Identified! PA - Philadelphia, 'Boy in the Box', WhtMale 4-6, 4UMPA, Feb'57

[PaulR]

It was a year and a half in her family. And the original detectives believed her. She recounted that while she and her mother were parked at the side of the road getting ready to dispose of the body, a passerby stopped his car and offered to help with whatever they were doing. Her mother refused the help and he kept driving. Funny thing is that there WAS an eyewitness who reported encountering a woman and her son by the side of the road. But Martha is rather broad-shouldered and it's entirely plausible that, considering the "son" was bundled up in winter clothing, Martha was mistaken for a boy. It's such an unusual detail that it lends credence to her story, IMO.

I hadn't heard that the original detectives believed "M", where did you read that?

Nevermind, it's here: http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/real-time/the-boy-in-the-box-1957-DNA-philadelphia.html

Bill Fleischer makes a rather interesting comment in the article.

 

[SpeckledCactys]

Nearly cried while reading through this. Poor child, absolutely heartbreaking. No one deserves this,

 

[SpeckledCactys]

Also, was cause of death ever determined? Obviously looks like he was beaten, but just wondering.

 

[Brainy]

Nearly cried while reading through this. Poor child, absolutely heartbreaking. No one deserves this,

Soul-crushing....

May he be blessed.

 

[Sweetluv]

I believe he was in foster care or orphanage..uncared for and mistreated
I think the crude haircut was prob him being a kid..trying to give himself a haircut! Someone was not happy about and took their anger out on him.
Breaks my heart!

 

[Giucy]

I hate bursting bubbles, but could the estimated age be inaccurate ?

Because the multiple surgical scars + scar on "left ankle, which looked like a cut-down incision, made to expose a vein so that a needle may be inserted to give an infusion or transfusion" (source: Doe Network) makes me think that the child had a chronic illness involving growth failure.
And in those days, there was no growth hormone replacement therapy widely available.

So, IMO, the child might be older than estimated.

I think that we should widen estimated age up to 8-9 years old.

 

[Ms Suzanne]

It says this on the Americas Unknown Childs Website about his age and X Rays.He also still had a full set of baby teeth.

http://americasunknownchild.net/summary.htm

Dr. Wilton M. Krogman, professor of physical anthropology at the Graduate School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania - was called in by the Medical Examiner's office to study the dead boy's physical characteristics. Doctor Krogman found the boy to be forty inches tall: giving him a "height age" of about three years, eight months. But the boy's thirty-pound weight was equivalent to a "weight age" of only about two years and two months. This obviously suggested undernourishment, and the bones confirmed that. With x-rays Doctor Krogman discovered scars of arrested growth on the long bones of the legs. This, he reported to police, "may have been enough to have slowed him down six months to a year in his growth progress." Dr. Krogman estimated that the boy had been in chronic ill health - with accompanying malnutrition - for about a year. He described the boy as having "a long narrow head, a high narrow face, and a high narrow nose." That, to him, was enough to speculate on Northwest European ancestry - Scandinavia, West Germany, or England or Scotland.

 

[Giucy]

Problem is that bone X rays doesn't contradict the inaccuracy issue : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bone_age
Yeah I know, Wikipedia

So, a child with growth delay means that bone age is inaccurate.
Let add that bone age charts are not representative for African American, Asian and Hispanic children : the statistics were made on Caucasian healthy children.
I know the boy is Caucasian, it's only FYI.

And undernourishment can be caused by a chronic illness, ex kidney disease https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-in...disease/growth-failure-chronic-kidney-disease
And children with kidney or heart disease lack of appetite, leading to undernourishment.

So, on a healthy child, I would had taken his age estimation at face value.

But too many elements point towards a chronic illness with growth failure, not less the multiple surgical scars.

So, I won't take age estimation at face value, especially with the "chronic ill health with malnutrition" by pathologist.

Since we have had no match with estimated age range, widening the age estimation won't hurt.

 

[Ozoner]

Problem is that bone X rays doesn't contradict the inaccuracy issue : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bone_age
Yeah I know, Wikipedia

So, a child with growth delay means that bone age is inaccurate.
Let add that bone age charts are not representative for African American, Asian and Hispanic children : the statistics were made on Caucasian healthy children.
I know the boy is Caucasian, it's only FYI.

And undernourishment can be caused by a chronic illness, ex kidney disease https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-in...disease/growth-failure-chronic-kidney-disease
And children with kidney or heart disease lack of appetite, leading to undernourishment.

So, on a healthy child, I would had taken his age estimation at face value.

But too many elements point towards a chronic illness with growth failure, not less the multiple surgical scars.

So, I won't take age estimation at face value, especially with the "chronic ill health with malnutrition" by pathologist.

Since we have had no match with estimated age range, widening the age estimation won't hurt.

It would be extremely rare for a child to have a full set of baby teeth on his 8th birthday, so I think we can say that 7 years of age is an upper limit, but I'd actually be very surprised if he was older than 6.

 

[Giucy]

In healthy children, yes.

But we are not in a case of a healthy child. So, we have to account this chronic ill health.

Since said child was chronically ill, could he had been hospitalized at the time of death, and hospital didn't report him missing ? In those days, sick children stayed in hospital for months, sometimes years.
Now, children rarely stay at hospital more than a month

 

[Giucy]

I was also thinking that the boy might had been hospitalized, denied visits from his parents by doctors for whatever reason I am not exactly sure, while a staff member wanted to cover up the murder. So, no one reported him missing.

