#Joseph Augustus Zarelli

[letsgethaunted]

CASE UPDATE: The Boy in the Box & Christmas Tree Jane Doe [IDENTIFIED!]

Welcome to our first ever Case Update episode. In July of 2021, we covered the case of “The Boy in the Box” aka “America’s Unknown Child”. The identity of the boy who was abused, murdered, and dumped in a trash pile on the side of the road in Fox Chase, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in February of 1957 has finally been identified. In December of 2021, we also brought you the case of “Christmas Tree Jane Doe” aka “The Christmas Tree Lady” aka “Annandale Jane Doe”. In that story, the unidentified body of an elderly woman was found suffocated to death in the children’s section of a cemetery in Annandale, Virginia in 1996. She, too, has finally been identified. In this short case update episode, we briefly discuss the most recent news articles and press conferences for each case. We would love to hear from our listeners to see what their thoughts are on these two groundbreaking identifications solved through Forensic Genealogy.

[stelleinthestars]

He got his name back two years ago I swear and people still won't leave him alone.

I'm not gonna reblog it but @squaresverse you made this clothing set and reblogged it several times using the tag #Black Simblr. The clothing set features a swatch with a photo of a beaten, deceased child. Not only does this just not belong in the Black Simblr tag, most importantly, its disgusting and vile and we shouldn't be in the business of profitting off of dead children in any way, shape or form (including recolored hoodies for the sims 4).

Please remove the swatch and stop tagging Black Simblr with your debauchery.

Not a good look fam.

More info here <-

[lucidicer]

i've seen a lot of gross shit on simblr before but all of that feels fucking minuscule in comparison to what i just found. the cc creator @squaresverse aka satanshubby on instagram made this disgusting fucking cc using the autopsy photo of a murdered 4 year old boy.

and if that wasn't bad enough, they have this cc paywalled so they can profit off of it too.

the boy in the photo wasn't identified until late 2022, over 60 years since he was brutally murdered and left nude on the side of a road and just the thought of someone seeing this picture which is clearly of a beaten child and deciding it fits their streetwear aesthetic and would go great on their cc is nauseating. i cannot begin to describe how evil this is.

rip joseph augustus zarelli.

[numinati]

certified studz (masc lesbian sim dump)

Hey y'all!

Recently, I asked on Twitter if people would be interested in a stud sim dump, and the answer was an overwhelming yes! Really happy to be able to put this together for you guys, especially since stud/masculine CC for women is pretty rare.

That's partly why it took so long for me to drop; making 48 different outfits out of a handful of clothing is not light work. 😭

Either way, I hope you like the girlsss! I think you will. ;)

 I took the now-infamous Satanshubby hoodie and edited the file to take out the swatch with Joseph Augustus Zarelli. If you don't know what I'm referring to, you can read here. (TW: child abuse, murder)

Y'all did not hear any of this from me, though.

Jermainique (second sim) has the Renaissance Sim aspiration but if you have Spa Day it'd be Inner Peace. I try and make all my sim downloads base game compatible but there are some traits/aspirations that are too ideal. 😅

Since this is a sim dump, I don't really have any base story for them. I personally headcanon YG and Sequoia as the youngest, and Jermainique as the oldest, but besides that - and them being friends, of course - I have nothing, lol. Do what you want! <3

A lot of the clothes are actually male clothes I edited the tags on, so on outfits there's some warping, especially on China since she's larger. Huge, huge shoutout to the CC creators whose masculine/male clothes look great on female sims cause whew.

you can download them here on my Patreon:

[awheckery]

DEATH TW and mentions of murder so if that is triggering for you don’t read, but if it’s not then i’d like to ask if you’ve heard of forensic genealogy? while i am uneasy at the prospect of using it to find suspects, it can also be used to find the identities of unidentified decedents, who die of accidental causes or are murdered, and often it’s the only hope to identify those who have been unidentified for decades. the dna doe project is a nonprofit that’s mostly volunteer run, and i think that your research skills could be useful there or somewhere like there. i know this is kind of a random ask to receive, identification of unidentified remains is my special interest but i don’t have the time or training to get better at researching beyond a few tricks here and there.

I feel like we've read the same articles recently; did you see the tumblr post (and linked articles) about Joseph Augustus Zarelli, the Boy in the Box?

