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#Post#: 84--------------------------------------------------
Re: THE BOY IN THE BOX: WM, 4-6, found in Philadelphia, PA, Feb
1957
DIR By: Akoya
Date: November 25, 2018, 9:30 am
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HTML http://i.imgur.com/CSn5RVK.jpg
#Post#: 85--------------------------------------------------
Re: THE BOY IN THE BOX: WM, 4-6, found in Philadelphia, PA, Feb
1957
DIR By: Akoya
Date: November 25, 2018, 9:32 am
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This is the location as it looks now.
HTML http://i.imgur.com/oki5aBa.jpg
#Post#: 86--------------------------------------------------
Re: THE BOY IN THE BOX: WM, 4-6, found in Philadelphia, PA, Feb
1957
DIR By: Akoya
Date: November 25, 2018, 9:36 am
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HTML http://americasunknownchild.net/summary.htm
Case Summary
Type of Case: Child Homicide
Date Body Discovered: February 25, 1957
Place of Discovery: Susquehanna Road, Philadelphia, PA. (Fox
Chase section)
The Discovery Site:
In 1957, Susquehanna Road was a narrow country lane in the
sparsely settled Fox Chase section of northeast Philadelphia. It
was approximately a half-mile in length, linking Pine Road on
the west with Verree Road on the east. The southern side of
Susquehanna Road was wooded at that time, but the tree cover did
not extend beyond a few yards from the road in most places. It
quickly gave way to extensive stretches of open field and scrub
growth. This provided a perfect habitat for rabbits, muskrats,
and other small game. There were no houses on Susquehanna Road
itself, but the compound of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd, a
religious order which operated a school for "wayward girls",
adjoined the road on the north. A driveway providing access to
this large, multiple building facility was located about 500
yards west of the intersection of Susquehanna and Verree roads.
Almost directly across the street from the entrance to the Good
Shepherd School was a wooded area choked with thick underbrush
that was often used by local residents as a place to dump
refuse. It was here, at the junction of two well-worn footpaths,
that the victim's body was twice discovered during the final
week of February 1957.
The Victim:
An unidentified Caucasian male, probable age 4 to 6 years, whose
nude body, wrapped in a cheap flannel blanket, was found lying
face up inside a large cardboard carton just a few feet from the
edge of Susquehanna Road . The body was dry and clean. The boy's
arms were carefully folded across his stomach. The finger and
toenails had been recently trimmed short and neat. The child was
40 1/2 inches tall and weighed 30 pounds. He had blue eyes, pale
skin, and appeared malnourished. His hair was described as
medium to light brown, or blond in color. It had been cut
recently - very close to the head, in a crude, hurried way,
perhaps as a deliberate attempt to conceal the child's identity.
Small clumps of cut hair clung to his entire body, suggesting
that someone had groomed him while he was unclothed, probably
either shortly before or immediately after death.
There were many bruises all over the child's body; particularly
on the head and face. All of the bruises appeared to have been
inflicted at the same time. There were also seven scars on the
body, three of which could have resulted from surgical
procedures. Two of these "surgical" scars were on the chest and
groin. They had healed quite well, leaving only a hair-line
trace. There was also a scar on the boy's left ankle, which
looked like a "cut-down" incision. Such an incision is made to
expose a vein so that a needle may be inserted to give an
infusion or transfusion. There was a 1 1/2 - inch scar on the
left side of the chest, and a round, irregular scar on the left
elbow. On the chin was an L-shaped scar - a quarter of an inch
long in each direction. There was no vaccination scar. The boy
had been circumcised.
There were three small moles on the left side of the face, a
tiny one below the right ear, three small ones on the right side
of the chest, and a large one on the right arm two inches above
the wrist, in line with the little finger. The boy had a full
set of baby teeth, and was also slightly buck-toothed. The
tonsils had not been removed.
The palm of his right hand and the soles of both his small feet
were rough-skinned and wrinkled in what police called a
"washerwoman" effect, indicating that just before or after death
the one hand and both feet had been submerged in water for an
extended period of time.
When an ultraviolet light was shone on the boy's left eye it
fluoresced a brilliant blue, suggesting that a special
diagnostic dye had been applied, possibly to treat a chronic eye
ailment.
Examination of the boy's gastrointestinal tract indicated that
he had not eaten for two or three hours before his death.
X-rays of the boy's body showed no evidence of current or prior
bone fractures.
The cool weather made it difficult to tell how long the child
had been dead. It may have been two or three days, or possibly
as long as two or three weeks.
Evidence (found at the scene):
A large cardboard carton, (15" x 19" x 35"), stamped "fragile".
It had originally contained a baby's bassinet sold by the J.C.
Penney Co. The bassinet, one of a dozen received on 11/27/56,
and which retailed for $7.50, was sold between 12/03/56 and
02/16/57 by the J.C. Penney store at 100 S. 69th St., Upper
Darby, PA, with the customer taking it away in its original
carton. Since J.C. Penney had a "cash only" policy at that time,
there were no store records indicating the identity of the
purchaser. Never the less, all but one of the twelve bassinets,
and the cartons they came in, were eventually accounted for. The
cardboard carton that contained the boy's body was in good
condition. It was dry inside, but damp on the outside, and
appeared slightly weathered. The inside of the carton had traces
of white coloring, indicating the bassinet was painted white.
The carton was sent to the FBI lab for analysis, but no distinct
fingerprints were found.
A faded blanket made of cheap cotton flannel. The blanket was
clean, appearing to have been washed recently. It had a plaid
design with diamonds and blocks in green, rust, brown, and
white. The blanket had been mended with poor grade cotton
thread, probably on a home sewing machine. It had also been cut
in half. One half of the blanket measured 33 by 76 inches, while
the other, from which a piece was missing, was 31 by 51 inches.
The Medical Examiner's office took the blanket to the
Philadelphia Textile Institute, for testing. It was determined
that the blanket had been made either at the Beacon Mills,
Swannanoa, N.C., or the Esmond Mills at Granby, Quebec, Canada.
However, it was not possible to identify likely points of sale,
since thousands of such blankets had been manufactured and
shipped to dozens of wholesalers throughout the country.
A man's cap, of royal blue corduroy with a leather strap and
buckle in the back. It was size seven and one-eighth, and
contained tissue paper placed there by the manufacturer to
maintain its shape. The cap was found about 17 feet from the
thicket where the boy's body was discovered. A pathway through
the underbrush led directly from the cap to the cardboard
carton. The cap was sent to the FBI lab for analysis, but
nothing of significance was found. Through the cap's label,
detectives learned it was made by the Robbins Bald Eagle Hat &
Cap Co., 2603 S. 7th St., Philadelphia. Police interviewed Mrs.
Hannah Robbins, owner of the firm, who said the cap was one of
12 made from corduroy remnants some time before May, 1956. She
told detectives the cap was made without a strap, but the man
she sold it to just a few months earlier asked her to sew a
strap on it. She said the man resembled the photograph of the
dead child on a police circular. Mrs. Robbins told detectives
the man was alone, wore working clothes, did not speak with a
foreign accent, and had blond hair. He appeared to be in his
late twenties.
Possible Evidence (found in the Fox Chase area):
A man's white handkerchief with some short strands of hair
clinging to it. It had the initial G in one corner. The
handkerchief was relatively clean considering its exposure to
the elements. It was sent to the police chemical laboratory for
a comparison of its hair with the hair of the dead boy. The
results of the test were negative.
A tan, child-size scarf and a boy's yellow flannel shirt, size
four. This is the size of the clothes that would have been worn
by the dead boy.
