Jakarta, IO – The Philadelphia Police have finally solved the mystery of the identity of a 4-year-old boy who was found dead in a cardboard in a forest on February 25, 1957.
The boy, Joseph Augustus Zarelli, born on January 13, 1943, was believed to be sadistically beaten to death.
The city’s oldest unsolved homicide has “haunted this community, the Philadelphia police department, our nation, and the world,” Philadelphia Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw said at a news conference, reported Merdeka, Saturday (10/12).
Police identified the boy using DNA and genetic genealogy, a method that has been quite successful in recent years. The DNA investigation began in 2019 when the court allowed investigators to exhume the boy’s body for modern DNA analysis.
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Genetic analysis allows investigators to find out the deceased parents and living relatives of the boy. The police did not reveal the boy’s surname. Although the police already know the identity of the boy, the case is not yet over. Police Captain Jason Smith said they still don’t know who killed him and how he was killed.
“It’s going to be an uphill battle for us to definitively determine who caused this child’s death,” said Captain Jason Smith, commanding officer of the homicide unit. “We may not make an arrest. We may never make an identification. But we’re going to do our darndest to try.” (un)