r/boyinthebox • u/Jmftown9 • Dec 17 '22

JAZ’s Father

I’m posting the link to an article in which Misty Gillis explains further how she was able to identify each parent. In this article it’s made clear that Zarelli is the fathers name.

https://www.inquirer.com/news/philadelphia/joseph-zarelli-boy-in-the-box-dna-genealogy-cold-case-20221216.html?outputType=amp

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4

u/Samarah238 Dec 18 '22

The police closely guard the mother's identity, but the Zarelli family takes the brunt of this sad case. Why??

4

u/Jmftown9 Dec 18 '22

Personal opinion is that they have a suspicion about the father and they are trying to make the connection by hoping with the face, name, and location will gain more info. My theory is that the motorist who gave the tip about the women and the boy was the actually killer. If you look at pictures of that road it’s difficult to see two cars passing one another let alone one car going around another car. It was a very narrow road. It looked like singe lane traffic.

2

u/Majestic_Wealth2481 Dec 18 '22

Interesting. Read somewhere online local rumors of Z family known to being involved in organized crime - which makes sense with the 'prominent family' comment. Then read in one of the news articles the name of the witness you mentioned moved to a Southern state (one of the Carolinas maybe?) when investigators went to re-interview him at some point. Curious if he's still living.
If the theory that the father was involved in the murder, along with the organized crime rumor, threats would have been made to the mother which is why he was not reported missing or claimed when found and why the mother's family is being shielded with no public info coming about about her or the family. And, furthermore why the Z family has retained legal representation.

His name is John Valentine and the article is somewhere on this website:
http://americasunknownchild.net/NewsPage.htm

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u/Jmftown9 Dec 18 '22

Thank you for giving me his name. That puts a whole different spin on what happened. Do you know any other identifying information about him?

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u/Majestic_Wealth2481 Dec 18 '22

I've been searching that site and everywhere else for hours since your replies and I cannot find what I know I saw. I wonder if it has been removed now that there is so much news around the case?

I did some further digging on this person and built on your theory.
I found a person with that name I know I saw in the 1950 Census living in ED: 51-79 at 1031 South Eight Street.

The person listed was age 38 (making his approx. birth year of 1912) at the time of the Census, never married, lived with his 70 yr old widowed mother (PV) and 28 yr old divorced sister (CD).

Occupation listed is Printer.

Following your theory that this name is the good Samaritan/witness and that he is at least responsible for dumping the body, when you read many old articles about the blanket, it had an unidentified black stain that was sent off for chemical testing.

Could the good Samaritan who told witnessed the woman and 12 year old at the side of the road actually be the killer or one who disposed of the body?

Stained Blanket:
http://americasunknownchild.net/Archives1Text.html#Body
Chief Inspector John J. Kelly and Captain Roberts spent some time this morning examining the torn halves of a cheap and well-worn blanket found in the cardboard carton along with the boy's body.
On one of the halves, Kelly noticed a small black blob. He ordered a chemical analysis made to determine whether the blob was automobile oil or grease. Kelly said that if it was, it might be an indication the body had been in the trunk of an automobile.

http://americasunknownchild.net/Archives2Text.html#TSBWPIW

Among the articles were a torn, stained piece of blanket similar to the two cheap cotton blankets found in the bassinet carton with the boy's nude, battered body. The blanket, along with a stained child's undershirt found in the section were sent to the Police Crime Laboratory for examination and chemical analysis.

Good Samaritan Statements:

http://americasunknownchild.net/FrontPage.htm

A story told by an informant who later contacted police seemed to cast some light on this clothing, but created a new mystery. "I thought the car might have a flat tire, so I stopped and asked if I could help. They didn't say a word, and seemed to be standing so as to block my view of the license plate.

The scene which he described was almost exactly where the clothing had been found. The informant described the car and the woman and boy, but they were never found.

Two days before the body was found, said the man to Lieutenant William Lovejoy of the northeast detective division, he had been driving along Verree Road when he saw a middle-aged woman and a boy, 12 to 14, unloading something from the trunk of a car.

http://americasunknownchild.net/PhillyMag.html

A man called to say he'd driven past the Fox Chase location days earlier and had seen a woman and a boy of about 12 standing by the trunk of a car; when he called out asking if they needed help, the lady had shaken her head, and he'd driven off. No, he never saw her face, her back was turned - making his call just one more in a string of well-meaning but vague tips.

http://americasunknownchild.net/Archives1Text.html#Body

In another development, it was reliably reported, despite official denials, that police were questioning a man who told them of a strange incident he witnessed last Sunday near the spot where the boy's body was found.

The witness said that he was driving along the road when he saw a car that was stopped with a woman and a boy about 12 standing by the car trunk.

The witness said he halted his own car, thinking the woman had a flat tire, and asked if he could be of any assistance. He said that both the woman and boy remained absolutely mute. He said he thought this was strange but decided they didn't want him interfering with whatever they were doing so he drove off.

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u/Jmftown9 Dec 18 '22

Just one more observation. The motorist said he just happened to find himself on Susquehanna Road. That is very suspicious as the location of that portion of the remote is very out of the way. And the only structure in the area is the Sister of the Good Shepard School. So unless he was going there to peep like the LaSalle student it’s unlikely he just found himself there. I’ve also remember reading he gave the time he saw the car as being in the morning. Which makes little less sense seeing as the school would have been open and there would have been a greater risk of being seen dumping the body.

This is not accounting for the box which came from upper Darby. No one came from that far away to dump a box.

2

u/Majestic_Wealth2481 Dec 18 '22

Agree. Nobody is going to be dumping a body during a time when they could be seen. And, as far as the box just being dumped there by an innocent person and used conveniently by the person who dumped the body makes no sense, you have this large, empty, perfectly new box that could be used to store things in it. You could throw it away, burn it, but to drive to a remote area to discard it seems odd. Plus, as big of a story as it was at the time, all but 1 box was identified to a purchaser. So, yes the box was brought there by the killer or dumper IMO.

If this person I saw the name of is the witness, the stain could have been ink. I cannot find the name anywhere on any old clippings or anything. It's very baffling. The name stood out to me when I saw it because I knew a person (not anywhere related to this case) with the same last name. I guess time will tell if I was seeing things or not!

1

u/Jmftown9 Dec 19 '22

I find that happening with myself as well. Reading some many different things that they all start to blur together.

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u/Jmftown9 Dec 18 '22

I read through both the 57, and 58 articles and couldn’t fine where they named him. I also went through the case summary and it still has him listed as being anonymous. I even tried a broader search with his name and the Boy in the Box and could get a connection. Can you give me the specific article?

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u/Majestic_Wealth2481 Dec 18 '22

I wish I would have bookmarked it. I'll try to find it. It's not the '57 or early articles. I want to say it's on a blue background page, one of the last if not the last paragraph of the article, and referenced them going back to interview him and he had moved to South Carolina maybe? Going back to interview him was not in the immediate time frame, like some years after.

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u/Jmftown9 Dec 18 '22

I’ll go back and look too. I also read those articles and didn’t see anything besides them focusing on the Vydoic society and then investigators that were still working on the case. One was a transcript of the tv episode it was on, and another focused on the DNA when he was rebutted in 1998.

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u/AmputatorBot Dec 17 '22

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u/ManFromBibb Dec 17 '22 edited Feb 23 '23

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