Disturbing And Fascinating Facts About The Boy In The Box

In 1957, law enforcement made a shocking discovery: the battered body of a young boy, stuffed inside a cardboard box and dumped by the side of a road just outside of Philadelphia. When Philadelphia police made the disturbing find (based on a tip called in by a local college student) they had no idea it was just the beginning of a mystery that is still unsolved to this day.

While the authorities know that the child - dubbed the "Boy in the Box" by the media - died as a result of multiple blows to his head, they have no idea how he sustained the fatal injuries. In fact, despite chasing down countless leads over the course of six decades, investigators still don't even know the boy's name - much less if he was murdered or died accidentally - causing many to call him "America's Unknown Child."

In 1961, Philadelphia investigators questioned Kenneth Dudley and his wife Irene Dudley to determine if the Boy in the Box had been one of the middle-age couple's ten children. Mr. Dudley was an itinerant carnival worker, so the entire family traveled up and down the east coast as he looked for work. However, the Dudleys came to the attention of law enforcement when one of their children - seven-year-old Carol Ann - died as a result of neglect, malnutrition, and exposure. Instead of burying their young child's body in a cemetery, the couple wrapped their daughter in a blanket and placed her corpse in a wooded area in Virginia.

Eventually, the authorities learned that seven of the Dudleys' 10 known children had died as a result of malnutrition and neglect, and none of them had received proper burials, causing Philadelphia investigators to suspect the Boy in the Box had been one of their sons. However, after questioning the Dudleys and investigating their movements in 1957, law enforcement officials in Philadelphia determined the couple - while negligent parents - were not connected to the Boy in the Box.

While police didn't discover the Boy in the Box until February 26, 1957, the child's corpse had actually been found the day before by Frederick Benonis. Benonis, a 27-year-old student at LaSalle College, told law enforcement he discovered the boy's body the day before when he was chasing a rabbit, but he didn't contact the authorities because he thought the child's corpse was a doll.

The college student said he decided to call the police the next day when he learned that a New Jersey child - who later proved not to be the Boy in the Box - had gone missing. Eventually, investigators learned why Benonis - a man who some people considered a suspect in the Boy in the Box's death - didn't immediately contact law enforcement: he'd actually been spying on girls at a nearby school when he made his grisly discovery.

Another popular theory about the Boy in the Box is that he had been raised as a girl, which is why investigators had difficulty finding out his true identity. One of the biggest proponents of this theory is Frank Bender, a forensic artist and co-founder of the Vidocqu Society, a private group of skilled professionals who are dedicated to solving crimes.

According to Bender, the reason the child's hair was cut around the time of his death was to hide the fact that he'd been raised as a girl. Bender also said pictures taken of the Boy in the Box show evidence that the child's eyebrows had been plucked before or after his death, indicating someone had altered the boy's appearance to make him appear more feminine.

In an effort to help identify the child if he had in fact been raised as a girl, Bender drew a sketch of what he thought the Boy in the Box would have looked like with long hair and bangs.

Around the time of his death, someone had cut off most of the child's light brown hair, because he had tufts of his own hair stuck to his body when he was discovered. However, according to the medical examiner, the person who cut the boy's hair had done so in a rushed and haphazard manner.

Apparently, there were four distinct bruises on the child's forehead, as well as signs of a cerebral hemorrhage, causing at least one member of law enforcement to theorize the person who killed the Boy in the Box may have done so accidentally when they applied too much pressure while holding the child's head in place as they trimmed his hair with clippers.

A Philadelphia barber came forward shortly after the boy was found to say he was certain he'd cut the child's hair approximately one week before his corpse was discovered. The barber said the boy had come into his shop with his older brother and he had left unharmed. However, no one was ever able find the mansion where the barber said the boy lived, making it impossible for investigators to follow up on this particular lead.

In addition to finding evidence the Boy in the Box had been underwater around the time he died, doctors who examined his body discovered many signs that indicated the child suffered greatly long before he was most likely beaten to death. With the help of X-rays, a doctor determined the child had probably been between the ages of three and five, but he weighed just 30 pounds and stood at only 40.5 inches tall at the time he was killed. According to a medical examiner, the Boy in the Box had the body of a child who was just over two years old, and the X-rays showed evidence of arrested growth.

