Speaker 1: Hey guys, Steve here, you are listening to one of
Speaker 1: our original twenty six episodes. If you listen to any
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Speaker 1: mean a huge thanks to listener James for doing almost
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Speaker 1: twenty six episodes before and you're re listening now, the
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Speaker 1: little different today than we do in what you're about
Speaker 1: to listen to. Yeah, bye bye, Thinking Sideways. I don't
Speaker 1: understand you never know stories of things we simply don't
Speaker 1: know the answer to. Hi, welcome, This is Thinking Sideways
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Devin. We're going to talk about another
Speaker 1: mystery like we always do. Yeah, and this one, this
Speaker 1: one is totally on my like par of things. I like,
Speaker 1: you know, we've talked about this. I like weird mysterious
Speaker 1: noises and weird mysterious deaths, and this is a weird
Speaker 1: mysterious death. And I don't like this death. I don't
Speaker 1: like like our Halloween episode. This one's pretty gruesome. It's
Speaker 1: kind of heart wrenching. If you're squeamish at all, if
Speaker 1: you've got kids, just skip this one. Seriously, skip this one,
Speaker 1: you guys, Seriously, just skip this one. Okay. So the
Speaker 1: mystery we're talking about tonight is the Boy in the
Speaker 1: Box UM, which is also known as America's Unknown Child.
Speaker 1: So February seven, a young man is checking his muskrat
Speaker 1: traps um and he spies a box from J. C.
Speaker 1: Penny that says it's got a bassinet in it. Upon
Speaker 1: further inspection, he finds the body of a four year
Speaker 1: old boy UM that was battered and bruised and wrapped
Speaker 1: in a flannel blanket. He was afraid that his police
Speaker 1: would confiscate his traps, so he didn't report it because
Speaker 1: you don't report those things. Apparently, well, you know, those
Speaker 1: traps are important. Yeah, So how did they find out
Speaker 1: about this guy? Forward? Later? Yeah, he came forward after
Speaker 1: it was reported. Um. So a few days later, a
Speaker 1: college student said he spotted a rabbit running through the underbrush,
Speaker 1: and knowing they were animal traps in the area, he
Speaker 1: stopped his car to investigate and discovered the body. It
Speaker 1: took him a day to come up with that story
Speaker 1: and finally reported to the police because he was really
Speaker 1: in the area spying on women at the Good Shepherd School,
Speaker 1: he didn't so he took him a while to also
Speaker 1: report it. Um didn't want to eventually admit that. The
Speaker 1: only reason they came forward is because in confession, their
Speaker 1: priests convinced him to come forward. I don't remember which
Speaker 1: one of him it was. I suspected was the second
Speaker 1: guy that he went and that would make sense. So,
Speaker 1: but it only took him a day. The other guy
Speaker 1: had found it a couple of days before that. So
Speaker 1: the boy has never been identified and this case has
Speaker 1: never been solved, which is unusual for four year old
Speaker 1: to just go to die, to be highly publicized and
Speaker 1: then just yeah, I would think that somebody would notice
Speaker 1: it next the Jones family was missing a kid, for example, right.
Speaker 1: So that was the thing was that initially the police thought, oh, well,
Speaker 1: we've got this case late in the bag. You know,
Speaker 1: obviously somebody's going to report a four year old boy missing,
Speaker 1: or someone will come forward and say, you know, this
Speaker 1: is probably the work of a murderer. It probably wasn't
Speaker 1: somebody that knew this child. You know, we'll just post
Speaker 1: all these flyers around and say have you seen this boy,
Speaker 1: and that someone will come forward. And they put a
Speaker 1: lot of flyers, a lot of flyers out, thousands, and
Speaker 1: nobody ever came forward. Ever. Did either of you look
Speaker 1: at the pictures of the flyers, Yeah, we're up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in this day and age, that flyer would never be
Speaker 1: put up because it was it was of you know,
Speaker 1: his h his dead face. Yeah, it was a little
Speaker 1: gruesome picture picture of his head full straight forward and
Speaker 1: then from either side. And then they also dressed him
Speaker 1: and boys clothes of the time, sat him in a
Speaker 1: chair and took pictures of him that way, hoping that
Speaker 1: maybe if somebody had been a visitor in a home
Speaker 1: they would recognize him more that way. You know, it's
Speaker 1: kind of hard to tell what somebody looks like if
Speaker 1: you've just got like a straight on picture. How did
Speaker 1: you look at sitting in the chair. It was just
Speaker 1: sort of like slump and it's kind of creepy with
Speaker 1: his hands in his lap and just like very still.
