"HEAVENLY FATHER, BLESS THIS UNKNOWN BOY":

The Boy in the Box: America’s Unknown Child: In woods not far from Philadelphia, the body of a young boy was found in a box in 1957. An autopsy showed the 4-to-6-year-old child had died from a blow to his head and had sustained numerous bruises. A widespread, prolonged investigation failed to even determine the boy’s name. (Mark Pulham, 2/02/11, Crime Magazine)

It had rained heavily the night before, and there was still some rain and cloud cover that Wednesday morning. It was November

11, 1998, and a crowd of around a hundred had gathered at the Ivy Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia for the funeral service. Just in time, the rain cleared and the clouds broke apart to reveal the sun, leaving a blue sky for the ceremony.

The service began exactly at 11 a.m. A lone piper played “Going Home” from Dvořák's “New World Symphony” on the bagpipes.

Reburial of the Boy in the Box. November 11th, 1998

The pallbearers were not family members or relatives, nor were they friends of the deceased, not in the common sense. Some were Philadelphia police officers, others were members of the Vidocq Society. The white casket was lowered into the ground on the corner triangular plot. One of the pallbearers, Sam Weinstein, a retired Philadelphia detective, sat on one of the chairs and wiped a tear from his eye.

Weinstein was there at the beginning, some forty-one years earlier.

In 1957, Fox Chase was still a rural district about eight miles north of Philadelphia’s downtown area. Remote and sparsely populated, Fox Chase had become an illegal dumping ground for trash.

It was Monday, February 25. Spring had yet to arrive, and it had been cold for that last week, the temperature dropping down to the 20s. Around 3:15 that afternoon, Frederick J. Benonis, a 26-year-old student from La Salle College, parked his car on the Susquehanna Road in Fox Chase. He got out of the car and went into the thickly wooded lot. Two weeks earlier, he had stopped at the same spot and chased a rabbit into the woods where he spotted a couple of traps set for small game. Benonis didn’t like the cruelty of these traps and sprung them. Now he wanted to check the traps again. They had not been reset.

As usual, garbage was strewn everywhere, including a large cardboard box partially covered with brush. It had not been there on his previous visit. Curious, he took a look inside and saw a large doll. It was very realistic. Too realistic.

Benonis rushed back to the car and drove away. He didn’t call the police; he knew what they would think. They had already talked with him about his habit of spying on the young ladies at the Good Shepherd Home for Wayward Girls across the street from the woods.

The next morning, as he drove to school, he heard a news broadcast on the car radio. A 4-year old girl named Mary Jane Barker had vanished from her home in Bellmawr, New Jersey, less than 25 miles away. Could that be Mary Jane’s body in the box? Is that what he had found? He had to talk to someone. He told of what he had found to two counsellors and a priest. They told him to call the police.

Sergeant Charles Gargani was manning the station desk when the call came in at 10:10 that Tuesday morning. He ordered a radio message to officers to investigate a cardboard box off Susquehanna Road, saying it could be a body, or a doll. Shortly after, Patrolman Elmer Palmer arrived on the scene. It was drizzling and cold.

Sure that what he would find would turn out to be a doll, Palmer entered the wooded area. Soon, he found the box, which was about three feet long and stamped “Fragile-Handle with Care.” Palmer stopped. He could see the head and shoulder that were sticking out of the box, the rest wrapped in a blanket. This was no doll. He went back to his patrol car and reported what he’d found.

A second car pulled up on that rainy, foggy morning. Sam Weinstein had arrived on the scene. Weinstein looked in the box. He was no stranger to death, having served in the Pacific as a Marine in World War II. But this was different, this was a child. Weinstein would always remember the sick feeling he got when he saw the body, thrown away with the rest of the garbage. He would make a promise that he would never give up on this child.