When a Doe becomes a life's work

Philadelphia medical examiner Remington Bristow kept up the search for the identity of the Boy in the Box for more than 36 years, long after the story had disappeared from the headlines. Without Bristow's work on the case, it would have faded forever, says the lead detective now working on the case, Tom Augustine. "Bristow was number one," said Augustine, a detective in the Philadelphia Police's homicide division. "Absolutely. Without him, we'd never be here today."

Remington Bristow spent more than 36 years trying to identify the boy.

Though Bristow had encountered more than 100 unidentifieds in his career, the Boy in the Box haunted him. He spent thousands of dollars of his own money and countless hours of his free time working to identify the child. He plastered his workspace with photos and newspaper clippings of the boy. He traveled as far as Arizona and Texas. He visited a psychic who attempted to gather clues by holding staples from the bassinet box in her hand. He even carried a death mask of the child in his briefcase.

Bristow's chief theory was that the Boy in the Box was abandoned, but not murdered. His fresh haircut and carefully clipped nails suggested he had been well cared for, and perhaps died in an accident at home. The family may have stayed mum because they didn't want to be charged with murder.

Three years after the boy's body was found, Bristow felt he was close to an answer. Following up on a psychic's "vision" that the boy lived in a Philadelphia foster home run by a couple out of an old mansion, Bristow found just such a family. In fact, the police had already interviewed them. Bristow spoke with the family, looked over the old police interviews, contacted a child who once stayed at the home, and even attended an estate sale in 1961 after the couple moved. There he found a bassinet that could have been the one packed in the box. Bristow suspected that the Boy in the Box belonged to the couple's unwed daughter, who might have ditched the body to avoid being exposed as a single mother.

Bristow died in 1993, frustrated by the failure of Philadelphia police to pursue his theory. But he left a trove of materials for investigators still pursuing the case today.