Inside the 65-year hunt to identify the Boy in the Box: How a DNA test taken after a 2017 break-up and technique used on mummies finally helped name cold case murder victim and reveal parents - which investigators kept secret for A YEAR. So, who killed him?
The identity of Philadelphia's 'Boy in the Box' remained a mystery for 65 years before he was finally publicly identified in December as Joseph Augustus Zarelli. DNA sample was obtained with techniques usually used on 'ancient' mummies - and his father was traced thanks to a DNA test a man bought for his ex-girlfriend. Investigators learned Joseph's name and the identity of his parents in October 2021 but were forced to keep it secret during painstaking verification process
By Lewis Pennock
Daily Mail
February 11, 2023
For 65 years, the identity of Philadelphia's Boy in the Box remained a mystery - until a breakthrough in October 2021 revealed his name: Joseph Augustus Zarelli.
But it was 14 months before the victim in one of America's most notorious cold case homicides was made public in December 2022.
In that time, the half-dozen experts, police and city officials who'd helped solve the mystery had to undertake painstaking work to confirm the boy's identity.
They also faced huge pressure - and even abuse - from online trolls, colleagues and the public as word spread that there was a breakthrough. As the team fought off relentless speculation, they even used decoy stories to keep their secret.
And there was a lot of speculation. Books have been written about the case, online forums and websites are dedicated to theories around the murder, and thousands of column inches across the country have been filled with stories about 'America's Unknown Child'.
Investigators who revealed Joseph's name declined to identify his parents, out of respect for their living relatives. They have since been named as Augustus J. 'Gus' Zarelli and Mary Elizabeth 'Betsy' Abel
Joseph's identity was uncovered using groundbreaking DNA research and genealogy to build a web of relatives that ultimately led to the boy. The final piece in the puzzle came after experts discovered the boy's parents: Augustus J. 'Gus' Zarelli and Mary Elizabeth 'Betsy' Abel.
The names of Betsy and Gus - who died in 1991 and 2014 respectively - were kept secret by the team out of respect for their surviving relatives. But they were eventually revealed in January after research by journalists and online sleuths who for years have been absorbed by the case.
In an interview with DailyMail.com, the leader of the team which undertook the DNA analysis and genealogy work, Dr Colleen Fitzpatrick, detailed the exhaustive work that resulted in the identity of the Boy in the Box.
The breakthrough also provides fresh hope that an answer can be found to the haunting question that remains: Who killed Joseph Augustus Zarelli?
Joseph's naked, badly bruised body was found wrapped in a blanket in a JC Penney bassinet box in Philadelphia's Fox Chase neighborhood on February 25, 1957. A national appeal was launched to identify the unknown boy - and capture his killer.
Pictures of his likeness were printed by the Philadelphia Inquirer and distributed to hundreds of thousands of homes in the city. Police took the unusual step of publishing a haunting post-mortem photograph of the boy's battered face, and another of his body dressed in children's clothes, as they sought help from the public.
Pictures were also put up in stores across Philadelphia - and people today who were alive in 1957 still recall those haunting images.
The desperate appeals triggered thousands of tips, even some from overseas, but none led to the boy's identity. Police believe he was killed by blunt force trauma, and many theories have swirled as to who murdered him and why.
Indeed, Captain Jason Smith, head of Philadelphia PD's homicide department, told the press conference which disclosed Joseph's identity: 'We have our suspicions as to who may be responsible, but it would be irresponsible of me to share these suspicions as this remains an active and ongoing criminal investigation.'
Betsy was 21 when Joseph was born and a close relative has said he could have been put up for adoption. The relative said there was 'no cruelty, no meanness', and there is no suggestion Joseph's parents had anything to do with his death.
An attorney for Gus's four children told the Philadelphia Inquirer they only learned about their connection to the case 'recently' and had 'never been shown anything that links their father or any member of their family to this'.
