The Philadelphia Inquirer, November 12, 1999
Boy slain in '57 still unidentified but not forgotten
The young victim was known as the Boy in the Box. Yesterday, a park
bench was dedicated near his grave.
By Suman Pradhan
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
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The Philadelphia Inquirer, November 12, 1999
Boy slain in '57 still unidentified but not forgotten
The young victim was known as the Boy in the Box. Yesterday, a park
bench was dedicated near his grave.
By Suman Pradhan
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
Yesterday morning was cold, chilly and cloudy with a hint of rain in the air, but by the time a small group of people at Ivy Hill Cemetery began a dedication ceremony, the clouds had cleared and the sun was brightly shining.
In many ways, William L. Fleisher remembered, the day was just like the one exactly a year ago.
Nov. 11, 1998, was also cold and cloudy. It had even rained that morning. But when the time came to rebury the Boy in the Box - that day renamed America's Unknown Child - the rains had stopped, the clouds had parted, and the sun shone brightly from a blue sky.
The similarities were not lost on Fleisher, commissioner of the Vidocq Society, a group of crime an forensic experts who try to solve long-unsolved crime mysteries.
"It is as if God wanted to clear the day for this little boy just as He did last year," Fleisher said pointing toward the sky.
Last year, he and several colleagues had gathered at the cemetery for the reburial of the young murder victim who was found Feb. 25, 1957, in a brown cardboard box left on top of a trash pile in a wooded area off Susquehanna Road in Fox Chase.
There were few clues to his identity. He was clean, and his fine blond hair was crudely cut. Authorities believed he was 3 to 5 years old. Bruises covered his body, and the medical examiner ruled he had died of blunt-force trauma.
The Boy in the Box, as he came to be known, was buried shortly thereafter in a potter's field in the Far Northeast, a graveyard for executed prisoners, unidentified bodies, and body parts.
But last year, more than four decades after the burial, his body was exhumed by investigators hoping to solve the case with the help of modern investigative techniques. They gathered valuable DNA evidence and reburied the body in a donated tiny white casket in a donated plot at Ivy Hill Cemetery, a move that the Vidocq Society said was to give some dignity and respect for the unknown murder victim.
Yesterday, members of the Vidocq Society and longtime investigators gathered again at the cemetery, this time to dedicate a small white granite park bench near the polished black headstone marking the grave.
"This bench is for all those who come to visit the grave and pay their respects to America's Unknown Child," Fleisher said. "They can sit on it and contemplate on the boy and all the children who are abused not just in America but all over the world."
It was a ceremony marked with poignancy. The two dozen or so people at the ceremony stood in silence as Christian and Jewish prayers were said. A lone bagpiper played a lonely tune that underscored the solemnity of the occasion. Fresh flowers adorned the grave. Small toys left by earlier mourners were still lined up neatly by the headstone.
"Oh, it's such a sad day," murmured Marie Bennet, 74, of Fairmount, tears welling in her eyes. "This was the first child whose identity was never known, who was so brutally abused. How many more since have suffered abuse? I hope this helps to keep everyone's mind focused on the issue."
Many of the original police personnel who had investigated the crime were on hand. Elmer Palmer, 72, and Sam Weinstein, 73, who were the first and second police officers on the crime scene, stood nearby, silently gazing at the headstone. Also in attendance was Mann Funeral Home's Craig Mann, whose father had originally handled the boy's funeral.
"When the call came on the radio that day," Palmer said, "they said it was a doll in a box. But when I got there, I saw it was not a doll, but a beautiful young boy. It's something that always sticks with you. It feels bad that nobody ever found out who the boy was. But hopefully some day, the mystery will be resolved."
That is the hope that keeps the Vidocq Society working on the case. The society has been funding new investigations by a team that includes Weinstein, Philadelphia Homicide Detective Tom Augustine, and William H. Kelly, a former identification supervisor with the Philadelphia Police Department.
"I don't want the public to forget that the boy was a human being," Weinstein said. "He had no choice in his birth, and no chance to live."
Weinstein is confident that one day the case will be solved.
"We have followed hundreds of leads since last year, but nothing has come of it yet," he said. "But we hope that somebody's conscience will prick them and they could come forward some day."
The Vidocq Society's Fleisher summed up the group's determination to solve the case: "The investigations will go on, even after we are gone. Someone else will step in to keep up the work."
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