Speaker 1: You can tell he's a It looks like one of
Speaker 1: those strange Halloween photos that you would see of people.
Speaker 1: Where have you seen the ones where you walk by
Speaker 1: him and they change from left right. It looks as
Speaker 1: if it's the basis of one of those. I was
Speaker 1: gonna say, it totally looks like one of those dummies
Speaker 1: that people put out, like on their front during Halloween
Speaker 1: to like scare people. Yeah, this one would definitely scare me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would scare me too. So nobody ever reported a
Speaker 1: missing child that fit this description, and there were thousands
Speaker 1: of leads and they were all dead ends. Apparently a
Speaker 1: bunch of people were saying, oh, yeah, that looks just
Speaker 1: like my nephew. And to be fair, it's a pretty
Speaker 1: average looking four year old boy. You know, anybody could say, oh,
Speaker 1: that looks like Johnny from down the street. I don't
Speaker 1: wonder if he's dead. I haven't seen him in a
Speaker 1: day because he's sick. Maybe that's him. Yeah. Yeah. The
Speaker 1: investigators decided to focus on the bassinet box. The box
Speaker 1: that he was found in um it was sold from J. C.
Speaker 1: Penny and they found it. They found the store that
Speaker 1: it was sold from, which was an Upper Darby. Sorry,
Speaker 1: this is in Pennsylvania. I should have said, oh yeah, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: I's on a dirt road they found it. But in Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: in Upper Derby, there was a J. C. Penny store
Speaker 1: where they sold this baby bass net. They only sold twelve.
Speaker 1: This store had only sold twelve of this model, apparently, UM,
Speaker 1: and they could trace all of them back to the
Speaker 1: owner except for one, which is a little odd, right,
Speaker 1: so obviously it was this one. UM. And then they
Speaker 1: took fingerprints and footprints of the boys hands and feet
Speaker 1: and sent them out to all of the hospitals in
Speaker 1: the area, and then later they expanded that search to
Speaker 1: Canada as well as the entire nation, and nothing ever
Speaker 1: came back with that there there's never a match the
Speaker 1: hospital to compare to birth certificates. Yeah yeah, to see
Speaker 1: if they could figure out who this kid was and
Speaker 1: for more more on that later. For reasons, they thought
Speaker 1: that maybe they would have hospital records. But other than
Speaker 1: the box in the blanket, they found a royal blue
Speaker 1: corduroy men's cap in a trail leading directly from the
Speaker 1: box into the forest, and it still had tissue paper
Speaker 1: to maintain. The manufacturers shape I'm talking about. It was
Speaker 1: almost basically brand new. It wasn't it was worn, but
Speaker 1: it had been stuff like if you have a nice
Speaker 1: hat and you put it back in a box, the
Speaker 1: tissue back in it so that it holds its shape. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: I got it. The boy was described as having blue eyes,
Speaker 1: a fair complexion, and medium to light brown hair. But
Speaker 1: it was very crudely cut, which made investigators think that
Speaker 1: perhaps it had been cut after his death. It was
Speaker 1: really choppy, well, and wasn't it didn't They find bits
Speaker 1: of hair in the clothing and stuff around him that
Speaker 1: you would suggest that it was cut just before just
Speaker 1: after his death. Yes. His nails, however, were neatly trimmed,
Speaker 1: which for a four year old is kind of rare.
Speaker 1: So they suspect that actually happened after his death as well.
Speaker 1: Think so, And you know, there's no way to really tell,
Speaker 1: right and nails would they think that that happened after
Speaker 1: his death as well? And he had kind of creepy
Speaker 1: his hair, nai, Yeah, And he had deep bruises covering
Speaker 1: all of his body and face. And the weather had
Speaker 1: been cold Pennsylvania in February, So they said that the
Speaker 1: child could have been in the box from anywhere between
Speaker 1: two or three days to two or three weeks. Oh wow,
Speaker 1: that really makes it kind of hard to figure out.
Speaker 1: That's really hard to narrow down a time frame. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was really cool that. I mean, it makes sense.
