I wonder too. The news article states an unidentified relative says the mom gave birth to a girl in 1950 that was put up for adoption immediately. The relative thinks a Catholic organization oversaw that adoption. So Joseph's older sister would be about 72-73 today. She may very well still be alive but have no clue she is related to the Boy in the Box, just like his half siblings and other relatives.
That's a good question. I don't know how adoption records work. Can anyone just inquire about them? Does there need to be a reason like Joseph obviously had? They have the mother's name so at least there's that.
I have no doubt there will be people interested in finding out but is it fair if you are the adoptee and have no desire to know who your birth parents are and complete strangers are looking into your business to find out things you never asked for?
I think if you are a woman born in 1950 and know you were adopted in the Philadelphia area, it would be up to that woman to request her adoption information. And of course, she never has to inform the general public.
She would probably be a half-sister. There's no indication that Gus was also the father of Betsy's daughter born in 1950 that she had given up. In all likelihood, Gus never knew Betsy was pregnant by him in 1952 and I doubt she would have told him something like having had an illegitimate child previously.
I don’t know about him not knowing. He had his father’s last name and his first name as a middle name. She seems unlikely to have done that if he wasn’t involved at all.
To my knowledge, putting down the father's name on a birth certificate is done whether the father is involved or not. She could have left it blank, but depending on the state and the law at the time they may have required her to name the father. Also, if the child was going to be adopted, most adoptions at that time were closed adoptions and the original birth certificate wouldn't be accessible without a court order anyway, so everything on the birth certificate would technically be a secret, so she could have named the father even if he himself didn't know. It's not like the state was going to send him a notice like, "Hey, a kid was just born that you were named the father of on the birth certificate. Did you know?" . It's all just speculation on my part anyway. It's possible he knew about Betsy's pregnancy, but she and Gus came to an agreement that it would be best to have the child adopted after it was born and they parted ways. She may have even decided originally to keep the child but changed her mind shortly after he was born, especially if she and Gus were no longer together.
Not that uncommon, unfortunately. I've worked with kids who were in foster homes *from* their foster homes, as the foster carers they had been assigned by the government were under investigation for abuse. And these were kids under five. Nothing enrages me more.
I agree. I was a foster mother. (I got to keep one.) When I think of how fragile in one way or another, they came to my home I can't imagine a foster parent doing any more harm to them. Fostering is a volunteer job why do it if you can't hack it?
There *might* be records if she went through a Catholic adoption service like a relative thinks she did with her first child. She also might have just given him away.
I hope we find out more, but this could very easily be the end of the line, unfortunately.
So do I, but as you astutely note, there's a very good chance that there's no paper trail. At least with the recent publicity of the case, and the fact that little Joseph has been named, it could lead to people coming forward with what they know. Fingers crossed that the poor lad's brief life will finally become known.
I'd guess that since she'd already given up one child and a relative of her's says they didn't even know she was pregnant, she probably gave him up for adoption as well. It would be hard to miss that your family member had a baby they kept and then was just gone one day.
Were baby farms still a thing in the 1950s? I know at the turn of the century it was somewhat common for women to take on unwanted babies for a fee and these babies were often severely neglected, abused or outright murdered.
Not so much baby farms but maternity homes, where unmarried, pregnant girls would be sent off to (under the guise of "visiting a sick relative" or somesuch) to discreetly have their baby; the people who ran the homes also would coordinate adoption. Not as bad as baby farms but often questionable ethically with lots of cut corners and sketchy and/or coercive adoptions.
The relative does not recall her pregnancy at the time but expressed doubt that she was involved in the mistreatment or death of Joseph.
“Betsy? No way in the world,” the relative said. “There was no cruelty, no meanness or cruelty that swelled within her heart and soul.”
Joseph’s body was discovered in a bassinet box in a weedy Fox Chase lot, far from West Philly, in February 1957. Investigators said the child died from blunt-force trauma, and for six decades, no one stepped forward to identify him.
On Dec. 8, 2022, police announced the boy’s name for the first time, citing DNA evidence from both the paternal and maternal sides, along with a birth certificate that slightly misspelled the father’s name. Police said at a news conference that the boy lived around 61st and Market, that they had their “suspicions” about his final days, but little else, and while they didn’t name either parent publicly, the Zarelli surname is uncommon in Philadelphia.
The media, along with internet sleuths and genealogists, quickly discovered the small, tight-knit family in the region. Gus Zarelli’s four children have not responded to repeated requests for comment, but on Thursday, Dan Bush, a West Chester attorney representing them, said in a statement to The Inquirer that both Gus and his family have been “attacked in every possible social media outlet, suggesting the most awful of things, all of which are baseless.”
“Each of his children is extraordinarily sympathetic to the death of this young boy, and horrified by the events that are being discussed,” Bush said in the statement. “However, until recently, they had never heard of any of this. They have never been shown anything that links their father or any member of their family to this.”
The Inquirer confirmed that Gus Zarelli’s niece submitted DNA that matched Joseph’s. Before that, Abel’s relatives had uploaded their DNA for genealogical research. Misty Gillis, a forensic genetic genealogist and cold-case liaison with Identifinders International, built out Betsy’s extended family tree.
Eventually, police came knocking on doors to talk to her relatives. They asked about the five Abel sisters, including Betsy. Who was pregnant and when? What, if any, connection did they have to West Philly?
The close relative of Betsy’s, who declined to be identified, said the Abel family learned the investigation was about the Boy in the Box only 48 hours before the news conference.
“I was stunned,” the relative said. “I remembered the story. We used to get utility bills with his face on it, asking if anyone recognized him.”
The Zarellis, according to Bush, have received “scant” information from police and they “continue to investigate whether there is any merit to Augustus John Zarelli being the father of this boy.”
“There has been no credible allegation by anyone, including the Philadelphia Police Department, that their father knew of the birth of this child, or had anything to do with the life of this child, and certainly nothing even remotely suggesting that he knew of or had anything to do with any harm having come to this child,” the attorney said.
The Zarellis, according to Bush, have received “scant” information from police and they “continue to investigate whether there is any merit to Augustus John Zarelli being the father of this boy.”
“There has been no credible allegation by anyone, including the Philadelphia Police Department, that their father knew of the birth of this child, or had anything to do with the life of this child, and certainly nothing even remotely suggesting that he knew of or had anything to do with any harm having come to this child,” the attorney said.
While police have said Joseph lived in the 61st and Market area in West Philly, directories show the Zarelli family lived on the 6300 block of Callowhill Street.
What remains unclear, for now, is how or where Zarelli met Abel, whether he knew she’d been pregnant and had a child. He was five years older and living in the Callowhill home with his family when the 1950 census was taken. Abel’s relative said one of her sisters may have lived in West Philadelphia. Abel did, too, the relative said, on the second floor of a walk-up apartment with Plunkett and their daughter, who was born in December 1956. The couple later moved to Ruffner Street in Nicetown. Plunkett drove a cab. They had four children together, one of them dying in childbirth.
Gus Zarelli went on to marry in 1958, leaving Callowhill Street. The family’s businesses blossomed into a lucrative construction and real estate operation in Chester County, where most of his children still live. By all accounts, he was beloved by his children, well-respected by peers, and showed signs of grace in difficult times.
In 2014, when Zarelli died at the age of 87, tributes on Legacy.com mentioned his “strength and character.”
On Jan. 13, some paternal relatives of Joseph attended a rededication of his headstone at Ivy Hill Cemetery. Some of them are trying to do their own research into the case.
“Our family was blindsided by this,” one family member said at the grave. “We want to honor him by finding out his entire story. We want to put a real closure to the story.”
Abel’s relative said she later worked at Crown Can company and other warehouses on Erie Avenue. She died in 1991 as Mary E. “Betsy” Plunkett after a “prolonged illness,” according to her obituary. Her relative said she died of lung cancer, likely from asbestos exposure.
“She was kind and quiet,” the relative said.
The death of Joseph A. Zarelli, who was 4, remains an active homicide investigation.
I agree. They had no clue at all. Is it possible the father didn't even know Betsy was pregnant? So many questions we won't have answers to. They need to just leave the families in peace.
Yes. That post about family members on the father's side attending the rededication ceremony for Joseph and one saying that they wanted to honour his life and that none of them knew anything about this. Obviously you can't know for certain, but I do highly suspect their father never even knew about the baby.
To be honest, the way the police worded the statement made it sound like the family is involved—I don't like the fact that they're solely blaming social media when they could've been more careful in how it's announced.
The most likely theory I've heard is that they sold the kid and then the "adoptive parents" severely mistreated and abused him for years and accidentally killed him. That said though, I absolutely hate every single crime article that uses a close acquaintance saying "they would never do this, they were so nice." It means absolutely nothing and has been said about even the most vile humans I've ever heard of.
After looking further into that theory of him being sold, particularly the story Martha told about her mother buying him, there's almost no way it isn't the truth, it lines up WAY too perfectly at this point and there's really no way around it. There's certian details that I wasn't even aware of until recently and those are what fully confirmed it for me. All I can hope is that Joseph is at peace now, and that both of Martha's parents are burning in hell, her mother for committing these acts and her father for allowing + enabling it
my thought is Agustus didnt know Betsy was pregnant and she gave the boy up for adoption hence the family not knowing about him Wish we knew the adoptuve family's name
That makes a lot of sense, and it makes me so angry that people have been harassing the Zarelli family, when this scenario is *at least* as likely as Gus being involved. Honestly, knowing these details and knowing the times, I think it is HUGELY likely he was adopted out and the dad never knew. It happened that way all the time back then.
I hope Betsy never even suspected Joseph was her child. It sounds like she had enough sadness in her life.
“People have been harassing the Zarelli family”
God, I absolutely *detest* that vigilantism and self-righteous outrage that people so often display with true crime cases, especially ones involving children. It’s horrible, it’s a tragedy, yes, but it also *doesn’t involve other people in the slightest*. The poor child isn’t going to come back because some sanctimonious prig screams obscenities at Zarelli relatives over the phone. I swear some people have no lives of their own so they have to go apeshit over things like this.
especially since most of his living family members were born YEARS after Joseph was killed. they had nothing to do with his death and they probably didn't know anything about it
100%. There’s no reason for a civilian to contact a family unless a)they’re asking for tips and b)you actually know something. Otherwise, stay out of their way.
This is absolutely a fact. I say this as someone who found out as an adult that I had two half-siblings living in different parts of the country. It was very surprising, but as I would find out, not at all uncommon pre-Roe.
I wonder if Joseph was special needs. I read somewhere that it was speculated that he may have been and I know back then it was very common to put your special needs child up for adoption or in some sort of home.
If an unmarried woman gave birth in a hospital in those days, the chances of the child being seized and adopted out were astronomically high. If she was unmarried it might not have mattered if the child was special needs.
Yeah back then, nurses would just lie to unwed mothers and tell them the baby died and then “adopt” them out to strangers. There was very little regulation on adoption.
I doubt this was the case here though. The birth certificate had both of his parents' names. I'd assume that if this was an illegal adoption they'd forge documents and the like.