The child's body was covered in bruises, his lips were dry and bloody, and he was so emaciated, his ribs were showing through his skin. They also found evidence the child may have had an eye infection that was treated with medication prior to his death. Due to the cold weather in Philadelphia around the time the Boy in the Box died, the medical examiner was unable to pinpoint his exact time of death, saying it could have occurred days or weeks before his corpse was recovered.

One of the reasons Bristow thought the Boy in the Box could have drowned after falling in a lake - despite having multiple head injuries - was because the bottoms of the child's feet and the palm of one of his hands were wrinkled, as if they had been in water for an extended period of time. Investigators were unable to determine if the boy had been submerged in water before or after his death, but they were able to conclude that he had died from several blows to the head, not drowning.

In addition to his wrinkled soles and palm, a medical examiner found the child had small clumps of hair from his head stuck to his body, reinforcing the doctor's belief that the boy had been wet around the time of his death.

Years after the child's body was found, fingerprint expert Billy Kelly theorized that the Boy in the Box may have been one of the many Hungarian refugees who came to America in the 1950s. Kelly developed this theory after he saw a a newspaper article - published in 1956, the year boy the boy's corpse was discovered - about people who had recently relocated to the United States from Hungary. The article was accompanied by a picture of Hungarian refugees, and one of the the immigrants in the photo looked remarkably similar to the Boy in the Box.

Thinking the child's status as a recent immigrant may have explained why no one had been able to identify the boy and there were no records of his existence, Kelly followed up on this theory. However, after going through more than 11,000 passport photos, Kelly tracked down the Hungarian boy from the 1956 article and learned the child was alive and well and living with his family in North Carolina.

One of the most popular theories about the Boy in the Box is that he was an orphan who was living at a foster home when he died accidentally, either by falling out of a window or drowning in a lake. This particular theory came from Remington Bristow, a Philadelphia medical examiner, who had been told by a psychic that she thought the child had died while he was living in an old mansion that a couple had turned into a foster home.

Apparently, Bristow had already interviewed a husband and wife who ran a children's home out of a mansion, and when he attended an estate sale at the home in 1961 after the family moved away, he said he discovered a bassinet in the house similar to the sort that would have been packaged in a cardboard box like the one the child's body was found in.

Bristow believed the boy may have been the secret son of the couple's young daughter, and when he died in some sort of accident, they simply dumped his body because they didn't want to be suspected of murder or have anyone find out about the existence of their illegitimate grandchild.

Decades later, a detective followed up this lead by interviewing the woman Bristow thought was the boy's mother, only to find out that she did have a son who died in a freak accident in 1957. However, morgue records proved the Boy in the Box couldn't have been her child, essentially eliminating this theory.

Over the course of their investigation, detectives received many tips from people who claimed to know the true identity of the Boy in the Box and how he died. One of these tips came from a woman known only as Martha who said when she was a girl, her mother (who worked as a librarian) purchased the child and brought him to their home in Philadelphia. According to Martha, she was told the boy's name was Jonathan, and her mother made him sleep in their dank and dirty basement.

Martha said her mother - who had subjected her to sexual abuse - bought Jonathan for the express purpose of using the boy as a sex slave.  However, one day, Jonathan vomited in the bathtub, and her mother responded by slamming the boy on the floor, killing him. After the child died, Martha said she accompanied her mother when she went to dump the boy's lifeless body somewhere in Philadelphia.

While detectives investigated Martha's claims - which came decades after the Boy in the Box was discovered - they were unable to find evidence that proved the information she provided was either true or false.

On February 25, 1957, police - acting on a tip from an informant - discovered a cardboard box that had been dumped off the side of a country road near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Inside the box, which had once contained a bassinet purchased from J.C. Penney, officers found the nude corpse of a young boy, partially wrapped in an inexpensive flannel blanket.

The child's lifeless corpse was covered in bruises, and a medical examiner later concluded the boy had died after he sustained multiple blows to the head. Almost immediately, detectives set about trying to learn the identity of the child - who was eventually dubbed the "Boy in the Box" - not realizing the many twists and turns their investigation would take as they attempted to find out who the boy was and how he'd died.