A pair of black children's shoes, size 1, was found near the
spot where the body was first observed. The shoes, cheap but in
good repair, were regarded as possibly significant because they
were clean, while the area near the death scene was muddy. One
shoe was found on the same side of Susquehanna road as the body,
about 50 feet north of it, the other 10 feet south on the
opposite side. But when detectives tried them on the boy in the
morgue, they were considerably too large (his shoe size was
8-D.)
A torn, stained piece of blanket and a dead cat wrapped in a
man's gray sweater were found lying together in a depression in
the ground about a quarter mile from where the boy's nude body
was found. Lying on top of the cat and blanket was a piece of
crumpled, sodden brown wrapping paper. The blanket fragment was
similar in type and quality to the blanket that was found with
the boy's body. However, subsequent analysis at the police
laboratory revealed that it was not part of the same blanket.
Chemical analysis of the other items also had negative results.
Evidence Obtained From The Victim's Body (1957):
During autopsy, blood and other body fluids, hair, gastric
contents, and tissue samples from vital organs including the
heart, liver, and lungs were extracted for toxicologic analysis
and microscopic examination. A mysterious dark brown residue
coating the interior of the boy's esophagus could not be
identified, but the presence of a brown substance in the
esophagus could be consistent with vomiting shortly before death
(Note: see testimony of the Ohio informant, below.) No other
unusual findings were noted.
Fingerprints and footprints were obtained for subsequent
comparison against hospital birth records and other medical
files. Despite an exhaustive search of hospitals in the region,
no matching prints were ever found.
Numerous hair strands found clinging to the body were sent to
the FBI lab for analysis. They proved to be the victim's own
hair.
#Post#: 87--------------------------------------------------
Re: THE BOY IN THE BOX: WM, 4-6, found in Philadelphia, PA, Feb
1957
DIR By: Akoya
Date: November 25, 2018, 9:38 am
---------------------------------------------------------
Continued...
Evidence Obtained From The Victim's Body (1998):
DNA technology did not exist in 1957. Forty-one years later,
after the long-dormant case was reactivated, the boy's remains
were exhumed for the purpose of obtaining tissue samples for DNA
analysis. Investigators hoped to compare the boy's nuclear DNA
profile against the DNA profiles of current and future suspects
& claimants. Unfortunately, by that time, the remains were far
too degraded to permit extraction of viable nuclear DNA.
However, after several failed attempts, tissue samples were sent
to an independent DNA laboratory, which successfully extracted
mitochondrial DNA from the boy's teeth. Although a mitochondrial
DNA profile is a less useful forensic tool than a nuclear DNA
profile in certain respects, it can never-the-less be used to
confirm or rule out a genetic relationship through maternal
lineage. The victim's mitochondrial DNA profile has already been
used to rule out the possibility that he was Steven Damman, a
missing New York boy who was kidnapped in 1955.
The Investigators - Then and Now:
America's Most Wanted - a popular television program hosted by
John Walsh, which aired a segment about the "Boy in the Box"
case on October 3,1998, in cooperation with the Philadelphia
police department and the Vidocq Society (see below). The
broadcast generated over 150 new "tips", and ultimately inspired
a group of private citizens to create the America's Unknown
Child web site.
Detective Tom Augustine, Philadelphia Police Department Homicide
Division - the latest in a long line of investigators to handle
the Boy in the Box case. Augustine first became interested in
the Boy in the Box case in 1957 when, as an eleven-year-old boy,
he saw the unknown boy's haunting image depicted on posters that
were displayed throughout the Philadelphia area. At the time,
the young Tom Augustine had no inkling that he would grow up to
become a Philadelphia homicide detective and get the opportunity
to investigate the mystery himself. Detective Augustine has been
in charge of the Boy in the Box investigation since 1998.
Frank Bender, VSM, forensic sculptor - created a bust of how the
boy's father may have looked. The bust is based on the facial
features of the boy and drawn from Mr. Bender's decades of
experience. Bender is the forensic sculptor behind the bust of
John List - the infamous killer from New Jersey who took the
lives of his entire family.
Remington Bristow, an investigator in the medical examiner's
office - spent 36 years on the case, often following leads to
distant parts of the country, mostly on his own time, and at his
own expense. Solving the mystery became a personal, life-long
obsession. Veteran investigators all agree that, but for
Remington Bristow's personal crusade, the Boy in the Box case
would have been completely abandoned and forgotten long ago.
Bristow even tried investigating the case through the use of
extrasensory perception (ESP). He elicited the help of an
elderly New Jersey psychic named Florence Sternfeld. Her
visions, supported by a considerable amount of circumstantial
evidence, led him to suspect members of a certain foster family
that lived near the place where the boy's body was found.
Bristow went to his grave in 1993 believing he knew the answer
to the mystery.
The FBI - was asked to help investigate the mystery of the
murdered boy. All evidence gathered in the painstaking search
for witnesses and clues was sent to the FBI's crime lab for
testing. The FBI published a report of the case in its monthly
bulletin, circulated throughout the country. In November 1998,
the FBI's Philadelphia Division Evidence Recovery Team
participated in the exhumation of the unknown boy's remains to
obtain tissue samples for DNA testing.
William L. Fleisher, V.S.M.: Co-founder and Commissioner of the
Vidocq Society (see below.) Bill is a former police officer, and
FBI and Customs agent. Under his leadership and overall
guidance, Vidocq Society investigators are aggressively pursuing
the Boy in the Box mystery.
Thomas J. Gibbons, Philadelphia Police Commissioner - ordered
the entire student complement of the Police Academy (270 police
trainees) into a search for clues to the identity of the young
boy. An exhaustive two-day search was conducted of a
12-square-mile area in the northeast part of the city, and
extending beyond the city limits. Searchers were looking for
anyone who might have known of a missing child about five years
old, and for any trace of the clothing of the murdered boy. A
total of 320 city police, detectives and Fairmount Park guards
were thrown into the hunt.
John J. Kelly, Chief Inspector - Philadelphia Police Department
(1957).
William H. Kelly, V.S.M., Supervisor of the Philadelphia Police
Department Identification Unit - took aerial photographs of
Susquehanna Road and its environs to aid in the investigation.
For years, Mr. Kelly systematically toured area hospitals,
checking the unknown boy's footprint against those in hospital
nursery records. Thousands of prints were searched in
Philadelphia, Delaware, Bucks and Montgomery counties, with
negative results. Mr. Kelly and William McNasby of the crime lab
also searched the files of the U.S. Immigration and
Naturalization Service on their own time. They checked 11,200
Passport photos on the theory that the unknown boy might have
been an alien. Now retired, William Kelly is a co-director of
the Vidocq Society's Boy in the Box investigation.
George R. Knowles: A private citizen, George is the founder and
administrator of the America's Unknown Child website. His
interest in the case dates back to 1957 when, as an 11-year-old
New Jersey boy, he became intrigued by the original Boy in the
Box poster. Since April 1999, George has been assisting the
investigators by publicizing the case on the Internet and by
gathering tips, theories, and other case-related information
from the public.
Joseph Komarnicki: former head of the Philadelphia Detective
Bureau's missing persons division - based on a hunch, he
traveled to Thornton, Colorado in 1960 to question Mrs. Margaret
Martinez, a 30-year-old woman who had admitted throwing her
three-year-old daughter's body into a trash can. No connection
to the "Boy in the Box" case could be established.