He said the family were 'extraordinarily sympathetic' and 'horrified', adding: 'There has been no credible allegation by anyone, including the Philadelphia Police Department, that their father knew of the birth of this child, or had anything to do with the life of this child, and certainly nothing even remotely suggesting that he knew of or had anything to do with any harm having come to this child.'
The DNA developments that sparked renewed hope the boy could be identified came more than half a century after his death.
Dr Fitzpatrick, founder and CEO of Identifinders International, first became aware of the case in around 2010, through newspaper headlines and discussions in cold cases circles. Even then, DNA technology was 'relatively primitive', she said.
Within a few years, knowledge in the field was advanced enough to help adoptees find their birth parents by combining DNA technology with genealogy. Forensic genealogists like Dr Fitzpatrick started to ask: 'How come we can't apply this to cold cases?'
After success in other high-profile cases, Identifinders International was officially brought on to the Boy in the Box case in February 2019.
The previous team who'd attempted to use the boy's DNA had been working with badly-damaged samples taken from teeth, obtained when Joseph's body was first exhumed in 1998.
In April 2019, a second exhumation took place and a part of the femur was removed for analysis.
The sample was sent by Identifinders International to the International Commission on Missing Persons at The Hague, Netherlands, who were able to extract three DNA samples, each just one eighth of a nanogram.
Dr Fitzpatrick's team attempted whole genome sequencing on the results, in the hope of generating a DNA profile of the boy which could be run through genealogy databases.
But the process failed.
'It just didn't even pass quality check,' Dr Fitzpatrick said. 'It was so bad that it stopped almost right away. That was pretty much where the technology was at that time.'
The pivotal DNA breakthrough came when her team were recommended a lab that handled, in layman's terms, 'ancient DNA' like that taken from mummies. In February 2021, that lab was able to extract a DNA sample large enough to create a profile for the boy.
'They did several extractions and one of them yielded three nanograms,' said Dr Fitzpatrick. 'You go from an eighth to three because of the magic they did.
'It was the right expertise, the right people, the right time.
'The lab that actually did the miracle for us wants to remain confidential. They did a miracle for us and they asked to remain anonymous for various reasons. It was more like a research project for them.'
Despite that game-changing development, the mystery was still far from solved, and the painstaking genealogy work began.
Misty Gillis, a forensic genealogist from Identifinders International, led the work of comparing Joseph's DNA profile with millions of samples held in databases used by the organization.
'It's been very personal to me because I have young children around the same age as Joseph,' Gillis said. 'I want to have his story told. I want to have it out in the world to do him justice.'
By comparing Joseph's DNA with samples in those vast databases, investigators are able to find close and distant relatives.
But just like with the DNA work that led to this crucial step, the process wasn't simple.
Dr Fitzpatrick explained: 'We didn't really have a lot of close matches. In other words, we didn't really have a brother or a sister or an aunt or uncle.'
The initial hits were distant cousins, several times removed.
'What you're actually doing is, if all those people are related to the boy, they have to be related to each other as well, in some way,' Dr Fitzpatrick added.
'And it's like a big sudoku puzzle, where you take the tools and you move the people around and their various relationships until you get that self-consistent pattern. When you do there's one part missing - and that's person you're looking for.'
Within a few months, Gillis had built a web that was leading the team tantalizingly close to Joseph's identity.
'On the maternal side, I used a whole bunch of third and fourth cousins that I was able to build out their genetic trees and see where they married into,' she said.
'And so I built those trees down and down, painstakingly. It took me about two months until I was able to identify who the birth mother was.'
Using this crucial information, a court order was obtained for Joseph's birth certificate. Sixty five years after his discovery, in October 2021, Joseph's name was known.
But instead of celebrating, the team had to embark on meticulous work to verify the discovery.
Joseph was born out of wedlock - a taboo at the time - and while his father's name appeared on his birth certificate, that also needed to be verified by DNA research.
Gillis's research led to Justin Thomas, who was revealed to be a distant relative of Joseph's father.
In a sign of the serendipity that's key to a case like this, Thomas, a middle-aged engineer from Philadelphia, had taken a DNA test in 2017 that was initially meant as a gift for his ex-girlfriend. They split before she could use it, so Thomas did it himself.