Speaker 1: A body is preserved, nothing's going to decompose because it's
Speaker 1: too cold but still and it's not snowing. It's just
Speaker 1: cold and dry. You know, that's perfect body preservation. So
Speaker 1: as he was the box sealed, was it closed, the
Speaker 1: top was open, the top was just open critters like
Speaker 1: muskrats for example. So I would assume that it were
Speaker 1: it was less time, especially since two people within a
Speaker 1: fairly short time spin discovered it. That you would assume
Speaker 1: that if that, if it was traveled that much, that
Speaker 1: there would be more people finding it earlier. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: I assume that it was shorter rather than longer time frame.
Speaker 1: But you know, we don't know. So some more things
Speaker 1: about him. He had seven scars they recounted, uh, three
Speaker 1: of which were clean enough to be surgical scars that
Speaker 1: had happened in a hospital or from a doctor. Two
Speaker 1: of them were on his chest and groin. They had
Speaker 1: healed quote quite well, leaving only hairline traces um. And
Speaker 1: there was another scar on his left ankle, which they
Speaker 1: said looked like a cut down incision, which is something
Speaker 1: they used to do to do transfusions to get to
Speaker 1: a big vein. They would cut down this is so gross,
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry, cut down a big chunk of your
Speaker 1: ankle to get to a big vein and stick a
Speaker 1: needle in that to do blood transfusions. Oh, basically peel
Speaker 1: all the skin back so you can get two things
Speaker 1: easier rather than trying to find him with the needle, right,
Speaker 1: And you would do that, you know, on the ankle,
Speaker 1: so that you know that's a it's a fast place
Speaker 1: to heal. And also if you have a scar on
Speaker 1: your ankle, it's not like it's just figuring anything well.
Speaker 1: And the veins are easier to get to in an ankle, Say,
Speaker 1: if you're going to cut down in somebody's in a
Speaker 1: form and the body step that's there's a lot of
Speaker 1: tendency to have bad things happen. So yeah, absolutely so yeah.
Speaker 1: So anyway, he's had two scars on the groin and
Speaker 1: the other one scar on his growing in, one scar
Speaker 1: on his chest that were of surgical origin. Ostensibly um
Speaker 1: and then he had a one and a half inch
Speaker 1: scar on the left side of his chest and around
Speaker 1: kind of irregular scar on his left elbow, and there
Speaker 1: was an L shaped scar on his chin that was
Speaker 1: about a quarter of an inch long in each direction.
Speaker 1: It's poor little kid had kind of a rough go.
Speaker 1: Did they consult any surgeons about the surgical scars? I
Speaker 1: mean yes, but there's not much to be said about them.
Speaker 1: They're just there was no record record or anything like that.
Speaker 1: They didn't know who he was, so well, it would
Speaker 1: be it would be useful probably to try to find out,
Speaker 1: you know, to a surgeon, and he would well that
Speaker 1: he was he was being operated on for his appendix
Speaker 1: because of the roan thingor something to do with his
Speaker 1: heart or whatever, or you know, I mean, you could
Speaker 1: identify the procedure that was done. Sure, I don't think
Speaker 1: they were a descript of any kind in terms of that.
Speaker 1: They said that he didn't have any vaccination scars, so
Speaker 1: he wasn't vaccinated, and he had been circumcised. You know,
Speaker 1: all of these things kind of seemed like he should
Speaker 1: have at least once visited the hospital well cared for.
Speaker 1: I mean, aside from the fact that somebody gave him
Speaker 1: a serious beating. Yah, it sounds like he got medical
Speaker 1: care at least at least at some point in his life. Right.
Speaker 1: So they also did an ultraviolet light on his whole
Speaker 1: entire body, and they said that his left eye fluoresced
Speaker 1: a brilliant blue, which suggested that some kind of diagnostic
Speaker 1: dye had been applied, that maybe he had some kind
Speaker 1: of chronic eye ailment of some sort and his left eye. Oh,
Speaker 1: so that like basically something they would do when you
Speaker 1: go to the eye doctor to get tested for a
Speaker 1: stigmatism or something. I guess, you know, I think the
Speaker 1: impression that I have is that it was more as
Speaker 1: like a treatment, like he would be needing eye drops
Speaker 1: for some kind of something that was wrong with his eye,
Speaker 1: although what that might have been, I don't know. And
Speaker 1: you know, you have to keep in mind, this boy's
Speaker 1: four years old. This is a lot of stuff to
Speaker 1: be happening to have four year old. And then, as
Speaker 1: we've said, you know, he was beaten to death and
Speaker 1: then just kind of discarded. Did they do and say
Speaker 1: was that the cause of death. The cause of death
Speaker 1: was blunt force trauma to the head. It was for
Speaker 1: the They said it was four hard blows to the head.