Which is to say, yes, I am aware of forensic genealogy and the DNA Doe Project, because like many white American women, I'm a true crime junkie.* My big Thing is investigative procedure tho, so I'm also deeply interested in plane & train crash investigations, medical mysteries, archaeology, anthropology... basically 'what happened, and by which processes and methods do we figure out what happened?'

So far as getting into the game myself, I dunno. I assume there's probably some sort of required formal training, along with the expectation of reliability and sustained effort, and I'm a chronically ill autodidact with ADHD. I'm the research equivalent of a sprinter; investigative genealogy requires a marathoner, because there's so much exhausting, grinding work involved.

Something I've never seen brought up before in any investigation is how many extant family trees are just wrong. Genealogical sites make it too easy to crib notes from other users, and all it takes is one person deciding 'eh that's probably the right guy' for dozens of other amateur researchers to make the same mistake, and then somebody ties that erroneous information to their DNA profile. I don't know how the forensic genealogists deal with that.

You also have to take into account how many people throughout history have just gone missing, or otherwise fallen off the historical record. Just because someone's date of death is absent doesn't mean something nefarious happened to them. (Just because someone's date of death is present doesn't mean it's correct.) People emigrate. They marry. They change their names. They die alone and unknown in a ditch**, or they die somewhere that doesn't make those records public***. Paper records can burn or flood out, and family stories rarely make it down more than one or two generations. History is messy.

I've only done serious research into my family background for two years, in fits and starts interrupted by illness flare ups. Half the time it feels like I find more questions to ask than I get answers. I've found a pair of illegitimate daughters and a handful of adoptees. I've found some two dozen 'missing persons' who may as well have disappeared into thin air, for how suddenly they dropped out of the historical record. I've found a murder victim and a (maybe) would-be murderess.

And four months ago, I found the answer to another family's 150 year old missing person case, and it changed everything I thought I knew about my mother's family.

This is how.

Five months ago, I thought I knew everything there was that could be known about John Robert McDowell.

I knew he was born July 1st of either 1868 or 1869, in Belfast, Northern Ireland. According to his naturalization petition, he came to the United States in April of 1883, when the absolute oldest he could have been was fourteen, and at the time of his naturalization in 1896 he claimed his nationality was English, presumably due to anti-Irish sentiments at the time.

I knew John's handwriting was idiosyncratic: he wrote the J in his name with a rightward upper loop that scooped up again before curving back around the center staff, and his uppercase R was a mess of curlicues. I've never seen the like before or since.

I knew that despite living in America for ten years longer than he'd lived outside it, John still had an accent in 1908 when his second son was born. Spelling is incredibly inconsistent across historical records because up until very recently, it was the practice of the record keepers to write down their best guess at what they heard, and in 1908 a midwife heard and recorded John's surname as McDoul.

John's life was actually remarkably well-documented, in comparison to his contemporaries. I bought myself access to Newspapers.com along with my Ancestry subscription, and he made semi-regular appearances in the Newport News Daily Press for the better part of thirty years as a Navy veteran, successful entrepreneur, and president of a labor union that later became the United Steelworkers Local 8888. (A seemingly throwaway notice in the Daily Press was the only record I've yet been able to find for his divorce, which eventually led me to find out whatever happened to his wife, which is another saga entirely. Pauline, you dirty rotten cheater.)

I knew that John was in and out of the hospital with thyroid cancer, but he was such a tough old bastard it took the better part of fifteen years to kill him, and he died in 1954 at the age of 86.****

According to John's death certificate (and the U.S. Government records at the VA hospital where he died), his parents' names were Thomas McDowell and Isabell Rabb (or possibly Robb, the Accent strikes again.)

This is the only record linked to either of them on Ancestry.com at all.

I have most of a history degree, so I wasn't surprised. There are next to no records of the 1890 census of the United States, and that was down to a fire in the National Archives. Ireland was dragged backwards through hell by the ankles for centuries by a succession of British monarchs and governments, and Belfast was in the prime of especially conflicted territory for much of it. No census records from John's lifetime were kept, and the likelihood his parents would show up in the surviving fragments from 1841 and 1851 was slim to none.

There were transcribed indexes from birth and marriage records available, at least, and I scoured them through, looking for a John McDowell, and there wasn't a single damn one born to a Thomas or Isabelle McDowell in a decade on either side of 1868. There wasn't any record I could find at all of a Thomas McDowell marrying an Isabelle Rabb until well after John left Ireland.

