Mysterious ‘boy in the box’ cold case murder gets vital clue – and restores child’s dignity

Published

3 years ago

December 9, 2022

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Nearly seven decades after the battered body of a young boy was found stuffed inside a cardboard box, US police have revealed his identity.

Joseph Augustus Zarelli was the victim of one of Philadelphia’s most notorious cold cases.

The child’s naked, badly bruised body was found on 25 February 1957, in a wooded area of Philadelphia’s Fox Chase neighbourhood.

Now police have finally discovered his identity, and they hope it will bring them one step closer to finding the boy’s killer and give the victim – known to generations of Philadelphians as the “Boy in the Box” – a measure of dignity.

“When people think about the boy in the box, a profound sadness is felt, not just because a child was murdered, but because his entire identity and his rightful claim to own his existence was taken away,” Philadelphia Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw said at a news conference.

She said the city’s oldest unsolved homicide has “haunted this community, the Philadelphia police department, our nation, and the world” for almost 66 years.

The homicide investigation remains open, and authorities said they hoped publicising Joseph’s name would spur a fresh round of leads.

Police said both of Joseph’s parents are dead, but that he has living siblings.

When the boy was discovered, he was four years old, and had been wrapped in a blanket and placed inside a large box.

Police say he was malnourished and had been beaten to death.

The boy’s photo was put on a poster which was hung all over the city as police worked to identify him and catch his killer.

The leads, the clues and the dead ends

Detectives pursued and discarded hundreds of leads – that he was a Hungarian refugee, a boy who’d been kidnapped outside a Long Island supermarket in 1955, a variety of other missing children.

They investigated a pair of travelling carnival workers and a family who operated a nearby foster home, but ruled them out as suspects.

An Ohio woman claimed her mother bought the boy from his birth parents in 1954, kept him in the basement of their suburban Philadelphia home, and killed him in a fit of rage.

Authorities found her credible but couldn’t corroborate her story – another dead end.

Generations of police took up the case.

Exhumation

They got permission to exhume his body for DNA testing in 1998 and again in 2019, and it was that latest round of testing, combined with genetic genealogy, that gave police their big break.

Dr Colleen Fitzpatrick, president of Identifinders International, a company that uses forensic genetic genealogy to help law enforcement investigate cold cases, said the victim’s DNA was so degraded that it took two-and-a-half years of work to be able to extract enough data to perform the genealogy.

The test results were uploaded to DNA databases, leading to a match on the child’s maternal side.

Authorities obtained a court order for vital records of any children born to the woman they suspected was Joseph’s mother between 1944 and 1956, and found Joseph’s birth certificate, which also listed the name of his father.

Headstone will finally have a name

Originally buried in a pauper’s grave, the boy’s remains now lie just inside the front gate at Ivy Hill Cemetery, under a weeping cherry tree, and a headstone designates him as “America’s Unknown Child”.

Services have been held there each year on the anniversary of the boy’s discovery inside the box.

People often leave flowers and, this time of year, Christmas decorations and toys.

“The boy has always been special to all of us, because we don’t know who it is,” Dave Drysdale, the cemetery’s secretary-treasurer, said.

Now they do. And now that he has a name – his real name – it will be etched on the stone.

US

Trump will meet Putin even if Russian leader refuses to meet Zelenskyy

Published

2 hours ago

August 8, 2025

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Putin plays down idea of meeting Zelenskyy, saying 'certain conditions' must be met

Donald Trump has said he will meet Vladimir Putin even if the Russian leader refuses to meet Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Asked by a reporter if Mr Putin needed to meet his Ukrainian counterpart in order to meet him, the US president replied: “No, he doesn’t. No.”

A Russian aide has said Washington and Moscow could hold talks “in the coming days”.

The same aide said the Americans had suggested a trilateral meeting but it was “not specifically discussed”.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said: “As President Trump said yesterday, the Russians expressed their desire to meet with President Trump, and the president is open to this meeting.

“President Trump would like to meet with both President Putin and President Zelenskyy because he wants this brutal war to end.

“The White House is working through the details of these potential meetings and details will be provided at the appropriate time.”

