WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.980 Before we start, this one took 65 years to get 00:00:03.980 --> 00:00:07.259 a name. It still doesn't have a killer. And the 00:00:07.259 --> 00:00:10.660 body itself already told us who did it. We just 00:00:10.660 --> 00:00:16.079 didn't want to hear it. A body covered in old 00:00:16.079 --> 00:00:19.980 scars and new bruises absolutely can. It tells 00:00:19.980 --> 00:00:28.030 you it wasn't one bad night. There it is. February 00:00:28.030 --> 00:00:32.149 25th, 1957. Philadelphia's Fox Chase neighborhood. 00:00:32.490 --> 00:00:34.969 A 26 -year -old college student named Frederick 00:00:34.969 --> 00:00:37.689 Bononis is out checking a rabbit trap when he 00:00:37.689 --> 00:00:40.509 finds a body in the brush. A young boy, wrapped 00:00:40.509 --> 00:00:43.090 in a blanket, stuffed inside a cardboard box 00:00:43.090 --> 00:00:45.530 that had originally held a JCPenney bassinet. 00:00:45.869 --> 00:00:48.619 No. And here's the part that never sits right 00:00:48.619 --> 00:00:51.299 with me. Bononus didn't call it in that day. 00:00:51.640 --> 00:00:54.420 He found the body and waited until the next morning 00:00:54.420 --> 00:00:57.420 to report it. A kid who'd just seen that. And 00:00:57.420 --> 00:01:00.560 he sat on it overnight. Understandable, honestly. 00:01:00.859 --> 00:01:03.219 People freeze. That's not evidence of anything 00:01:03.219 --> 00:01:06.890 except being 26 and horrified. Maybe. I'm not 00:01:06.890 --> 00:01:09.069 accusing him of anything. I just think it's worth 00:01:09.069 --> 00:01:11.450 saying out loud, because everything about this 00:01:11.450 --> 00:01:13.750 case starts with someone not reporting something 00:01:13.750 --> 00:01:16.390 they should have. He was maybe four to six years 00:01:16.390 --> 00:01:19.870 old, naked, severely malnourished, beaten badly 00:01:19.870 --> 00:01:22.109 enough that blunt force trauma was ruled the 00:01:22.109 --> 00:01:24.909 cause of death. Sure, but here's the detail that 00:01:24.909 --> 00:01:27.430 actually matters. His hair had been recently 00:01:27.430 --> 00:01:30.170 cut. His fingernails were trimmed. Someone had 00:01:30.170 --> 00:01:32.170 cleaned him up right before he ended up in that 00:01:32.170 --> 00:01:34.909 box. Which is a medical record, not a guess. 00:01:35.230 --> 00:01:37.909 The scars on his body, some surgical, on his 00:01:37.909 --> 00:01:40.829 ankle, his groin, his chin, showed this wasn't 00:01:40.829 --> 00:01:43.450 a single incident. This was ongoing abuse for 00:01:43.450 --> 00:01:46.150 a long time by someone with regular access to 00:01:46.150 --> 00:01:49.280 him. and no one ever reported him missing. Not 00:01:49.280 --> 00:01:52.379 one person anywhere ever called in a child matching 00:01:52.379 --> 00:01:55.060 his description as gone. He didn't even have 00:01:55.060 --> 00:01:57.560 a social security number issued to him. As far 00:01:57.560 --> 00:02:00.019 as any government record was concerned, he didn't 00:02:00.019 --> 00:02:03.000 officially exist. Which means whoever was responsible 00:02:03.000 --> 00:02:06.019 for him kept him almost entirely invisible his 00:02:06.019 --> 00:02:09.259 whole short life. And then, days before he died, 00:02:09.580 --> 00:02:11.819 groomed him like he was about to be seen by somebody. 00:02:15.080 --> 00:02:19.620 For three years, nothing. Then in 1960, a medical 00:02:19.620 --> 00:02:22.500 examiner's office employee named Remington Bristow 00:02:22.500 --> 00:02:24.780 does something no one else was willing to do. 00:02:25.039 --> 00:02:28.099 He consults a psychic. Which sounds ridiculous 00:02:28.099 --> 00:02:30.699 until you hear what happened next. It sounds 00:02:30.699 --> 00:02:33.680 ridiculous either way, Simone. The psychic tells 00:02:33.680 --> 00:02:36.520 him to look for a specific kind of house, matching 00:02:36.520 --> 00:02:38.979 a foster home. And when she's brought out to 00:02:38.979 --> 00:02:41.520 the discovery site, she leads him directly to 00:02:41.520 --> 00:02:45.099 one. A real, unlicensed foster home, about a 00:02:45.099 --> 00:02:48.020 mile and a half away, run by a couple named Arthur 00:02:48.020 --> 00:02:51.199 and Catherine Nicoletti. Twenty -five kids moving 00:02:51.199 --> 00:02:53.360 through that house at a time. Off the books. 