Five months ago, as far as I knew, John Robert McDowell was probably a bastard, who'd either been left out of whatever records were taken at the time, or he was one of the unfortunate ones whose birth record had been lost.

Four months ago, I realized that the record indexes on Ancestry included film numbers, which meant there were pictures of those records to be found somewhere. If they were organized chronologically, I could try to find his birth registration that way. Googling "ireland civil registration records" brought me to the Civil Records search page of a genealogy site run by, of all things, the Irish government's tourism department.

Once again, there wasn't a John McDowell born to the right parents during the right time period, so I went looking for his parents' marriage. And found it.

If they married in 1872, John would probably still technically be a bastard, but I had a point to start from. Once I clicked into the actual scan of the record I nearly snapped myself in half sitting upright in attention, because Thomas McDowell's father's name was Duncan, John named his eldest son Duncan, Isabella's father's name was John, I had to have the right two people, this couldn't be a coincidence.

And then I noticed Isabella was a widow. Isabella was a widow.

Who was your husband, and when did he die, Isabella? I searched again, and found her marriage to a Thomas Logan July 30th, 1866. No men named Thomas Logan died in Belfast between 1866 and 1870, which meant he was probably still alive when John was born. It meant I had been looking in the wrong direction the entire time.

John Robb Logan came into the world on July 1st, 1868, in the Ballymacarrett district of Belfast, the second child of four born to Thomas Logan and Isabella Robb. Once I knew what I was looking for the rest came easy.

John's early life was riddled with tragedies. His younger brother Joseph was six months old when he died in March of 1870. His father died of smallpox in December of the same year, exactly one month after the birth of his sister Mary. Three months before his fifth birthday, his first half-sibling Bella died, at just five months old. And in 1879, his older brother William died after a long, miserably drawn-out illness from spinal tuberculosis.

(As an aside, god, poor Isabella. She had four children with Thomas Logan, and a further nine with Thomas McDowell, and before her early death from a long respiratory illness she buried a husband, two sons, and two daughters. How do you go on after that, how are you not forever shattered?)

If I hadn't been sure I'd found the right family, I was after William died. Thomas McDowell was the person who reported William's death to the registrar's office after sitting by his deathbed. The registrar recorded William as a "child of [the] baker" that Thomas was by profession; Thomas McDowell claimed his stepson as his own.

Duncan McDowell, John's step-grandfather, had a family burial plot in Ballygowan, and he named William Adam Logan as his grandson, with no qualifiers, when they buried him.

All the evidence suggests that the McDowells loved John Robb Logan and his siblings, and he loved them back every bit as much. You don't choose to take on the surname of people you hate, and it seems very much the case that John chose to go by McDowell when he came to America. I'm honestly not sure there was a way for Thomas McDowell to bequeath his name to his stepchildren, given John's brother William died a Logan and his sister Mary married as one.

John Robb Logan disappeared from history after his baptism, and John Robert McDowell made his first confirmed appearance in the historical record in 1883, but I was certain they were one and the same. The problem was proving it to my mother, because McDowell was her family name. She'd grown up with it, as had her sisters and her dozens of cousins and her father and his siblings and her father's father; I only had a paper trail arguing the name she knew didn't belong to any of them by blood.

So I went for blood.

I refuse to give my DNA to Ancestry.com on a principle born from paranoia and ethics concerns. It's absolutely not happening, ever, like hell do I expect a corporation to do the right thing with my genetic material. My mother doesn't share my concerns, either now or four years ago, when she bought an Ancestry DNA kit and then did absolutely nothing with her results besides marvel at the unexpected Swedish heritage in her 'Ethnicity Estimate' because doing anything else looked like too much work.

It took a few days to figure out how to hook my mother's DNA results into the tree I've built, and a few more for all the features to populate, but all told it took less than a week between learning the truth about my great-great-grandfather's parentage and proving it irrefutably with DNA, via several descendants of his full-blooded sister Mary and a grandson of his half-brother Wallace.

Ancestry doesn't tell you when new DNA matches are found, or when someone adds you to their tree (and thank god for that, my mother has somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty thousand matches). To those descendants of Mary Thomasina Logan, the handful of John's descendants who've shelled out for Ancestry DNA kits could be any random person. Frequently the relationships between matches aren't clear, because of all the folks like my mom who never add a tree to their results, or those who don't try to go any further back than their grandparents.

