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.Five months later, with leads petering out, authorities decidedthat it was time to give the child a proper burial.He needed a better cof-fin than the cardboard box in which he had been found.The homicidesquad wanted to give him more dignity in death than he had beenaccorded in life.They took up a collection to pay for the funeral.On July 24, 1957, about a dozen detectives gathered as three amongtheir ranks and a member of the city medical examiner s staff carriedthe small white casket to the graveside of America s Unknown Child.Captain Warren F.Guthriell, chaplain of the Fourth Naval District inPhiladelphia, said a final prayer.The detectives heard the familiarwords intoned,  Suffer the little children to come unto me. Red rosesand gladioli lay upon the casket with a card:  From the members ofthe homicide squad. They watched silently as his casket was loweredinto the ground in a municipal cemetery near the Byberry state hospital.On the headstone read the inscription, Heavenly Father, Bless ThisUnknown Boy.The men who worked on the case never really stopped thinking aboutthat little boy.In 1990, former police officer and FBI agent WilliamFleisher, forensic reconstructionist Frank Bender, and forensicpsychologist and criminal profiler Richard Walter formed the VidocqSociety.This Philadelphia-based volunteer organization uses its mem-bers combined experience in law enforcement to help solve cold casesinvolving violent crimes, murders, and abductions in which the victimwas killed.In early 1998, the Philadelphia Police Department asked the Societyto adopt the case of the Unknown Child.Three retired Philadelphiapolice officers began working with homicide detective Thomas Augustineto try to solve this old mystery.Augustine, who was 11 years old when he202 Cold Cases: Famous Unsolved Mysteries, Crimes, and Disappearances in Americasaw the picture of the Unknown Child in a store window, grew up not farfrom where the body was found.Weinstein, the second police officer toarrive on the scene back in 1957, had retired from the force in 1985.He led the Vidocq Society s team, and he was joined by Joseph McGillenand William Kelly.MODERN FORENSICSForensic techniques had evolved considerably since the boy s bodywas found in 1957.Bender created a bust of what he believed the boy sfather might look like, hoping that someone would recognize him.On November 4, 1998, the unknown boy s remains were exhumedand DNA samples were taken to compare with possible survivingrelatives should anyone step forward.In April 2001, forensics expertswere able to coax mitochondrial DNA from the core of the boy s teeth.Mitochondrial DNA is inherited from mother to child, whereas nuclearDNA comes from both parents.Mitochondrial DNA is easier to extractfrom hair, bones, or even teeth, particularly when a body s remains aredegraded.The boy s burial site in the potter s field was littered with condomsand other trash and did not reflect the dignity that he deserved, Fleisherdecided.The Ivy Hill Cemetery donated a plot by the entrance.Morethan 100 people attended a ceremony on November 11, 1998, whenthe child was reburied.A bagpiper played  Going Home, and hisbody was lowered into the ground.The Vidocq Society erected a new,black granite marker on his grave that bore the inscription  America sUnknown Child.The television show  America s Most Wanted aired a story aboutthe case on October 3, 1998, generating hundreds of tips.The threeretired officers carefully went through six large storage boxes of infor-mation that had been gathered over the years and followed up on theleads that the show generated.They knew that they may not be ableto find the little boy s killer, but they felt that he at least deserved aname other than  America s Unknown Child.On February 25, 2000, an Ohio psychiatrist phoned the homicidedivision.One of her outpatients,  Mary, had woken up in the weehours of the morning in a state of panic; she wanted to report a murderthat had occurred 43 years ago that day.Through her psychiatrist, shetold the men that she had grown up in Lower Merion.Her father wasa high school teacher and her mother was a librarian.She was an onlyUnknown Child: The Boy in the Box (1957) 203child and later earned a doctorate in chemistry.When she was about13 years old, she and her mother went to someone s home where hermother handed over an envelope of money to a couple in exchange fora toddler.She kept the boy in the basement and didn t allow him toleave the house.He never talked, as though he had a mental disability [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]