Speaker 1: So here's some more kind of interesting facts. His one
Speaker 1: of his hands and both of his feet had been wrinkled,
Speaker 1: which in a way that like pruned, like when they're
Speaker 1: submerged in water. It pretty skin. Yeah, so they had
Speaker 1: been submerged in water, maybe for an extended period of
Speaker 1: time just before he died, because that apparently doesn't happen
Speaker 1: if you're dead. Your skin doesn't actually prune up, it
Speaker 1: bloats up instead. And two hands, one hand, but not
Speaker 1: the skin above. That was relatively normal as far as
Speaker 1: they could tell. Well, that's weird. Weird. Get how do
Speaker 1: you get those in the water and nothing else? I
Speaker 1: don't know. He uh, probably had not eaten three to
Speaker 1: four hours before death, although his esophagus contained a dark
Speaker 1: brown residue, which indicated that he probably vomited shortly before death.
Speaker 1: If it is indeed that somebody you know wailed on
Speaker 1: him a lot, which is obviously what it seems like,
Speaker 1: then it would be perceivable that that would have caused
Speaker 1: him to the row up. Yeah. Additionally, he was severely malnourished,
Speaker 1: so you know, for all of the good care that
Speaker 1: it seems he may have had. It also seems he
Speaker 1: may not have had. Well, you got such a good care.
Speaker 1: We maybe got good care at one point, and that
Speaker 1: was handed up for somebody else who abused the hell
Speaker 1: out of him. Yeah. So there's I'm actually pretty interesting theories,
Speaker 1: one of which definitely ties into that sort of idea
Speaker 1: that he was at one point cared for very well
Speaker 1: in his life and then came into bad times with
Speaker 1: a different family. But first I want to talk about
Speaker 1: the foster home theory, which is there was a foster
Speaker 1: home there was located like a mile and a half
Speaker 1: away from where he was found, um, and they had
Speaker 1: kids that were all school aged kids they were fostering.
Speaker 1: There was a step daughter that lived there, um, and
Speaker 1: she was twenty, and the theory was that perhaps it
Speaker 1: was her child out of wedlock because you know, seven,
Speaker 1: that was still kind of a big thing, um, and
Speaker 1: that they had tried to care for him, but he
Speaker 1: was just so sickly, you know, given all of these things,
Speaker 1: that they eventually just decided that he needed to die.
Speaker 1: So they beat him to death and then dropped his body,
Speaker 1: which seems unlikely to me. I guess it seems unlikely
Speaker 1: that people who foster kids were just as kids. Sucks.
Speaker 1: Let's just beat him to death. I mean, that's gotta
Speaker 1: be better way to have. But I've I've read accounts
Speaker 1: and I don't know if if this is you know
Speaker 1: something that we're going to go over about the step
Speaker 1: daughter and the relationship with the quote unquote father in
Speaker 1: the house, because that was a very weird thing, and
Speaker 1: it was it was very weird. Um. They they were
Speaker 1: doing all these investigations in seven and they reopened the
Speaker 1: case in there was this detective named bristow Um and
Speaker 1: he doggedly attacked this. He just wanted to know everything
Speaker 1: there was to know and he never let it go.
Speaker 1: It was like his career passion was this case. Now,
Speaker 1: how did he come under the case? Was he one
Speaker 1: of the first investigators or was he the fingerprint guy?
Speaker 1: He was the fingerprint guy. Okay, so that was He's
Speaker 1: the one who had to do when they were doing
Speaker 1: the fingerprints and the footprints. If I remember in the reading,
Speaker 1: that's when the story really stuck with him and he couldn't. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was. He was an interesting character. He would go
Speaker 1: visit the grave once a week and yeah, I think
Speaker 1: you kind of This is the sort of case that
Speaker 1: if it if it hits you and you're there, it
Speaker 1: hits you and it's part of your life forever. But
Speaker 1: it's uh, he must have been on the force a
Speaker 1: hell of a long time, because thirty one years between
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty seven and nyeh exes me forty one years
Speaker 1: when I'm saying yes. So, when they reopened the case
Speaker 1: in police lieutended by the name of Tom Augustine took
Speaker 1: charge of the investigation, and he went back to this
Speaker 1: Foster home because they exhumed the body and took some
Speaker 1: DNA and they figured, oh, just go test this girl
Speaker 1: for DNA and if it matches, then we've got our answer.