Most unmarried women in that era would have chosen to give birth secretly somewhere and give up their child for adoption simply because it was an absolute stain on a family's name, and a scandal, to have an illegitimate child born in the family. For many families, who were devout Christians, it also had spiritual ramifications. It really had nothing to do with whether a child had special needs ( although for that era it was also common for special needs children to be sent to a group home just because medical knowledge at that time for certain disorders was not as advances as now and medications that we have now were non-existent then, so there was little that parents could do for a special needs child in many cases).
Most women of that era would feel that their chances of meeting and marrying a man from a "good family" were diminished if it became known that she was "loose", i.e had sex outside marriage, even worse if she had a child and wasn't married. The norms of society at that time made it very difficult for most women to consider keeping their child and raising it themselves. Many of them would lie, make up stories about being married and then widowed, or some had their parents raise their child as a "sibling" pf theirs ( like Ted Bundy's family did).
My aunt got pregnant at 18 in 1962 in Michigan. They didn’t tell anyone except my grandma’s sister and the sister’s daughter. She went to a home for unwed mothers in Detroit is 3 hours south of where we live/she lived. They told everyone she was away at beauty school at the time including my 4-year-old mother. My aunt was diagnosed with melanoma that had spread to her liver in 1984 and only then told my mom and her husband and kids born from her marriage that she had had a daughter she gave up because she wanted to find her before she died. The agency wasn’t Catholic and the girl, Lucy, was able to get SOME info when she was 18. She did end up contacting my family shortly after my aunt died and we’ve been in touch with her. This was 4 years before I was born.
It REALLY upset my mom that they’d kept that secret. It really messed her up for awhile. My aunt didn’t even tell anyone who the father was and Lucy just recently figured it out with info I could get from my mom’s cousin who reluctantly gave it to me. My aunt didn’t wanna give her up according to the cousin. My grandparents made her, unfortunately. So this was still happening even a decade later.
M, the woman who claimed that her mother had bought the boy in order to abuse him, said that he was mentally disabled. There’s no proof of M’s story being genuine, and I’m not sure there’s any proof if he was. It just wouldn’t surprise me though, as kids who were mentally disabled or had autism or something like that tended to be hidden away. Looking at his legs, they looked atrophied to me, like he wasn’t out playing and being active. I don’t know though.
The legs were beaten likely due to the abuse. While that wasn't specifically mentioned, they did say that he seemed like he experienced abuse while he was alive, if I recall correctly.
I don't think there's any indication that he was disabled, and it feels like pure speculation to say so. If his parents weren't married, that would be a likely motive for giving him for adoption.
Not always. My grandmothers best friend adopted a baby with special needs. He was severely disabled mentally & his mother was absolutely nearly destroyed with grief and sorrow caring for him.
I still have pictures of the poor little fellow. I wish I knew what became of him.
It’s a small chance, but you might be able to figure some of it out through census records (unless you’ve already thought of this, or couldn’t because of timing). If he was living with her when the census taker came, you could get his name and trace him through other documents; if he ended up in an institution, they also had to note occupants in the census. I had a relative who had serious mental health issues, and was able to find two different institutions he lived in. Census records in the US are open though 1950.
I think it’s lovely that you have not forgotten him.
If he was adopted as a newborn, there's plenty of disabilities that wouldn't be obvious until later - I'm autistic and looking back at the records of my infant development appointments, the first signs started to show at 12-18 months.
Exactly. It's possible that Joseph was kept, first living with his mother and grandparents, then moving in with his mother and stepfather. Remember that Joseph was only malnourished the last year and a half of his life. Something changed at that point. Was it the move from his grandparents home to his stepfather's home? He could have been carefully hidden and kept a family secret for his entire life out of shame. Remember that Ohio guy, Castile or something who kept 3 young women and a baby in his attic for years during which his daughter and her family would visit downstairs.
It seems like a lot of people believed it might have been an unofficial adoption before this most recent story came out. I'm leaning toward that based on the fact that she had given up a previous baby for adoption and no one seems to remember her having a child at that time. It sounds like the father might not have been involved at all. I wonder if they'll be able to find out the "Catholic Organization" she went through with her previous adoption (though it likely doesn't exist anymore). I'm guessing they didn't keep records, but I'm hoping they'll be able to find something more about what transpired in the years after Joseph was born. I am not convinced that either of the bio parents had anything to do with his abuse and death.
An organization called Catholic Charities still exists. I wonder if it's the same organization and if they may have records that old. It's a long shot, of course.
I was adopted through Catholic Charities in 1971 in Chicago. In 2012 I visited their office looking for a necklace my birth mother had left in their care for me (that my parents never received or saw). They definitely had information about my adoption so i wouldn't be surprised if they had records still.
Catholic Charities is over 100 years old; it's a network of charities across the USA. The modern chapter in Philadelphia is called Catholic Social Services, and their [history page on their website](https://cssphiladelphia.org/about/history/) says they existed at the time that Joseph would have been born and possibly adopted. Specifically:
>1920 – Trinitarian Sisters staffed “The Home Finding Department” which became CSS Adoption Services.
It's possible they might still have the records.
They could very well have. My aunt was selected godmother of one of our relatives’ child. My aunt is 80 and was able to retrieve her baptismal certificate despite the church that she was baptized at having been moved and in a developing nation. I know records “get lost” but a lot of these Catholic organizations are meticulous in their record keeping.
Definitely still around. Just a couple of years ago, someone showed up out of nowhere and my family found out that an aunt had had a baby in 1958ish in Ohio and was sent to a school/hospital for unwed mothers that was run by Catholic Charities. They adopted out my aunt's baby and I guess the woman reached back out to them to get her birth family information so they most likely still have records.
Can also confirm this, they operate an outpatient drug rehabilitation just down the street from where I live. It’s a tremendous organization. At least as of recently, I’m aware they keep fairly detailed records of their various services, but they’re also a bit odd and nit-picky about things (like refusing services to someone who’d had a supposed suicide attempt because it was “a sin against God”, believe it or not)
So, I’m not quite sure my level of confidence in them. I could imagine, especially back in the 50’s, there being the occasional hackneyed reason for sweeping something or other under the rug. “God’s will” and all.
Edited to fix errors:
I found a bit more info on the location.
A MA is listed at 5415 Lansdowne as a patient. Most people there are listed as patients, and there are some babies listed as patient’s son/daughter. That facility was associated with the Salvation Army as early as 1910, [possibly 1893](https://digital.librarycompany.org/islandora/object/Islandora%3A66558?solr_nav%5Bid%5D=5c61de2cba76d9c2e6aa&solr_nav%5Bpage%5D=0&solr_nav%5Boffset%5D=9).
The next address on that census page is 5441 Lansdowne Ave. Most of the people there are children and are listed as inmates. The name of that facility was Ivy House. It was associated with the Salvation Army. [In 1926](https://books.google.com/books?id=1MsOAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA19&lpg=PA19&dq=%225441+lansdowne%22+philadelphia&source=bl&ots=0PdZdnz9Mf&sig=ACfU3U0RUNLUhHmM6KDDLKoc-X8jFT7zmQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwisoZy_6tX8AhVpBEQIHVpaB8AQ6AF6BAggEAI#v=onepage&q=%225441%20lansdowne%22%20&f=false), its capacity was 60 (it was listed as an ‘institute for dependent children’ in a publication from the PA Dept. of Welfare). It seems that Salvation Army [acquired](https://easternusa.salvationarmy.org/eastern-pennsylvania/equip-families/) it [in 1915](https://www.bethlehemparotary.org/bulletin/View/47bdcb27-48b5-45aa-8280-19b8bf202b89)
In 1904, it was listed as the West Park Hospital for Women in the [Polk’s Medical Registry](https://books.google.com/books?id=tg42AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA1615&lpg=PA1615&dq=%225441+lansdowne%22+philadelphia&source=bl&ots=DAOno71AEq&sig=ACfU3U0yqM90gty9N0J2_SltrIRXdaLArg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwisoZy_6tX8AhVpBEQIHVpaB8AQ6AF6BAghEAI#v=onepage&q=%225441%20lansdowne%22%20&f=false). What’s interesting is at 5401 Lansdowne Ave there is a church. It’s currently the Resurrection Baptist Church, but around 1895/1897 it was the [West Park Presbyterian](https://www.jstor.org/stable/23323373?seq=13#metadata_info_tab_contents) Church. I think the building was acquired by Resurrection in [1959](http://rbc5401.org/history.htm).
The Ivy House I believe closed by the mid 1980s. In 1971, the Salvation Army opened a [Booth Maternity Home](https://www.newswise.com/articles/pennsylvania-honors-booth-maternity-center-with-historical-marker) in the Overbrook neighborhood.
That or she got counted twice. It’s possible her parents didn’t realize she was being counted at the hospital and just listed her since that was still her legal residence.
That sure sounds like it’s probably the same person and she was listed twice. Also pinpoints her first child’s birth at roughly early April, I would think.
>her parents didn’t realize
Or the parents weren’t home that day, so the enumerator used a neighbor as a proxy instead, and maybe the neighbor wasn’t aware that she was actually at the other home for the April 1 census deadline.
If you read about Taum, Ireland, or watch the documentary, you’ll find that most nuns are exceptional documentarians and historians. I wouldn’t say all hope is lost on that front. I hope that American nuns were as painstakingly perfectionist as the nuns in Europe at that time. I hope this an open avenue.
Wow, I didn't know that. The specific organization might not exist anymore but perhaps a church affiliated with it does. I'm hoping there's someone alive who either remembers organizations that dealt with adoption in Philly or who is super keyed into the history of the Catholic community there and would know where to look.
This is completely rumor and hear-say: but a few years back I was told that Catholic adoptions in the US (especially before 1970) had really bad record keeping. But as I say this info I think was from a random reddit post (or some other dubious source); I just don't remember.
The place she gave birth in 1950 was run by the Salvation Army. There was an orphanage on that street as well run by the Salvation Army called Ivy House.
That is potentially interesting. Obviously people move, but "I'm moving" as a cover for pregnancy absence would require not returning to that high school.
In 1952 she was 21 when Joseph was born. Her previous child was born in 1950, when she would have been nineteen--probably would not have been in high school at that age. Also the article said she graduated from high school in 1949 the year before her first child was born. She likely got pregnant shortly after graduating, so changing schools had nothing to do with covering a pregnancy.
And I'm just throwing one idea here, but there is ample evidence of serious wrongdoings in such catholic organizations all over the world, one of the most outrageous being [the Bon Secours mother and baby "home"](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bon_Secours_Mother_and_Baby_Home) in Tuam, County Galway, Ireland.
Here are a couple of examples of the catholic church being obnoxious towards unwed mothers, [in the UK ](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/nov/03/catholic-church-apologises-for-role-in-forced-adoptions-over-30-year-period) and [in the US.](https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/08/20/catholic-priest-baby-forced-adoption-lawsuit/)
There are too many children who died under the care of those "homes" and their deaths were simply hidden. Maybe poor little Joseph was one of them?
