On February 25, 1957, an unidentified child’s body was found wrapped in a blanket
and inside a box in Philadelphia by a man checking his rabbit traps in the woods. This case would continue to puzzle the nation for 65 years, until November 30, 2022, when the Philadelphia police finally uncovered the identity of the young boy.
Joseph Augustus Zarelli was born on January 13, 1953, to parents Augustus J. “Gus” Zarelli and Mary Elizabeth “Betsy” Abel. Four years after his birth, he was murdered. The man who found him later came out and said that due to fear of getting in trouble, he did not report it. It was when a different man followed a rabbit into the woods that the body was finally reported.
Joseph’s hair seemed to have just been cut, with pieces of it still on his body. He had signs of malnourishment and physical abuse. Immediately, investigators put out pictures of his likely appearance. His picture was distributed all over the nation and was featured on the gas bills of Philadelphia residents in hopes of finding a relative of the boy.
The crime scene was searched through roughly by 270 police academy recruits. They found a man’s blue corduroy cap, a child’s scarf and a man’s white handkerchief with the letter “G” in the corner, but this led the police nowhere.
The police searched for decades, doing all they could to get his picture distributed and
scrambling for information about the case. No one ever came forward to claim his identity.
In 2022, the local police got a hit off one of Joseph’s cousins who had put his DNA into
an ancestry website. From there, the police got more DNA from the family and that DNA and his genealogy led to the boy’s identity being uncovered, but the identity of who hurt him has not been found. Over the years, this case has become very popular and it was a relief to many followers of the case to finally see Joseph’s name given back to him after so many years.