

The Boy In The Box

For over six decades, the case of a young boy found deceased in a Philadelphia woods in 1957 remained one of America's most perplexing mysteries. The child, who was malnourished and showed signs of severe abuse, had been placed inside a cardboard box and was known for generations only as "America's Unknown Child." Despite an intense investigation and thousands of leads, no one ever came forward to identify him. In 2022, after 65 years, authorities successfully used modern genetic genealogy to finally give him a name: Joseph Augustus Zarelli. This breakthrough, however, did not solve the crime or identify the killer.