Dr. Wilton M. Krogman, professor of physical anthropology at the
Graduate School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania - was
called in by the Medical Examiner's office to study the dead
boy's physical characteristics. Doctor Krogman found the boy to
be forty inches tall: giving him a "height age" of about three
years, eight months. But the boy's thirty-pound weight was
equivalent to a "weight age" of only about two years and two
months. This obviously suggested undernourishment, and the bones
confirmed that. With x-rays Doctor Krogman discovered scars of
arrested growth on the long bones of the legs. This, he reported
to police, "may have been enough to have slowed him down six
months to a year in his growth progress." Dr. Krogman estimated
that the boy had been in chronic ill health - with accompanying
malnutrition - for about a year. He described the boy as having
"a long narrow head, a high narrow face, and a high narrow
nose." That, to him, was enough to speculate on Northwest
European ancestry - Scandinavia, West Germany, or England or
Scotland.
Joseph McGillen, V.S.M., - an investigator with the Philadelphia
Medical Examiner's Office since 1956. After his retirement,
McGillen became a member of the Vidocq Society and participated
in the investigation of the Boy in the Box case. He is now a
co-director of that effort. McGillen was quick to recognize the
potential of utilizing the Internet to help solve the case. To
this end, he was instrumental in arranging a direct link between
the Vidocq Society's home page and the America's Unknown Child
web site. McGillen is aggressively pursuing other potential
avenues for publicizing the case via this revolutionary
communications medium.
Captain Joseph O'Neill, head of the Philadelphia homicide unit
(1959).
Elmer Palmer - the first police officer to arrive at the scene
when the boy's body was discovered. Deeply moved by that
experience, Palmer has closely followed the progress of the case
through the years and visits the boy's grave whenever he can.
#Post#: 88--------------------------------------------------
Re: THE BOY IN THE BOX: WM, 4-6, found in Philadelphia, PA, Feb
1957
DIR By: Akoya
Date: November 25, 2018, 9:40 am
---------------------------------------------------------
Continued...
Captain David H. Roberts, head of the Philadelphia homicide
squad (1957).
Dr. Joseph W. Spelman, City medical examiner - he performed a
two-hour autopsy on the slain boy, establishing that he had been
violently murdered by multiple blows on the head. Dr. Spelman
also launched a plan to check hospital records, in co-operation
with Philadelphia General Hospital officials. Women volunteers
examined all the PGH records for the years 1953 through 1955.
The hospital medical records were examined for a record of an
operation or treatment of an illness that the unknown boy may
have had.
Vidocq Society: An international organization of crime-solving
experts based in Philadelphia, which adopted the case early in
1998. The society is a private, non-profit group whose 82
members possess varied investigative expertise ranging from
forensics to law. The Vidocq Society was instrumental in helping
obtain a court order granting permission to exhume the boy's
body for the purpose of extracting tissue for DNA testing. The
boy was subsequently reburied at another location as "America's
Unknown Child."
Sam Weinstein, VSM - the second policeman to arrive at the scene
when the boy's body was found. Weinstein later became a
detective and participated in the investigation of the Boy in
the Box case. He retired after serving 35 years on the police
force and became a member of the Vidocq Society. In 1998,
Weinstein was appointed to head the society's Boy in the Box
investigation. At first, Weinstein was working alone, but he was
later joined by two other retired crime fighters: Joseph
McGillen, formerly an investigator with the Philadelphia Medical
Examiner's office, and William H. Kelly, former Supervisor of
the police department's Identification Unit. In February 2000,
Sam Weinstein was compelled to discontinue active involvement in
the case due to medical reasons. He passed away on May 16, 2004.
Randolph E. Wise, City Welfare Commissioner - his department
conducted a direct check to account for 64 normal children in
foster homes, and about 400 mentally retarded children. All
children in foster homes were accounted for. The possibility of
the boy having been in some institution was also eliminated.
Suspects, Informants, False Leads, and Dead Ends:
Frederick J. Benonis - a 26-year-old student at LaSalle College.
He called police shortly after 10:00 a.m. on the morning of
February 26, 1957, and informed them that he had discovered the
body of a small child the previous day. Benonis said he was
driving along Susquehanna road west of Verree road on Monday
afternoon at around 3:15 p.m., when he saw a rabbit jump into
the underbrush. He said that he stopped to chase it. While out
of the car, Benonis saw some muskrat traps and then came upon a
large cardboard box. He looked inside, and saw what he thought
could possibly be a doll, or the body of a small child. Benonis
decided not to report the incident. (Police subsequently learned
that Benonis was in the habit of visiting Susquehanna Road to
spy on the young women at the Good Shepherd School for Wayward
Girls. This may explain his initial reluctance to reveal the
discovery to authorities.) However, by the next morning, Benonis
had second thoughts about keeping silent, especially after
hearing a radio news report about a missing New Jersey child.
Benonis confided in two LaSalle College faculty priests, who
advised him to notify authorities immediately. Benonis was
questioned extensively by detectives at Philadelphia police
department headquarters. He also voluntarily submitted to a lie
detector test, the results of which cleared him of any
suspicion.
George Broomall, Marine Private First Class - told police that
he believed the unknown boy might be his eight-year-old brother.
He renewed the belief after viewing the body in the morgue.
Broomall, who had recently returned from overseas, said he was
one of 18 children. He last saw his family when they lived in
Philadelphia. At that time, he said, the family was about to
move to the West Coast, but two of the younger children were
left with an older brother who lived in the northeast section of
the city. Detectives eventually found the "missing" brother,
alive and well in California.
Steven Craig Damman - The son of an airman stationed at Mitchel
Air Force Base, N.Y., who was kidnapped outside a Long Island
supermarket, October 31, 1955, when he was 34 months old. At the
time of Steven's disappearance he was described as 38 inches
tall, weighing 32 pounds and having blond hair. Since the
unknown boy appeared to be about the age the Damman boy would
have been if he were still alive, and because of some
similarities of description, investigators thought that it was
possible they could be the same person. They sent copies of the
dead boy's footprints to the Nassau County, NY police
department. They also X-rayed his body at Philadelphia General
Hospital in a search for certain physical characteristics known
to be possessed by the Damman boy when he disappeared. However,
comparison of the dead boy's footprints with those of the
missing Damman boy taken at his birth and the X-ray findings
cast great doubt on whether they were the same person. The
X-rays failed to reveal a healed fracture of the left arm, which
the Damman child had. Also, a large freckle on the back of the
right calf of the Damman boy did not exist on the body of the
murdered boy. A comparison of the footprints did not indicate
any similarity and a picture of the dead boy's face bore no
resemblance to the missing Damman child. To clinch the matter,
the autopsy conducted by Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Joseph W.
Spelman had shown that the dead boy had normal kidneys. The
Damman boy, his parents said, had been under treatment for a
kidney growth at the time of his kidnapping. Two visiting Nassau
County police officers said they were satisfied after viewing
the body and conferring with Philadelphia investigators that the
murdered boy was not the missing Damman child.
In 2003, investigators re-examined the still-unsolved Steven
Damman case in order to determine if every potential link to the
Boy in the Box case had been thoroughly explored. They found
that nothing had been overlooked by the original investigators.
Also, with the cooperation of the Nassau County police
department and other law enforcement agencies, the sister of
Steven Damman was located. She submitted a DNA sample for
comparison with the DNA profile of "America's Unknown Child."
Analysis of her DNA sample proved conclusively that the unknown
boy discovered in Philadelphia was not Steven Damman.