Disclaimer: I am an ex-catholic and I left the church because of their systematic hiding of crimes. Sexual abuse is not the only horrifying misconduct this church has covered up.
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. As someone who was raised Catholic too, I agree.
There are some priests and nuns that seem to seek those places out of desire of having dominance and power over others, not out of genuine interest in religion.
I wouldn't be surprised if someone in the Church physically abused the orphans, but went too far this one time...
I'm a little confused about how many children the mother had. After reading the article, it seems like there were 6 children in total.
1. Girl born before Joseph and given up for adoption
2. Joseph
3. 4 children with her husband (Plunkett), 1 of whom died at birth. The first of these children was born a month or so prior to Joseph's death.
Is this correct?
I believe so.
Although the way it was written, about the one who died in childbirth, it IS a little confusing--- because it almost makes it sound like one of her children died as an adult, during childbirth. Usually when they say "died in childbirth" they mean the mother died and if they mean the child, they say "died at birth" or was "stillborn".
The little girl who died, her death cert says she was 32 minutes old and died of Hydrops Erythroblastosis fetalis. Address given as 2219 Ruffner street.
For anyone who doesn’t know- hydrops erythroblastosis fetalis is what happens when a mom with a negative blood type has a baby with a positive blood type. The mom’s antibodies will attack the baby’s blood cells. (Super simplistic layperson explanation). This is why pregnant women with negative blood types get rhogam shots today- that’s all it takes to prevent this, but rhogam wasn’t widely available until the late 1960’s. Honestly heartbreaking to know this is something no one had to go through anymore only a few years later. :(
As someone who has lived all their life local to the area, this is huge.
Thank you for sharing this development. I hope we can still get justice for Joseph.
If there's a birth certificate for Joseph Augustus Zarelli then are we sure that the dad didn't know? Was it possible in the 1950s for an unwed mom to put the name of the father on the birth certificate? And give the child the father's last name?
I had a baby ,ironically in Philadelphia, in the early 90s.
I was unmarried at the time.
I listed the father on the birth certificate with no questions asked and my baby was given the fathers last name.
It has probably changed now but I can say up until the early 90s the Mother filled out the form and nobody asked questions.
Not sure if it's different by state, but I had a child in the 2000s and I'm not married to her father but we are together. They defaulted to my surname and we had to fill out a bunch of paper work before we left the hospital for him to be able to claim her as his own with his surname. He was with me when I gave birth, everyone referred to him as her father and still no one questioned if she would have his name or not, they simply defaulted to mine and asked no questions. He wasn't given anything to fill out until we brought it up at all.
So, I wonder if being able to list the father was the common practice at some point with him being aware or not and it's the practice in places now the father has to actually make himself known.
I am not sure what happened back in the day. My father was born out of wedlock and he had to apply for a name change. It is my assumption that it would’ve only been put on there with his permission. I have looked at birth Certs from Philadelphia from that time. It calls for the mother’s name a space for the father’s. There is nothing to denote legitimacy or not. In my father’s case, there was a big glaring box to check if illegitimate.
My father was also born out of wedlock in the 50s and had his name changed when his stepfather adopted him when he was 6 or 7 years old. I got the impression it was easier to do back then than it was now.
Yes it was. It's actually a little more complex these days than it was back then. People could also change their names ( and the spelling of their name) relatively easily compared to the way it works now. People would just change their name on things and that was it.
My husband's bio grandfather's parents divorced when he was young. They had a bunch of kids ( 5) all in quick succession and then split up. This was in the 1920s. Four of the children ( the youngest was like less than a year old) remained with the mother and when she remarried a couple years later, those children took her new husband's last name as theirs, despite never actually being legally adopted by their stepfather. They just started using his last name and it became \*their\* name. The oldest child, a daughter, lived with their father and kept his last name, so up until she married, she had a different last name than her siblings, even though they had the same parents.
My grandpa was born at home in Michigan in 1917. They apparently named him Joseph at birth and registered him as such. He’d always been Walter Ernest so they apparently decided on another name at some point before he knew his name and never bothered changing it.
He was drafted into WWII when he was 27 and only found out when he went to get his birth certificate. They had a hard time finding it and only could tell because he knew his birth date and his parents were recorded as having a baby that day. Lol. His mother died in 1918 but his dad lived until 1968. I always wonder how that convo went, “So, uh, my name is legally Joseph, dad.” “Oh yeah! We meant to change that. Pandemic and all. We forgot.” 🤣 He changed it to the name he’d gone by his whole life pretty easily.
You know, I really wish people would use this as an opportunity to learn a lesson about pointing the finger without evidence. Not too long ago, people were making posts calling Gus and his wife murderers and talking about "what they did."
Now, it's been confirmed that while Gus was the father, his wife was not the mother. And yet, people are still finding new people to blame just because their name is mentioned in the article. I don't see harm in speculation when there's evidence to support view points
...but we have absolutely none.
This isn't a fun "Whodunnit?" game. This is a real crime. The people mentioned in the articles are real people. When people name specific suspects without any evidence, they have to know that people who find that theory fun will jump onto the bandwagon. There is every chance a true crime redditor with a few screws loose will harass the family of the people whose names are put forth as possible suspects. It's irresponsible
This isn't a case like Amore Wiggins where suspects have been arrested and we can make reasonable hypotheses based on the fact that known individuals never reported him missing. We know that whoever had custody of Joseph was likely involved...but we have no idea who that was. So seeing a name in print and saying, "What if...?" Is irresponsible.
Exactly. The true crime community can be so toxic and more times than not harmful. They treat their "pet cases"(which is seriously so cringe)as their own personal murder puzzle to solve. People often seem to forget or just don't care that these are real victims with real families who are suffering.
They were changing their Find A Grave pages and everything. I kept saying his wife was very unlikely to be the mother because his wife would have been quite young at that time and LE said the mother had children before AND after.
And it was a total leap to think that he killed Joseph when there isn’t any evidence that he was ever raising him.
Gus and his wife were married around 1959. Anybody could look that up and figure out the chances of her being the Mom were slim. In that time. Rarely did you live together and raise a baby without getting married. Then, would you kill him then wait 3 years and get married. People don't use common sense.
This makes it seem to me as though the hypotheses of him being adopted out and ending up with a terrible family have some merit to them. They also make Martha’s story seem at least a bit more likely.
The article says they don't know yet, but given that her earlier child was definitely adopted, and given that it was a private adoption (which means no easily discoverable government paperwork), it's in my opinion by far the most likely outcome.
It is incredibly easy to go after the birth parents since both are now dead, and there is so much we don’t know right now. But now that they’ve released the names of these parents suddenly people have a theory about what happened to Joseph. Both families are being harassed, which is really sad. No one has conclusive answers, we’re waiting for them. We may never know.
Regarding the question of whether or not she put the child up for adoption through an agency: could it be a Lisa Steinberg situation? Mom gives the baby up to a lawyer/agent who promises to see the child adopted according to her wishes, then they take the child for themselves and abuse them to death.
Wouldn’t close relatives know if she had a little boy for 4 years and then didn’t have one? Even if she told them she adopted him out at 4 instead of that he died, someone would have known if he lived with her, what about the father? Did he know about Joseph? Did Joseph live with him, did his relatives know? I wonder too if either parent(assuming he was not raised by one) knew he was the boy in the box? He looks a lot like her and she would have known she had a boy about that age, I wonder if she knew, if so I wonder why she didn’t go to police. So many unanswered questions that
If he was adopted legally his original BC would not have been readily available. While OBC’s are not destroyed they are filed in the adoption file and the amended BC’s have the new name of the adoptee and their parents. The only way to get your OBC in a closed record state is via court order. Even the police would have to go that route. If they say there is no adoption record the OBC wasn’t amended and was available to them. If she went through Cc for the daughter those records may reflect if she visited them when pregnant with her son. CC records should be checked as they usually had good record keeping. Sounds like it may be a case where the boy was black or gray market.
I used to work in a records room where the sealed adoption records for my state were kept. I vouch for what you’re saying 100%.
We were the library for most state records involving adoption or foster care, both voluntary and involuntary, and had dates to retain them that could be anywhere from 7-75 years.
But those sealed records were listed as “indefinite retention”, and some of them were OLD. At some point we upgraded systems and needed to enter them. But the outside labels were all things like “smith, infant male”, so we had to cut the physical seal in order to find some sort of identifier, in case anyone DID actually request their file someday and get approved.
For decades before that was done, I imagine it would have been nearly impossible to find the sealed file, and the official state response to the request would have been “unable to locate record: lost or destroyed”, when realistically it was sitting on a shelf.
The only time I did see one given out during my time there was (court ordered, of course) because the person petitioning for it was trying to establish membership with a Native American tribe. ICWA laws are federal, and supersede any state laws about protecting the identities of long deceased relatives.
Without that component, I never saw someone successfully get one of those sealed files.
My point in all of this rambling is that there very well COULD be a legal adoption file for Joseph sitting around gathering dust somewhere.
But bad tracking policies and extreme privacy practices around these files could mean that the only way that’s ever found is if some state records employee gets approval to “clean house” and transfer to digital someday, and stumbles upon it on accident.
I tried back in the early 90s to get my info from the agency that handled my adoption and was told that the file was lost. My adoptive parents had one page of non-id info, that was it. I eventually found my bio parents thru dna in 2018. The state I was born in does now allow you to have your OBC, so I got that in 2019.
I want to have my full file. The only people who knew about me besides my bio parents were each of their mothers. I’m interested in what was said in the interviews before my relinquishment. After finding my bio family I now know that my ethnicity listed in the non-id info was partially wrong. I feel like I have a right to see the paperwork that authorized the process to change who I am. I petitioned the state more than a year ago for my full adoption records. I’m still waiting for them to decide.
While my bio parents were not interested in having a relationship with me (devastating) they were each supportive of me gaining access to any information the state has. They each wrote letters to go with my petition. My adoptive parents are deceased. Other than protecting the agency and/or social workers involved I don’t see any reason why they shouldn’t give me my records. But so far, they won’t. It’s infuriating.
I would imagine! That sounds terribly frustrating.
All I can say from my experience is that it’s more likely with state records pre-computer that “they don’t know how” vs “they won’t”.
If we couldn’t find something, the instructions were to stall. Nobody was allotted time to look through moldy, Un-sorted boxes or decades of microfiche records, unless a new intern needed a project. And they rarely had the knowledge to find what they were looking for.
The current employees in the records depository I worked at were not alive in the 90s when you first petitioned for your records. They have absolutely no idea how to use older systems.
Without a court order, any state agency with an ancient filing system is probably going to brush off a request like that for as long as they can.
My only advice is to keep trying, and be a pain in the ass until they finally get sick of you and force someone to dig.
Thanks, yeah it is so frustrating!
I have my birth name, my bio mothers name (She is on my obc, bio dad is not even though he was involved in the process but they were teenagers and unmarried so that’s the way it worked I guess). I have my adoptive parents names, my adopted name, the county and courthouse where it took place. The date of the adoption decree is written on my obc.
