How Authorities Identified the "Boy in the Box” After 65 Years

On February 25, 1957, 26-year-old Frederick Benonis stopped his car and got out in Philadelphia’s Fox Chase neighborhood to go after a rabbit. When he ran into the brush, Benonis found a gruesome scene: the badly beaten naked body of a little boy wrapped in a blanket and stuffed inside a cardboard box for a baby bassinet.

Disturbed by the discovery, Benonis did not report the corpse to police until the following day. Investigators determined the boy, between 3 and 7 years old, died from blunt force trauma. The child appeared to have been severely malnourished, and his body was covered in bruises and scars. Police took the dead boy’s fingerprints, but they were unable to identify him. No one had reported him missing.

The body was buried in an unmarked grave in a potter’s field, and for more than half a century, he was only known as “The Boy in the Box” and “America’s Unknown Child.” But on December 10, 2022, Philadelphia Police homicide detectives identified him as 4-year-old Joseph Augustus Zarelli using his DNA and forensic genetic genealogy.

Over 65 years, police dug up Joseph’s body twice to scrape DNA in the hopes they could identify him. The first time, in 1998, investigators created a DNA profile but were unable to get any hits on possible relatives, according to Forensic Magazine.

Two decades later, the Philadelphia Police Department implemented a new forensic genealogy program to assist investigators in determining dozens of unidentified human remains and unknown suspects in cold cases. The department brought in forensic genealogist Colleen Fitzpatrick and her organization Identifinders International to help link the DNA samples with possible surviving relatives.

In 2019, authorities exhumed Joseph’s body a second time because the amount of DNA from the remains extracted during the 1998 exhumation proved insufficient for the new round of testing.

Over the next three years, Fitzpatrick and her team at Identifinders International developed a genetic profile that provided Philadelphia Police with leads for the maternal relatives of the boy. Investigators obtained a DNA sample from a living family member that genealogists used to confirm the identity of Joseph’s mother.

The boy’s DNA strands were “like confetti” and “basically shot,” Fitzpatrick told CBS Philadelphia. "You sort of network them together in a self-consistent way like a big Sudoku puzzle," she added.

Misty Gillis, an Identifiers International genealogist, used the DNA sample to match it with samples taken from possible biological cousins to develop a genetic network that provided leads to investigators. “We looked at where those samples married into each other to build a family tree,” Gillis told NBC10 Philadelphia. “There was a lot of legwork on the detective side and a lot of collaboration between us on giving them tips on who to speak to.”

After confirming the mother's identity, detectives tracked down a birth certificate for a male child born in 1953 that listed the names of the boy’s parents that matched the mom. Police also determined the parents had two other children who were still alive. Investigators obtained DNA samples from the paternal side of the boy’s family that genealogists used to confirm it was the same father listed on the birth certificate.

“This child’s tragic story was always remembered by the community, the Philadelphia police department and our partners,” then-Philadelphia Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw said at the press conference announcing the boy’s identification. “Without the hard work, dedication, passion and doggedness of the many, we would not be here today to give America’s formerly unknown child Joseph Augustus Zarelli a voice.”

Joseph’s birth certificate listed Mary Elizabeth Abel and Augustus John Zarelli, two lifelong Philadelphia residents who passed away in 1991 and 2014, as his mother and father, respectively. Not much is known about the couple’s time together or how they met.

But Abel and Zarelli, who also had two daughters, split up around the time Joseph’s body was discovered, according to Philadelphia Police. The couple never reported the missing boy to authorities.

Abel met her second husband, John Plunkett, in 1959 and they had two children, NBC 10 Philadelphia reported. Zarelli also started a new family the same year. He married a woman named Cynthia Pashko and they had two daughters and one son, according to Zarelli’s online obituary. In 2024, authorities replaced the headstone of the boy’s unmarked grave with a new one bearing Joseph’s name. Relatives of Joseph’s father attended the memorial, including Donna Thomas, a cousin who told reporters she provided a DNA sample that genealogists used to confirm Joseph’s identity and his biological father.

Despite Joseph’s identity being confirmed, authorities have still not provided any details on who may have killed him or any motives for the murder. For more than six decades, theories on the killer’s identity included a story about Joseph possibly being a victim of child sex trafficking by an unidentified woman who killed him in a fit of rage. Other persons of interest included a couple who ran a foster home and Benonis, the man who discovered the boy’s body.

At the press conference announcing Joseph’s identity, Philadelphia Police Capt. Jason Smith, who oversees the homicide unit, said the department won’t comment on the case because it remains an ongoing criminal investigation. A Philadelphia Police spokesperson also declined to comment on the status of the case.

“We have our suspicions as to who may be responsible,” Smith said. “We’re hoping to receive an avalanche of tips from this press conference, someone in their mid to late 70s or 80s who remembers that child.”