#Post#: 89--------------------------------------------------
Re: THE BOY IN THE BOX: WM, 4-6, found in Philadelphia, PA, Feb
1957
DIR By: Akoya
Date: November 25, 2018, 9:42 am
---------------------------------------------------------
Continued
Kenneth E. and Irene Adelle Dudley - itinerant carnival workers,
who were arrested and jailed in Lawrenceville, VA in 1961 for
causing the death of their seven-year-old daughter through
malnutrition, exposure and neglect. Under intense questioning,
the Dudleys admitted that they had permitted six of their 10
children to die of malnutrition and neglect, disposing the
bodies in various places in several southern states. Two of the
bodies were tossed into a lake, and another was dumped at an
abandoned phosphate mine. Detectives conducted a thorough
investigation of the Dudleys and eventually disproved any
possible connection to the Boy in the Box case.
Florida Claimants: In early 2004, Detective Tom Augustine was
contacted by people in Florida who claimed that their mother was
the unknown boy's birth parent. They submitted DNA samples for
testing at their own expense. The DNA samples were analyzed, but
they didn't match. When Detective Augustine informed them of
this, the people in Florida insisted that the DNA lab must have
made a mistake because they were absolutely certain that their
mother was the boy's birth parent! Subsequently, they submitted
a sample of their mother's DNA for analysis, again at their own
expense. The mother's DNA sample also failed to match the
unknown boy's DNA profile.
Foster Family - operated a foster home in a large stone house on
Moredon Road, about 1.5 miles from where the boy's body was
discovered. The family consisted of a middle-aged couple, Arthur
and Catherine Nicoletti, and a 20-year-old female, Anna Marie
Nagle, who was Catherine's daughter by a previous marriage.
There was hearsay evidence that Anna Marie was retarded or at
least "mentally challenged." She had previously given birth to
four children out of wedlock. Three of the children were
stillborn, while the fourth child, a boy, was tragically
electrocuted in 1955 at the age of three in a department store
amusement ride accident. The Nicoletti family took boys and
girls from the state and city for a few weeks to a few years.
They usually cared for five or six kids at a time, but sometimes
as many as 25 were in residence. There were eight foster
children living there at the time of the unknown boy's discovery
(five girls and three boys.) All of the foster children were
checked out by detectives and accounted for. The police did not
suspect the foster family of having anything to do with the Boy
in the Box case.
In 1960, Remington Bristow, an investigator in the medical
examiner's office who was conducting his own inquiry into the
Boy in the Box mystery, began to focus his attention on the
foster home. He hadn't been making much progress up to that
point, so in desperation, he turned to an elderly New Jersey
psychic named Florence Sternfeld for help. Florence claimed that
she could identify a person by holding a piece of metal that in
some way was connected to him. Bristow went to see Florence at
her home in Palisades Park, NJ, and took with him two staples
from the J.C. Penney box the unknown boy was found in. Florence
told Bristow to look for a large house with a wooden railing and
a log cabin on the property that had children playing in it.
Bristow spent months searching around the Fox Chase area for a
large house that fit the psychic's description, and eventually
found the foster home. There was a log cabin behind it. Bristow
learned that the foster children slept on cots in the log cabin
in the summer. Bristow then brought Florence to Philadelphia
(she claimed to have never been there before), and took her to
the discovery site on Susquehanna Road. She led him directly
from there to the foster home. This impressive performance
convinced Bristow that he was definitely on the right track. In
1961, the Nicoletti family got out of the foster care business
and moved away. The home was closed and put up for sale. Bristow
went to a preview of an auction of its furnishings and spotted a
bassinet similar to the one sold by J.C. Penney. It was covered
with dust, sitting in the basement. Outside, he found plaid
blankets hanging on a clothesline. The blankets had been cut in
half to fit the metal cots the children had slept on. There was
also a duck pond on the property. Bristow theorized that this
could have been the place where the boy's hand and foot had lain
in water. Bristow said he always believed that the stone house
was linked to the case because of what he found there. For
years, Bristow tried repeatedly to persuade the Philadelphia
police to re-investigate the foster family, but they refused.
Finally, in 1984, two homicide detectives reluctantly agreed to
interview Arthur Nicoletti at his home in Dublin, Bucks County,
PA. The interview failed to turn up anything incriminating.
Frustrated by this, Bristow telephoned Arthur Nicoletti and
urged him to take a lie detector test. Nicoletti declined to do
so. To Bristow, the man's lack of cooperation indicated that he
probably had something to hide. Bristow was firmly convinced
that the Nicoletti family had somehow been involved in the
strange death of the Boy in the Box. He theorized that the boy
may have actually been the illegitimate son of Anna Marie Nagle.
His suspicions were reinforced some years later when Arthur
Nicoletti, then a widower, married his stepdaughter. In 1988,
after going through old police reports, Bristow realized that a
doctor who had treated the children at the foster home had never
been interviewed. Bristow hoped that the unknown boy's medical
records would be among the doctor's files. He located the
doctor's wife, who told him that she'd destroyed the records
about five years earler, after her husband died. Until his own
death in 1993, Bristow never wavered in his belief that the
foster family had been involved in the unknown boy's demise.
However, in the end, Bristow couldn't come up with any hard
evidence to prove his theories.
When the Boy in the Box case was reopened early in 1998,
Philadelphia Police Captain, Pat Dempsey, asked Homicide
Detective Tom Augustine to follow up on the foster home angle
where Remington Bristow left off in 1984. Detective Augustine,
accompanied by a member of the Bucks County police department,
interviewed Arthur Nicoletti and Anna Marie (now husband and
wife) at their home on February 23, 1998. During the course of
that interview, Detective Augustine was able to obtain the
answers to many crucial questions about members of the foster
family. In general, the interview tended to confirm that the
foster family had no involvement in the unknown boy's death.
Only a few months after the interview, Arthur Nicoletti died.
Anna Marie was subsequently placed in a nursing home.
Shortly after the America's Most Wanted TV broadcast of October
3, 1998, seven persons who had watched the program and
participated in the AMW Forum, decided to form an Internet chat
group to discuss the Boy in the Box case. One member of that
chat group was a woman postal worker from Virginia. She had been
raised in the Philadelphia area during the 1950's and 60's, and
said that she vividly recalled the original Boy in the Box
investigation; particularly the flyers, which were posted
everywhere. In early November, the woman began telling the other
chat group members about a friend of hers named "Dianne", who
had allegedly lived in the same neighborhood as the foster
family and knew a lot about them, possibly even "incriminating
stuff". "Dianne" had attended grammar school with two of the
foster girls, she said. The woman stated that the foster family
definitely had several relatives on the Philadelphia police
force, and that they may have engineered a cover-up of the "Boy
in the Box" case. This information was relayed to the Vidocq
Society by George Knowles, the group's Vidocq liaison, and was
brought to the attention of Vidocq Society Commissioner, William
Fleisher. Fleisher requested that the woman contact him via
telephone as soon as possible. After some initial reluctance,
the woman called Fleisher, but declined to put him in touch with
her friend, "Dianne." She told Fleisher that "Dianne's" abusive
husband hated the police and wouldn't allow her to speak
directly to anyone in law enforcement. The woman proposed that
Fleisher funnel all of his questions through her, and she would
act as an "intermediary" between "Dianne" and the Vidocq
Society. Fleisher reluctantly agreed to this unusual arrangement
initially, but in subsequent phone conversations, he insisted
that he had to speak with "Dianne" directly about her knowledge
of the foster family. The woman stalled Fleisher for awhile by
announcing that "Dianne" was temporarily unavailable because she
and her husband had left town for a two-week vacation in
Florida. At the end of two weeks, Fleisher contacted the woman
again and repeated his request to be put directly in touch with
"Dianne." This time the woman told him that "Dianne's" husband
had suffered a mild stroke in Florida, and needed time to
recuperate! "Dianne" wouldn't be able to return to Philadelphia
until the spring, she said. This weird "cat and mouse game"
continued for a few more weeks, until the woman suddenly
announced that "Dianne's" husband had suffered a second stroke
and probably didn't have long to live! Therefore "Dianne" had
decided to sell her home in Pennsylvania and remain in Florida
permanently. Consequently, Bill Fleisher would never have the
opportunity to speak with "Dianne" about the foster family. Of
course, by this time, everyone was already convinced that
"Dianne" didn't really exist. In all probability, she was an
imaginary character that the woman had invented just to get
attention. Eventually, the woman was expelled from the chat
group.
