PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) — On Thursday, Philadelphia investigators will provide an update on one of the city’s most famous unsolved mysteries.
Police say through detective work and DNA analysis, officers have finally identified the child, known as “the boy in the box”.
The little boy’s body was found in a cardboard box on the side of Susquehanna Road in Fox Chase back in 1957. The boy was naked, malnourished and had been beaten to death.
His remains have not yet been identified. The case remains the oldest unsolved homicide in Philadelphia.
It never left Dave Drysdale’s mind. A tombstone that reads “America’s Unknown Child” is located outside his office at Ivy Hill Cemetery in Cedarbrook.
“I just wish some of the old-timers were still here to see it because I know they were hoping for this day,” Drysdale said.
Detective Tom Augustine died in October. In 1998, he was a security guard carrying an unknown boy to his new grave.
Augustine exhumed the body from the potter’s field for DNA collection and a proper burial.
Action News spoke with his grandson, Matthew Braxton.
“We grew up with these posters up in his office, in his house. We grew up knowing at a very young age who that was. It was a big part not only of his life but also of ours. So it’s kind of closure for us, too,” Braxton said.
The Vidocq Society, made up of some of the world’s leading researchers, took up the case.
Ivy Hill Cemetery says it is ready to engrave the name on the headstone and restore dignity to this little child.
A press conference on this case is scheduled for 11:00 a.m. Thursday.
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