The 'Boy in the Box' finally identified 66 years after his body was found in a cardboard box

A body found in a cardboard box 66 years ago in the United States has been identified by police.

Known as “the boy in the box,” Philadelphia police now say his name was Joseph Augustus Zarelli.

By revealing the name to the public, authorities hope it will bring them closer to the boy's killer and give the victim — known to generations of Philadelphians as “Boy in the Box” — a measure of dignity.

“When people think of the boy in the box, they feel a deep sadness, not only because a child was murdered, but also because his entire identity and legitimate right to own his existence was taken away from him,” he said. said Philadelphia Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw. a press conference.

She said the city's oldest unsolved homicide “has haunted this community, the Philadelphia Police Department, our nation and the world” for more than six decades.

The homicide investigation remains open, and authorities said they hope the release of Joseph's name will lead to new leads. But they warned that the passage of time complicates the task.

Captain Jason Smith, head of the homicide unit, said: “It's going to be an uphill battle for us to definitively determine who caused this child's death.

“We cannot make an arrest. We may never be able to make an identification. But we will do our best to try.

Police said both of Joseph's parents were dead, but he had living siblings. They said his family lived in West Philadelphia.

The child's naked and badly bruised body was found on February 25, 1957, in a wooded area in Philadelphia's Fox Chase neighborhood. The boy, aged 4, had been wrapped in a blanket and placed in a large JCPenney crib box. Police say he was suffering from malnutrition. He had been beaten to death.

The boy's photo was put on a poster and displayed across the city as police worked to identify him and arrest his killer.

Detectives pursued and rejected hundreds of leads – that he was a Hungarian refugee, a boy who had been kidnapped outside a Long Island supermarket in 1955, as well as various other missing children. They investigated two itinerant carnival workers and a family that operated a nearby shelter, but ruled them out as suspects.

An Ohio woman claimed her mother bought the boy from his biological parents in 1954, kept him in the basement of their suburban Philadelphia home and killed him in a fit of rage. Authorities found her credible but could not corroborate her story – another dead end.

Meanwhile, the boy's missing identity consumed police officers, who pursued the case for generations.

They gained permission to exhume his body for DNA testing in 1998 and again in 2019, and it was this latest round of testing, combined with genetic genealogy, that gave police their big break.