Speaker 1: And that's super easy because you know, we couldn't do
Speaker 1: that in seven. And they went back and they said, um,
Speaker 1: you know, we're looking for so and so and the
Speaker 1: you know, the father and the step daughter. And he said, oh,
Speaker 1: she's my wife now, yeah, yeah, And that's why the
Speaker 1: DNA obviously proves that it wasn't them. But still it
Speaker 1: leads me to think that there's got to be some
Speaker 1: stuff that was going on in that household. I agree, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he doesn't explain the story, but yeah, they're still kind
Speaker 1: of weird going on there. So the other theory, one
Speaker 1: of the other theories is they referred to it as
Speaker 1: the M theory, and in a lot of sources they
Speaker 1: only referred to her as m. Her name was Mary Um,
Speaker 1: and she was this woman and she brought it her
Speaker 1: theory forward in two thousand two, she said that her
Speaker 1: abusive mother purchased an unknown boy named Jonathan from her
Speaker 1: from his birth parents in nineteen fifty four, basically to
Speaker 1: have a beating bag. Yeah, it's I mean, it's pretty rough.
Speaker 1: Her story is, she said, you know that, Mary said
Speaker 1: that her mom suggested Jonathan to extreme physical and sexual
Speaker 1: abuse for two and a half years, and then Um,
Speaker 1: in a fit of rage, killed him by slamming him
Speaker 1: into the floor after he vomited in the bathtub. Mary's
Speaker 1: mother then cut the boy's long hair and dropped him
Speaker 1: just on the then secluded Fox Chase area, which is
Speaker 1: where they found him and correct me if I'm wrong.
Speaker 1: At the time, that was like a one laying ground
Speaker 1: that was kind of a dump area that it would
Speaker 1: just take their stuff. That was kind of one of
Speaker 1: the things that was so disturbing in this. You know,
Speaker 1: some people say, well, he was kind of he was
Speaker 1: being prepared for a burial. That's why his hair was cut,
Speaker 1: his nails were trimmed. He was found with his arms
Speaker 1: crossed in this like and wrapped in a shroud, you know,
Speaker 1: and that somebody was taking him to bury him and
Speaker 1: they got spooked because there were people around, so they
Speaker 1: just dropped him. But you know the area he was
Speaker 1: dropped in, it was this place that was known as
Speaker 1: a dumping ground. You know, people would just go dump
Speaker 1: their rubbing is on this little side track of road,
Speaker 1: which is just you know, kind of adds another layer
Speaker 1: of sadness to this story. Or yea, you know, he
Speaker 1: was just kind of dumped unceremoniously. And yes he was
Speaker 1: you know, wrapped in a shroud and all that stuff.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's pretty pretty creepy. Yeah. So Mary would
Speaker 1: have been twelves when it happened, and she recounted the story. Um,
Speaker 1: and apparently it took her three hours to tell it,
Speaker 1: and she said she had quirky little details. Quirky is
Speaker 1: not the right word, but she had details like, um,
Speaker 1: the boy had thrown up after eating some baked beans
Speaker 1: and her mother was enraged with the mess so she
Speaker 1: threw the boy into a bathtub and beat him um,
Speaker 1: which would have accounted for why some some of his
Speaker 1: appendages were super wet and others weren't. And that she
Speaker 1: said that she had only ever heard the boy utter
Speaker 1: any noises and it was one shriek at his death.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's pretty rough story. I don't want to
Speaker 1: go too into detail. The whole problem that they have
Speaker 1: with the story is that Mary has a history of
Speaker 1: mental illness, not very reliant. It's not he's she's not
Speaker 1: very reliable, although her psychiatrists believe that she's sincere. First
Speaker 1: they've interviewed her hundreds of times and her story has
Speaker 1: never changed, which is pretty rare for somebody who's making
Speaker 1: a story up with mental disabilities like hers. So, but
Speaker 1: there's there's been many cases of folks who have an
Speaker 1: illness like that, a mental illness, who convinced themselves off
Speaker 1: and they're very sincere and they believe it. And you know,
Speaker 1: it might be that in some way she's got savant
Speaker 1: is the wrong word, but she's able to just make
Speaker 1: something up and memorize that exactly. You know, I'm not
Speaker 1: discounting her version of what it could be but if