00:02:53.639 --> 00:02:56.080 And Bristo finds a bassinet at an estate sale 00:02:56.080 --> 00:02:58.699 on that property that matches the box exactly. 00:02:59.139 --> 00:03:01.979 JC Penny model. Plus blankets on the clothesline 00:03:01.979 --> 00:03:04.240 that match the one the boy was wrapped in, cut 00:03:04.240 --> 00:03:07.699 in half. Sure, there's more. Catherine's adult 00:03:07.699 --> 00:03:10.400 daughter from a previous marriage. A woman named 00:03:10.400 --> 00:03:13.379 Anna Marie Nagel, with an intellectual disability, 00:03:13.699 --> 00:03:15.840 lived at the house too, and had four children 00:03:15.840 --> 00:03:18.960 of her own, three of them stillborn. Bristo's 00:03:18.960 --> 00:03:21.460 theory was straightforward. The boy was her son, 00:03:21.659 --> 00:03:24.039 born out of wedlock, and the family disposed 00:03:24.039 --> 00:03:27.280 of him rather than let that get out. Right. A 00:03:27.280 --> 00:03:30.479 theory. Philadelphia PD refused to reinvestigate 00:03:30.479 --> 00:03:32.680 the family for over 20 years on the strength 00:03:32.680 --> 00:03:35.539 of a psychic tip and a matching bassinet. That's 00:03:35.539 --> 00:03:38.300 not evidence. That's a hunch with a receipt attached. 00:03:38.539 --> 00:03:43.180 It's a hunch that took until 1984, 24 years later, 00:03:43.400 --> 00:03:46.960 before two homicide detectives finally, reluctantly, 00:03:47.379 --> 00:03:49.840 agreed to sit down with Arthur Nicoletti. And 00:03:49.840 --> 00:03:51.879 when Bristow pushed him to take a polygraph, 00:03:52.360 --> 00:04:02.020 Nicoletti refused. Sure, but he also married 00:04:02.020 --> 00:04:04.900 his stepdaughter after his first wife died. That's 00:04:04.900 --> 00:04:07.280 the same stepdaughter Bristow suspected was the 00:04:07.280 --> 00:04:09.900 boy's mother. I'm not saying that proves anything 00:04:09.900 --> 00:04:12.460 on its own. I'm saying it's exactly the kind 00:04:12.460 --> 00:04:14.719 of detail that should have gotten someone a warrant, 00:04:15.159 --> 00:04:18.259 not a polite conversation 24 years too late. 00:04:25.759 --> 00:04:28.639 They were. I'm not arguing the Nicolettis did 00:04:28.639 --> 00:04:30.959 it. I'm arguing that a department that takes 00:04:30.959 --> 00:04:33.980 24 years to knock on a door isn't a department 00:04:33.980 --> 00:04:36.550 building a case. It's a department that's already 00:04:36.550 --> 00:04:42.649 decided this doesn't matter enough to rush. In 00:04:42.649 --> 00:04:46.149 2002, a woman using the name Martha comes forward 00:04:46.149 --> 00:04:48.790 with a story. She says her own mother purchased 00:04:48.790 --> 00:04:51.850 the boy. She calls him Jonathan from his birth 00:04:51.850 --> 00:04:55.149 parents back in 1954 and beat him to death in 00:04:55.149 --> 00:04:59.550 their home. Okay, it's an awful story and it 00:04:59.550 --> 00:05:02.769 was investigated and it was never substantiated. 00:05:03.029 --> 00:05:06.019 I want to be fair about that. It wasn't just 00:05:06.019 --> 00:05:09.519 unsubstantiated. Genealogists have since confirmed 00:05:09.519 --> 00:05:12.560 there's no biological connection between Martha's 00:05:12.560 --> 00:05:15.959 family and Joseph at all. The DNA that eventually 00:05:15.959 --> 00:05:18.819 identified him ruled her account out completely. 