On Thursday, December 8, 2022, the Philadelphia Police Department announced the name of the child know as the Boy in the Box: Joseph Augustus Zarelli. He was four years old.
On February 25, 1957 Joseph Augustus Zarelli was found dead inside a cardboard box that was left on an empty lot near then Susquehanna Road in Fox Chase, northeastern Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was four years old, malnourished, nude, and beaten. In some papers it is mentioned that he was clean and groomed.
Over the years, authorities searched and scanned many databases and files of missing children. All leads were pursued but nothing really paid off to identify the child. The rumours about his injuries, whether a one-time occurrence or an established pattern, remained. Blunt force trauma is most likely the cause of death.
Guest blogger Silvia Pettem wrote about the condition of the child’s body: the medical examiner said that there were “bruises all over the boy’s body, particularly on his head, legs, and arms” and he added that the boy’s “death is definitely due to a homicide.”
In 1998, an exhumation took place. At the morgue, the medical examiner found inside the coffin a few small teeth which led to mitochondrial (maternal bloodline) DNA. In 2019, he was exhumed again in search of more biological materials from which DNA could be retrieved. With lots of effort, the DNA profile was secured and stabilized.
Then the search began with forensic genealogy. The goal was to check in various ancestry databases for a pool of people who partially matched the boy’s DNA profile. Note that when this type of research is done, the best that researchers will find is always a partial match, never a 100% match. Why? Unless the DNA profile of the person you are looking for already was uploaded in a database, what you find is a partial profile match. How well those profiles overlap depends on how close you got to the bloodlines.
On December 8, 2022 police revealed that Joseph Augustus Zarelli was born on January 13, 1953. The identity of his parents will not be released out of respect for the privacy of his living siblings and their families. Both birth mother and father have been found and are deceased.
Who is responsible for his death is at this moment suspected but as it is an ongoing investigation, no further information will be released. However, with a case this old there is the possibility that there will never be an arrest.
Posts and database updates in this case will continue under his own name.
Rest in pace, Joseph Augustus Zarelli.