As far as Mary Logan's descendants know, the sons of Thomas Logan dead-ended his line, and when I do find John in their trees there's never more than a birth year and a blank space where there would usually be a year of death. (They all have the wrong Isabella Robb too, but I don't really blame them; apparently Isabella was one of the most popular names for girls for well over a century, and Robbs weren't exactly thin on the ground.)

Someday soon, I'm going to reach out. People who study genealogy do it because they're looking for something: long lost relatives, answers to questions asked too late, or even a better, more personal understanding of history by learning about the people who were there when it happened. Every family has its mysteries and this one, at least, could be solved.

John's story doesn't end here. Here is where it begins.

~

*I'm aware of the problematic nature of White Lady True Crime Brain Poisoning, but I'm gonna have to pull the 'I'm not like other girls' card. I'm incredibly discerning about my crime shows, I hate the fucking cops, and I'm realistic about how unbelievably low my chances are of ever being the victim of a violent crime. I'm white, I'm broke as shit, I'm built like a running back and walk like the Terminator, and most importantly, I'm single and planning to stay that way for the rest of my life. The only way I'm getting murdered is if I happen to get caught in a random mass shooting, which isn't outside the realm of possibility because America.

**In case anyone's gotten this far and is still interested, there's strong evidence that the mystery of the Somerton Man was finally solved last year. At some point I'd like to take a look at the tree the forensic genealogists built tho, because I have some Doubts. There was only one person in that family that fell off the map in the 40's? Just one? I was lightning-strike kinds of lucky enough to find John's real parentage, but I dug up more unanswered questions with it, because two of his half-brothers dropped out of the records after 1901. Completely setting aside the possibility of infidelity in the Webb family and how common inbreeding has been (both historically and in recent memory) in populations of European descent, I have a hard time buying that Carl Webb was the only person who could be the Somerton Man. It's still cool as shit that they have a strong possibility tho.

***Maryland and Kansas specifically can blow me, if somebody died in either of those states I have to find an obituary or a tombstone to get the mcfrickin' date, and I have to either pay money and prove a relationship to see a death certificate, or show up to an archive in person to search on their intranet, MARYLAND WHY DO YOU NOT WANT ME TO KNOW WHEN MY GREAT-GRANDMOTHER DIED. (Being fair, I don't know if she died in Maryland, that's just a great-uncle's best guess, because she ran away from her family in 1949 and nobody ever saw her again after the early 60's. Helen, where the hell did you go?)

****One of the big reasons why I got into genealogy in the first place was to see if I could find how far back the predisposition to early deaths and autoimmune disease went in my family. What I hadn't expected to find was a predisposition for extreme longevity on all sides. Longevity as in 'skewing the life expectancy bell curve' kinds of longevity. As long as someone didn't come down with a freak illness or make a looooooooong string of poor life choices, they were apparently immune to death, which honestly explains a few things about Crazy Grandma, god damn.

[dailyunsolvedmysteries-movedd]

Boy in the Box named as Joseph Augustus Zarelli

The ‘Boy in the Box’ was the name given to a 3-7 year old boy whose naked, extensively beaten body was found on the side of Susquehanna Road, in Philadelphia, USA. He was found on 25 February 1957.

He had been cleaned and freshly groomed with a recent haircut and trimmed fingernails. He had undergone extensive physical abuse before his death with multiple bruises on his body and found to be malnourished. His body was covered in scars, some of which were surgical (such as on his ankle, groin, and chin). The doctor believed this was due to the child receiving IV fluids while he was young and the police reached out to hospitals to try to identify him. A death mask was made of this child and when investigators would try to chase up a lead they would have this mask with them. Police went to all the orphanages and foster homes to see all kids were accounted for. A handkerchief found was a red herring.

His cause of death was believed to be homicide by blunt force trauma. Police have an idea of who the killer(s) may be but they said it would be irresponsible to name them.

Now, in December 2022, police have idenifed him as Joseph Augustus Zarelli. He was born on Jan 13, 1953. He has multiple living siblings. Police say it is out of respect for them that they are not releasing the birth parents’ names. His birth parents were identified and through birth certificates they were able to generate the lead to identify this boy. Police do not know who is responsible for his death.

[gunphilia]

he was recently identified as of 2022, his name is joseph augustus zarelli. the homicide investigation is still open, though.

In 1957, the unknown battered remains of a boy were found in a box. Known as ’‘Boy in the Box’’, his case remains open.