00:05:19.459 --> 00:05:22.480 Which I'll take. But notice the pattern I keep 00:05:22.480 --> 00:05:25.220 pointing at every time one of these comes up. 00:05:25.620 --> 00:05:28.740 The psychic's tip. Martha's confession. Even 00:05:28.740 --> 00:05:32.019 the theories nobody could prove. Every single 00:05:32.019 --> 00:05:35.060 one of them independently lands on the same shape. 00:05:35.560 --> 00:05:38.300 A child kept by an adult in a position of care, 00:05:38.879 --> 00:05:42.500 hidden, hurt over time, not by a stranger in 00:05:42.500 --> 00:05:45.420 an alley. Or every one of them is a different, 00:05:45.620 --> 00:05:48.439 unreliable narrator independently inventing the 00:05:48.439 --> 00:05:51.540 same trope, because abusive parent hides the 00:05:51.540 --> 00:05:54.439 body is the single most common pattern in cases 00:05:54.439 --> 00:05:57.600 like this, statistically. That's not corroboration. 00:05:57.879 --> 00:06:01.060 That's base rate. Maybe. But the actual physical 00:06:01.060 --> 00:06:03.379 evidence agrees with the base rate here, Eli. 00:06:04.040 --> 00:06:07.199 The old scars, the malnutrition, the haircut 00:06:07.199 --> 00:06:10.220 right before he died, none of that points to 00:06:10.220 --> 00:06:16.699 a stranger. In 1998, investigators exhumed the 00:06:16.699 --> 00:06:19.839 boy's remains for the first time and pulled mitochondrial 00:06:19.839 --> 00:06:22.759 DNA from a tooth, hoping to finally get a lead. 00:06:23.300 --> 00:06:26.519 And it went nowhere. It wasn't just bad luck. 00:06:26.680 --> 00:06:29.959 Standard forensic DNA testing checks about two 00:06:29.959 --> 00:06:32.939 dozen genetic markers run against a law enforcement 00:06:32.939 --> 00:06:35.579 database built for matching convicted felons 00:06:35.579 --> 00:06:38.639 or direct missing persons reports. Nobody with 00:06:38.639 --> 00:06:40.959 his DNA was ever going to be in that system. 00:06:41.300 --> 00:06:44.279 The tool was wrong for the problem. He was reburied 00:06:44.279 --> 00:06:47.720 that same year at Ivy Hill Cemetery, still unnamed. 00:06:48.000 --> 00:06:51.540 Then, in 2019, Philadelphia police get a court 00:06:51.540 --> 00:06:54.220 order for a second exhumation, not because the 00:06:54.220 --> 00:06:56.579 first attempt was botched, but because they needed 00:06:56.579 --> 00:06:59.220 far more genetic material than mitochondrial 00:06:59.220 --> 00:07:01.939 DNA could give them. This time, it's forensic 00:07:01.939 --> 00:07:04.939 genealogist Colleen Fitzpatrick and her team 00:07:04.939 --> 00:07:07.540 at Identifinders International working with the 00:07:07.540 --> 00:07:10.430 department's forensic lab. Okay, and what they 00:07:10.430 --> 00:07:13.449 needed wasn't 24 markers anymore. It was a full 00:07:13.449 --> 00:07:16.970 genetic profile, over 800 ,000 points across 00:07:16.970 --> 00:07:19.529 his entire genome, the kind you'd get from a 00:07:19.529 --> 00:07:23.009 consumer ancestry test, not a crime lab. Fitzpatrick 00:07:23.009 --> 00:07:25.449 herself said the DNA they pulled from the bone 00:07:25.449 --> 00:07:28.670 was like confetti, basically shattered by six 00:07:28.670 --> 00:07:31.170 decades in the ground. It took her team until 00:07:31.170 --> 00:07:34.709 spring of 2021, two and a half years just to 00:07:34.709 --> 00:07:37.110 stitch enough of it back into a usable profile 00:07:37.110 --> 00:07:40.000 to upload anywhere. Once it was on Jedmatch, 00:07:40.220 --> 00:07:43.040 a genealogist named Misty Gillis started finding 00:07:43.040 --> 00:07:45.779 matches. Not to Joseph directly, there was no 00:07:45.779 --> 00:07:48.180 direct match anywhere, but to third and fourth 00:07:48.180 --> 00:07:50.980 cousins, people sharing a fraction of a percent 00:07:50.980 --> 00:07:53.899 of his DNA, who had no idea they were related 00:07:53.899 --> 00:07:56.920 to a decades old cold case. Which sounds thin, 00:07:57.220 --> 00:07:59.500 but Fitzpatrick described building the family 00:07:59.500 --> 00:08:02.420 tree from there like solving a giant Sudoku puzzle. 