‘Boy in the Box’ reportedly identified

PHILADELPHIA » Police are expected to reveal the identity of the “Boy in the Box” found dead in the city decades ago as early as next week.

NBC10 reported that recent DNA testing had linked the child to “a prominent family in Delaware County.” A spokesperson for the Philadelphia Police Department

said there was no releasable information available Thursday, but indicated there would likely be a “significant update on this case in the near future.”

The child’s naked, malnourished and severely beaten body was discovered wrapped in a plaid blanket inside a cardboard box in a wooded area of the city’s Fox Chase neighborhood on Feb. 25, 1957. He was estimated to be between the ages of 4 and 6, weighing 30 pounds and about 3 feet tall.

The case generated significant media attention at the time. The Philadelphia Inquirer printed 400,000 flyers that included images of the boy that were distributed on street corners, posted in shops, and even sent out with every gas bill in the city. In 2016, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children released a facial reconstruction image of what the boy may have looked like.

Police investigated numerous clues, leads and tips in the intervening 65 years, none of which produced any results. NBC10 reports that investigators were finally able to identify the boy through DNA evidence and find his birth certificate. The revelation is expected to reinvigorate the long-running homicide investigation.

The boy is buried at Ivy Hill

Cemetery in the Cedarbrook section of Philadelphia under a headstone reading “America’s Unknown Child.”