More than 65 years later, US police said Thursday that new DNA and genealogical research has led to the identification of a toddler who was found dead in a cardboard box in Philadelphia in the late 1950s and whose killer has never been found. On February 25, 1957, the lifeless body of a boy was found in a wooded area of a city in the North-East of America, with traces of multiple blows, wrapped in a blanket in a cardboard box.
“malnutrition”
In addition to beating “The boy appeared to be malnourished (…) it was obvious that in his very short life this child had experienced horrors that no one, no one should ever have to experience.”Philadelphia police chief Daniel Outlaw announced this at a press conference. An autopsy concluded that the victim was between four and six years old, but no one ever came forward to claim her body and investigate. “The Little Boy in the Box” she was never able to identify him, despite previous DNA tests.
In 2019, police exhumed his remains again, buried near a tombstone “America’s Unknown Child”, after developing new forensic techniques, police Capt. Jason Smith explained. The test results were uploaded to a DNA database and then analyzed by genealogists, tracking down the child’s biological mother. Investigators then found the birth certificate of one of her children, who was born in 1953. The new analysis has made it possible to determine the father and date of birth of the child, who has been identified as Joseph Augustus Zarelli and was born in 1953. on January 13.
Police did not identify the parents, but said the child was born “a number of siblings” still alive “This is still an active homicide investigation and we still need the public’s help to complete this child’s life story.”, said Daniel Outlaw. At the end of October, another mystery was revealed in the northeastern United States. Federal police and justice said they had identified a woman who was found murdered with her arms severed on a beach on the east coast of the United States in 1974, and whose killer was also never found. Ruth Marie Terry, a resident of Tennessee, was 37 years old at the time of her death.
Source: Le Figaro
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