00:08:02.589 --> 00:08:04.930 You network the cousins together by figuring 00:08:04.930 --> 00:08:07.310 out where their branches married into each other, 00:08:07.670 --> 00:08:10.209 working inward from both directions until the 00:08:10.209 --> 00:08:13.050 branches only funnel to one person. And that's 00:08:13.050 --> 00:08:15.709 exactly what happened. Cousins on his mother's 00:08:15.709 --> 00:08:18.430 side and cousins on his father's side, independently, 00:08:18.790 --> 00:08:21.410 could only possibly connect through one individual. 00:08:21.709 --> 00:08:24.230 That's not a guess. That's two separate lines 00:08:24.230 --> 00:08:28.209 of evidence agreeing. And on December 8, 2022, 00:08:28.769 --> 00:08:32.450 65 years, 9 months, and 13 days after he was 00:08:32.450 --> 00:08:35.129 found, Philadelphia police finally give him his 00:08:35.129 --> 00:08:39.070 name, Joseph Augustus Zarelli. Born January 13, 00:08:39.429 --> 00:08:43.090 1953, parents Augustus John Zarelli and Mary 00:08:43.090 --> 00:08:46.000 Elizabeth from West Philadelphia. And even with 00:08:46.000 --> 00:08:48.159 the name, police still haven't named a killer. 00:08:48.480 --> 00:08:50.799 At the announcement, Captain Jason Smith said 00:08:50.799 --> 00:08:53.480 outright they have suspicions about who's responsible 00:08:53.480 --> 00:08:55.919 but won't share them because it's still an open 00:08:55.919 --> 00:08:58.399 homicide case. That's true. And I think that 00:08:58.399 --> 00:09:01.000 restraint is actually appropriate. Suspicion 00:09:01.000 --> 00:09:04.259 isn't the same evidentiary bar as enough to charge 00:09:04.259 --> 00:09:07.950 someone, even 65 years later. or it's the bar 00:09:07.950 --> 00:09:10.269 being applied to protect people who are almost 00:09:10.269 --> 00:09:13.450 certainly already dead themselves. Both of Joseph's 00:09:13.450 --> 00:09:16.289 parents are gone. Police won't even confirm details 00:09:16.289 --> 00:09:18.870 about them, out of respect for living half -siblings 00:09:18.870 --> 00:09:21.950 on both sides, most of whom, by every account, 00:09:22.149 --> 00:09:37.899 had no idea he ever existed. In July of 1957, 00:09:38.299 --> 00:09:41.299 with no name and no family to claim him, Philadelphia 00:09:41.299 --> 00:09:43.899 detectives served as pallbearers at his funeral 00:09:43.899 --> 00:09:46.460 and buried him in a potter's field near Dunks 00:09:46.460 --> 00:09:49.639 Ferry in the far northeast of the city. The donated 00:09:49.639 --> 00:09:52.980 headstone read, Heavenly Father, bless this unknown 00:09:52.980 --> 00:09:57.980 boy. And people never stopped visiting. Decades 00:09:57.980 --> 00:10:00.279 of strangers bringing flowers to a grave with 00:10:00.279 --> 00:10:03.570 no name on it for a child they never knew. because 00:10:03.570 --> 00:10:06.690 the not knowing was somehow unbearable to an 00:10:06.690 --> 00:10:10.350 entire city. That potter's field isn't just his 00:10:10.350 --> 00:10:13.049 grave either. It's held hundreds of murder victims 00:10:13.049 --> 00:10:16.090 and unclaimed dead over the decades. And in September 00:10:16.090 --> 00:10:19.610 2024, investigators went back and exhumed eight 00:10:19.610 --> 00:10:22.210 more of them, ranging from children to adults, 00:10:22.429 --> 00:10:25.350 some going back 60 years, specifically to run 00:10:25.350 --> 00:10:28.590 the same DNA and genealogy process that finally 00:10:28.590 --> 00:10:32.159 worked on Joseph. As of the most recent reporting, 00:10:32.480 --> 00:10:34.700 none of those eight have been identified yet. 00:10:35.159 --> 00:10:37.840 Which tells you Joseph wasn't a one -off miracle. 