The White House has set a deadline of Friday for Moscow to show progress towards ending the three-year war in Ukraine or suffer additional economic sanctions.

Asked if that deadline would hold, Mr Trump said of Mr Putin: “It’s going to be up to him. We’re going to see what he has to say. It’s going to be up to him. Very disappointed.”

The Russian leader has played down the possibility of talks with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, saying that while it is possible, certain conditions must be met.

Mr Putin had been responding to an American proposal of a trilateral meeting between him, the Ukrainian president and Mr Trump.

The idea was floated by Steve Witkoff, the US president’s envoy, during talks with Mr Putin on Wednesday, Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said.

War in Ukraine: Latest updates

Mr Ushakov said the three-way option was “simply mentioned by the American representative during the meeting in the Kremlin”.

He added, however: “This option was not specifically discussed.”

On the prospect of meeting Mr Zelenskyy, Vladimir Putin said: “I have already said many times that I have nothing against it in general – it is possible.”

However, he distanced himself from any such meeting happening soon, adding: “But certain conditions must be created for this. Unfortunately, we are still far from creating such conditions.”

Mr Zelenskyy offered to speak to Mr Putin in May, challenging him to meet in Istanbul for talks on ending the war in Ukraine – an invitation the Russian leader declined.

While a trilateral meeting appears to be off the agenda, Mr Ushakov said an agreement had been reached for Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin to meet “in the coming days”.

After the US president touted a “very good prospect” of the leaders meeting for Ukraine ceasefire talks, Mr Ushakov said on Thursday that Russian and American officials had started working on the details.

“At the suggestion of the American side, an agreement was essentially reached to hold a bilateral meeting at the highest level in the coming days,” he said.

“We are now beginning concrete preparations together with our American colleagues.”

Regarding a trilateral meeting, Mr Ushakov said: “We propose, first of all, to focus on preparing a bilateral meeting with Trump, and we consider it most important that this meeting be successful and productive.”

It would be the first time the two leaders have met since Mr Trump returned to office, and follows a three-hour meeting between Mr Putin and Steve Witkoff in Moscow on Wednesday.

Following the meeting, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said it appeared that Russia was “more inclined to a ceasefire”.

A poll from Gallup suggests 69% of Ukrainians support a negotiated end to the war with Russia – an almost complete reversal from 2022, when 73% favoured fighting until victory.

Most said they were sceptical the war would end soon, with 68% saying they believed it was unlikely that active fighting would stop within the next 12 months.

US

Trump and Putin’s first meeting in years does not necessarily mean a ceasefire in Ukraine

Published

2 hours ago

August 8, 2025

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Trump and Putin's first meeting in years does not necessarily mean a ceasefire in Ukraine

It could be diplomatic dynamite.

The first meeting between a sitting US and Russian president in more than four years, following one of the bleakest periods in the history of their countries’ bilateral relations.

But a Putin–Trump summit does not necessarily mean there will be a ceasefire.

Ukraine war latest: Kremlin aide’s full statement on Trump-Putin talks

On the one hand, it could signal that a point of agreement has been reached and a face-to-face meeting is needed to seal the deal.

That has always been Russia’s stance. It’s consistently said it would only meet at a presidential level if there’s something to agree on.

On the other hand, there might not be anything substantive. It might just be for show.

It might just be the latest attempt by the Kremlin to diffuse Donald Trump’s anger and dodge his deadline to end the war by Friday or face sanctions.

It would give Trump something that can be presented as progress, but in reality, it delivers anything but.

After all, there has certainly not been any sign that Moscow is willing to soften its negotiating position or step back from its goals on the battlefield.

Tellingly, perhaps, it’s this latter view which has been taken by some of the Russian press on Thursday.

“Putin won” is the headline in Moskovsky Komsomolets regarding the Kremlin leader’s meeting with Witkoff.

The state-run tabloid quotes a political scientist, Marat Bashirov, who claims Putin “bought time” ahead of Friday’s deadline.

“It is noteworthy that in his rhetoric [on sanctions] Trump did not mention Russia at all,” the paper notes.

Komsomolskaya Pravda is similarly dismissive.

“Donald Trump has two simple interests in connection with Ukraine: to earn money for America, and political whistles and the Nobel Peace Prize for himself,” it says.

