Something truly horrific happened in 1957 when the body of a young boy was found, discarded in a wooded area in Philadelphia.
Just a few days, on February 25th, a college student was driving down Susquehanna Road when he spotted a rabbit running into the woods. With the knowledge that traps littered the area, he chased after the rabbit. He, just like the hunter, stumbled across the box with the boy inside. The college student was hesitant to report and waited until the next day, he called the police after hearing about the missing 4-year-old, Mary Jane Barker.
Police arrived the same day to find the body wrapped in a plaid blanket inside the bassinet box. He was left naked, battered and showing clear signs of malnourishment. His hair had been messily cut off, long matted clumps still hanging on his body and his scalp cut up. His hands and feet were pruned up like he had been left soaking in a bath and his nails were freshly trimmed. There were surgical scars all over him, most notably there were scars on his ankle, groin, an L-shaped scar under his chin and round scars on his left elbow and ankle that seemed like needle injection sites. After the autopsy baked beans were found in the boy’s stomach.
Police fingerprinted the body just to see if anything would come up but they weren’t entirely hopeful that anybody would come forward to claim the body because of how malnourished he was. They were right. Nobody came forward with anything useful to the chase.
At the crime scene, police found many things around where the body was found. There was a tan scarf, a yellow flannel shirt along with a pair of black shoes too big for the boy. There was a handkerchief and a blue corduroy hat with a leather strap also found in another area of the crime scene. The police managed to find where the hat was bought and went to the store down in south Philadelphia, the owner claimed a man aged 26–30 bought it. No man was found and no one came forward.
To help try to spread the boy’s face further, the Philadelphia Inquirer printed 400,000 flyers. The flyers ended up inside of bills and scattered around town in buildings and handed out at supermarkets.
Over the years facial reconstructions were done of the boy and what his father could have potentially looked like. Despite this, no one came forward. It seemed like no one knew who the boy in the box was. This case went cold quickly as leads went quiet within just a few months, this led to theories going wild as people tried solving the case. Two of the many theories are called The Foster Home Theory and A Woman Named “Martha”/”M” or something similar.
The Foster Home Theory came a few years after the discovery of the body when Remington Bristow, a medical examiner from Philadelphia, came forward saying he went to a psychic who told him to look into the home. At an estate sale, Bristow discovered the home was using J.C. Penney boxes, which Bristow knew were the same brand that the body was found in. Whilst looking around the home, Bristow found blankets on the line that looked similar to the one wrapped around the boy. Bristow’s theory was that the boy’s mother was the stepdaughter of the owner of the house. They disposed of the boy to hide the child that was born out of wedlock. Police looked into this but didn’t find any proof of the theory.
The other theory about the woman named “Martha” or “M” for short came out in February 2002. A woman claimed that her mother brought the boy into their home during the summer of 1954, he was named Jonathan and forced to sleep in the dingy basement. M claimed that her mother had purchased Jonathan from his birth parents and over the next two and a half years, he was abused both physically and sexually.
One evening, the family were having a dinner of baked beans when Jonathan threw up. As punishment M’s mother beat Jonathan’s head against the floor until he was semiconscious. Whilst he was still in this state M’s mother bathed Jonathan and whilst she was washing him, he passed in the water. After he died, M’s mother messily cut off his long hair to try and hide his identity.
M was forced into helping her mother dispose of the body in Fox Chase. With Jonathan’s body inside a box, M and her mother was trying to put the box inside the trunk of their car when a man pulled over to help him. M was made to stand in front of the car’s license plate to hide it from the man whilst her mother told the man that they didn’t need help.
The police seemed to believe the story since it lined up with details from the case. The details about the boy’s hands and feet being pruned up and the baked beans in his stomach were never released to the public. Another thing that made the story seem more believed was a confidential testimony from a male witness in 1957 that lined up with M’s story. Police went to verify the story with the neighbours but the neighbours dismissed the story claiming to have never seen a boy and that M’s story was ridiculous. Neighbours also pointed out the fact that M had a long history of mental illness, this was confirmed by medical records. With the lack of leads that came from the story and M’s medical history, the theory was left as just that.
It has been a little over 65 years since the discovery of the body and the boy is still unnamed and his murderer(s) uncharged with his murder.
Comments
Post a Comment