[sporadiceagleheart]

here's another edit for the victims of murder abuse and strangulation beaten to death and kidnapped and rest In Peace Troy Ramey in the song try Jesus I can't believe what that father did to CeCe&Bella and Shan'ann&Nico he was a bad father and husband and there's a Amber alert after Amber Hagerman went missing and she was murdered jonbenet and rose Pizem were murdered young unexpected and Opal Jo Dace Jennings was kidnapped and murdered and Tristyn Bailey was stabbed 114 times Brianna Ghey was murdered and Jocelyn nungaray was strangled in 2024 to death I hope that killers gets what's coming to them And Sylvia Likens and junko furuta was murdered Sarah foxwell was kidnapped and murdered Sarah payne was murdered April Tinsley was Raped and Murdered and April Jones was murdered and I have many names of the Angels children who passed away all on the edit names like Angie Housman and Molly Anne Bish and mei leung and Jennifer Lynn Bolduc and LaShonna Marie Bates and Melanie Alex Beltran and Taylor Marie Behl and Barbara Ann Barnes and Anthony Otis Bars and Christopher Michael “Chris” Barrios Jr. And Janessa D Aguirre and Joseph Kelly “Joe” Barefoot and Martin Laurence Amos and Dawn Rita Olanick and Fanny Adams and Betsy Aardsma and Keith Bennett and Edward Evans and Lesley Ann Downey and Bella Neveah Amoroso Bond and John Kilbride and Pauline Reade and Joseph Augustus Zarelli and Alicia Lynn Clark and April Sue-Lyn Jones and James Clifford “Jimmie” Walker Jr. And karly Sheehan and Riley ann Sawyers And Riley Ann Fox and Terrell Peterson and Debra Faye “Debbie” Walker and Tammy Jo Alexander and James Clifford “Cliff” Walker Sr. And Evelyn Christine “Tilly” Myers Walker and Jessica Marie Lunsford and Anthony Bernard Carter and William DaShawn Hamilton and April Marie Tinsley and Linda Ann O'Keefe and Donna Marie Emmel and Ava-Jayne Corless and Krista Lea Harrison and Elisa Izquierdo and Kellie Lynch and many more victims rest In Peace To those

[go-patricia-wiemers-wolfpjw2]

The (UNSOLVED) Case of Joseph Augustus Zarelli

[one-time-i-dreamt]

not a dream

Genetic genealogy is incredible.

So many Jane and John Does have been getting their names back in the past few years thanks to it. So many crimes have been solved.

Joseph Augustus Zarelli, formerly known as "The Boy in the Box" has been identified 65 years after being found.

He got a new headstone, and many people, among them the people who have been working on his case for years, were there to see it being unveiled.

[aurumacadicus]

Oh one of them is the Dyatlov Pass Incident lmao. Most people figured it was probably an avalanche but it was also during the Cold War/Space Race and there was radiation on some of the bodies so some people posited that they either stumbled across Russian military tests (or American spies) and so were killed, and there was a photo on one of the cameras that many said could have been a fucking yeti???, and another theory was that they all got hypothermia and went sort of mad from it. I really cannot endorse the You're Wrong About podcast enough, their Dyatlov Pass Incident episode really goes into the different theories.

The thing about the Dyatlov Pass Incident is that we'll probably never know for sure, but enough evidence has been shown that I'm pretty confident in the avalanche theory. The hikers weren't reported missing for a month (Dyatlov told their sports club he would send a telegram when they reached Vizhai on the expected date of February 12, though he expected it would take longer, so a search party wasn't sent out until February 20 at the demand of family members, and it took 6 further days to find the scene), the military got involved so a lot of people thought some information was redacted, there was a single survivor that had to turn back because he was having joint issues that made hiking too dangerous for him to continue who obviously felt survivor's guilt and that skewed his opinion of what happened. I'm an Avalanche Believer.

The other was the Boy in the Box, or America's Unknown Child. He was found wrapped in a blanket inside a cardboard box on the side of the road in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in February 1957. Despite public interest in the case, this poor boy was unidentified for over half a century. And I'll be honest with you, the only thing I ever wanted for this little boy was for him to be identified. I don't care if they ever figure out who killed him or left him there (that would not bring me, personally, any closure). He just needed his identity back.

