October 22–29, 1998

city beat

'Bless This Unknown Boy'

		Box Cops: Vidocq Society member Sam Wieinstein (left) and Detective Tome Augustine reviews files in an office of the Vidocq Society photo: Sandor Welsh

The mystery of The Boy in The Box gnaws at investigators who believe they're one call away from solving the 41-year-old case.

by Frank Lewis

Like it was yesterday, Sam Weinstein sees the bruised little head, the sunken cheeks, the painfully thin, naked body, stretched out and still not filling the cardboard box.

"I'm supposed to be a hardened cop," he says. "I saw a lot of murder and mayhem in World War II. But I never saw anything like what I saw in that box."

That was February 1957. Weinstein was the second cop on the scene after the body of a young boy, perhaps 4 or 5 years old, was discovered in a box on an overgrown lot in the Fox Chase section of Northeast Philadelphia. A nationwide search for answers would prove fruitless, and the tiny victim would continue to be known only as The Boy in The Box.

About 11 years later, Weinstein conducted a routine interview with an aspiring Philly cop named Tom Augustine. Though it didn't come up at the time, Augustine also felt a connection to the case. He grew up not far from the scene, and recalled the posters that seemed to be everywhere in the weeks and months after the discovery. There was no forgetting that ghostly visage, close enough in age to have been his younger brother.

Today, Weinstein is retired; he served for 35 years. Augustine, in his 30th year, is with the Homicide Division's fugitive squad.

Ironically, The Boy in The Box has brought them together again. Augustine is the latest in a long line of homicide detectives to take on the now-41-year-old case. Weinstein is a member of the Vidocq Society, an exclusive and somewhat secretive organization of former investigators and forensic experts that exists for exactly this type of case. They devote much of their free time to reviewing the voluminous files, and chasing down the tips that resulted from the recent airing of the case by America's Most Wanted.

They hope at least to identify the boy, so that someone can replace the words on the headstone purchased way back when by Philly detectives—"Heavenly Father, Bless This Unknown Boy"—with something more personal. To that end they are considering an exhumation of the Potter's Field grave—to obtain DNA samples that could prove useful in the future—and a reinterment in another cemetery.

"He should be in hallowed ground," says Vidocq Society executive director William Fleisher, "with other children."

Augustine agrees, but won't say much else about the possible exhumation. The matter must be handled with care, he explains—and not just because no one knows how deeply the boy was buried, or how well the tiny wooden casket might have held up.

"People might say, Why disturb him? What's the point?" Augustine says. "And I admit, I have mixed feelings about it." But with DNA samples on hand, investigators could confirm or rule out the claims of whatever relatives might come forward, tomorrow or 10 years from now, and finally reveal their family's dark secret.

The hope that such a call will come is what keeps Augustine and Weinstein going. Until then, they follow up on the 150 or so tips that resulted from the America's Most Wanted broadcast. Most are actually suggestions—"Have the detectives check area schools," that sort of thing—from well-meaning folks who have no idea how exhaustive the initial investigation was. (One of the boxes cluttering Weinstein's office in the Vidocq Society's Center City headquarters contains hundreds of 3-by-5 cards, each representing one person interviewed.

But some of the tips sounded promising. A woman in Atlantic City, for example, described a news clipping she'd saved, about a missing Vineland, NJ, boy, who simply had to be the boy she saw on AMW. Augustine called the newspaper, which dug the article out of its archives and faxed him a copy. He was happy to have been saved a trip to Atlantic City when he learned that the Vineland boy had gone missing five years after The Boy in The Box was found.

More recently, he and Weinstein learned that in 1958, an Illinois woman who'd read about the Philadelphia mystery in The Saturday Evening Post told FBI agents that she knew the boy's mother—a "loose" woman who traveled a lot. Once the original report was located, Fleisher tracked down a member of the family by phone, who indicated that the boy he was asking about was now a man and very much alive. She wouldn't give Fleisher his number, but agreed—albeit reluctantly—to pass along a message. At press time, the call had not been returned.

A woman in Modesto, CA, is convinced that the man her aunt married many years ago fled Philadelphia under suspicious circumstances. Local authorities interviewed her at Augustine's request, and sent back a photograph of a boy who might be The Boy in The Box's half-brother. There is a resemblance, but Weinstein and Augustine have learned it's better not to get excited.

"Every time you think you have something," says Weinstein, "you find something else that contradicts that information."

Even long-accepted facts are called into question. Augustine says Philadelphia Medical Examiner Haresh Mirchandani recently concluded that what had been thought to be signs of multiple intravenous insertions into the boy's leg—an indication that he might have been chronically ill—were actually scars from hernia surgery. A minor point, perhaps, but minor points could make the difference.

In some ways, they know so much. The box in which the boy was laid once held a bassinet purchased at JCPenney in Upper Darby (but the box was seen on the lot weeks before the boy was found). The blanket draped over him was manufactured for only a few years, but 1.5 million were sold across the country. The blue corduroy man's hat found nearby was made in South Philadelphia.

But without the name, they know nothing.

"We're not this much closer to solving this case than we they were in 1957," says Augustine, holding his thumb and forefinger about an inch apart. "In police work, [supervisors] ask where you are with a case. We're one phone call away from solving it."

Information about The Boy in The Box can be reported to the Philadelphia Police Department's Homicide Division, 686-3334 or 3335.