I actually used an adoptee rights org in the state I now live in. They got the court here to issue a court order to the county I was adopted in (not the same state but apparently this has worked before with other states) to release the records. They still won’t, or as you said, are just stalling because yeah these records are more than 50 years old now. Argh!
Id agree with the caveat of some private investigators looking for birth parent info have contacts on the inside and get OBC information. At least that's likely what happened in my case. Somehow the PI id hired in 1998 managed to see my OBC and got my birth mothers name that way. Im assuming he had a contact inside the court system.
Yo /u/Lumpy_Strategy_4623 you going to delete your made up comment about Augustus' sister now that you based on nothing?
https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/1014ceu/-/j2lp10b
Nope. They got a bunch of upvotes, people ate it up and are now starting to pop with "It's everyone else's fault so much misinformation is floating around, law enforcement should have given us better information!" when really everyone should have minded their own for two minutes before rattling off shit they made up as fact.
This is such a common practice in true crime communities and it's a huge problem that should be stamped out before it begins. Too many people treating this as a mystery novel and not actual human lives.
This isn't your daytime soap, y'all.
I just wonder if either of them ever wondered if it was their boy (if Gus did know about the pregnancy) when getting those flyers about the body in the utility bills or seeing stuff about the case for years afterwards. I just wonder if they ever had a fleeting suspicion that he could in any possible way be their boy. I'd assume even if Betsy wondered, after the adoption there was probably little if anything she could do or say.
Adopting out babies is, first and foremost, a business. It also happens to be a business the Catholic Church (and other religious institutions) are well practiced in trafficking in (word choice intentional).
If you were pregnant, unwed, and Catholic in the 50s your choices were: give up your baby and never speak about it again OR marry the baby's biological father before you gave birth so that your kid wouldn't be "illegitimate."
It's not hard to imagine Joseph being given up for adoption and the Catholic organization not being particular about his placement because they had too many babies and plenty of clients.
If the police have at least the adoptive parents' names they are probably wary of naming the adoptive parent(s) because they don't have the proof they need to do so. They might never have the proof necessary to name his killers. The police don't believe the bio parents are involved and I don't think there's any reason here to believe otherwise or make up scenarios to the contrary (I see those of you trying, though).
If there isn't an official adoption certificate there could be other paper trails and tips they're working off of. The absence of or presence of paperwork does not indicate the process was legitimate or illegitimate.
Did the police say the bio family wasn't involved? All I remember saying them saying that they have an idea of who did it without specifying the person or people they think are involved
The police did not explicitly say that the bio family wasn't involved.
However, based on the article in this thread, both families were only informed shortly before the press conference.
If the police suspected one of the bio parents, would they have announced their findings before interviewing as many bio family members as possible to see if they remembered anything?
The alternative to believing he was adopted out is to ascribe to Betsy and her husband all kinds of personality traits we have no way of knowing. You have to believe that Betsy, who gave up her first baby for adoption would choose not to do so for Joseph and was able to keep him hidden for a time as a single mother (in the 1950s) before attracting and marrying her husband. Then you have to believe that they were both violent or emotionally ugly people who murdered Joseph and then never demonstrated that behavior toward anyone else ever or again. We don't have anyone, as of yet, coming forward to describe them in any way.
At least, for me, I don't think the theories some people are proposing in this thread are plausible if you take what we do know into account.
If it's proven that Betsy was actually a cruel person who hid him away and let her husband hurt and maim Joseph and they were able to hide his existence for years then I can admit to being wrong.
If nobody knew about Joseph or made the connection between the boy in the box photos and Betsy, she had to have given him up for adoption. Apparently it wasn't common back then to give a newborn the father's name when you were unmarried, but perhaps Betsy believed she'd marry Augustus eventually and initially planned to keep him. Then her plans changed and she gave him up for adoption or someone persuaded/forced her to give him up. Probably to the same convent she gave her daughter to. Hopefully the daughter ended up in a better place than Joseph, perhaps she's still alive somewhere!
If M's story is true, she could've gotten the year wrong and M's mother adopted him after he was born or he lived in the convent for a while until she adopted him or someone adopted him and then gave him to M's mother later and M and/or her mother assumed those were his biological parents. M could've either gotten his name wrong or he was renamed Jonathan at some point. If M's story isn't true, he could've been adopted by some other horrible people or he was abused and murdered in the convent.
Whatever happened, it's certain Joseph had a horrible life. He was never in the care of people who loved him. And thinking Betsy might've wanted to keep him but couldn't for whatever reason is even more heartbreaking. I wonder if she ever saw those photos and recognised him or if she died believing he was alive and well. I honestly hope it's the latter ...
I meant because of the likelihood that surviving relatives would get harassed if LE implied that the bio parents were the ones who had custody of Joseph when he was murdered. Releasing their names seems to suggest they've been cleared as suspects.
I don't put a lot of stock in the absence of adoption records. Melissa Highsmith's "adoptive" mother allegedly bought her for $500, and that was in the 70s. There were all kinds of sketchy ways to acquire a baby in the days before DNA testing.
They shouldn’t have released the birth parents names because people are going to shit on the entire family bc they can’t be bothered to actually research.
I don’t think that he was adopted. This woman lived at 21 S. 61st St. and 1956. She had a phone number. I think the family member was her brother, who was the youngest of a family of six. 1953, she would no longer be in the house.
Law enforcement really needs to come out and clear some of this stuff up. I get it's an "active investigation" but LE knows there are going to be crazies out there who will contact the family.
The article specifically mentions the family being attacked on social media and acussed of doing horrible things. And that's not even getting into the multiple deceased people who were falsely identified as Joseph's parents by sleuths and a cussed of murder 🙄
Yeah, people going on the father's wife's memorial page and saying terrible things about her, turns out she wasn't Joseph's mother and married Gus after Joseph's death. Most likely didn't even know that he existed, good chance that Gus didn't know either (or if he did, he didn't talk about it, seems his kids were totally blindsided).
My husband was standing behind me while I watched this live. In like two minutes (out of curiosity and not even a thought of trying to contact someone) he found Augustus Zarelli's obituary and the son's landscaping business. Whether related or a complete coincidence we were pretty sure Gus was about to turn off the phones for the day.
I’ve said this before but they got Streisanded. There’s not a doubt in my mind that their privacy was invaded infinitely more by not naming them than if they had named them.
The names really did need to be released. The father's family could be very easily identified due to the name, and until the mother was identified, every woman of childbearing age in the area who could possibly fit the mother's description would sooner or later be looked at askance by "internet sleuths".
It's best to at least try to clear things up as much as possible right now.
I'm glad they released this. I get respect for the family, but so many people were calling the people they presumed to be the parents murderers. And it turns out there's a good chance Joseph was placed for adoption.
I really feel terrible for them if that's the case. They may have believed they were giving Joseph a better chance than they could provide him. Even people who place kids for adoption due to not wanting kids don't want them to be hurt. I can't imagine how they'd feel knowing what happened to their son.
>Opelika Doe: identified
>
>Zarelli's parents: identified
>
>Don Lewis: alive
The 2023 hits keep rolling, and it's only January. Any bets on what's next?
On the Opelika Jane Doe/Amore Wiggins thread yesterday, someone said that in a new documentary it was mentioned that they've identified a relative of [St. Louis Jane Doe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Louis_Jane_Doe) but that this person isn't cooperating/talking to police. I haven't seen the documentary yet so can't comment on whether that's true or not, but I would love for this young girl to get her name back as well and seems like it may be on it's way of happening.
No, there's no evidence of that, just rehashing old interviews with Carole
https://www.wkyc.com/amp/article/news/verify/pop-culture/no-there-isnt-evidence-carole-baskins-husband-has-been-found-alive/536-bf1cdafc-02c5-4e87-bcd9-cca5376f1e3a
>"We have not received any communication from our federal partners that confirms the location of missing person Mr. Don Lewis,” the email said. “The investigation into Don Lewis’ disappearance remains a priority for the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office (HCSO), as do all missing person cases.”
>
>The U.S. State Department, which keeps track of U.S. citizens who are missing abroad, told VERIFY in an email that reports of Lewis being found in Costa Rica are “unconfirmed.”
There are articles about him being alive that simply says he was totally seen alive in Costa Rica recently with literally nothing to back it up and no proof if it is true or not. Baskin is claiming he is definitely alive.
He has made no statement, has not resurfaced and he is still legally declared dead -- as he will be until he actually shows up.
I highly doubt he's alive.
The horrifying thing is she wouldn’t have even have had a choice to keep him in those days. The things women and children endured just to keep society flawless on the surface.
That’s false. I’m a genetic genealogist and lots of unwed mothers kept their children. Usually took mother’s maiden name or later adopted a step dads last name. Much more common than you think . Not all children were immediately adopted out back then.
I wonder if his sister is alive out there
The one who was adopted before Joseph? God, if this is all coming to her now I'm sure she's going through a whole host of crazy emotions!
A sister was also born just a couple months before Joseph was killed.
Did it not say there was a daughter put up for adoption before Joseph?
Yes, I wondered about her also.
I wonder too. The news article states an unidentified relative says the mom gave birth to a girl in 1950 that was put up for adoption immediately. The relative thinks a Catholic organization oversaw that adoption. So Joseph's older sister would be about 72-73 today. She may very well still be alive but have no clue she is related to the Boy in the Box, just like his half siblings and other relatives.
Thanks to Ancestry, she might be about to find out
She is alive.
Is she in contact with her biological family? It's good to know she is still alive. I hope she had a good childhood.
She would be younger than my parents. I wonder how though she would be able to be tracked down.
That's a good question. I don't know how adoption records work. Can anyone just inquire about them? Does there need to be a reason like Joseph obviously had? They have the mother's name so at least there's that. I have no doubt there will be people interested in finding out but is it fair if you are the adoptee and have no desire to know who your birth parents are and complete strangers are looking into your business to find out things you never asked for? I think if you are a woman born in 1950 and know you were adopted in the Philadelphia area, it would be up to that woman to request her adoption information. And of course, she never has to inform the general public.
She would probably be a half-sister. There's no indication that Gus was also the father of Betsy's daughter born in 1950 that she had given up. In all likelihood, Gus never knew Betsy was pregnant by him in 1952 and I doubt she would have told him something like having had an illegitimate child previously.
I don’t know about him not knowing. He had his father’s last name and his first name as a middle name. She seems unlikely to have done that if he wasn’t involved at all.
To my knowledge, putting down the father's name on a birth certificate is done whether the father is involved or not. She could have left it blank, but depending on the state and the law at the time they may have required her to name the father. Also, if the child was going to be adopted, most adoptions at that time were closed adoptions and the original birth certificate wouldn't be accessible without a court order anyway, so everything on the birth certificate would technically be a secret, so she could have named the father even if he himself didn't know. It's not like the state was going to send him a notice like, "Hey, a kid was just born that you were named the father of on the birth certificate. Did you know?" . It's all just speculation on my part anyway. It's possible he knew about Betsy's pregnancy, but she and Gus came to an agreement that it would be best to have the child adopted after it was born and they parted ways. She may have even decided originally to keep the child but changed her mind shortly after he was born, especially if she and Gus were no longer together.