Speaker 1: you try to explain it away, We've seen a lot
Speaker 1: of evidence in the world of folks who who were
Speaker 1: in that stage. Yeah. Additionally, you know, they went back
Speaker 1: to her old neighborhood and tried to interview her neighbors
Speaker 1: and they all said, no, there was never a boy here, which,
Speaker 1: on the one hand, well, they might have kept him
Speaker 1: under wraps. You think, you know, if you buy a
Speaker 1: kid to beat on, right, you're not going to be
Speaker 1: walking him around the neighborhood. Yeah, but something. So, why
Speaker 1: did she choose that particular time to come forward? And
Speaker 1: had her mother finally died? Her parents had died a
Speaker 1: long time ago, so she had a dad also living
Speaker 1: in the house. Yeah, So I'm not totally sure what
Speaker 1: that whole situation is. It's disturbing if it's true. For sure, Well,
Speaker 1: there's people that do that kind of stuff. There are
Speaker 1: that's true that she did. Anybody ask Mary what happened
Speaker 1: after the boy died in terms of what happened to her?
Speaker 1: Did she become the punching bag then and they go
Speaker 1: find another kid? But they don't talk about that at
Speaker 1: least in any of the stories. Um, but I would assume,
Speaker 1: you know, she was twelve when they purchased the kids.
Speaker 1: So I would assume that either she had already been
Speaker 1: the punching bag and was continued to be the punching bag,
Speaker 1: or they found another outlet. You know, it was never married,
Speaker 1: then it was never married. If it was always married,
Speaker 1: it was always married. But she may have needed a supplement.
Speaker 1: That's just such a weird, creepy little So there are
Speaker 1: two other theories. One which I think is fairly plausible
Speaker 1: is that perhaps this boy was a child of an
Speaker 1: Amish family. There are a lot of Amish in Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: many Dutch, and so they're more prone to cover things up. Additionally,
Speaker 1: they don't really they don't really have contact with the
Speaker 1: outside world. Which there were pictures, you know, being circulated,
Speaker 1: they probably wouldn't have made it into these Amish communities.
Speaker 1: So if anybody in these communities knew this boy, they
Speaker 1: wouldn't be able to report it. But you know, that's
Speaker 1: pretty much as far as that goes. You know, he
Speaker 1: was in ill health and an accident happened, but I
Speaker 1: just don't think that the kind of bruising that he
Speaker 1: had well, and this is something that I never I
Speaker 1: never noticed, and I don't want to harp on this
Speaker 1: too long, but I do want to ask the bruising
Speaker 1: did were they able to tell was it all at
Speaker 1: once or was it continual? Well, all of the bruises
Speaker 1: they found, they were really really deep bruises, and all
Speaker 1: of the bruises they found on his body when they
Speaker 1: found his body were new or at the same time, umuises,
Speaker 1: no broken bones. Just out of curiosity, do you know
Speaker 1: if the Amish circucis you not there eject circumcision like
Speaker 1: a lot of other Christian faiths. So okay, I kind
Speaker 1: of yeah, And I guess I don't think of the
Speaker 1: Amish as having the most advanced medicinal technology, So I
Speaker 1: don't know that the kind of scarring that he had,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I well know I I actually I wouldn't.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't agree with that because if you think about it,
Speaker 1: if your entire life, let's say, all you do as
Speaker 1: you you work with the livestock, and when something happens,
Speaker 1: you learned to sew them up so that you can
Speaker 1: keep your live stock alive. Well, if you've been doing
Speaker 1: that in your entire life, you're probably you know, there
Speaker 1: may be one guy that's got an aptitude for it,
Speaker 1: so everybody takes their their stock to him. He would
Speaker 1: get really good at it. It's true. Having having a
Speaker 1: sharp scalpel is just probably not against their religion. No, no,
Speaker 1: and they do They're not like Jehovah's witnesses. They do
Speaker 1: allow blood transfusions and stuff. So the ankle thing is legit,
Speaker 1: I guess. Yeah, all right, so maybe he was wasn't
Speaker 1: because they don't circumcise, but yeah, no, I mean, we're
Speaker 1: we're off off topic here, but it's just that's very interesting.