#Post#: 90--------------------------------------------------
Re: THE BOY IN THE BOX: WM, 4-6, found in Philadelphia, PA, Feb
1957
DIR By: Akoya
Date: November 25, 2018, 9:45 am
---------------------------------------------------------
Continued
In May 2001, the CBS television program "48 Hours" broadcast a
brief segment about the Boy in the Box investigation. The
segment featured clips from home movies that were taken at the
foster home in the 1950's. A man who had spent his summers at
the foster home during that period, saw the program and
recognized himself in one of the film clips. He contacted the
America's Unknown Child website and offered to tell what he knew
about the foster family. The man was immediately put in touch
with the investigators, but he could provide little information
that wasn't already known.
Horsham Suspects - a mass night raid on a farm near Horsham, PA
in September 1957 netted four persons who were questioned about
the murder of the unidentified boy. Carried out by State,
Montgomery county and Philadelphia police, the raid was made as
a result of confidential information given to the Montgomery
County District Attorney by an unidentified woman. The exact
location of the farm and the identities of the six persons
living there were not disclosed. After questioning, all of the
suspects were released.
Hungarian Refugee: In 1965, Bill Kelly decided to investigate
the possibility that the unknown boy may have been a recent
immigrant. If true, that would explain why he had no hospital
birth record or footprints on file. Going through old
newspapers, Kelly came across a 1956 article about the tide of
Hungarian refugees that arrived in this country following the
failed uprising of October 1956. In the accompanying photo,
there was a little boy who looked exactly like the Boy in the
Box. His approximate age, coloring, facial expression, and build
were the same. With the assistance of the Immigration and
Naturalization Service, Kelly sifted through 11,200 passport
photos before finding the Hungarian boy's picture, and then
locating his family in North Carolina. State troopers found the
family at home, the boy playing safely in the yard.
Mrs. Margaret Martinez of Thornton, CO - arrested in 1960 after
she admitted throwing her three-year-old daughter's body into a
trash can. Mrs. Martinez matched the description of a woman seen
standing next to a parked car near the spot where the boy's body
was found in Fox Chase. She was questioned by Joseph Komarnicki,
former head of the Philadelphia Detective Bureau's missing
persons division, but no connection to the Boy in the Box case
could be established.
Missing Rhode Island Boy - The initial search for clues spread
to Barrington, Rhode Island, where police learned a young mother
and her six-year-old son had been reported missing since they
left, ostensibly for Florida, on Feb. 19, 1957. Twenty-five
prints of the dead boy's foot were sent to the Barrington police
to be checked against those of the missing youngster there,
along with a picture of the slain boy. The mother of the
Barrington boy was estranged from her husband. Her son, though a
blond and of about the same height as the dead boy, apparently
was at least 10 pounds heavier. This potential lead turned out
to be a dead end.
New York City Homicide Victim - Certain similarities between the
Boy in the Box case and the mysterious homicide of a 5-year-old
girl found in a New York City park in August 1957 prompted the
Philadelphia and New York City police departments to launch a
cooperative investigation to determine if both children could
have been victimized by the same person. A link between the two
crimes was never found.
Ohio Informant - In February 2002, a business woman from
Cincinnati, Ohio (hereinafter referred to as "M") contacted
investigators through her psychiatrist. "M" claimed that her
abusive mother purchased the unknown boy from his birth parents
in the summer of 1954, subjected him to extreme physical and
sexual abuse for two and a half years, and then killed him in a
fit of rage, by slamming him to the floor after he vomited in
the bathtub. (Allegedly, the boy had eaten baked beans just a
few minutes earlier.) "M" had originally recounted the story to
her psychiatrist in 1989 but declined to come forward and speak
with law enforcement officials until thirteen years later.
In May 2002, Philadelphia detective Tom Augustine, accompanied
by Vidocq Society investigators, Joseph McGillen and William
Kelly, traveled to Cincinnati and interviewed the woman at her
psychiatrist's office for three hours. "M" told them that she
had lived in Lower Merion, Pennsylvania (a well-to-do suburb of
Philadelphia) in the 1950's. Her parents were both employed by
the Lower Merion school district. Her mother was a librarian and
her father was a science teacher. "M" told the investigators
that the unknown boy's name was "Jonathan". She said that
"Jonathan" was very frail, mentally handicapped, and could not
speak. In August 1954, when she was 10, "M" told the
investigators, her mother drove her to a home, where she picked
the boy up in exchange for an envelope which she assumed
contained money. "M" claimed that her mother regularly sexually
abused her and purchased "Jonathan" so that she could sexually
abuse him, as well.
For two and a half years, "Jonathan" was raised in squalor in
the basement of the Lower Merion home. He slept in an empty
refrigerator box amid dusty coal bins and used a floor drain as
his toilet. "Jonathan" was never allowed to go outside or even
be seen by visitors to the home.
According to "M", after her mother killed "Jonathan" in February
1957, she cut his long hair to conceal his identity. "M" trimmed
the boy's nails. Then they wrapped the boy's nude body in an old
blanket, placed it in the trunk of their car, and drove into
Philadelphia, looking for a suitable place to dump the body. "M"
said that they eventually arrived at Susquehanna Road, a narrow,
secluded country lane in the sparsely-settled Fox Chase section
of northern Philadelphia. It was ideally suited for their
purpose. "M" recalled that, as she and her mother were preparing
to remove the boy's body from the trunk, a male driver
unexpectedly stopped and asked them if they were having car
trouble. They quickly turned their backs to the man, and said
nothing. They were careful to block the man's view of the
license plate on their car. After a few anxious moments that
must have seemed like an eternity, the man continued on his way.
("M's" account almost exactly matched the confidential testimony
of the anonymous male witness who had originally reported this
incident to the police in 1957.) After the man drove away, "M"
and her mother removed the boy's body from the trunk and placed
it in a large cardboard box that they found at the scene. What
role, if any, "M's" father may have played in the whole macabre
episode has not been revealed by the investigators.
The investigators were impressed by "M's" testimony, which
seemed quite plausible, but they remained skeptical. At issue
was whether "M", who has a history of mental problems, could
have fabricated the entire story. After the investigative team
returned to Philadelphia, the Philadelphia police department,
the Vidocq Society, and the Montgomery County District
Attorney's office launched an intensive follow-up investigation
in order to verify "M's" account of the unknown boy's death.
Unfortunately, six months later, having left "no stone unturned"
in their relentless search for corroborating evidence, the
investigators came up empty. Not a single one of "M's"
allegations could be substantiated. Also, a search for trace
evidence in the basement of the Lower Merion home where the boy
allegedly resided turned up nothing. The investigators are still
pursuing other clues in this phase of the Boy in the Box
investigation.
Private Edward J. Posivak of Philadelphia, PA - detained and
questioned in Nashville, TN regarding the mysterious
disappearance of a young married woman whom he had been dating.
In a car Posivak was driving, police found a clipping about the
unidentified boy found in the Fox Chase area of Philadelphia.
