PHILADELPHIA — More than six decades after the badly bruised body of a young boy was found in a cardboard box in Philadelphia’s Fox Chase section, police Thursday announced the long-sought identity of the boy — finally naming “America’s Unknown Child” and providing some closure in what police say is one of the city’s most enduring unsolved homicides.
Long-known as the “Boy in the Box,” Joseph Augustus Zarelli was newly 4 years old when he was found in a bassinet box in the rural Northeast Philadelphia field in February of 1957, police said. He likely died from blunt force trauma, Philadelphia Police Homicide Captain Jason Smith said.
For decades, investigators tried to uncover Zarelli’s mysterious identity with little luck, canvassing the city with fliers of his face, scouring local orphanages, and even distributing pictures of the boy’s clothed body posed in a chair in hopes of jogging someone’s memory.