“Russia has its own interests,” it adds, “securing them is what Vladimir Putin will seek at a meeting with Trump.”

At this stage, the most likely location is the United Arab Emirates. Putin met the country’s president in the Kremlin today, and afterwards said it would be a “suitable location”. It felt like a strong hint.

And the UAE certainly makes sense.

It’s played mediator for a number of the prisoner swaps between Russia and Ukraine; it has good relations with the US (and was one of Trump’s stops on his recent Middle East tour); and most importantly for Moscow, it’s not a member of the International Criminal Court. So Putin doesn’t have to worry about being arrested.

But if NBC’s reports are correct, that a Putin-Trump summit is conditional on the Russian president meeting with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy, then the summit may not happen at all.

Until now, Putin has refused to meet Zelenskyy, despite numerous demands from Kyiv, because he views him as illegitimate.

The Kremlin said the prospect of a trilateral meeting between the leaders was mentioned by Witkoff on Wednesday, but the proposal was left “completely without comment” by Russia.

US

OpenAI releases long-awaited GPT-5 AI chatbot upgrade

Published

2 hours ago

August 8, 2025

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OpenAI releases long-awaited GPT-5 AI chatbot upgrade

GPT-5, the long-awaited upgrade to the ChatGPT AI chatbot, has been released by its maker OpenAI.

It has been one of the most highly anticipated launches in Silicon Valley after OpenAI’s first offering ChatGPT – powered by its GPT-3 model – kick-started the current AI boom in late 2022.

“GPT-3 sort of felt like talking to a high school student,” said Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive.

“GPT-4, maybe it was like talking to a college student. But with GPT-5, now it’s like talking to an expert, a PhD-level expert in anything, any area you need, on demand.”

At the launch event, OpenAI claimed the new chatbot, which will be released to all ChatGPT users on Thursday, was more than a simple upgrade to its previous offerings.

According to OpenAI, the new model exceeds the chatbot competition from the likes of Google, X and Antropic on “benchmarks” – standardised tests used to rank models.

OpenAI claims it has been designed to be easier and more natural to communicate with, better at writing prose and advanced computer code, solving academic questions from mathematics to law, assisting with healthcare-related questions, as well as being safer than its predecessors.

“It’s an incredible superpower on demand,” claimed Mr Altman.

The model is also more intelligent in how it uses its own brain power – and therefore an expensive computing resource – according to OpenAI.

It is a hybrid of previous chatbots and slower, more computing-intensive “reasoning” models like OpenAI’s Deep Research.

Based on a user’s request, the model will decide how much “thinking” is required before answering, rather than requiring the user to switch between different models.

Although AI enthusiasts who had been expecting GPT-5 to represent “artificial general intelligence [AGI]” will be disappointed.

Despite this being OpenAI’s stated goal, Mr Altman billed GPT-5 as a “major upgrade” to GPT-4 and a “significant step along the path to AGI”.

But they’re clearly not there yet.

A real test of GPT-5 will be whether it sells.

OpenAI is projected to spend $8bn (£6bn) this year, on top of $5bn (£3.7bn) last year, and while it is expected to make a profit this year, the business case for increasingly powerful AI models is still not clear to many investors.

Given a single training run for GPT-5 is rumoured to have cost $500m (£373m), there will be an expectation the new model is significantly more useful to business users.

Despite a very slick demonstration of its coding skills at the launch presentation, where it built an online language learning game in seconds, GPT-5 will have to prove its worth for professional coding.

Many in the tech industry prefer Anthropic AI’s Claude model to write code. OpenAI and its investors will be hoping GPT-5 changes that.

AI experts will also be testing GPT-5’s tendency to “hallucinate”, an issue OpenAI claims to have improved with GPT-5.

But erroneous or bizarre answers are a problem that dogs all large generative AI models.

“Shiny things are always fun to play with, and I fully expect GPT-5 to be the shiniest so far,” said Gary Marcus, a cognitive scientist at New York University and AI commentator.

“But that doesn’t mean that it is a critical step on the optimal path to AI that we can trust,” Mr Marcus added in a post.