Police plan DNA test in probe of 41-year-old slaying
The young victim — who had come to be known as “the Boy in the Box” — was exhumed yesterday.
This story was originally published in November 1998.
A murder mystery that riveted the city 41 years ago and has perplexed city detectives ever since is about to be reexamined with the help of modern technology.
After securing a court order, homicide detectives yesterday exhumed the body of a never-identified youngster who has come to be known as “the Boy in the Box.’”
The investigators had gone to the potter’s field in the Far Northeast to get DNA from the remains — an investigatory avenue that was unavailable to detectives more than a generation ago.
“Hopefully, with this new evidence, this DNA evidence, we’ll be able to positively link somebody or rule somebody out,’” said Lt. Kenneth Coluzzi of the Homicide Division, “so we won’t just be chasing lead after lead.’”
At this point, however, investigators have no leads.
The discovery of the body of a young boy in a brown cardboard box left in a wooded area off Susquehanna Road — then a lonely country lane between Verree and Pine Roads in Fox Chase — on Feb. 25, 1957, generated widespread interest and frustration.
There was little to help identify the boy. He was clean and he had a crude haircut. He was wrapped in a cheap, colorful cotton blanket that had been cut in half. Investigators believe he was about 4 years old. He had head injuries, but the exact cause of death was never determined.
Yesterday, investigators went to the potter’s field, near Mechanicsville and Dunks Ferry Roads, and in the chill fall air located the grave marker that reads: “Heavenly Father, Bless This Unknown Boy.’”
A backhoe sliced into the earth.
Inspector Jerrold Kane of the Homicide Division said the remains were taken to the Medical Examiner’s Office. Once testing is completed, they will be reburied Nov. 11 — only this time in Ivy Hill Cemetery off Easton Road in the city’s Northwest section.
The cost of the burial, according to Kane, will be borne by the Vidocq society — an association of professional sleuths long interested in the case. The reburial will be done by Craig Mann, of Mann Funeral Home on Tabor Road, whose father handled the original burial.
Once DNA is harvested it will be stored in the event that someday a lead will pan out.
Coluzzi, overseer of the division’s cold-case files, thinks DNA could be the key to solving the case.
“Hopefully we can put a name to this little boy. Give him the respect and dignity he deserves,” he said, “and then find out who killed him.’”
This story was originally published in November 1998.