His results had been uploaded to a database used by Identifinders International and Gillis tracked him down. She told him he 'might' be a match in a cold case from Philadelphia.
Thomas put Gillis in touch with his mother, who agreed to take a test herself. That revealed she was likely a first cousin of Joseph Zarelli, and ultimately helped Gillis confirm the identity of the boy's birth father.
The investigators had completed the puzzle with Joseph at its center. But it would still be a few more months before the breakthrough could be shared.
A call was arranged between Gillis, Dr Fitzpatrick, Philadelphia PD detective Bob Hesser and a member of the police department's Office of Forensic Science.
A modern-day color rendering of what the Boy in the Box would have looked like. Police generated several images of the boy in their appeals for clues and information
Dr Fitzpatrick said: 'We went over whatever we needed to go over and we agreed that we had the right name...
'We had to go to the medical examiner to have them sign a death certificate and that took a few more months because, of course, they are not as familiar with genealogy as we are and we have to go through the process.
'They have very intelligent questions, because they said if we release the name when it all comes out people are going to ask, "well, did you consider if…" We had to patch those holes together.'
The questions ranged from whether the team was certain of the identity of the boy's father to whether the details on the birth certificate were correct.
'We can't prove something that doesn't exist,' said Dr Fitzpatrick of the strenuous work in addressing the questions. 'You can't say it's not there, all you can say is you didn't find it.'
Until the press conference in December, only a handful of people knew the boy's identity.
'You really want to come out and say this fantastic thing we've done and we can't and that was very difficult,' Dr Fitzpatrick said.
'We didn't want people tripping over themselves and speculating and whatever.
'It took over a year to announce it. We're sitting on this because the medical examiner is doing their job, there's violent crime in Philadelphia, the detectives have other responsibilities.
'During that time, it became kind of an issue that people knew that we had it but we couldn't really publicly acknowledge that, so it's a lot of pressure guarding a secret from your own fellow detectives.'
As speculation grew that Joseph's name had been uncovered, so did the flurry of enquiries from followers of the case desperate for details.
'I would get emails from the community saying [things like], "hey, just tell me if he's eastern European, my grandfather was eastern European and I think it was my grandfather's brother",' said Dr Fitzpatrick.
'One lady had written a book about the boy and she had pictures of another child that looked just like him. She wrote me this long email about why she had it all figured out and all I could say is, 'thank you for the information' - and she was dead wrong. She wanted me to say, 'oh my god, you've solved it'.'
Nobody who contacted Dr Fitzpatrick had any information that was correct, she said.
Social media groups dedicated to the case were also buzzing with rumors that investigators had identified the boy. Posts ranged from 'jaded comments' to outright criticism from observers who accused the team of failing at their task.
At last, in an emotional press conference on December 8, Philadelphia Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw disclosed Joseph's name to the public.
She was joined by current and former investigators, Dr Fitzpatrick, and a member of the Vidoqc Society, a Philadelphia-based organization that works on unsolved murder cases, including the Boy in the Box.
Dr Fitzpatrick added: 'When you have a child that young, this could only be solved with genealogy.
'He's got no paper trail, he's got no history, he's got no legal history, the only documentation in the world was his birth certificate. And how are you going to find that in the middle of the millions of birth certificates in the Philadelphia archives?'
She praised the police department for the 'brilliant job on the investigative side' that helped confirm the findings of the DNA and genealogy investigation. This included tracking down the close relatives in Joseph's family tree and interviewing them about the case.
Dr Fitzpatrick also stressed that her team did not use consumer databases like Ancestry or 23andMe. Their main tool was GEDmatch, which is used by law enforcement in the US and has contributed to solving cases including the Golden State Killer.
The identification of Joseph meant he could at last be buried under a headstone that features his name.
A dedication ceremony was held at Ivy Hill Cemetery on January 13, where he has been buried since 1998 under a gravestone that previously read 'America's Unknown Child'.
Meanwhile, the murder investigation remains open.
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