Mysterious ‘boy in the box’ cold case murder gets vital clue – and restores child’s dignity
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.
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Commissioner Danielle Outlaw says the 66-year-old case, has moved forward because of ‘doggedness’ of those investigating.
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 pauses higher tariffs for most countries for 90 days – but increases those on China to 125%
Donald Trump has paused his so-called “reciprocal” tariffs on most of America’s trading partners for 90 days – while increasing those on China to 125%.
There have been fears of a global recession and stock markets around the world had plummeted after Mr Trump announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs on Wednesday 2 April.
However, the S&P 500 stock index jumped 9.5% and global markets bounced back following Mr Trump’s announcement on Wednesday that the increased tariffs on nearly all trading partners would now be paused.
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In a post on his Truth Social platform, Mr Trump said the “90-day pause” was for the “more than 75 countries” who had not retaliated against his tariffs “in any way”.
He added that during this period they would still have to pay a “substantially lowered” 10% tariff, which is “effective immediately”.
It is lower than the 20% tariff that Mr Trump had set for goods from the European Union, 24% on imports from Japan and 25% on products from South Korea.
The UK was already going to face a blanket 10% tariff under the new system.
Mr Trump said the increased 125% tariff on imported goods from China was “effective immediately”.
He added: “At some point, hopefully in the near future, China will realise that the days of ripping off the USA, and other countries, is no longer sustainable or acceptable.”
Hours after Mr Trump announced the pause on tariffs for most countries, a White House official clarified that this did not apply to the 25% duties imposed on some US imports from Mexico and Canada.
The tariffs were first announced in February and Mexico and Canada were not included in the “Liberation Day” announcements.
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Donald Trump says China ‘wants to make a deal’
Hours before the 125% tariff on China was revealed, Beijing said it was increasing tariffs on US goods by 50%.
It meant tariffs of 84% would be enforced on US goods – up from the 34% China had previously planned.
Mr Trump spoke to reporters in the Oval Office. Pic: Reuters
China ‘want to make a deal’
Asked why he posted “BE COOL” on Truth Social hours before announcing his tariff pause, Mr Trump told reporters at the White House: “I thought that people were jumping a little bit out of line.”
“They were getting yippy, you know, were getting a little bit yippy, a little bit afraid,” he added.
Mr Trump continued: “China wants to make a deal, they just don’t know how to go about it.
“[They’re] quite the proud people, and President Xi is a proud man. I know him very well, and they don’t know quite how to go about it, but they’ll figure it out.
“They’re in the process of figuring out, but they want to make a deal.”
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White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the walk back was part of a grand negotiating strategy by Mr Trump.
“President Trump created maximum negotiating leverage for himself,” she said, adding that the news media “clearly failed to see what President Trump is doing here”.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent also insisted Mr Trump had strengthened his hand through his tariffs.
“President Trump created maximum negotiating leverage for himself,” he said.
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Mr Bessent said Mr Trump decided to raise tariffs on China because Beijing hadn’t reached out to the US and instead increased its own levies on US goods.
Downing Street said that the UK will “coolly and calmly” continue its negotiations with the US.
A Number 10 spokeswoman said: “A trade war is in nobody’s interests. We don’t want any tariffs at all, so for jobs and livelihoods across the UK, we will coolly and calmly continue to negotiate in Britain’s interests.”
US
Prince Andrew accuser Virginia Giuffre leaves hospital after saying she had ‘four days to live’ following car crash
Prince Andrew accuser Virginia Giuffre has reportedly left hospital after recently saying she had “four days to live”.
Her representative said she was discharged on Monday, according to US celebrity website People.
Photos in Australian media on Wednesday are said to show Ms Giuffre being driven in a vehicle north of Perth.
The 41-year-old appeared with a bruised face last week when she posted an Instagram video saying her car had been hit by a speeding school bus as she slowed for a turn.
She said: “I’ve gone into kidney renal failure, they’ve given me four days to live, transferring me to a specialist hospital in urology.
“I’m ready to go, just not until I see my babies one last time…”
Police said they had received a report of a “minor crash” between a school bus and a car in Neergabby, about 12 miles from Perth, on 24 March.
“The collision was reported by the bus driver the following day,” said a spokeswoman. “There were no reported injuries as a result of the crash.”
A few days after the Instagram video, it emerged Ms Giuffre had been charged with allegedly breaching a family violence restraining order.
Ms Giuffre is reported to have separated from her husband.
The case was due back in court today (9 April).
Ms Giuffre reached a settlement with the duke in 2022. File pic: AP
Ms Giuffre sued the Duke of York for sexual abuse in August 2021, saying Andrew had sex with her when she was 17 and had been trafficked by his friend, the billionaire paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
The duke has repeatedly denied the claims, and he has not been charged with any criminal offences.
In March 2022, it was announced Ms Giuffre and Andrew had reached an out-of-court settlement – believed to include a “substantial donation to Ms Giuffre’s charity in support of victims’ rights”.
The severity cannot be overstated, if an additional 50% tariffs are levied on all Chinese goods it will decimate trade between the world’s two biggest economies.
Remember, 50% would sit on top of what is already on the table: 34% announced last week, 20% announced at the start of US President Donald Trump’s term, and some additional tariffs left over from his first term in office.
In total, it means all Chinese goods would face tariffs of over 100%, some as high as 120%.
It’s a price that makes any trade almost impossible.
China is really the only nation in the world at the moment that is choosing to take a stand.
While others are publicly making concessions and sending delegations to negotiate, China has clearly calculated that not being seen to be bullied is worth the cost that retaliation will bring.
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Tariffs: Xi hits back at Trump
The real question, though, is if the US does indeed impose this extra 50% tomorrow, what could or would China do next?
It has said it will “fight to the end”, but what does that mean?
In reality, there are few good options.
There are some obvious measures that China will almost certainly enact.
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Further export controls on rare earth minerals (crucial for the development of high-tech products) are one example. China controls a huge proportion of the world’s supply, but the US would likely find workarounds in time.
Hiking tariffs on high-impact US products such as agricultural goods is another option, but there is only so far this could go.
The potentially more impactful options have significant drawbacks for Beijing.
It could, for instance, target high-profile American companies such as Apple and Tesla, but this isn’t ideal at a time when China is trying to attract more foreign investment, and some devaluation of the currency is possible, but it would also come with adverse effects.
Other options are more political and come with the risk of escalation beyond the economic arena.
In an opinion piece this morning, the editor of Xinhua, China’s state news agency, speculated that China could cease all cooperation with the US on the war against fentanyl.
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This has been a major political issue for Mr Trump, and it’s hard to see it would not constitute some sort of red line for him.
Other options touted include banning the import of American films, or perhaps calling for the Chinese public to boycott all American products.
Anything like this comes with a sense that the world’s two most powerful superpowers might be teetering on the edge of not just a total economic decoupling, but cultural separation too.
There is understandably serious nervousness about how that could spiral and the precedent it sets.
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