that he would soon be identified. However, no one ever came forward with any useful information. The case attracted considerable media attention in Philadelphia and the Delaware Valley. The Philadelphia Inquirer printed 400,000 flyers depicting the boy's likeness, which were sent out and posted across the area, and were included with every gas bill in Philadelphia. The crime scene was combed over and over again by 270 police academy recruits, who discovered a man's blue corduroy cap, a child's scarf, and a man's white handkerchief with the letter "G" in the corner; all clues that led nowhere. The police also distributed a post-mortem photograph of the boy fully dressed and in a seated position, as he may have looked in life, in the hope it might lead to a clue. In 1998, his body was exhumed for the purpose of extracting DNA, which was obtained from a tooth. On March 21, 2016, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children released a forensic facial reconstruction of the victim and added him into their database. The body was then exhumed yet again in 2019 to retrieve additional DNA samples. Identification The child was an unidentified murder victim for decades. However, on November 30, 2022, the Philadelphia Police Department announced that they had identified the child through the use of genetic testing and investigative genetic genealogy, and that they would provide a case update in the following week. Sources stated that he was the child of a prominent family in Delaware County, Pennsylvania. Authorities said that the investigation will use the new information to continue to search for suspects. On December 8, 2022, the child was publicly identified as 4-year-old Joseph Augustus Zarelli, born on January 13, 1953. Genealogists had uncovered his name more than a year earlier, in October 2021. On January 19, 2023, the names of Zarelli's parents were reported. Investigators were finally able to identify him after a cousin uploaded DNA to a public database. Investigators subsequently encouraged that person's mother (a first cousin of Zarelli) to submit a genetic profile to GEDmatch, which she did, allowing investigators to identify his parents. A court order for the child's birth certificate was then made, which revealed the child's name and his parents' names (subsequently verified by DNA). Theories prior to identification The foster home This theory concerns a foster home that was located approximately 1.5 miles (2.5 km) from the