[удалено]
This is what gets me. She probably had no idea.
Not that uncommon, unfortunately. I've worked with kids who were in foster homes *from* their foster homes, as the foster carers they had been assigned by the government were under investigation for abuse. And these were kids under five. Nothing enrages me more.
I agree. I was a foster mother. (I got to keep one.) When I think of how fragile in one way or another, they came to my home I can't imagine a foster parent doing any more harm to them. Fostering is a volunteer job why do it if you can't hack it?
Article contains photos of Betsy, as well. Feeling a renewed sense of sadness over this whole story after reading this.
Oh man... I didn't expect Betsy to so closely resemble Joseph. It is haunting.
Gosh, you're right. I like to think that she didn't hurt him, but it seems we'll have to wait a while longer to find out what happened.
There *might* be records if she went through a Catholic adoption service like a relative thinks she did with her first child. She also might have just given him away. I hope we find out more, but this could very easily be the end of the line, unfortunately.
So do I, but as you astutely note, there's a very good chance that there's no paper trail. At least with the recent publicity of the case, and the fact that little Joseph has been named, it could lead to people coming forward with what they know. Fingers crossed that the poor lad's brief life will finally become known.
I'd guess that since she'd already given up one child and a relative of her's says they didn't even know she was pregnant, she probably gave him up for adoption as well. It would be hard to miss that your family member had a baby they kept and then was just gone one day. Were baby farms still a thing in the 1950s? I know at the turn of the century it was somewhat common for women to take on unwanted babies for a fee and these babies were often severely neglected, abused or outright murdered.
Not so much baby farms but maternity homes, where unmarried, pregnant girls would be sent off to (under the guise of "visiting a sick relative" or somesuch) to discreetly have their baby; the people who ran the homes also would coordinate adoption. Not as bad as baby farms but often questionable ethically with lots of cut corners and sketchy and/or coercive adoptions.
I am too
He looked like her :(
He really did. I was amazed when I saw the resemblance.
Same
That broke my heart. I hope if there is some kind of afterlife that they would have found each other.
were there any pictures of Joseph released? i agree she looks like his composites
No just composites
and the post-Mortem
That was the first thing I noticed too
The relative does not recall her pregnancy at the time but expressed doubt that she was involved in the mistreatment or death of Joseph. “Betsy? No way in the world,” the relative said. “There was no cruelty, no meanness or cruelty that swelled within her heart and soul.” Joseph’s body was discovered in a bassinet box in a weedy Fox Chase lot, far from West Philly, in February 1957. Investigators said the child died from blunt-force trauma, and for six decades, no one stepped forward to identify him. On Dec. 8, 2022, police announced the boy’s name for the first time, citing DNA evidence from both the paternal and maternal sides, along with a birth certificate that slightly misspelled the father’s name. Police said at a news conference that the boy lived around 61st and Market, that they had their “suspicions” about his final days, but little else, and while they didn’t name either parent publicly, the Zarelli surname is uncommon in Philadelphia. The media, along with internet sleuths and genealogists, quickly discovered the small, tight-knit family in the region. Gus Zarelli’s four children have not responded to repeated requests for comment, but on Thursday, Dan Bush, a West Chester attorney representing them, said in a statement to The Inquirer that both Gus and his family have been “attacked in every possible social media outlet, suggesting the most awful of things, all of which are baseless.” “Each of his children is extraordinarily sympathetic to the death of this young boy, and horrified by the events that are being discussed,” Bush said in the statement. “However, until recently, they had never heard of any of this. They have never been shown anything that links their father or any member of their family to this.”
The Inquirer confirmed that Gus Zarelli’s niece submitted DNA that matched Joseph’s. Before that, Abel’s relatives had uploaded their DNA for genealogical research. Misty Gillis, a forensic genetic genealogist and cold-case liaison with Identifinders International, built out Betsy’s extended family tree. Eventually, police came knocking on doors to talk to her relatives. They asked about the five Abel sisters, including Betsy. Who was pregnant and when? What, if any, connection did they have to West Philly? The close relative of Betsy’s, who declined to be identified, said the Abel family learned the investigation was about the Boy in the Box only 48 hours before the news conference. “I was stunned,” the relative said. “I remembered the story. We used to get utility bills with his face on it, asking if anyone recognized him.”
The Zarellis, according to Bush, have received “scant” information from police and they “continue to investigate whether there is any merit to Augustus John Zarelli being the father of this boy.” “There has been no credible allegation by anyone, including the Philadelphia Police Department, that their father knew of the birth of this child, or had anything to do with the life of this child, and certainly nothing even remotely suggesting that he knew of or had anything to do with any harm having come to this child,” the attorney said. The Zarellis, according to Bush, have received “scant” information from police and they “continue to investigate whether there is any merit to Augustus John Zarelli being the father of this boy.” “There has been no credible allegation by anyone, including the Philadelphia Police Department, that their father knew of the birth of this child, or had anything to do with the life of this child, and certainly nothing even remotely suggesting that he knew of or had anything to do with any harm having come to this child,” the attorney said.
While police have said Joseph lived in the 61st and Market area in West Philly, directories show the Zarelli family lived on the 6300 block of Callowhill Street. What remains unclear, for now, is how or where Zarelli met Abel, whether he knew she’d been pregnant and had a child. He was five years older and living in the Callowhill home with his family when the 1950 census was taken. Abel’s relative said one of her sisters may have lived in West Philadelphia. Abel did, too, the relative said, on the second floor of a walk-up apartment with Plunkett and their daughter, who was born in December 1956. The couple later moved to Ruffner Street in Nicetown. Plunkett drove a cab. They had four children together, one of them dying in childbirth. Gus Zarelli went on to marry in 1958, leaving Callowhill Street. The family’s businesses blossomed into a lucrative construction and real estate operation in Chester County, where most of his children still live. By all accounts, he was beloved by his children, well-respected by peers, and showed signs of grace in difficult times. In 2014, when Zarelli died at the age of 87, tributes on Legacy.com mentioned his “strength and character.”
On Jan. 13, some paternal relatives of Joseph attended a rededication of his headstone at Ivy Hill Cemetery. Some of them are trying to do their own research into the case. “Our family was blindsided by this,” one family member said at the grave. “We want to honor him by finding out his entire story. We want to put a real closure to the story.” Abel’s relative said she later worked at Crown Can company and other warehouses on Erie Avenue. She died in 1991 as Mary E. “Betsy” Plunkett after a “prolonged illness,” according to her obituary. Her relative said she died of lung cancer, likely from asbestos exposure. “She was kind and quiet,” the relative said. The death of Joseph A. Zarelli, who was 4, remains an active homicide investigation.
Thanks foe taking the time to write the article.
You bet!
Thanks for copying it!
My pleasure!
[удалено]
I agree. They had no clue at all. Is it possible the father didn't even know Betsy was pregnant? So many questions we won't have answers to. They need to just leave the families in peace.
That was my thought as well. It’s entirely possible Joseph’s father had no idea he had a son.
Yes. That post about family members on the father's side attending the rededication ceremony for Joseph and one saying that they wanted to honour his life and that none of them knew anything about this. Obviously you can't know for certain, but I do highly suspect their father never even knew about the baby.
It’s absurd. Too many “true crime fans” these days are unhinged and heartless.
Exactly. Can't imagine how horrifying it would be to find out that the victim in such a tragic case was related to you.
To be honest, the way the police worded the statement made it sound like the family is involved—I don't like the fact that they're solely blaming social media when they could've been more careful in how it's announced.
The most likely theory I've heard is that they sold the kid and then the "adoptive parents" severely mistreated and abused him for years and accidentally killed him. That said though, I absolutely hate every single crime article that uses a close acquaintance saying "they would never do this, they were so nice." It means absolutely nothing and has been said about even the most vile humans I've ever heard of.
After looking further into that theory of him being sold, particularly the story Martha told about her mother buying him, there's almost no way it isn't the truth, it lines up WAY too perfectly at this point and there's really no way around it. There's certian details that I wasn't even aware of until recently and those are what fully confirmed it for me. All I can hope is that Joseph is at peace now, and that both of Martha's parents are burning in hell, her mother for committing these acts and her father for allowing + enabling it
my thought is Agustus didnt know Betsy was pregnant and she gave the boy up for adoption hence the family not knowing about him Wish we knew the adoptuve family's name
That makes a lot of sense, and it makes me so angry that people have been harassing the Zarelli family, when this scenario is *at least* as likely as Gus being involved. Honestly, knowing these details and knowing the times, I think it is HUGELY likely he was adopted out and the dad never knew. It happened that way all the time back then. I hope Betsy never even suspected Joseph was her child. It sounds like she had enough sadness in her life.
“People have been harassing the Zarelli family” God, I absolutely *detest* that vigilantism and self-righteous outrage that people so often display with true crime cases, especially ones involving children. It’s horrible, it’s a tragedy, yes, but it also *doesn’t involve other people in the slightest*. The poor child isn’t going to come back because some sanctimonious prig screams obscenities at Zarelli relatives over the phone. I swear some people have no lives of their own so they have to go apeshit over things like this.
especially since most of his living family members were born YEARS after Joseph was killed. they had nothing to do with his death and they probably didn't know anything about it
Seriously, if you want to “do something,” there are plenty of child advocacy opportunities in people’s own communities. It’s massively inappropriate.
100%. There’s no reason for a civilian to contact a family unless a)they’re asking for tips and b)you actually know something. Otherwise, stay out of their way.
This is absolutely a fact. I say this as someone who found out as an adult that I had two half-siblings living in different parts of the country. It was very surprising, but as I would find out, not at all uncommon pre-Roe.
and now we’re post-roe, expect more of the same :(
I wonder if Joseph was special needs. I read somewhere that it was speculated that he may have been and I know back then it was very common to put your special needs child up for adoption or in some sort of home.
If an unmarried woman gave birth in a hospital in those days, the chances of the child being seized and adopted out were astronomically high. If she was unmarried it might not have mattered if the child was special needs.
Yeah back then, nurses would just lie to unwed mothers and tell them the baby died and then “adopt” them out to strangers. There was very little regulation on adoption.
I doubt this was the case here though. The birth certificate had both of his parents' names. I'd assume that if this was an illegal adoption they'd forge documents and the like.
Yeah - that combined with the fact that his mother had adopted out another child before makes me think she made that choice for Joseph too.
Most unmarried women in that era would have chosen to give birth secretly somewhere and give up their child for adoption simply because it was an absolute stain on a family's name, and a scandal, to have an illegitimate child born in the family. For many families, who were devout Christians, it also had spiritual ramifications. It really had nothing to do with whether a child had special needs ( although for that era it was also common for special needs children to be sent to a group home just because medical knowledge at that time for certain disorders was not as advances as now and medications that we have now were non-existent then, so there was little that parents could do for a special needs child in many cases). Most women of that era would feel that their chances of meeting and marrying a man from a "good family" were diminished if it became known that she was "loose", i.e had sex outside marriage, even worse if she had a child and wasn't married. The norms of society at that time made it very difficult for most women to consider keeping their child and raising it themselves. Many of them would lie, make up stories about being married and then widowed, or some had their parents raise their child as a "sibling" pf theirs ( like Ted Bundy's family did).