Posivak denied any involvement in the boy's death. He agreed to
submit to a lie detector test. The results of the test were
entirely negative, confirming Posivak's assertion that his
relatives sent him news clippings as matters of general
interest. Extensive questioning convinced detectives that
Posivak was probably nowhere near Philadelphia at the time the
boy was found dead.
John Powroznik - an 18-year-old youth who told police that he
had discovered the body of the murdered boy in Fox Chase on the
weekend of February 22-23, 1957, but was afraid to tell anyone
about it. John Powroznik's home was located on Pine road near
Susquehanna road, a short distance from the spot where police
found the boy's body. Powroznik told detectives that on either
Saturday, February 23, or Sunday, February 24, he sighted the
box, with the body, while returning home from a basketball game.
Powroznik was not sure of the day but said it was drizzling at
the time (the Weather Bureau reported a light rain about 1 P.M.
on Saturday.) Powroznik was so horrified and frightened by what
he had seen that he ran home and said nothing about it to his
parents. Powroznik claimed ownership of a number of muskrat
traps in the vicinity.
Harold Sanders, of Dover, DE - reported that his wife and three
children were missing. He said that he had a son, John, who was
fair, thin, and about the age of the child found battered to
death in Fox Chase. Mr. Sanders' wife and children were
subsequently located - alive and well. The investigators learned
that Mrs. Sanders had not really been "missing" after all, but
had simply left her husband and taken the children with her.
#Post#: 91--------------------------------------------------
Re: THE BOY IN THE BOX: WM, 4-6, found in Philadelphia, PA, Feb
1957
DIR By: Akoya
Date: November 25, 2018, 9:46 am
---------------------------------------------------------
Continued
Terry Lee Speece - The dead boy was identified by six persons as
Terry Lee Speece, eight, who had been living with his father, an
itinerant roofer and laborer, in Camden, NJ for the six weeks
preceding February 23, 1957. Police issued a 13 state alarm,
requesting that the boy's father, Charles D. Speece, be detained
for questioning. Speece's estranged wife, who had not seen the
boy for a year, took a look at the dead boy in the morgue, and
said he was not her son. The boy's maternal grandparents also
viewed the body of the dead boy, and said they could not
positively identify him as their grandson. Weeks later, Terry
Lee Speece was found by state police in Ardmore, PA, living with
his father. The father said he wasn't aware police had been
looking for him.
Mrs. Cora Thompson of Tulsa, OK - telephoned Philadelphia
detectives and said she thought the boy found beaten to death in
Philadelphia might be her son who had been missing for two
years. Pictures of the dead boy were sent to Tulsa police so
that the woman could check them, but nothing came of it.
Unidentified Bus Passenger - In March 1957, a woman amateur
artist identified the body in the morgue as the same boy she had
seen sleeping in a man's arms on a bus running from Philadelphia
to southern New Jersey. The pair had boarded the bus in Camden,
she said. The woman submitted a sketch she'd made of the man,
but the investigators weren't able to verify her story.
Unidentified Caller: In May 1999, an anonymous caller informed
the Philadelphia police department about a woman who had lived
only a few miles from the crime scene in early 1957. Allegedly,
the woman had a little boy who was "about the same age" as the
unknown Boy in the Box. According to the anonymous caller,
shortly before the unknown boy's body was discovered, both the
woman and her son mysteriously disappeared! The caller
identified the missing woman by name, and said that she was
"almost certain" that the woman had been the mother of the
unknown boy. Detective Tom Augustine followed up on the
anonymous tip, but he soon discovered that this information was
not new. The story about the missing woman and her young son had
originally been reported to the local police in 1957. They had
checked out the story, and verified that the woman and her son
had merely moved away. There was no connection between them and
the Boy in the Box case. Augustine also discovered that the
"missing" woman's son had subsequently died of injuries that he
received in an automobile accident at the age of 21.
Unidentified Informant #1 - A tip was called in by a man who
said he knew how to obtain a pre-mortem photograph of the
unknown boy sitting on an Indian blanket. Detective Sam
Weinstein received authorization from his commander to purchase
the photo. The boy in the photo looked like the dead boy, and
the blanket looked like the blanket found in the box. But after
further investigation, Weinstein discovered that the boy in the
photo was still alive and obviously not the one found in Fox
Chase.
Unidentified Informant #2 - In 1982, the police got a call from
someone who said they had new information on the case. The
information turned out to be correct, but it concerned a
different child - not the Boy in the Box. Police learned that
the child, who had been sent to live in a Bucks County foster
home in 1957, was still alive.
Unidentified Delaware Informant - In March 1957, a waitress in
Wilmington, Delaware identified the child from a circular as one
she had seen several months before walking past the place where
she worked, hand in hand with a man who was talking about
catching a train for Philadelphia. The woman's testimony could
not be corroborated.
Unidentified Illinois Informant - In late 1998, investigators
learned that in 1958, an Illinois woman who'd read about the
Philadelphia mystery in The Saturday Evening Post told FBI
agents that she knew the boy's mother - a "loose" woman who
traveled a lot. Once the original report was located, Vidocq
Society Commissioner William Fleisher tracked down a female
member of the family by phone, who indicated that the boy he was
asking about was now a man and very much alive.
Unidentified Michigan Informant - In September 2000, a Michigan
woman notified police that she believed a young boy who moved
into her Detroit neighborhood in the mid-1950's could have been
the Boy in the Box. She said that he was a shy, withdrawn child,
and he was thoroughly disliked and mistreated by his drunkard
stepfather. In late 1956 or early 1957, the boy tried to cut his
own hair and made a mess of it. This infuriated his stepfather.
Shortly thereafter, the boy and his family departed on a
two-week trip to Kentucky to visit relatives. When the parents
returned to Detroit, the boy wasn't with them. The stepfather
alleged that the boy had been "adopted" by a Tennessee doctor.
Although the informant didn't accept the stepfather's
explanation, she never reported the boy's mysterious
disappearance to authorities.
The Michigan woman's tip was relayed to the Boy in the Box
investigators in Philadelphia. Her story was exhaustively
investigated but no connection to the Boy in the Box case could
be found. The boy's two younger half-sisters were located and
interviewed. One of the half-sisters said that she had always
been told that her half-brother had been adopted by folks in
Tennessee, but she knew nothing more than that. Another person
who was interviewed said that he had been told that the boy had
tracked down and visited his stepfather in the 1960's. He was
allegedly wearing an Air Force uniform at that time. Photographs
of the boy were sent to the investigators, but they determined
that the Michigan boy bore no resemblance to "America's Unknown
Child." Ultimately, the investigators decided to discontinue
active pursuit of the Michigan lead because, in their collective
judgment, the investigation had reached a dead end.
Unidentified Motorist - Shortly after the unknown boy's body was
discovered, a man told police of a strange incident he witnessed
about 200 feet from the spot where the boy's body was found, on
Sunday, February 24, 1957. The witness said that he was driving
along Verree road when he spotted a car that was stopped on the
side of Susquehanna road with a woman and a boy standing by the
car trunk. The woman appeared to be "groping" for something in
the trunk. The woman, the witness said, was between 40 and 50,
of medium height and heavyset, wearing a checked winter cloth
coat. Her boy companion appeared to be between 12 and 14, and
was of about the same height as the woman. The witness said he
turned onto Susquehanna road and slowed his own car, thinking
the woman had a flat tire, and asked if he could be of any
assistance. He said that both the woman and boy turned their
backs to him and remained absolutely mute. They seemed to be
trying to conceal the license plate of their car from him. The
man thought this was strange but decided they didn't want him
interfering with whatever they were doing, so he drove off.
