@CathrinVielleicht kommt man ja über so einen engagierten "Schreiber" an Infos...ich füge mal das Original ein: war glaube von 2007, vielleicht mal eine mail ?? was denkst Du
The 'Boy in the Box' mystery, 50 years on
By Joseph A. Gambardello
Inquirer Staff Writer
Deanna Gannon came to a snow-covered Ivy Hill Cemetery in the gray morning chill yesterday with a single white rose for a boy more loved in death than he was in life.
He has no name, but Gannon - like many of her generation who grew up in Philadelphia in the 1950s - remembers his face.
And so she joined with a dwindling band of retired investigators in marking the 50th anniversary of what has become known as the Boy in the Box case.
There was Elmer Palmer, the police officer who found the boy's bruised and undernourished body in a bassinet box on a field Feb. 26, 1957, in a then-rural part of Fox Chase.
There was Bill Kelly, a onetime police photographer who searched hundreds of medical and immigration records trying to put a name to the face that touched a city. And there was Joe McGillen, a former medical examiner's office investigator, who with Kelly and other members of the Vidocq Society - a group of professional and amateur sleuths - is still trying to solve the crime.
Joining them for the first time was Detective Regina Byarm, the latest Police Department homicide investigator assigned to oversee case H-57-22.
Gannon, too, was making her first visit to the boy's grave site, which had been in Potter's Field until his remains were moved to Ivy Hill in 1998.
Gannon was 12 when the case broke. Since then, she has become the mother of five and the grandmother of 10.
"I remember the poster [of the boy's face] going to the store in our neighborhood," said Gannon, of Gwynedd Valley. "It's such a tragedy. Who would be so cruel?"
The boy was 4 to 6 years old and had been beaten. His light brown hair had been crudely chopped. His nude body was wrapped in a cheap blanket.
McGillen recalled that investigators felt they would break the case in days, if not hours.
"Now, 50 years later, we're still in the same position... It's still a mystery," he said.
He noted that others who had taken the case to heart have since died, including Remington Bristow, a former medical examiner's investigator; and George Knowles, who created the America's Unknown Child Web site dedicated to the case.
At yesterday's graveside ceremony, Kelly offered prayers. A bagpiper played "Amazing Grace" and other hymns.
It was Kelly who observed that the boy "had more love in death than he encountered in life."
And William Fleisher, a former police officer and FBI agent who is commissioner of the Vidocq Society in Philadelphia, said that as long as the boy is remembered, there is chance that one day his name could be chiseled into his tombstone, no longer unknown.
Contact staff writer Joseph Gambardello at 215-854-2153 or jgambardello@phillynews.com.