00:10:38.340 --> 00:10:40.879 He was the proof of concept for a technique the 00:10:40.879 --> 00:10:44.139 city is now using on an entire field full of 00:10:44.139 --> 00:10:47.480 nameless people. After the first exhumation in 00:10:47.480 --> 00:10:51.139 98, he was reburied at Ivy Hill Cemetery. Once 00:10:51.139 --> 00:10:53.779 he was finally identified, they dedicated a new 00:10:53.779 --> 00:10:57.740 headstone there in January 2023. His 70th birthday 00:10:57.740 --> 00:11:01.070 would have been that same month. It reads, America's 00:11:01.070 --> 00:11:05.330 unknown child. There's a $20 ,000 reward standing 00:11:05.330 --> 00:11:07.809 right now for information leading to an arrest. 00:11:08.490 --> 00:11:11.710 And just this past January, his 73rd birthday, 00:11:12.269 --> 00:11:14.750 the VDoc Society used the anniversary to launch 00:11:14.750 --> 00:11:18.230 a nationwide initiative to identify other unidentified 00:11:18.230 --> 00:11:21.250 child murder victims, using exactly what worked 00:11:21.250 --> 00:11:24.659 on Joseph's case. William Fleischer, who's with 00:11:24.659 --> 00:11:27.919 VDoC, called this the longest continuously investigated 00:11:27.919 --> 00:11:30.580 unsolved homicide in Philadelphia's history, 00:11:30.799 --> 00:11:32.919 which tells you this case was never actually 00:11:32.919 --> 00:11:38.019 cold. It was just unnamed. 69 years later, and 00:11:38.019 --> 00:11:41.879 it's still open. Someone out there in their 70s 00:11:41.879 --> 00:11:44.779 or 80s might still remember something. Police 00:11:44.779 --> 00:11:48.740 are still asking. Investigators didn't disclose 00:11:48.740 --> 00:11:51.580 which specific ancestry databases they used to 00:11:51.580 --> 00:11:54.110 crack the case. only that the results came from 00:11:54.110 --> 00:11:56.809 public, consumer -accessible ones, the same kind 00:11:56.809 --> 00:12:00.029 anyone can upload a home DNA test to. Bristo 00:12:00.029 --> 00:12:03.429 worked this case for 36 years, unpaid, until 00:12:03.429 --> 00:12:07.149 his death in 1993. He never saw the answer. For 00:12:07.149 --> 00:12:09.850 decades, nobody could even agree on his age at 00:12:09.850 --> 00:12:13.210 death. Estimates ranged from 3 years old to 6. 00:12:13.529 --> 00:12:16.429 Philadelphia's forensic lab is now applying this 00:12:16.429 --> 00:12:19.570 same genetic genealogy process to dozens of other 00:12:19.570 --> 00:12:22.769 unidentified remains cases going back 60 years. 00:12:25.070 --> 00:12:29.370 Okay, here's mine. My case is that DNA is what 00:12:29.370 --> 00:12:32.570 actually broke this open, and DNA is what will 00:12:32.570 --> 00:12:36.870 finish it, if anything does. 65 years of psychics 00:12:36.870 --> 00:12:39.570 and confessions and foster home theories went 00:12:39.570 --> 00:12:42.539 nowhere. Not because people weren't trying, but 00:12:42.539 --> 00:12:46.320 because none of it was proof. One genetic genealogy 00:12:46.320 --> 00:12:49.120 program, built on cousins nobody knew they had, 00:12:49.460 --> 00:12:53.299 did what six decades of leads couldn't. In my 00:12:53.299 --> 00:12:55.980 case, is that the science gave him back his name. 00:12:56.419 --> 00:12:58.799 But the pattern was visible this whole time, 00:12:59.059 --> 00:13:02.299 sitting right there on his own body. Sustained, 00:13:02.740 --> 00:13:06.000 private, caregiver -level abuse by someone who 00:13:06.000 --> 00:13:08.299 kept him hidden from every system that should 00:13:08.299 --> 00:13:11.860 have known he existed. The psychic's tip, the 00:13:11.860 --> 00:13:15.240 Nicoletti theory, Martha's confession, none of 00:13:15.240 --> 00:13:17.620 them were the right answer individually. But 00:13:17.620 --> 00:13:20.259 they all pointed the same direction, and I don't 00:13:20.259 --> 00:13:22.879 think that's a coincidence. I think that's what 00:13:22.879 --> 00:13:25.659 happens when the truth is simple and nobody wants 00:13:25.659 --> 00:13:29.679 to say it plainly. We need proof, though. Not 00:13:29.679 --> 00:13:34.600 a direction. Proof. We do. We just might never 00:13:34.600 --> 00:13:39.539 get it. We got his name back. I'm not sure we 00:13:39.539 --> 00:13:40.539 get anything else.