During the 1950s, children played outside and there never seemed to be as much worry as there is now when your children are left alone to play.
His name was Joseph Augustus Zarrelli. Prior to being identified, Joseph was known as America's unknown child or "the boy in the box". He was born on January 13, 1953, and by the time he was age 4, he had endured a lot of things that most children have never been through.
On February 25, 1957, Joseph's body was found wrapped in a plaid blanket and was reportedly found with lots of scars on his body. His hair had just been recently cut and he looked very groomed. He was also found nude and malnourished. His body was found on Susquehanna Road near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. There were hardly any items near the crime scene, but the one thing that stuck out was that there was a news boy blue corduroy cap that was found near the murder.
The final outcome of how he was killed was by blunt force trauma.
When his body was found, there were no parents that were associated with this boy. So there were a lot of speculations about what had happened. Fingerprints were enough to identify the unknown body at the time so the police had put out over 400,000 flyers and at least 270 cops were on scene trying to figure out what had happened if there were any items or clues in the area.
One thing that has stuck out about this case was the fact that there was a foster home near where his body was found. The blanket that this unknown body was wrapped in matched with the blankets that were found at the foster home.
Remington Bristow was an employee of the medical examiners office. He was trying to tie the foster home to the unknown boy's body. He was trying to tie that the owner's stepdaughter was potentially the mother of this unknown boy. They thought maybe they were trying to hide the mom's story so people didn't learn the truth about this potential step-daughter's baby and knowing he was born out of wedlock.
Tom Augustine was an investigator on this case, and in 1998 he interviewed the foster dad and stepdaughter. After his interview, he closed the investigation on the foster dad and step-daughter after he made conclusions that they had nothing to do with this unknown boy.
Investigators were trying to pull at straws because they had hardly any information on what had happened to this boy.
The unknown boy's body was exhumed in 1998 to get a DNA extracted from his tooth. The NCMEC had released forensic facial reconstruction, and it still was not enough to place this child with a name at the time nor his parents.
His body was exhumed again in 2019 and more DNA samples were taken. This time the parents were named because they had used the GED match where police could compare DNA from different companies and they came up with a birth certificate for this unknown boy.
The mom's name was Mary Able otherwise known as Betsy and the dad's name was Augustus John Zarrelli also known as Gus. They were both Italian immigrants and nobody in their families knew about this unknown boy between these two parents. Betsy had graduated from a school in Philadelphia, and the only things they knew about her was that she had had a daughter that she had given up for adoption. His father owned a construction business and had four other children.
Frank Bender, who is in the forensic artist, raised his eyebrows wondering if this boy was a girl originally due to the way the eyebrows were and the haircut style. He released a sketch in 2008 with long hair. Just trying to make sure they covered all dots and crossed their t's.
Thank God this young boy had a name now and the city officials and residents had come up with some money to bury him respectfully in Ivy Hill cemetery outside of Philadelphia.
To this day, this homicide is still active and the investigators are hoping that the public can help them help solve this murder. This case has been tormenting the town and the investigators, and hopefully there will be justice for Joseph.
Written By: Heidi
Murder of Joseph Augustus Zarelli - Wikipedia
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