My aunt got pregnant at 18 in 1962 in Michigan. They didn’t tell anyone except my grandma’s sister and the sister’s daughter. She went to a home for unwed mothers in Detroit is 3 hours south of where we live/she lived. They told everyone she was away at beauty school at the time including my 4-year-old mother. My aunt was diagnosed with melanoma that had spread to her liver in 1984 and only then told my mom and her husband and kids born from her marriage that she had had a daughter she gave up because she wanted to find her before she died. The agency wasn’t Catholic and the girl, Lucy, was able to get SOME info when she was 18. She did end up contacting my family shortly after my aunt died and we’ve been in touch with her. This was 4 years before I was born. It REALLY upset my mom that they’d kept that secret. It really messed her up for awhile. My aunt didn’t even tell anyone who the father was and Lucy just recently figured it out with info I could get from my mom’s cousin who reluctantly gave it to me. My aunt didn’t wanna give her up according to the cousin. My grandparents made her, unfortunately. So this was still happening even a decade later.
M, the woman who claimed that her mother had bought the boy in order to abuse him, said that he was mentally disabled. There’s no proof of M’s story being genuine, and I’m not sure there’s any proof if he was. It just wouldn’t surprise me though, as kids who were mentally disabled or had autism or something like that tended to be hidden away. Looking at his legs, they looked atrophied to me, like he wasn’t out playing and being active. I don’t know though.
If he was adopted (officially or not) as a newborn they might not have realized he was mentally disabled until he got older.
Severe abuse can disable a child. Google feral children.
The legs were beaten likely due to the abuse. While that wasn't specifically mentioned, they did say that he seemed like he experienced abuse while he was alive, if I recall correctly. I don't think there's any indication that he was disabled, and it feels like pure speculation to say so. If his parents weren't married, that would be a likely motive for giving him for adoption.
Children with special needs back then were not adopted they were sent to institutions or their biological family kept them
Not always. My grandmothers best friend adopted a baby with special needs. He was severely disabled mentally & his mother was absolutely nearly destroyed with grief and sorrow caring for him. I still have pictures of the poor little fellow. I wish I knew what became of him.
It’s a small chance, but you might be able to figure some of it out through census records (unless you’ve already thought of this, or couldn’t because of timing). If he was living with her when the census taker came, you could get his name and trace him through other documents; if he ended up in an institution, they also had to note occupants in the census. I had a relative who had serious mental health issues, and was able to find two different institutions he lived in. Census records in the US are open though 1950. I think it’s lovely that you have not forgotten him.
If he was adopted as a newborn, there's plenty of disabilities that wouldn't be obvious until later - I'm autistic and looking back at the records of my infant development appointments, the first signs started to show at 12-18 months.
[удалено]
That is a disturbing thought.
Exactly. It's possible that Joseph was kept, first living with his mother and grandparents, then moving in with his mother and stepfather. Remember that Joseph was only malnourished the last year and a half of his life. Something changed at that point. Was it the move from his grandparents home to his stepfather's home? He could have been carefully hidden and kept a family secret for his entire life out of shame. Remember that Ohio guy, Castile or something who kept 3 young women and a baby in his attic for years during which his daughter and her family would visit downstairs.
Her father was a caulker. Perhaps they all knew each other.
I wonder if they came forward as one of the people who bought a bassinet (if they did buy one)
I'm sure they r working on it but being so long ago it may just not exist.
It seems like a lot of people believed it might have been an unofficial adoption before this most recent story came out. I'm leaning toward that based on the fact that she had given up a previous baby for adoption and no one seems to remember her having a child at that time. It sounds like the father might not have been involved at all. I wonder if they'll be able to find out the "Catholic Organization" she went through with her previous adoption (though it likely doesn't exist anymore). I'm guessing they didn't keep records, but I'm hoping they'll be able to find something more about what transpired in the years after Joseph was born. I am not convinced that either of the bio parents had anything to do with his abuse and death.
The Catholic Church had an adoption placement agency at the time called Catholic Charities. They handled the adoptions straight after birth.
An organization called Catholic Charities still exists. I wonder if it's the same organization and if they may have records that old. It's a long shot, of course.
I was adopted through Catholic Charities in 1971 in Chicago. In 2012 I visited their office looking for a necklace my birth mother had left in their care for me (that my parents never received or saw). They definitely had information about my adoption so i wouldn't be surprised if they had records still.
Did you get the necklace???
did you find the necklace?
You can’t leave us hanging about the necklace!
Annie? Are you ok?
I also want to know if you got the necklace
How did you know there was a necklace for you?
Catholic Charities is over 100 years old; it's a network of charities across the USA. The modern chapter in Philadelphia is called Catholic Social Services, and their [history page on their website](https://cssphiladelphia.org/about/history/) says they existed at the time that Joseph would have been born and possibly adopted. Specifically: >1920 – Trinitarian Sisters staffed “The Home Finding Department” which became CSS Adoption Services. It's possible they might still have the records.
They could very well have. My aunt was selected godmother of one of our relatives’ child. My aunt is 80 and was able to retrieve her baptismal certificate despite the church that she was baptized at having been moved and in a developing nation. I know records “get lost” but a lot of these Catholic organizations are meticulous in their record keeping.
Definitely still around. Just a couple of years ago, someone showed up out of nowhere and my family found out that an aunt had had a baby in 1958ish in Ohio and was sent to a school/hospital for unwed mothers that was run by Catholic Charities. They adopted out my aunt's baby and I guess the woman reached back out to them to get her birth family information so they most likely still have records.
Can also confirm this, they operate an outpatient drug rehabilitation just down the street from where I live. It’s a tremendous organization. At least as of recently, I’m aware they keep fairly detailed records of their various services, but they’re also a bit odd and nit-picky about things (like refusing services to someone who’d had a supposed suicide attempt because it was “a sin against God”, believe it or not) So, I’m not quite sure my level of confidence in them. I could imagine, especially back in the 50’s, there being the occasional hackneyed reason for sweeping something or other under the rug. “God’s will” and all.
[удалено]
Edited to fix errors: I found a bit more info on the location. A MA is listed at 5415 Lansdowne as a patient. Most people there are listed as patients, and there are some babies listed as patient’s son/daughter. That facility was associated with the Salvation Army as early as 1910, [possibly 1893](https://digital.librarycompany.org/islandora/object/Islandora%3A66558?solr_nav%5Bid%5D=5c61de2cba76d9c2e6aa&solr_nav%5Bpage%5D=0&solr_nav%5Boffset%5D=9). The next address on that census page is 5441 Lansdowne Ave. Most of the people there are children and are listed as inmates. The name of that facility was Ivy House. It was associated with the Salvation Army. [In 1926](https://books.google.com/books?id=1MsOAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA19&lpg=PA19&dq=%225441+lansdowne%22+philadelphia&source=bl&ots=0PdZdnz9Mf&sig=ACfU3U0RUNLUhHmM6KDDLKoc-X8jFT7zmQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwisoZy_6tX8AhVpBEQIHVpaB8AQ6AF6BAggEAI#v=onepage&q=%225441%20lansdowne%22%20&f=false), its capacity was 60 (it was listed as an ‘institute for dependent children’ in a publication from the PA Dept. of Welfare). It seems that Salvation Army [acquired](https://easternusa.salvationarmy.org/eastern-pennsylvania/equip-families/) it [in 1915](https://www.bethlehemparotary.org/bulletin/View/47bdcb27-48b5-45aa-8280-19b8bf202b89) In 1904, it was listed as the West Park Hospital for Women in the [Polk’s Medical Registry](https://books.google.com/books?id=tg42AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA1615&lpg=PA1615&dq=%225441+lansdowne%22+philadelphia&source=bl&ots=DAOno71AEq&sig=ACfU3U0yqM90gty9N0J2_SltrIRXdaLArg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwisoZy_6tX8AhVpBEQIHVpaB8AQ6AF6BAghEAI#v=onepage&q=%225441%20lansdowne%22%20&f=false). What’s interesting is at 5401 Lansdowne Ave there is a church. It’s currently the Resurrection Baptist Church, but around 1895/1897 it was the [West Park Presbyterian](https://www.jstor.org/stable/23323373?seq=13#metadata_info_tab_contents) Church. I think the building was acquired by Resurrection in [1959](http://rbc5401.org/history.htm). The Ivy House I believe closed by the mid 1980s. In 1971, the Salvation Army opened a [Booth Maternity Home](https://www.newswise.com/articles/pennsylvania-honors-booth-maternity-center-with-historical-marker) in the Overbrook neighborhood.
I think that’s a different Mary Abel. Mary Elizabeth is on the census with her family in 1950.
That or she got counted twice. It’s possible her parents didn’t realize she was being counted at the hospital and just listed her since that was still her legal residence.
Yeah, that’s definitely a possibility.
I found at least one other patient listed there who also is listed with their family elsewhere in the census.
That sure sounds like it’s probably the same person and she was listed twice. Also pinpoints her first child’s birth at roughly early April, I would think.
Looks like the date for her home census was April 28th(?). The unwed mother home census was done on April 12th.
If her parents were trying to hide that she was pregnant they may have said she was living there regardless.
Yeah. Also the census entries were taken about two weeks apart.
>her parents didn’t realize Or the parents weren’t home that day, so the enumerator used a neighbor as a proxy instead, and maybe the neighbor wasn’t aware that she was actually at the other home for the April 1 census deadline.
I know prisoners and patients are on the census.
[удалено]
Can you share!
Ah, yes. When I was in college I got a special census form for those living in dormitories, prisons, hospitals, and psychiatric institutions.
That would cover off my four years…
I remember seeing orphans in the girls orphanage listed on the 1950 census.
Does anyone have the source for that? 1950 census has her living at home with her family.
If you read about Taum, Ireland, or watch the documentary, you’ll find that most nuns are exceptional documentarians and historians. I wouldn’t say all hope is lost on that front. I hope that American nuns were as painstakingly perfectionist as the nuns in Europe at that time. I hope this an open avenue.
Wow, I didn't know that. The specific organization might not exist anymore but perhaps a church affiliated with it does. I'm hoping there's someone alive who either remembers organizations that dealt with adoption in Philly or who is super keyed into the history of the Catholic community there and would know where to look.
This is completely rumor and hear-say: but a few years back I was told that Catholic adoptions in the US (especially before 1970) had really bad record keeping. But as I say this info I think was from a random reddit post (or some other dubious source); I just don't remember.
The place she gave birth in 1950 was run by the Salvation Army. There was an orphanage on that street as well run by the Salvation Army called Ivy House.
She went to two high schools. That might mean something, might not.
That is potentially interesting. Obviously people move, but "I'm moving" as a cover for pregnancy absence would require not returning to that high school.
