The boy is named

But by May 2002, Augustine was feeling like he was back to square one. He'd received thousands of tips from Knowles and the America's Most Wanted segment. But none of them had panned out. But then he got a phone call from a psychiatrist in Cincinnati. The night before, one of her patients had phoned the doctor at 2 a.m. demanding she contact Philadelphia homicide. She wanted to talk about the Boy in the Box. So Augustine, accompanied by two retired investigators close to the case, Joseph McGillen and William Kelly, flew to Cincinnati to track down the lead of a lifetime.

The men met the woman, whom Augustine would only identify as "Martha," at the psychiatrist's office, a converted house. Over three hours, the woman opened up gradually, painting a grim portrait of the little boy's life.

In 1955, when Martha was 11, she told the investigators, her librarian mother drove her to a home, where she picked the boy up in exchange for an envelope which she assumed contained money. The child, called Jonathan, then came to live with them in their Philadelphia home. There, he was raised in squalor in the basement, with a drain for a bathroom and a makeshift bed amid coal bins and discarded cardboard cartons. Martha claimed that her mother regularly sexually abused her and had purchased the child to do the same to him.

The boy's death, Martha claimed, eventually came when her mother, in a fit of rage, slammed him down on the floor after he vomited in the tub. That day, her mother drove her into Philadelphia to dump the child.

Augustine was amazed, but skeptical. "This is the best lead we've ever had on this case," he explained. "But until we have proof that [the boy] is who she says he is, she can talk all day long — we're not closing it."

At issue is whether Martha, who has a history of mental problems, could have fabricated the story. Her psychiatrist claimed to have first heard the tale in 1989, but protected her client's privacy until she chose to come forward. No notes of that original discussion exist, says Augustine. "If we had notes, that would be a different story," he said. "If we could just prove one thing about it, we'd have it solved. And if we could just disprove one thing, we'd throw her tip in the garbage."

To corroborate her story, Augustine is arranging to search the Philadelphia house where she used to live. Was the drain in the basement where she said it was, for example, and did houses in that area have coal bins as she described? But these minor details will not seal a case that, for Augustine, has become a life's work. "I want to get this case to be sewn up as if the mother was still alive and we got an arrest warrant and a conviction in court," he said. And he plans to continue speaking with Martha, hoping she'll provide more details that can be corroborated.

Until then, the real story will remain buried with the boy, under a new headstone inscribed "America's Unknown Child" in Philadelphia's Ivy Hill cemetery.

"I wish I could put a name on that tombstone," Augustine said. "Aside from my children, this is the biggest, most important thing in my life."