Joseph Augustus Zarelli is buried in a plot generously donated by the Ivy Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia, and his coffin, headstone, and funeral service was donated by the son of the man who originally buried him in 1957. His headstone, when first installed, contained the words "America's Unknown Child" with a plaque underneath reading "Heavenly Father, Bless This Unknown Boy." On January 13, 2023, his full name was added to the existing headstone.

My ultimate favorite unsolved mystery is still Hinterkaifeck but since most people who research it kind of agree that they don't want to name the person they expect strongly did it in respect to their descendants so. I'm mostly fascinated at the fact that it's basically a real life horror movie and yet every horror movie mistake was made.

I'd also like to just say I'm not one of those people who is. OBSESSED with true crime and unsolved mysteries. I like them a normal amount and I do have favorites, just like any other hobby. I do try to be sensitive to the families and friends still alive today. That's why I prefer old cases where there aren't as many people around who could be hurt.

"OP how did you learn about Dyatlov Pass" I don't know how to tell you this but I have been a fan of unsolved mysteries since I was small. Luckily the two I was obsessed with were solved within my lifetime.

[cringefail-loser]

the fact that the identities of the somerton man, lady of the dunes, and the boy in the box were all discovered around the same time that watcher gained more popularity tells me something but I don't know what

[dailyunsolvedmysteries]

Boy in the Box named as Joseph Augustus Zarelli

The 'Boy in the Box' was the name given to a 3-7 year old boy whose naked, extensively beaten body was found on the side of Susquehanna Road, in Philadelphia, USA. He was found on 25 February 1957.

He had been cleaned and freshly groomed with a recent haircut and trimmed fingernails. He had undergone extensive physical abuse before his death with multiple bruises on his body and found to be malnourished. His body was covered in scars, some of which were surgical (such as on his ankle, groin, and chin). The doctor believed this was due to the child receiving IV fluids while he was young and the police reached out to hospitals to try to identify him. A death mask was made of this child and when investigators would try to chase up a lead they would have this mask with them. Police went to all the orphanages and foster homes to see all kids were accounted for. A handkerchief found was a red herring.

His cause of death was believed to be homicide by blunt force trauma. Police have an idea of who the killer(s) may be but they said it would be irresponsible to name them.

Now, in December 2022, police have idenifed him as Joseph Augustus Zarelli. He was born on Jan 13, 1953. He has multiple living siblings. Police say it is out of respect for them that they are not releasing the birth parents' names. His birth parents were identified and through birth certificates they were able to generate the lead to identify this boy. Police do not know who is responsible for his death.

[f1inl3ey]

The boy in the box has been identified?!

[a-study-in-darkness]

The "boy in the box" AKA "America's unnamed child" has officially been found and given back his name: Joseph Augustus Zarelli. This is a monumental step. No child deserves to be unnamed, unknown, and unmourned. Even if his case is never solved, at least people will know his name. At least his family will get closure.

On that note, I've noticed a lot of people upset with the press conference above and their unwillingness to share the parents' names at this time. While I don't trust law enforcement not to be a part of a cover up, please remember that this is a case that has garnered a lot of attention over the years. Should the parents be named, it could damage any legal charges, including murder charges. It could cause the guilty party to flee. It could give others the ability to take the law into their own hands and harm the family, guilty and innocent alike. There would almost certainly be innocent family members that would be targeted in any sort of crossfire. We already know he has living siblings that would have been young children or not even born yet at the time. A cover up is not the only reason they may be unwilling to give out this information.

"Joseph has a number of siblings of both the mother and father's side who are living, and it is out of respect for them that their parents' information remain confidential," Smith said (See newsweek source below). This seems to imply that he may or may not have had full-siblings but that Joseph definitely has half-siblings, making the metaphorical water even more muddied.

A Twitter user claims to have found the parents (a link I will not be sharing out of respect for the family) and posted a photo of what he believes to be their grave. If both parents are in fact deceased as well as being the perpatrators, this only complicates legal matters further as neither suspect would be able to create legal defense for themselves.

In my very unprofessional opinion, it seems odd that the parents didn't report their child missing. On the other hand, we are only seeing a small amount of the information. There are other possibilities besides being guilty of murder that may have lead the family to stay quiet. It is dangerous to make assumptions of guilt without having all of the pieces to the puzzle. We should not do even further damage to innocent and grieving family members. We should not create even more victims of this crime.

Sources:

https://www.newsweek.com/boy-box-joseph-augustus-zarelli-has-living-siblings-60-years-later-1765716

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTR4Koj9j/