An Emotional Take on Why I Study Crime

I should probably be asleep right now. It's pushing one in the morning and I have to be up before eight for a film shoot, but oh well, I'm young. I can't help but feel the urge to reflect on something. I have studied famous crimes in America for years. It's always intrigued me and anyone who knows me knows about my interests in crime. And I do get the periodic critique by those who don't understand why I do what I do and who look at this interest as a waste of time. Sadly, those who often throw this critique at me are people who think your free time is for little more than wasting. But it's a back and forth type of affair. They don't understand why I spend the time I do studying crime and I don't understand how they can be so passive towards it. The Kennedy assassination is my major area of study; I've been studying it since I was only 7-years old and I know most aspects of it inside and out. The reason I've dedicated so much study towards it is because of what the event represents for our country as a whole. Within five years our country was in the most turmoil it had been in since the Civil War. That was only followed by the Watergate debacle and all the insanity that has happened since then. Now it's hard to say how different things might be if Kennedy wasn't killed, but one thing's for sure, it couldn't get much worse had he not been killed. But his assassination changed the way we look at government and led the public as a collective whole to question and become pessimistic towards them. That event led to extreme changes in our country and, in effect, as a whole. That's why I study and try to be knowledgeable about events such as these, because this is where I live. If you don't know anything about your own country then don't complain about it. And studying events such as these help give you an honest perspective as to the way things work and function in our country, which is something most people are scared of knowing.

But it's not only famous crimes that I study. I study whatever attracts me, and sometimes that attraction is not as simple as having a crime surrounded by interesting events. Sometimes it has to hit you right in the heart to get your attention. And that happened to me tonight while I was doing something completely unrelated, and then it just popped into my head. It's a story that I have looked up before but has always been mixed in with all the other crimes I've studied. But for some reason my mind was more opened up than before and this event popped into my head and immediately I started looking up videos, photographs and information on the case. After being reintroduced to the case I have it in my plans to do a short film on the event, maybe around twenty minutes or so, if for no other to at least remind people of it because it's sadly such an obscure case. It's been used as a template for various cold case-style television programs, but being a true story, the real thing is so much more painful to examine. When I was first examining the case I stumbled onto a video create on YouTube that provided the base details of the case, playing to an instrumental version of "Amazing Grace" that had a major effect on me watching the imagery flow along amidst the melancholic soundtrack. And I'm someone who has seen many videos on many various heartbreaking crimes, but this one has had a much greater effect than others. This case is known as: The Boy in the Box. (the link to that YouTube video, if you want your heart to be ripped out, is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LImoCjRjpfQ)

"The Boy in the Box", also known as "America's Unknown Child" revolved around events that occurred in February, 1957 when the body of a boy, approximately four to six years of age, was discovered wrapped in a blanket and stuffed in a JCPenney box along a rural road on the edge of Philadelphia. To this day the child has never been identified. With the event having occurred over fifty-six years ago it's hard to believe that the boys true identity will ever be established. The potential for identifying him more or less hinges on the fact that there are trace amounts of DNA in existence so that small amount of hope much loom there. But sadly it seems that this small child was badly neglected and thus likely killed by whoever was supposed to be taking care of him, be it his parents or anyone else. The boys body was roughly around five-years of age but he had the size and weight of a child more around the age of three and a half. He had several scars on his body, some of which appear to have been surgical (which makes one wonder of there are records of him sitting in a hospital somewhere collecting dust). He had bruises all over his body from his head to his feet.

While there are a few websites and organizations who are trying to keep the memory of this child alive in the hopes of discovering his real identity someday the case is still so incredibly obscure and yet I think it's one of the most gripping unsolved crimes of all time. Sure it may not have the prestige or flare of higher profile unsolved crimes such as the Zodiac Killer and the Black Dahlia, but few other crimes can tear at the heart the way this one does. The Boy in the Box serves as a likely example of a child who even in only a few years of existence was never cared for and never loved, and yet children have a capacity for love, sensitivity and compassion that most adults can hardly imagine or comprehend anymore. I can't imagine taking the wondrous heart of a child and trying to comprehend the shattering feeling of going ignored and unloved. Sadly, nonetheless, there are so many children out there who feel this way and who are being horrible neglected and mistreated and it defies my logic. When you acknowledge that you can't comprehend the way these guardians behave the following answer is often that they are too stupid and sick to grasp what they're doing either. But that certainly doesn't give them a pass in my book. Whether you love little kids or now, regardless how annoyed you get when babies scream or little kids complain when they don't get that toy they want, there is still so much kindness and warmth running through their hearts, a warmth that our world really needs, especially now in this lazy and pessimistic time we live in. Such is one of the reasons I really enjoy the 2006 film "Children of Men", which specifically tries to convey the disheartened and war torn existence that may come about in a world without children.

