Elmer J. Palmer, 83, first officer at scene of ‘boy in the box’

Elmer J. Palmer, 83, the first police officer to respond to the scene of the notorious "boy in the box" homicide in 1957, died Monday, Jan. 10.

Mr. Palmer often said, "It's something that's lived with me all these years," recalled Joseph McGillen, 84, who worked in the Medical Examiner's Office when the body was discovered in Northeast Philadelphia and who decades later was involved in a reinvestigation of the unsolved case.

On Feb. 25, 1957, Mr. Palmer was dispatched to check on a report of a possible child's body in a large cardboard box along then-rural Susquehanna Road in Fox Chase.

The box for a J.C. Penney Co. bassinet contained the nude body of a boy, wrapped in a cheap flannel blanket. He appeared to be 4 to 6. His blond hair had been cut close, in a crude fashion, with clumps of hair still on his body. The back of his head had been smashed in. He was face up in the box, which was stamped "fragile."

Mr. Palmer, a father of young children, had been with the Police Department for 61/2 years when he responded to the scene.

"It's something you don't forget. . . . This was the one that bothered everybody," Mr. Palmer said 50 years later.

A major investigation commenced. Police Commissioner Thomas J. Gibbons approved the citywide distribution of posters with the boy's face.

News of the murder case, and a plea to help solve it, was literally hand-delivered to nearly every household in Philadelphia in the form of copies of the poster inserted with gas bills.

Despite reexaminations of the case over the decades, including reports on national television, not even the boy's name is known, and might never be.

His body was exhumed from his pauper's grave for a DNA test, which proved fruitless, and was reburied at Ivy Hill Cemetery in 1998.

Mr. Palmer, a graduate of North Catholic High School and a Korean War veteran, left the police force in 1964 after an injury. He later retired from a job as an employee of Cheltenham Township.

He was a founding member of the Fox Chase Soccer Club and a longtime coach.

He is survived by his wife, Regina; a daughter, Regina; a son, James; two sisters; and five grandchildren.

The viewing is set for 9:30 a.m. Friday, Jan. 14, at St. Cecilia Roman Catholic Church, 535 Rhawn St., with a Funeral Mass to follow at 10:30 a.m.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in Mr. Palmer's name to the FOP Survivor Fund No. 5, 1336 Spring Garden St., Philadelphia 19123.