And the parents were lied about their child by staff. Child was not necessarily killed by family or relative.

Hospitalized children in the '50s : https://mobile.nytimes.com/2008/01/01/health/01visi.html


My theory is that said child was killed by a healthcare professional who was assigned to the boy, while parents were left in the dark (for whatever sick reason in perp's mind).
Might explain why hospital destroyed child's medical record.

Parents are the most likely culprit in similar cases. But we can't exclude hospital staff being the perp(s) and covering up to family.

In my strong opinion, something in this case doesn't add up about family being the perp, from the element we have.

I hope that my theory is wrong, for the sake of the child.

 

[Trident]

Just this morning I was on YouTube listening to a show about pedophilia and other perversions. The Boy in The Box was mentioned in passing, as a child who had been kept in a cage and used for sexual purposes. This was the first time I had ever heard that and I don't know where this man got his information. Now I come here and read this:

In 2002, an Ohio-based psychiatrist alerted Philadelphia authorities that a patient, Mary (a pseudonym), had claimed for decades that her mother and father bought “America’s Unknown Child” from an underground human-trafficking outpost in Kensington.

He was to be used as a sex toy, she claimed.

One day, while struggling to bathe the boy, her mother beat him to death, she said. She told her psychiatrist that she accompanied her mother to Northeast Philadelphia and watched her wrap the boy in a cheap blanket and toss him into the cardboard box.
http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/real-time/the-boy-in-the-box-1957-DNA-philadelphia.html

I know it's been stated, with a link to back it up, that there was no sexual abuse found. However, is that something that would have been put out there, especially in the fifties? I was around in those days, and this was NOT a topic for news or polite conversation. I'm wondering if it was covered up/lied about, for whatever reason. I'm also wondering where this man on YouTube got his information since he had a lot of documented cases and other information.

I just find it odd that twice in one day I'd be hearing about The Boy in The Box, sexual abuse and a possible connection to pedophile rings.

:cow:

 

[4SAM]

Going on another post saying that he could have been denied visits while in hospital by parents, could he when he died not been positively identified by parents, and then dumped away from the hospital so that the parents never put 2 and 2 together? They went and buried maybe an empty coffin or was told the boy was cremated.

 

[Ms Suzanne]

I tried to turn this in to see if this Unidentified man was related to the boy in the box found in 1957 also in Philaelphia.I never heard anything back.Please let me know if anyone has heard if they looked into this. https://www.facebook.com/Unidentifi...57-Fort-Mifflin-Philadelphia-116167622298207/

 

[PaulR]

Just this morning I was on YouTube listening to a show about pedophilia and other perversions. The Boy in The Box was mentioned in passing, as a child who had been kept in a cage and used for sexual purposes. This was the first time I had ever heard that and I don't know where this man got his information. Now I come here and read this:

I know it's been stated, with a link to back it up, that there was no sexual abuse found. However, is that something that would have been put out there, especially in the fifties? I was around in those days, and this was NOT a topic for news or polite conversation. I'm wondering if it was covered up/lied about, for whatever reason. I'm also wondering where this man on YouTube got his information since he had a lot of documented cases and other information.

I just find it odd that twice in one day I'd be hearing about The Boy in The Box, sexual abuse and a possible connection to pedophile rings.

:cow:

The only source that says he was used as a "sex toy" is Mary. Every other claim that this was what happened to him has her as a source. And while you are right, it may not have made the news, the detectives and medical examiners who worked on the case would have known, and a few of them were members of the Vidoqc Society and continued working the case. I'm not sure if any of them are still around, but I do think it would have been communicated to the current detectives on the cold case squad and any VSM still working the case like Fleischer.

As far as I know, they have not said whether the Boy in the Box was a victim of sexual abuse.

 

[Ms Suzanne]

There are earlier newspaper articles on the unknown Childs website that says the autopsy report said there was no sexual on him.In David Stouts book The unsolved Case of America's Unknown Child on page 24 he says Dr Spelman found that,whatever else he had suffered,the child had not been raped.

 

[Ms Suzanne]

From America's Unknown Child's website.I'm assuming he meant no sexual assault in this statement.03/06/57
http://americasunknownchild.net/Archives2Text.html#BPC

Registration Lists

A separate force of 20 detectives armed with voting registration lists were assigned to contact every resident of the area being searched to see if anyone remembers seeing a child resembling the murdered boy in any connection.
Dr. Joseph W. Spelman, city medical examiner, reported that laboratory tests ruled out a suspicion that drowning had figured in the boy's death as well as beating.
He said the tests also failed to show any evidence of an assault and showed that the child had not eaten for two or three hours before his death.
Dr. Spelman said specialists have determined from X-rays of the boy's bones that he was between four and five

 

[juli99]

I just listened to this case on Buzzfeed unsolved. My gut feeling is that M's story is the truth.

 

[Sailor Haumea]

I just listened to this case on Buzzfeed unsolved. My gut feeling is that M's story is the truth.

M is reliable. Has a degree. Formerly worked for a pharmaceutical company. Continual work history since high school graduation.

She is NOT a mentally ill person.

 

[juli99]

It just seems like they couldn't find any hard evidence to corroborate her story. It's too bad the box or the blanket couldn't have provided more clues.