The Boy In The Box
Wikimedia CommonsPolice photo of the victim known as the ‘boy in the box,’ one of America’s most famous unsolved cold cases.
He is known as one of America’s most famous cold cases. He is also known as ‘America’s Unknown Child,’ a small boy found in a cardboard box during the early months of 1957.
The investigators in Fox Chase, a neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, found it difficult to determine his age, as he was significantly malnourished. Their best estimate was between three to seven years old.
The boy’s hair was haphazardly chopped; possibly post-mortem. He was naked and had no vaccination marks. The cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head. A college student had seen the box in the woods and thought perhaps it was a doll inside. He called the police just to make sure.
The police were so desperate for info that they even used a psychic who led investigators to a foster home closeby to where the killer discarded the boy. After meeting the owner and his step-daughter, investigators believed they could be involved. However, no leads panned out, and any evidence was circumstantial.
Wikimedia CommonsA 1957 flyer asking for information about the victim.
Then 43 years later on the anniversary of the boy’s discovery, the police received a strange call from Ohio. A psychiatrist had a patient call in the middle of the night. The patient wanted to report a murder her mother committed many years ago.
The anonymous woman claimed her mother purchased the boy from his parents, and then went on to abuse him and keep him in the basement.
One night, after vomiting from eating baked beans, the boy was severely beaten and then placed in a bathtub to wash up. The patient says the boy died from his beating while in the tub. The mother then drove him into the woods.
Even though the patient’s story collaborates with some facts not ever made public – like the boy’s last meal of baked beans – police doubted the memory. All of the former neighbors with access to the house said it was impossible that a young boy lived there. Furthermore, the patient’s history of mental illness did not make her a viable source of information, police insisted.
It is also theorized that whoever had custody of the boy perhaps dressed him as a girl. That could explain the hasty haircut and the fact that his eyebrows appeared to be plucked.