Speaker 1: And yeah, so the last theory, So I like this
Speaker 1: theory a lot. Man by the name of Frank Bender.
Speaker 1: He's part of the VDC Society, which has taken a
Speaker 1: keen interest in this case. Is what exactly their society.
Speaker 1: It's it's a bunch of retired police officers and detectives
Speaker 1: who for and they've gone into a lot of cases,
Speaker 1: and they've got a lot of coverage in the past.
Speaker 1: Is they opened up old cold cases and look at
Speaker 1: them with modern techniques and technologies and try and come
Speaker 1: at him from a completely different angle, and they've solved
Speaker 1: a lot, a lot of so he thinks that, um,
Speaker 1: this boy was probably raised as a girl. Cutting the
Speaker 1: hair and the nails too, because a girl would usually
Speaker 1: have longer nails. But that nobody could recognize the pictures
Speaker 1: of this boy because he was walking around town as
Speaker 1: a girl. That's true, right, with very long blonde brown hair, longer,
Speaker 1: longer nails, dressed as a girl. You know, they would
Speaker 1: when the accident occurred or whatever occurred, chop off all
Speaker 1: the hair really short, trimm the nails, make it look
Speaker 1: like this kid has always been a boy. They're touting,
Speaker 1: you know, nobody except for the people who knew what happened. No,
Speaker 1: this boy is a boy. Everybody else thinks this boy
Speaker 1: is a girl. I think it's fairly valid. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: explains what the kid was found naked too, because they
Speaker 1: probably didn't have any boys clothes to dress him many.
Speaker 1: So one of the things that Vendor brings up is that, um,
Speaker 1: apparently the medical examiner, and this wasn't wildly publicized, but
Speaker 1: the medical examiner said that, um, it looked like the
Speaker 1: boy's eyebrows had been plucked, like you would if you
Speaker 1: were trying to pass a little boy off as a
Speaker 1: little girl. Oh, they have some sketches of people of
Speaker 1: what this boy would have looked like as a girl. Yeah,
Speaker 1: now that you mentioned, and I hadn't really made the connection.
Speaker 1: When you look at the sketch and the photo, they're
Speaker 1: very similar, and it does it's very it would be
Speaker 1: very easy with long hair to mix it up and
Speaker 1: just go, well, it's a little girl. Yeah, I think absolutely,
Speaker 1: I think it's um. I think it's a really good theory. Actually,
Speaker 1: you know, this happened in two thousand three or something
Speaker 1: like that, and they still haven't solved the case. Nobody's
Speaker 1: come forward, but there's still a really big effort. And
Speaker 1: Bender has ancent clearance rate with the society in solving cases,
Speaker 1: so maybe he's on the right track. Yeah. The sad
Speaker 1: thing is that at that time it was not uncommon
Speaker 1: for a family to have a child and not be
Speaker 1: able to take care of it because they just didn't
Speaker 1: have the money for it. So you were sent to
Speaker 1: uncle Jim's farm to live with him because he had
Speaker 1: enough money, and you were gonna be raised there and
Speaker 1: taking care of their and so it could very easily
Speaker 1: have been that the situation was a somebody who did
Speaker 1: this said, oh, well I sent to the kid to
Speaker 1: uncle Jim's farm or the kid was sent to Uncle Jim,
Speaker 1: who then committed to atrocity. I mean, you know, this
Speaker 1: doesn't play in any of the theories you've talked about it.
Speaker 1: It's just kind of things that you have to think
Speaker 1: about when you remember the time frame. Yeah. I think
Speaker 1: that's that's totally fair. Um, you know, it's hard. It's
Speaker 1: hard to imagine somebody who just couldn't afford to raise
Speaker 1: a child killing them so brutally. You know, there are
Speaker 1: definitely ways to get rid of these, you know, fun
Speaker 1: topics for the night, fun ways to get rid of people.
Speaker 1: But you don't beat a child to death with like
Speaker 1: deep deep bruises just because you can't. Normal people don't,
Speaker 1: well normal people don't. But you know, I think that
Speaker 1: people who I generally want, people who are concerned about
Speaker 1: the welfare fair of their family into normal people. Yes,
Speaker 1: very true. Maybe I'm wrong, I don't know. So Yeah,
Speaker 1: once again, I'm going on record, I don't like the story.
