America's Unknown Child, Part 2: Over 40 Years Without a Name

Described in a Philadelphia Times article as "the most famous anonymous person in Philadelphia history," the young boy's battered body was discovered inside a cardboard box, tossed onto a roadside dump site over forty years ago. Yet because of the unfailing efforts of hundreds of people who have dedicated countless hours toward solving the case, the mystery of America's Unknown Child continues to be invesigated with the hope that some day the boy's real name will be engraved onto his headstone.

An investigator by the name of Remington Bristow from the city medical examiner's office spent 36 years on the case - all the way through retirement and to his death. He spent hours following leads, often on his own time and expense, and died believing that he knew the killer of the young boy to be a foster family that lived near the place where the body was found. Bristow even called in a psychic who envisioned a house where a couple had lived with five foster children. At the time of the discovery they claimed that all five children were accounted for, but Bristow discovered a similar blanket at the house to the one the boy's body had been wrapped in. Even though this couldn't be proven, he died believing he had solved the case.

The Vidocq Society http://www.vidocq.org/index.html - an international group of crime-solving professionals - adopted the case in 1998. Sam Weinstein - the second policeman to arrive at the scene where the boy's body was discovered - led the society's Boy in the Box investigation. He was later joined by Joseph McGillen, a former investigator with the Philadelphia Medical Examiner's Office and William Kelly who the supervisor of the Philadelphia Police Department Identification Unit during the time of the murder. The Vidocq Society assisted in obtaining a court order to exhume the boy's body for DNA testing. Unfortunately the body was too decayed and the test was unsuccessful.

In 1998 America's Most Wanted in cooperation with the Vidocq Society, hosted a segment on the Boy in the Box mystery. The television show brought in hundreds of new leads and inspired a group of citizens to create a web site at http://mysteryboy.virtualave.net to share the boy's story with the world.

The Boy in the Box was discarded in a dumpsite, left with no identity - no story to tell - and so many people have adopted his case out of empathy for the boy who suffered a cruel and undeserved death. Forty years have passed yet there still may be someone out there that could step forward.

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