The Boy in the Box

On the 25th February 1957, the body of a boy was found in a box in an illegal dumping ground in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was estimated to be four to six years old, thirty pounds and three-foot-three. He was found naked but wrapped in a blanket. His hair had been recently cut and his body had been recently cleaned. There were small scars on his chin, groin and left ankle, some suggested a medical procedure. The cause of death was ruled to be blunt force trauma to the head. There were no witnesses.

The body was first found by a young man who was walking through the lot. The man waited a full day before reporting the discovery to the police. Bizarrely, another man had previously found the body but did not report it to the police because he didn’t want to get involved. 

The cold weather and the delayed call meant that it was not possible for the police to accurately estimate the time of death.

The boy in the box has not been identified, but not for lack of trying. The police kept the boy in the morgue whilst visitors from ten different states tried to identify him, to no avail. They then distributed four hundred thousand fliers. The American Medical Association sent out a description of the boy but it led nowhere. The boy’s footprints and fingerprints were taken to compare to hospital records in the area, but yet again, there was no identification. 

The police investigation followed up on several key clues in the hopes of getting some answers. The box that the boy was found in was thoroughly investigated. It contained a serial number that was traced to the shipment which was then traced to a J.C.Pennies fifteen miles away from where the boy was found. The box was used to store a bassinet. In total, there were twelve of the bassinets shipped, however, all the customers paid in cash and thus left no record. Eight of the twelve customers contacted the police after they read the story in the newspapers. The police were, however, able to determine that the box was shipped to Upper Darby Pennsylvania. 

The police also tried to follow up on the blanket the boy was wrapped in. The Philadelphia Textile Institute managed to find that the blanket was either made in Granby, Quebec or Swannanoa, North Carolina. However, there was no way to gather any more information as thousands of blankets were made and sold. 

Fifteen feet away from where the boy was found was a blue corduroy, Ivy-League style cap, in size seven and one eighth. The cap was labelled Eagle Hat and Cap Company and was made in south Philadelphia by the owner Hannah Robbins. Robbins remembers the customer because he requested that a leather strap and buckle be added to the hat. He was blond, between twenty-six and thirty years old. He paid in cash and Robbins never saw him again. Detectives visited over one hundred stores in the area but no one recognised the hat nor the boy.

Strands of hair were found on the boy’s body and indicated a hasty haircut. This led forensic artist, Frank Bender to believe that the boy was raised as a girl. Bill Kelly, one of the original investigators recounts that in 1957 and 1958, a west coast artist circulated an image of the child as a girl. It didn’t result in any leads. 

Theory 1: The first theory comes from authors Lou Romano and Jim Hoffman. They found a lead from a man in Philadelphia who claims he rented a house to a man who sold his son – possibly the boy in the box. 

A forensic pathologist looked at photographs of the potential father and a possible brother and said that the similarities would warrant further testing. There were similarities in the facial structure, the helix of the right ear and the nose. A DNA sample was taken from the possible brother but investigators did not say whether they would test the DNA or not, only saying that they would ‘investigate further’.

Theory 2:  Medical Examiner, Remington Bristow investigated the boy in the box case for over thirty-six years, spending thousands of his own money and countless hours trying to identify the boy. Bristow travelled to Arizona and Texas for leads and consulted a psychic with staples from the box, in the hopes of gaining some ideas. On top of that, Bristow carried around a mask of the boy’s face in his briefcase.

Bristow theorised that the boy had died accidentally. The freshly cut hair and nails suggested that the boy had been well-taken care of. He suggested that the family didn’t come forward because they didn’t want to be charged with murder. 

Based off a clue from the psychic, Bristow looked into a foster family that lived near where the boy was found. The family had been interviewed by police.

In 1961, the family held a garage sale and amongst the other items for sale was a bassinet which Bristow believed could’ve been the one from the box.

He theorised that the boy was an illegitimate child of the daughter who abandoned him so she would not be known as a single mother.

Bristow passed away in 1993 and a Philadelphia detective, Tom Augustine took up the case from where he left off. On the 23rd February 1998, Augustine went to the home of Arthur Nicoletti, the man who had run the former foster home. Anna Marie Nicoletti, Arthur’s wife and step-daughter, was the woman who Bristow theorised was the boy’s mother. Anna Marie told Augustine that she did have a son who had passed away in a bizarre accident and had the morgue records to back her up. Her son had died from electrocution from a nickel ride outside a store.

Theory 3: The last theory comes from a psychiatric patient who was known by the name of Martha. A psychiatrist in Cincinnati contacted Augustine and said a patient had insisted on speaking to the police. 

Martha claimed that when she was eleven, her mother took her to a house where she handed an envelope over for a boy. She also said that her mother sexually abused her and that her mother wanted to do the same to the boy.

Martha’s mother allegedly beat the boy to death after struggling to bathe him and then drove Martha and the boy to Philadelphia to abandon him.

Martha spoke to Tom Augustine and two of the original detectives on the case, Joseph McGillen and William Kelly. All three of them were convinced by Martha’s story. Bill Fleischer, a retired FBI agent stated that the details of Martha’s story added up; the testimonies, addresses and descriptions. However, they couldn’t verify whether the boy was who Martha claimed her was.

To this day, the boy remains unidentified and the mystery of how his corpse came to be in the box unsolved. He has become known as America’s Unknown Child and many visit his grave to pay respects.