his biological parents adopted and then kept in the cellar. As a result, the boy, whose name is said to have been "Jonathan", was repeatedly subjected to abuse by her mother. After two and a half years, she finally killed him by throwing him to the floor after he vomited in the bathtub (the brown residue in his stomach matches this). The mother then cut his long hair to make identification more difficult, and she and her mother put him in a cardboard box that they found in the Fox Chase area. M also said that just as she and her mother were about to get the boy's body out of the trunk , a male driver stopped and asked her if they needed help. The two would then have turned their backs on the man and tried to cover the license plate. After a few moments the man drove away again. This statement fits almost exactly with a man's statement from 1957, which was still kept secret in 1989. According to her psychiatrist, M told this story as early as 1989, but refused to tell the police for 13 years.

The investigators were initially enthusiastic, if skeptical, about the appropriate statement Ms. To their disappointment, an investigation did not reveal any evidence of M's story. M's mother's neighbors, who at that time also had a key and thus access to the house, declared M's story "ridiculous" and didn't know of any boy who lived in the house. Even a search in the basement of the house did not find any clues. Due to the lack of recordings of the conversation between the psychiatrist and M in 1989, it cannot be ruled out that the testimony was changed over time or was invented later. M's years of mental health problems also undermine the believability of the story. It should be noted that the investigators found neither evidence nor counter-evidence for the story of Ms.

today

The case reopened in 1998. References are still being received at irregular intervals, even if hardly any of them seem to have much value. Most recently, however, the investigators have started a new initiative. You are trying to match the boy's DNA profile with the DNA profiles in the national mitochondrial DNA database.

Web links

• Photos (with accompanying English text) of the murder case ( Memento from September 22, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
• America's Unknown Child - A homepage dedicated to the case. ( Memento from May 18, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
• Investigations into the case on the website of Vidocq (International Association of Investigators).