By Matt Bean
Court TV

In February 1957, a man walking through an abandoned lot in Philadelphia stumbled upon the naked body of a boy wedged inside a corrugated J.C. Penney's carton marked "Fragile, Handle with Care." The bruised and battered child, covered with a cheap flannel blanket, soon became known as "The Boy in the Box." As stark as it may seem, the moniker summed up what little investigators had to work with.

A police sketch of the unnamed boy

The coroner determined that the child, about 4 years old, had been beaten to death and died from massive head wounds, but could not answer the question that swept the city. Why was he killed? And who had dumped him in the lot? Hoping to identify the boy as a missing child, officials kept his body in the morgue as visitors from more than 10 states filed through, scanning his small, bruised body for familiar markings. A group of Camden, N.J., residents were convinced he was the child of Camden local Charles Speece (he wasn't). A Marine with 17 siblings falsely claimed the child was one of his brothers. Others thought he was Stephen Damman, a child with a similar L-shaped scar under his chin who was snatched in 1955 in Long Island, N.Y. But it was another dead end.

Philadelphia police had little to go on except for the limited physical evidence. The carton the boy was found in once held a baby's bassinet and was one of only 12 units shipped to a store in Upper Darby, Pa. A blue corduroy "Ivy League" cap found in the debris-strewn field near the boy was traced to a store in South Philadelphia. Scars on the boy's body suggested he had been hospitalized before his death, so investigators canvassed local hospitals to see if any had treated the boy in recent months. They even singled out his freshly cut hair, theorizing that he may have met his end at a barber shop.

The box the boy was found in had once held a bassinet.

Five months after he was found, the Boy in the Box was buried in a potter's field. His tombstone read "Heavenly Father, Bless This Unknown Boy." The official investigation eventually languished, but the boy's unseemly end had burned an indelible image into the minds of a few investigators and citizens who would spend the rest of their lives wondering: How does a child turn up dead and no one come to claim him?

The Boy in the Box became the original poster child for what are now known as "Child Does." According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, there are 1,000 to 1,200 of these unidentified children at any given time. Some remain anonymous forever, buried in unmarked graves. Others may be identified, often thanks to the work of a diligent few who keep their cases alive.