And while the case is still unsolved there have been many suggestions as to who this child may have been and unfortunately none of those possibilities suggest a positive existence for this little one. Many people all over the east coast who had a background of child abuse or child abandonment were fingered as being possibly involved. There happened to be a large foster home that functioned similarly to an orphanage, taking in lots of children who didn't have or had been abandoned by their parents, that was stationed only a short distance from where this boy was discovered. There have been suggestions of mistreatment of the children who were kept here and the daughter of the woman who ran the house was believed to be mentally challenged. While no proof was ever presented tying those from this foster home to the crime for certain, it is of interest to note that one of the investigating officers on the case attended a yard sale that was done at the house and he stumbled upon a collection of plaid blankets (the boy had been wrapped in a plaid blanket) and a bassinet for sale (the JCPenney box the boy had been found it originally held a bassinet). He also noticed there was a duck pond right next to the house (when the boy was discovered they found that parts of his body had recently been placed in water for a prolonged period of time). With the strange way in which the people who ran this house conducted themselves there were many reasons to consider them to be suspects. It has even been argued that the man who ran the place may have impregnated his mentally challenged stepdaughter and thus this child was her illegitimate child.

Despite questions about its legitimacy (the woman who claimed this story refused to speak directly with authorities but only through phone calls and email before she clammed up and stopped talking to authorities all together), the most convincing story came from a woman who never game her real name, but claimed she grew up in the same house with this boy. She claimed that he had been horrible abused, kept locked in a cold basement and poorly fed (upon discovery, the boy was very malnourished). She claimed that in a fit of rage her mother, who was taking care of the boy, had killed the boy and went out with her brother to get rid of his dead body. What made this the most compelling for me was the fact that this woman told a story that matched perfectly with an eyewitness account from a man who drove past the site where the boy's body was discovered, and at the time she told her story this man's account had not been made known to the public so she couldn't have known that the police had corroboration for her story). She claimed that her mother and little brother drove out and abandoned the boy inside of a box along the road. But while they were taking care of moving the body a man drove by in a car and stopped, asking if they were having car troubles. Worried, she said her mom just turned away from the man and tried to ignore him. Then the man drove off. Well, according to the account of this eyewitness, he claimed that he pulled up to a location near where the boy's body was abandoned and saw a woman there with a young boy. He said he asked if they needed help and was surprised to see the woman turn her back on him as though she were ignoring him, and so he just kept driving. So either this woman was incredibly lucky in guessing at an event that the police had corroboration really happened or she was telling the truth.

But sadly, in the end, the case is still regarded as unsolved and we have a small child who likely suffered through a horribly painful existence. And that's why I study things such as this, in the hopes of understanding these events and helping to prevent such events from happening in the future. With the scientific and technical advancements we have now it's unlikely many cases such as the boy in the box will occur because we have so many more tools now to use to identify people, but the significance of this case goes beyond mere identification. And I know hearing about tragic stories like this troubles many people and they just don't want to deal with it; they throw out the classic, "Just because it exists doesn't mean I have to see it" argument. Well, the truth is yes, you do need to see it and to experience it because if you ignore things such as this you ignore a very sad reality of our world, that there are people out there that do things such as this. And just because it's the 21st Century and we're all so convinced that we are so much more advanced than before doesn't mean heart-shattering mind-blowing events such as the boy in the box don't still occur and won't continue to occur in the future. Ignoring the problem doesn't help it go away and if you ignore the problem you may as well say you don't care, because if you do you'd put your own ego aside and acknowledge the bad things we all must live with along with the good. It's not there to dwell on but to help us understand the world we live in a little better. It helps us take notice of what is going on around us so that when events such as this occur there will be more people in the know and a better chance of finding out what happened. And coming to terms with painful events such as these should not serve to dishearten us, as we often allow them to do, but to remind us of how wonderful everything we have is. It's easy to be passive or lack appreciation towards what we do have when we willingly ignore how horrible things could be. But when we acknowledge the pain that can and does exist out there we learn to love what we have a little more and to be stronger for those around us who are suffering the most and need more than just consolation, but also understanding.

I could go on and on about this, but it's pushing two a.m. now and I seriously need to get myself off to sleep. To all you parents out there who will wake up tomorrow morning to see your child, the apple of your eye, remember to kiss them and hold them close because they are the real proof of the miracle that is life. Never take your child for granted. Good night.