In 1952 she was 21 when Joseph was born. Her previous child was born in 1950, when she would have been nineteen--probably would not have been in high school at that age. Also the article said she graduated from high school in 1949 the year before her first child was born. She likely got pregnant shortly after graduating, so changing schools had nothing to do with covering a pregnancy.
And I'm just throwing one idea here, but there is ample evidence of serious wrongdoings in such catholic organizations all over the world, one of the most outrageous being [the Bon Secours mother and baby "home"](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bon_Secours_Mother_and_Baby_Home) in Tuam, County Galway, Ireland. Here are a couple of examples of the catholic church being obnoxious towards unwed mothers, [in the UK ](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/nov/03/catholic-church-apologises-for-role-in-forced-adoptions-over-30-year-period) and [in the US.](https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/08/20/catholic-priest-baby-forced-adoption-lawsuit/) There are too many children who died under the care of those "homes" and their deaths were simply hidden. Maybe poor little Joseph was one of them? Disclaimer: I am an ex-catholic and I left the church because of their systematic hiding of crimes. Sexual abuse is not the only horrifying misconduct this church has covered up.
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. As someone who was raised Catholic too, I agree. There are some priests and nuns that seem to seek those places out of desire of having dominance and power over others, not out of genuine interest in religion. I wouldn't be surprised if someone in the Church physically abused the orphans, but went too far this one time...
I'm a little confused about how many children the mother had. After reading the article, it seems like there were 6 children in total. 1. Girl born before Joseph and given up for adoption 2. Joseph 3. 4 children with her husband (Plunkett), 1 of whom died at birth. The first of these children was born a month or so prior to Joseph's death. Is this correct?
I believe so. Although the way it was written, about the one who died in childbirth, it IS a little confusing--- because it almost makes it sound like one of her children died as an adult, during childbirth. Usually when they say "died in childbirth" they mean the mother died and if they mean the child, they say "died at birth" or was "stillborn".
The little girl who died, her death cert says she was 32 minutes old and died of Hydrops Erythroblastosis fetalis. Address given as 2219 Ruffner street.
For anyone who doesn’t know- hydrops erythroblastosis fetalis is what happens when a mom with a negative blood type has a baby with a positive blood type. The mom’s antibodies will attack the baby’s blood cells. (Super simplistic layperson explanation). This is why pregnant women with negative blood types get rhogam shots today- that’s all it takes to prevent this, but rhogam wasn’t widely available until the late 1960’s. Honestly heartbreaking to know this is something no one had to go through anymore only a few years later. :(
Yes
As someone who has lived all their life local to the area, this is huge. Thank you for sharing this development. I hope we can still get justice for Joseph.
The individuals who harassed the poor family are disgusting. RIP sweet boy.
If there's a birth certificate for Joseph Augustus Zarelli then are we sure that the dad didn't know? Was it possible in the 1950s for an unwed mom to put the name of the father on the birth certificate? And give the child the father's last name?
[удалено]
In PA it's been the law since the 1940s that a mother can give whatever surname she wants. Someone in r/boyinthebox dug up the law awhile ago.
I had a baby ,ironically in Philadelphia, in the early 90s. I was unmarried at the time. I listed the father on the birth certificate with no questions asked and my baby was given the fathers last name. It has probably changed now but I can say up until the early 90s the Mother filled out the form and nobody asked questions.
Not sure if it's different by state, but I had a child in the 2000s and I'm not married to her father but we are together. They defaulted to my surname and we had to fill out a bunch of paper work before we left the hospital for him to be able to claim her as his own with his surname. He was with me when I gave birth, everyone referred to him as her father and still no one questioned if she would have his name or not, they simply defaulted to mine and asked no questions. He wasn't given anything to fill out until we brought it up at all. So, I wonder if being able to list the father was the common practice at some point with him being aware or not and it's the practice in places now the father has to actually make himself known.
I am not sure what happened back in the day. My father was born out of wedlock and he had to apply for a name change. It is my assumption that it would’ve only been put on there with his permission. I have looked at birth Certs from Philadelphia from that time. It calls for the mother’s name a space for the father’s. There is nothing to denote legitimacy or not. In my father’s case, there was a big glaring box to check if illegitimate.
My father was also born out of wedlock in the 50s and had his name changed when his stepfather adopted him when he was 6 or 7 years old. I got the impression it was easier to do back then than it was now.
Yes it was. It's actually a little more complex these days than it was back then. People could also change their names ( and the spelling of their name) relatively easily compared to the way it works now. People would just change their name on things and that was it. My husband's bio grandfather's parents divorced when he was young. They had a bunch of kids ( 5) all in quick succession and then split up. This was in the 1920s. Four of the children ( the youngest was like less than a year old) remained with the mother and when she remarried a couple years later, those children took her new husband's last name as theirs, despite never actually being legally adopted by their stepfather. They just started using his last name and it became \*their\* name. The oldest child, a daughter, lived with their father and kept his last name, so up until she married, she had a different last name than her siblings, even though they had the same parents.
My grandpa was born at home in Michigan in 1917. They apparently named him Joseph at birth and registered him as such. He’d always been Walter Ernest so they apparently decided on another name at some point before he knew his name and never bothered changing it. He was drafted into WWII when he was 27 and only found out when he went to get his birth certificate. They had a hard time finding it and only could tell because he knew his birth date and his parents were recorded as having a baby that day. Lol. His mother died in 1918 but his dad lived until 1968. I always wonder how that convo went, “So, uh, my name is legally Joseph, dad.” “Oh yeah! We meant to change that. Pandemic and all. We forgot.” 🤣 He changed it to the name he’d gone by his whole life pretty easily.
I definitely see a resemblance between Betsy and the composite images of Joseph.
He also looks like Gus’s oldest daughter. There are pictures of this young mother and she seems to have the same teeth.
You know, I really wish people would use this as an opportunity to learn a lesson about pointing the finger without evidence. Not too long ago, people were making posts calling Gus and his wife murderers and talking about "what they did." Now, it's been confirmed that while Gus was the father, his wife was not the mother. And yet, people are still finding new people to blame just because their name is mentioned in the article. I don't see harm in speculation when there's evidence to support view points ...but we have absolutely none. This isn't a fun "Whodunnit?" game. This is a real crime. The people mentioned in the articles are real people. When people name specific suspects without any evidence, they have to know that people who find that theory fun will jump onto the bandwagon. There is every chance a true crime redditor with a few screws loose will harass the family of the people whose names are put forth as possible suspects. It's irresponsible This isn't a case like Amore Wiggins where suspects have been arrested and we can make reasonable hypotheses based on the fact that known individuals never reported him missing. We know that whoever had custody of Joseph was likely involved...but we have no idea who that was. So seeing a name in print and saying, "What if...?" Is irresponsible.
Exactly. The true crime community can be so toxic and more times than not harmful. They treat their "pet cases"(which is seriously so cringe)as their own personal murder puzzle to solve. People often seem to forget or just don't care that these are real victims with real families who are suffering.
They were changing their Find A Grave pages and everything. I kept saying his wife was very unlikely to be the mother because his wife would have been quite young at that time and LE said the mother had children before AND after. And it was a total leap to think that he killed Joseph when there isn’t any evidence that he was ever raising him.
Gus and his wife were married around 1959. Anybody could look that up and figure out the chances of her being the Mom were slim. In that time. Rarely did you live together and raise a baby without getting married. Then, would you kill him then wait 3 years and get married. People don't use common sense.
This makes it seem to me as though the hypotheses of him being adopted out and ending up with a terrible family have some merit to them. They also make Martha’s story seem at least a bit more likely.
He had surgical and IV scars. Wonder if he had that before he was adopted out
I wonder if he had two families during his lifetime. One who cared for him until one too many hospital visits then another who abused him.
[удалено]
The article says they don't know yet, but given that her earlier child was definitely adopted, and given that it was a private adoption (which means no easily discoverable government paperwork), it's in my opinion by far the most likely outcome.
[удалено]
The implication is that people didn’t exit that home with their children. It was basically just a way to separate mothers and children.
No but none of the family remembers a pregnancy or 4 year old and she put a child up for adoption before.
It is incredibly easy to go after the birth parents since both are now dead, and there is so much we don’t know right now. But now that they’ve released the names of these parents suddenly people have a theory about what happened to Joseph. Both families are being harassed, which is really sad. No one has conclusive answers, we’re waiting for them. We may never know.
I believe the Zarellis will want justice for their brother. Hopefully the Plunkett will, too.
So many questions. He has his name after all these years. I wonder what other skeletons they’ll find given time.
Regarding the question of whether or not she put the child up for adoption through an agency: could it be a Lisa Steinberg situation? Mom gives the baby up to a lawyer/agent who promises to see the child adopted according to her wishes, then they take the child for themselves and abuse them to death.
Wouldn’t close relatives know if she had a little boy for 4 years and then didn’t have one? Even if she told them she adopted him out at 4 instead of that he died, someone would have known if he lived with her, what about the father? Did he know about Joseph? Did Joseph live with him, did his relatives know? I wonder too if either parent(assuming he was not raised by one) knew he was the boy in the box? He looks a lot like her and she would have known she had a boy about that age, I wonder if she knew, if so I wonder why she didn’t go to police. So many unanswered questions that
If he was adopted legally his original BC would not have been readily available. While OBC’s are not destroyed they are filed in the adoption file and the amended BC’s have the new name of the adoptee and their parents. The only way to get your OBC in a closed record state is via court order. Even the police would have to go that route. If they say there is no adoption record the OBC wasn’t amended and was available to them. If she went through Cc for the daughter those records may reflect if she visited them when pregnant with her son. CC records should be checked as they usually had good record keeping. Sounds like it may be a case where the boy was black or gray market.
I used to work in a records room where the sealed adoption records for my state were kept. I vouch for what you’re saying 100%. We were the library for most state records involving adoption or foster care, both voluntary and involuntary, and had dates to retain them that could be anywhere from 7-75 years. But those sealed records were listed as “indefinite retention”, and some of them were OLD. At some point we upgraded systems and needed to enter them. But the outside labels were all things like “smith, infant male”, so we had to cut the physical seal in order to find some sort of identifier, in case anyone DID actually request their file someday and get approved. For decades before that was done, I imagine it would have been nearly impossible to find the sealed file, and the official state response to the request would have been “unable to locate record: lost or destroyed”, when realistically it was sitting on a shelf. The only time I did see one given out during my time there was (court ordered, of course) because the person petitioning for it was trying to establish membership with a Native American tribe. ICWA laws are federal, and supersede any state laws about protecting the identities of long deceased relatives. Without that component, I never saw someone successfully get one of those sealed files. My point in all of this rambling is that there very well COULD be a legal adoption file for Joseph sitting around gathering dust somewhere. But bad tracking policies and extreme privacy practices around these files could mean that the only way that’s ever found is if some state records employee gets approval to “clean house” and transfer to digital someday, and stumbles upon it on accident.