Unidentified New Jersey Informant - In March 1957, the woman
night manager of a restaurant in Camden, N.J., directly across
the Delaware River from Philadelphia, called to say she had seen
the murder victim in the restaurant on two occasions in
February. She said that the boy was accompanied by a man of
about 40 . . . red-faced, sloppily dressed. The little boy said
he wanted to talk to his 'Mommy' on the telephone, so the man
placed a long distance call to Baltimore. Investigators could
find no other witnesses who saw the unidentified man and boy at
the Camden restaurant, and a check of telephone records
disclosed that there had been no long distance calls to
Baltimore made during the period mentioned by the woman in her
report to police. The lead was eventually dismissed as
unsubstantiated and unverifiable.
Unidentified New Jersey Man - On March 1, 1957, a Merchantville,
New Jersey man was brought to City Hall for questioning about
the slaying after he made five telephone calls to Sgt. John
McBride of the Homicide Squad, saying he "knew about the case."
The man told detectives he "had visions of killing the boy" and
of being implicated in the murder. The man, father of five
children, was released after it was discovered he had been a
psychiatric patient at the Naval Hospital.
#Post#: 92--------------------------------------------------
Re: THE BOY IN THE BOX: WM, 4-6, found in Philadelphia, PA, Feb
1957
DIR By: Akoya
Date: November 25, 2018, 9:48 am
---------------------------------------------------------
Continued...
Unidentified Pennsylvania Couple - In March 1957, a Manayunk, PA
couple told detectives they thought the boy might be their
6-year-old son, whom they had last seen seven months earlier
when he was placed in an orphanage by the Municipal Court. The
mother said the boy "looks like him" and the father said he
wasn't "too sure." A team of detectives later found the boy in a
private orphanage in West Philadelphia.
Unidentified Pennsylvania Informant #1 - In December 1999, a
Bucks County, PA man contacted the America's Unknown Child web
site and the Vidocq Society. He declared that his family might
be able to shed some light on the Boy in the Box case. The man
said that he had been born and raised in Philadelphia. He
recalled that his parents briefly rented a house in the Oxford
Circle section of the city to an out-of-town family in 1956/57.
Throughout their nine-month residency, the tenant family
remained very secretive and aloof, and little was known about
them. Allegedly, most of the neighbors didn't even know how many
people actually lived in the house! At about the time the
unknown boy's body was discovered, the tenant family moved away
quite suddenly, perhaps in the middle of the night. The family
departed in such a hurry that they left breakfast dishes and
food on the kitchen table! Judging by some articles of clothing
and other personal items that were left behind, it was evident
that a young boy had lived in the house. The man's mother
allegedly reported this incident to the Philadelphia police in
March, 1957 but never received any feedback. In late December,
the man and his sister personally met with Sam Weinstein and
Bill Kelly of the Vidocq Society and discussed the details of
this intriguing story.
In August 2000, while searching through the original case files,
Vidocq Society investigators, Bill Kelly and Joseph McGillen,
discovered an index card confirming that in March, 1957 the lead
about the hasty overnight departure of a mysterious tenant
family in the Oxford Circle area had been provided to the
Philadelphia police. The card also bore the name of a female
neighbor whom police had interviewed after getting that tip. The
neighbor had babysat for the tenant family during the short time
they lived in the neighborhood. She testified that there was a
young boy in that family, but he was only 2-1/2 years old at the
time (rather than the unknown boy's estimated age of 4 or 5),
and that he bore no resemblance to the unknown boy in the box.
There was a reference number on the index card to a page number
in one of the master books containing the actual interview with
the neighbor, but the Vidocq investigators were unable to locate
the specific report. However, the brief information on the index
card provided sufficient evidence that the lead was checked out
in 1957 and found to be of no value in the case.
Unidentified Pennsylvania Informant #2 - In 2004, the
investigators received a tip via the Internet about a large
family of poor tenant farmers who lived in Bustleton, not far
from the Fox Chase site where the unknown boy's body was
discovered. The tenant farmers allegedly moved away quite
suddenly in early 1957. The youngest child in the family was
said to be about the same age as the Boy in the Box. Preliminary
investigation revealed that the family had, in fact, moved to
Virginia suddenly in 1957, but none of the children died during
childhood. The eldest child was contacted and he agreed to
submit a DNA sample for analysis. His DNA did not match the
unknown boy’s DNA profile.
Leads Generated By the America's Most Wanted TV Broadcast of
October 3, 1998:
In response to the special Boy in the Box segment shown on the
America's Most Wanted program of October 3, 1998. approximately
150 tips were called into America's Most Wanted's toll-free
hotline, and at least another eight tips were received by
Philadelphia Homicide. Several tips originated from Philadelphia
or its outlying areas, such as southern New Jersey and upstate
Pennsylvania. Others came in from as far away as Southern
California, Wyoming, British Columbia, Newfoundland, Maine, New
York, Virginia, Alabama, Missouri and Indiana. Most of the calls
were anonymous, without even a phone number to follow up on.
Many callers simply had questions or offered theories about the
case, and a few calls came from psychics and other people who
had vague "dreams" or "visions." A small percentage of the
respondents had "leads" or "tips" which warranted follow-up
investigation, although in the end, none of them panned out.
Here are four examples:
Modesto, California Lead - A woman reported that a man her aunt
married many years ago fled Philadelphia under suspicious
circumstances. Local authorities interviewed the woman at
Detective Tom Augustine's request, and sent back a photograph of
a boy that "could have been the unknown boy's half-brother."
This lead eventually turned out to be a dead end.
Brazil, Indiana Lead - A young boy disappeared when a carnival
came to town and was never seen again. This occurred less than a
year before the Boy in the Box was discovered. Detective Tom
Augustine contacted local law enforcement officials to learn
more. Result: there was no connection between this incident and
the Boy in the Box case.
Atlantic City, New Jersey lead - A woman described a news
clipping she'd saved, about a missing Vineland, NJ, boy, who
simply had to be the boy she saw on AMW. Detective Augustine
called the newspaper, which dug the article out of its archives
and faxed him a copy. He was happy to have been saved a trip to
Atlantic City when he learned that the Vineland boy had gone
missing five years after the Boy in the Box was found.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Lead - A man showed up at
Philadelphia Homicide and reported that his half-brother, 14
months older than himself, had mysteriously disappeared around
the time that the unknown boy's body was discovered. He said it
was a secret among the family for years. He also said that
forensic sculptor Frank Bender's hypothetical bust of the
unknown boy's father looked exactly like his own deceased
father. Detective Augustine tried to track down other relatives
who might have been able to add to the man's story. Eventual
result: another dead end.
#Post#: 93--------------------------------------------------
Re: THE BOY IN THE BOX: WM, 4-6, found in Philadelphia, PA, Feb
1957
DIR By: Akoya
Date: November 25, 2018, 9:49 am
---------------------------------------------------------
HTML http://americasunknownchild.net/SatEvePost.html
SATURDAY EVENING POST
JULY 26, 1958
A BOX, a BLANKET
and a SMALL BODY
A year and a half after a shocking murder, these mute
pieces of evidence still hold the secret of Philadelphia's
most baffling crime. by EARL and ANNE SELBY
Spring sometimes comes early in Philadelphia, but by late
February of 1957 there was still no sign of warm weather. In the
last week of that month, the temperature ranged from the chilly
twenties to the brisk forties. In Philadelphia's most incredible
murder mystery, that tiny fact may be the most important clue of
all. When the thermometer stays in that range, human bodies do
not decompose rapidly. And, as a result, there was no telling
how long the body of a little boy had lain in a box in a
rubbish-strewn field.
