Case 2

As always, discretion is advised.

The Boy in the Box

Location: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Date: February 25, 1957

Victim: unidentified young boy approximately 4-6 years old

Details:

                On a cold, Pennsylvania morning in 1957, Fredrick Benosis reported a horrifying discovery. The naked body of a young boy was tucked into a cardboard box and dumped in an out of the way area of Philadelphia. Unfortunately, this was not the first time this particular crime scene had been stumbled upon. Nor was it reported on the same day as Benosis had discovered the body.  Due to wanting to avoid criminal charges, the young boy had lain in the cold for at least three days. While the cold had preserved the body relatively well, the elements did nothing to protect the forensic evidence.

Evidence & Autopsy:

                The location chosen as the dumpsite of the unknown boy was an area littered with trash and debris, yet the boy had seemingly been cared for at least in some manner both before and after his death. His body was wrapped in a blanket and placed inside a cardboard box. While his body was covered in bruises, his fingernails were short and neat, and his body was scrubbed clean. His light hair had been hastily cut, leaving it uneven. The fragments of his hair were stuck to his body, indicating that his hair had been cut post-mortem or immediately before his death. The boy was malnourished and had not eaten for 2-3 hours before his death, though evidence suggests that he had vomited not long before he died of blunt force trauma to the head. It was determined that he could have been dead anywhere from 2 days to 3 weeks before his discovery.

                The big pieces of evidence in the case included both the box he was placed in and the blanket he was wrapped in.  It was discovered that the box was from a bassinet sold in JC Penney stores. Only 12 had been sold in the area, but the original owners of the box were never found, thus leading to a dead end. The blanket was a similar situation. It was a low quality, flannel blanket that had been mass produced in either Quebec, Canada or North Carolina and shipped to a multitude of locations. As noted before, the body was scrubbed clean, eliminating any evidence on the boy himself.

Media:

                The media ran wild with the case, and it pulled at America’s heartstrings. The boy was dubbed “America’s Unknown Child”, and his face was plastered all over. The police even allowed hundreds to thousands of people to come view the body in hopes of unveiling the boy’s identity.

Theories:

                There aren’t really suspects in this case, so I’ll instead reveal some of the most popular theories behind the case.

                A prominent theory of this case comes from an informant called Martha, who claimed that her mother bought a boy named Jonathan and held him in the basement of their home. Martha reported that her mother sexually abused her as a child, and had bought the boy for the same nefarious reasons. Martha claimed that after the boy had gotten sick in her mother’s presence during bath time, the mother beat the boy to death by slamming him on the floor. Martha then claimed that her mother had dumped “Jonathan” somewhere in Philadelphia.

                Now, to me, this theory is pretty strong because many of Martha’s claims line up with the boy’s story, such as:

·         The fact that he was malnourished could indeed suggest that he had been held hostage by someone whose intentions were less than pure

·         The fact that the boy in the box had evidence of having been sick shortly before death, and Martha claiming that vomiting was the catalyst that sparked the rage that led to “Jonathan’s” death

·         The fact that cause of death lines up in each case

·         The boy in the box had been scrubbed clean, and Martha reported that “Jonathan” had received a bath immediately prior to his death (the tub was his alleged location when he had gotten sick in Martha’s story)

·         And of course, the fact that Martha claimed that they dumped “Jonathan” is a big coincidence.

The dumpsite is something that could have easily been obtained in media, but other pieces of Martha’s story would have been substantially more difficult to obtain.

        Another theory comes from the ME at the time, Remington Bristow. Bristow theorized that the boy was an orphan in foster care who died accidently. This theory goes deeper; however. Bristow, who became somewhat obsessed with the case, consulted a psychic, who claimed that the boy lived in a mansion that had been converted into a foster home. Bristow interviewed a couple at an estate sale of a large home in 1961 about the former owners. He claimed to have found a bassinet matching the type associated with the JC Penney box and believed the boy was the illegitimate son of the original homeowner’s daughter; who had died in a freak accident and was dumped to prevent suspicion of murder or the discovery of the family’s secret. Bristow followed this lead but came to a dead end when he found out that there had been a boy in the family who died in an accident, but morgue records eliminated the possibility of it being the boy in the box.

        This theory, while being well thought out, feels like a bit of a stretch. Other than the bassinet (which we don’t know for sure existed at the estate sale), not much of this theory holds water. That doesn’t stop it from being a popular one.

        Another seemingly odd theory is that the boy in the box may have been raised as a girl, which would have made identification harder for the police. This theory was proposed by a forensic artist named Frank Bender, who believed that the reason the boy’s hair was cut was to obscure his identity. Bender claimed that it appeared that the boy’s brows had been shaped at some point before death, thus making him more feminine. Bender created a sketch of the boy as a girl to help aid in identification.

        Again, this theory seems a little out there. There isn’t much proof to support it, other than the presence of recently cut hair on the body. And I’d like to point out that there’s a huge difference in the amount of hair there would have been from “girl” length hair and that of a hasty trim of more masculine hair. Though, I will admit that cutting the boy’s hair at all was odd.

        These seem to be the most popular theories, though there are a multitude more out there.

        Since no one came forward to claim the boy, Philadelphia detectives paid for a funeral, and he was buried in potter’s field, only to be exhumed in 1998 for further testing. He was reburied with a donated ornate headstone in Ivy Hill Cemetery.

        The Boy in the Box has baffled the world for 60 years. How could someone not come forward to claim this young soul? He was never identified, and justice has never been served.

References:

Ranker.com

http://www.historicmysteries.com

Additional resources:

Americasunkknownchild.net                     Cayleigh Elise Nameless #6 “The Boy in the Box”- YouTube

Buzzfeed Unsolved S2 E2 “The Mysterious Death of the Boy in the Box” -YouTube