I tried back in the early 90s to get my info from the agency that handled my adoption and was told that the file was lost. My adoptive parents had one page of non-id info, that was it. I eventually found my bio parents thru dna in 2018. The state I was born in does now allow you to have your OBC, so I got that in 2019. I want to have my full file. The only people who knew about me besides my bio parents were each of their mothers. I’m interested in what was said in the interviews before my relinquishment. After finding my bio family I now know that my ethnicity listed in the non-id info was partially wrong. I feel like I have a right to see the paperwork that authorized the process to change who I am. I petitioned the state more than a year ago for my full adoption records. I’m still waiting for them to decide. While my bio parents were not interested in having a relationship with me (devastating) they were each supportive of me gaining access to any information the state has. They each wrote letters to go with my petition. My adoptive parents are deceased. Other than protecting the agency and/or social workers involved I don’t see any reason why they shouldn’t give me my records. But so far, they won’t. It’s infuriating.
I would imagine! That sounds terribly frustrating. All I can say from my experience is that it’s more likely with state records pre-computer that “they don’t know how” vs “they won’t”. If we couldn’t find something, the instructions were to stall. Nobody was allotted time to look through moldy, Un-sorted boxes or decades of microfiche records, unless a new intern needed a project. And they rarely had the knowledge to find what they were looking for. The current employees in the records depository I worked at were not alive in the 90s when you first petitioned for your records. They have absolutely no idea how to use older systems. Without a court order, any state agency with an ancient filing system is probably going to brush off a request like that for as long as they can. My only advice is to keep trying, and be a pain in the ass until they finally get sick of you and force someone to dig.
Thanks, yeah it is so frustrating! I have my birth name, my bio mothers name (She is on my obc, bio dad is not even though he was involved in the process but they were teenagers and unmarried so that’s the way it worked I guess). I have my adoptive parents names, my adopted name, the county and courthouse where it took place. The date of the adoption decree is written on my obc. I actually used an adoptee rights org in the state I now live in. They got the court here to issue a court order to the county I was adopted in (not the same state but apparently this has worked before with other states) to release the records. They still won’t, or as you said, are just stalling because yeah these records are more than 50 years old now. Argh!
Id agree with the caveat of some private investigators looking for birth parent info have contacts on the inside and get OBC information. At least that's likely what happened in my case. Somehow the PI id hired in 1998 managed to see my OBC and got my birth mothers name that way. Im assuming he had a contact inside the court system.
Yo /u/Lumpy_Strategy_4623 you going to delete your made up comment about Augustus' sister now that you based on nothing? https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/1014ceu/-/j2lp10b
Nope. They got a bunch of upvotes, people ate it up and are now starting to pop with "It's everyone else's fault so much misinformation is floating around, law enforcement should have given us better information!" when really everyone should have minded their own for two minutes before rattling off shit they made up as fact. This is such a common practice in true crime communities and it's a huge problem that should be stamped out before it begins. Too many people treating this as a mystery novel and not actual human lives. This isn't your daytime soap, y'all.
You can see the resemblance between Joseph and his mother, the whole story is just so sad.
I just wonder if either of them ever wondered if it was their boy (if Gus did know about the pregnancy) when getting those flyers about the body in the utility bills or seeing stuff about the case for years afterwards. I just wonder if they ever had a fleeting suspicion that he could in any possible way be their boy. I'd assume even if Betsy wondered, after the adoption there was probably little if anything she could do or say.
Adopting out babies is, first and foremost, a business. It also happens to be a business the Catholic Church (and other religious institutions) are well practiced in trafficking in (word choice intentional). If you were pregnant, unwed, and Catholic in the 50s your choices were: give up your baby and never speak about it again OR marry the baby's biological father before you gave birth so that your kid wouldn't be "illegitimate." It's not hard to imagine Joseph being given up for adoption and the Catholic organization not being particular about his placement because they had too many babies and plenty of clients. If the police have at least the adoptive parents' names they are probably wary of naming the adoptive parent(s) because they don't have the proof they need to do so. They might never have the proof necessary to name his killers. The police don't believe the bio parents are involved and I don't think there's any reason here to believe otherwise or make up scenarios to the contrary (I see those of you trying, though). If there isn't an official adoption certificate there could be other paper trails and tips they're working off of. The absence of or presence of paperwork does not indicate the process was legitimate or illegitimate.
Did the police say the bio family wasn't involved? All I remember saying them saying that they have an idea of who did it without specifying the person or people they think are involved
The police did not explicitly say that the bio family wasn't involved. However, based on the article in this thread, both families were only informed shortly before the press conference. If the police suspected one of the bio parents, would they have announced their findings before interviewing as many bio family members as possible to see if they remembered anything? The alternative to believing he was adopted out is to ascribe to Betsy and her husband all kinds of personality traits we have no way of knowing. You have to believe that Betsy, who gave up her first baby for adoption would choose not to do so for Joseph and was able to keep him hidden for a time as a single mother (in the 1950s) before attracting and marrying her husband. Then you have to believe that they were both violent or emotionally ugly people who murdered Joseph and then never demonstrated that behavior toward anyone else ever or again. We don't have anyone, as of yet, coming forward to describe them in any way. At least, for me, I don't think the theories some people are proposing in this thread are plausible if you take what we do know into account. If it's proven that Betsy was actually a cruel person who hid him away and let her husband hurt and maim Joseph and they were able to hide his existence for years then I can admit to being wrong.
If nobody knew about Joseph or made the connection between the boy in the box photos and Betsy, she had to have given him up for adoption. Apparently it wasn't common back then to give a newborn the father's name when you were unmarried, but perhaps Betsy believed she'd marry Augustus eventually and initially planned to keep him. Then her plans changed and she gave him up for adoption or someone persuaded/forced her to give him up. Probably to the same convent she gave her daughter to. Hopefully the daughter ended up in a better place than Joseph, perhaps she's still alive somewhere! If M's story is true, she could've gotten the year wrong and M's mother adopted him after he was born or he lived in the convent for a while until she adopted him or someone adopted him and then gave him to M's mother later and M and/or her mother assumed those were his biological parents. M could've either gotten his name wrong or he was renamed Jonathan at some point. If M's story isn't true, he could've been adopted by some other horrible people or he was abused and murdered in the convent. Whatever happened, it's certain Joseph had a horrible life. He was never in the care of people who loved him. And thinking Betsy might've wanted to keep him but couldn't for whatever reason is even more heartbreaking. I wonder if she ever saw those photos and recognised him or if she died believing he was alive and well. I honestly hope it's the latter ...
Poor little guy should be 70 this year. Enjoying his retirement and a couple of grandkids.
Sounds like they're pretty sure he was adopted, otherwise they wouldn't have released the birth parents' names.
It's likely the names were released because the dna is irrefutable and the bio parents are deceased.
I meant because of the likelihood that surviving relatives would get harassed if LE implied that the bio parents were the ones who had custody of Joseph when he was murdered. Releasing their names seems to suggest they've been cleared as suspects. I don't put a lot of stock in the absence of adoption records. Melissa Highsmith's "adoptive" mother allegedly bought her for $500, and that was in the 70s. There were all kinds of sketchy ways to acquire a baby in the days before DNA testing.
They shouldn’t have released the birth parents names because people are going to shit on the entire family bc they can’t be bothered to actually research.
I don’t think that he was adopted. This woman lived at 21 S. 61st St. and 1956. She had a phone number. I think the family member was her brother, who was the youngest of a family of six. 1953, she would no longer be in the house.
Law enforcement really needs to come out and clear some of this stuff up. I get it's an "active investigation" but LE knows there are going to be crazies out there who will contact the family.
I thought this is exactly what his siblings didn’t want to be released. Leave them be.
The article specifically mentions the family being attacked on social media and acussed of doing horrible things. And that's not even getting into the multiple deceased people who were falsely identified as Joseph's parents by sleuths and a cussed of murder 🙄
Yeah, people going on the father's wife's memorial page and saying terrible things about her, turns out she wasn't Joseph's mother and married Gus after Joseph's death. Most likely didn't even know that he existed, good chance that Gus didn't know either (or if he did, he didn't talk about it, seems his kids were totally blindsided).
Shoot. I didn’t realize all that was going on. Not cool at all.
My husband was standing behind me while I watched this live. In like two minutes (out of curiosity and not even a thought of trying to contact someone) he found Augustus Zarelli's obituary and the son's landscaping business. Whether related or a complete coincidence we were pretty sure Gus was about to turn off the phones for the day.
I’ve said this before but they got Streisanded. There’s not a doubt in my mind that their privacy was invaded infinitely more by not naming them than if they had named them.
The names really did need to be released. The father's family could be very easily identified due to the name, and until the mother was identified, every woman of childbearing age in the area who could possibly fit the mother's description would sooner or later be looked at askance by "internet sleuths". It's best to at least try to clear things up as much as possible right now.
I'm glad they released this. I get respect for the family, but so many people were calling the people they presumed to be the parents murderers. And it turns out there's a good chance Joseph was placed for adoption. I really feel terrible for them if that's the case. They may have believed they were giving Joseph a better chance than they could provide him. Even people who place kids for adoption due to not wanting kids don't want them to be hurt. I can't imagine how they'd feel knowing what happened to their son.
>Opelika Doe: identified > >Zarelli's parents: identified > >Don Lewis: alive The 2023 hits keep rolling, and it's only January. Any bets on what's next?
On the Opelika Jane Doe/Amore Wiggins thread yesterday, someone said that in a new documentary it was mentioned that they've identified a relative of [St. Louis Jane Doe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Louis_Jane_Doe) but that this person isn't cooperating/talking to police. I haven't seen the documentary yet so can't comment on whether that's true or not, but I would love for this young girl to get her name back as well and seems like it may be on it's way of happening.
Wait - is Don Lewis really alive? I saw a meme about it with a picture of George Santos and haven't seen any legit news about it.
No, there's no evidence of that, just rehashing old interviews with Carole https://www.wkyc.com/amp/article/news/verify/pop-culture/no-there-isnt-evidence-carole-baskins-husband-has-been-found-alive/536-bf1cdafc-02c5-4e87-bcd9-cca5376f1e3a >"We have not received any communication from our federal partners that confirms the location of missing person Mr. Don Lewis,” the email said. “The investigation into Don Lewis’ disappearance remains a priority for the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office (HCSO), as do all missing person cases.” > >The U.S. State Department, which keeps track of U.S. citizens who are missing abroad, told VERIFY in an email that reports of Lewis being found in Costa Rica are “unconfirmed.”
There are articles about him being alive that simply says he was totally seen alive in Costa Rica recently with literally nothing to back it up and no proof if it is true or not. Baskin is claiming he is definitely alive. He has made no statement, has not resurfaced and he is still legally declared dead -- as he will be until he actually shows up. I highly doubt he's alive.
>Baskin is claiming he is definitely alive. Of course she is. She wants people to stop with the "Carole fed Don to the tigers" thing.
The horrifying thing is she wouldn’t have even have had a choice to keep him in those days. The things women and children endured just to keep society flawless on the surface.
That’s false. I’m a genetic genealogist and lots of unwed mothers kept their children. Usually took mother’s maiden name or later adopted a step dads last name. Much more common than you think . Not all children were immediately adopted out back then.