The boy - perhaps four, maybe five years old - had been beaten
to death, but the police have never determined when, where or by
whom. In a big city, murder is commonplace and seldom an
enduring puzzle. In the usual course of their investigation,
police rapidly learn the name, home address and cronies of the
murdered. Rarely do they lack a suspect. In this case the
mystery is so complete that detectives have never been able to
identify the body.
This is a mystery almost without parallel. How is it possible
for a murderer not only to escape justice, but even to shroud
the identity of the victim?
Somewhere in his life the boy must have been known, not just to
his parents, but to their friends. Somewhere he must have had
playmates. Somewhere there must have been neighbors who knew he
was alive - and now around no more. Somewhere there must be a
person who neatly trimmed the nails on his fingers and toes.
Somewhere there must be a barber - professional or amateur - who
gave him a bowl-like haircut shortly before his death. Somewhere
the boy's fingerprints - or footprints - must be on file.
That is - all these people - and these things - "must be" in the
logical course of events. It is, or so it would seem, impossible
for a child to be murdered and have no persons come forward to
claim him as their own or, at the very least, identify him.
But in this case, fact defies logic. The police sent out 400,000
circulars to be posted in police stations, post offices, and
courthouses all over the nation. The FBI's Law Enforcement
Bulletin alerted investigators; the American Medical Association
circulated a complete medical description in the hope that some
doctor, somewhere, might recognize the boy. In a dozen states,
from California to Maine, leads have developed - and all proved
futile.
More than a year has now gone by. The Philadelphia police have
three filing cases bulging with reports of investigations. But
nothing has happened to alter the simple statement of fact on
the white marble slab over the boy's grave: HEAVENLY FATHER,
BLESS THIS UNKNOWN BOY.
There is no telling how long the boy's body might have gone
undiscovered in the community of Fox Chase, on the northern
outskirts of Philadelphia, had it not been for a rabbit. On
February 11, 1957, a LaSalle College student named Frederick
Benonis was driving home from school on Susquehanna Road, west
of Verree Road. On the north side of Susquehanna there is a
girls' school; on the south, a country field with dense
undergrowth stretching back from a line of trees and providing
perfect cover for small game. When a rabbit scurried in front of
Benonis' car, he stopped to follow it into the brush. He didn't
catch the rabbit, but he did find two steel traps for small
game. Benonis sprang the traps and then left.
Two weeks later, about 3:15 on the afternoon of Monday, February
twenty-fifth, he again drove by and stopped to see if the traps
were still there. He looked around for them and saw a
three-foot-long cardboard box partially overlaid with vines and
brush, about fifteen feet from Susquehanna Road - on a direct
line with a footpath made by persons who'd dumped trash.
The box looked new, and Benonis went over to examine it. Inside
he found what appeared to be a doll or a small child wrapped in
an old blanket. But, as a police report puts it, "He did not
notify the police or anyone else for fear of becoming involved
in some tragedy."
The next morning, while driving to school, Benonis heard a radio
broadcast about a little girl being missing from her home in New
Jersey. Could her body be what he had seen in that box? When
Benonis got to LaSalle, he didn't go to class. Instead he talked
with two faculty counselors and also with his priest-brother.
All advised him to tell the police his story. At ten A.M. he
telephoned the Philadelphia homicide squad, commanded by Capt.
David Roberts.
A routine police check was ordered; and, at the exact point
Benonis had described, the officers found the cardboard box
marked, FRAGILE, HANDLE WITH CARE. In it was the boy's body,
wrapped in one piece of a cheap, well-worn blanket with a faded
design of diamonds and blocks in green, rust-red, brown and
white. In the box was another piece of the same blanket, smeared
with what appeared to be grease. A third piece - to complete the
64-by-76-inch blanket was missing.
The boy was unclothed. His head was bruised with the injuries
that killed him. But the body was dry - and clean. The nails had
been recently trimmed short and neat. But the palm of his right
hand and the soles of both his small feet were rough-skinned and
wrinkled in what police called a "washerwoman" effect,
indicating that just before or after death the one hand and both
feet had been in water. His hair, a medium brown, had been
crudely cut, with no sideburns, and short - only about a half
inch on top. And on his body, police discovered a spattering of
his hair, meaning that the cutting had been made with no sheet
around his neck or when the boy was nude - and possibly dead. No
man could fix the time of death. The boy could have died two
days - or two weeks - earlier.
Those three clues - a box, a blanket and a body - were all the
direct evidence the police had. But in the beginning hours of
their investigation the detectives had no thought that this
would be a crime without solution. The left hand yielded perfect
fingerprints. That "washerwoman" wrinkling was not severe enough
to obliterate the prints on the right hand nor on the feet.
Further, there were scars on the child's body which could mark
surgical incisions, on the left ankle, the chest and the groin.
On the chin was an L-shaped scar - a quarter of an inch long in
each direction. There were three small moles on the left side of
the face, a tiny one below the right ear, three on the chest,
and still another on the right arm two inches above the wrist.
The boy had blue eyes and a full set of baby teeth.
No one believed that a homicide investigator's first job -
identifying the victim - would be difficult. What was more, the
box itself not only bore the name of the store it had come from
- it also carried a manufacturer's serial number, so that it
could be pinpointed to one specific shipment. And the stain on
that torn piece of blanket could be chemically analyzed; if it
turned out to be automobile grease it could be compared with
smears that might be found in a suspect's car. Prosecutors like
that kind of circumstantial evidence.
There was yet another hopeful item. Fifteen feet from the box,
near the footpath leading in from the road, searchers found a
distinctive cap, cut in Ivy League style from blue corduroy,
with a leather strap and buckle across the back. It was easy to
understand how someone who carried the box could have had the
cap brushed off by a low-hanging branch - then been unable to
find it in the darkness. And, best of all, the capmaker's name
and address were clearly stamped on the sweatband.
Detectives took the cap to Mrs. Hannah Robbins, in whose South
Philadelphia shop it had been made. Certainly, said Mrs.
Robbins, she remembered the cap. Several months earlier a man
between twenty-six and thirty years old had bought it. She
recalled him because he'd asked her to add the leather strap and
buckle. He was in working clothes, spoke without an accent and
was alone. What was his name? lt was, said Mrs. Robbins, a cash
sale, so she hadn't taken his name. Had she ever seen him before
or since? Never, she said. With the cap and a picture of the
boy, detectives then painstakingly visited 143 stores and
businesses in the area. Not one person recalled either boy or
cap.
Meanwhile the fingerprints were checked. Neither the
Philadelphia Police, the Pennsylvania State Police, nor the FBI
files in Washington produced any match for the youngster's
prints. Four thousand doctors in the Philadelphia area were sent
special circulars: none remembered seeing the boy. Nothing of
consequence developed after the same information appeared in the
nationally-circulated Journal of the American Medical
Association.
And what of the cardboard box? Printed on it was the name of the
J.C. Penney chain's store in suburban Upper Darby - at least
fifteen miles from where the boy's body was found. The store
officials immediately recognized the box as one used for a $7.95
white bassinet. But Penney's practice is "Cash"-- and although a
dozen were sold from that shipment, the store had no records of
the purchaser. With the help of newspaper publicity, the
detectives got calls from eight buyers, all of who said they had
either put the box out for trash or still had it in their homes.
The police talked to the trash collectors--they said they had
long since burned their loads of refuse. The four other
purchasers of the white bassinets were never found.
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