Speaker 1: This was a creepy, crazy I don't like it either. Sorry,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry everyone, Sorry for hunting your nightmares. Picture all
Speaker 1: of these wonderful, beautiful things to start the holidays, ye think,
Speaker 1: happy thoughts. So I'm guessing it's like some some girl
Speaker 1: from Philadelphia or somewhere around there, just too pregnant out
Speaker 1: of wedlock. And at some point, once she was going
Speaker 1: to start showing, she decided to head to some relatives
Speaker 1: place or somewhere where she could have, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: a home for her wayward mothers, that kind of thing mothers,
Speaker 1: and had the baby. She was probably a little bit
Speaker 1: of a head case and had convinced herself that she
Speaker 1: was going to have a daughter, or for some reason
Speaker 1: believe she was gonna have a daughter. So she told
Speaker 1: everybody she was going to adopt her niece and bring
Speaker 1: him back to live with her because her niece needed
Speaker 1: at home and her parents had been killed or whatever.
Speaker 1: And when she comes back siver months later, while she's
Speaker 1: with she's got a little boy had on her niece
Speaker 1: because well, it turns out the baby wasn't a girl
Speaker 1: after all. She screwed up, and so she had to
Speaker 1: hide the fact that her this kid was a boy
Speaker 1: and not a girl. That makes sense, but him, Why
Speaker 1: is the kid dead? There could be It could be
Speaker 1: a number of things. It could be just a burden
Speaker 1: of keeping this secret and just being a single mother etcetera,
Speaker 1: got to be a bit too much. Um, it might
Speaker 1: be that at some point she came to realize that
Speaker 1: that keeping the secret forever was just not going to
Speaker 1: be possible, or if she's mentally unbalanced, mentally she's mentally yeah,
Speaker 1: it's always that too. Unfortunately things happen. Yeah, either way,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know the facts in this
Speaker 1: one for me to ever say, I think it's this
Speaker 1: unfortunately for me, I I think it probably is Mary's story.
Speaker 1: I think she's got a lot of facts, right, and
Speaker 1: you know, all of them more things that you know
Speaker 1: the general public knew. But her story is pretty convincing.
Speaker 1: But nothing. She didn't have any details that we hadn't
Speaker 1: already been put in the papers, right, No, But I
Speaker 1: guess why would you? Why would you make something like
Speaker 1: that up. It's not like she's earning money from it.
Speaker 1: She's not getting any kind of public notoriety of a
Speaker 1: lot of people do that kind of stuff. Though Tons
Speaker 1: of people confess to murders they haven't committed just because
Speaker 1: they like the attention. So it's I don't know. So
Speaker 1: I don't really know what the is I could have met.
Speaker 1: Mary's story is plausible. Yeah, it runs in line with
Speaker 1: your theory. I mean there's a lot of you know,
Speaker 1: crossover between what you were looking at what or what
Speaker 1: you were talking about and her story. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't I don't know. I don't like it can well,
Speaker 1: so we still have to solve this mystery. Okay, forget
Speaker 1: it now. I think it's too sad to solve. I
Speaker 1: think the I think that we just have to say
Speaker 1: that it was actually just a Halloween dummy that everybody
Speaker 1: thought was a real boy. That's what the cops thought
Speaker 1: when they first got there, was that it was a dummy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's part Yeah, it was this Pinocchio. Yeah, the whole
Speaker 1: thing was actually PoCA. Yeah, thank you, thank you. And
Speaker 1: lovely unicorns running in the field. I see them now.
Speaker 1: You know. It's like kids get beaten to death every year,
Speaker 1: even today. It's like they usually don't wind up in
Speaker 1: a junkyard, you know, and never never identified. But it
Speaker 1: happens all the time, too bad, unfortunately it does. So
Speaker 1: this is an open case. It's ongoing. Ostensibly, if you
Speaker 1: know something about it, you've talked to the authorities. But
Speaker 1: if you want to talk to us instead, an email
Speaker 1: at Thinking Sideways Podcast at gmail dot com. Um. All
Speaker 1: of the links from this week's show, as well as pictures,
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Speaker 1: happy thoughts