CHARLOTTE — There are new efforts to solve Charlotte’s oldest cold case, known as the “Boxcar Boy.”
The case dates back to 1932 when a teenager was killed while sleeping on a train.
He was buried but never identified and now a group of researchers hope to change that.
Channel 9’s crime reporter Hunter Sáenz got an inside look at the case.
Most tombstones bare a name in Charlotte’s historic Elmwood Cemetery but in the Potter’s Field section stands the tomb of an unknown boy.
“The public has given him the name, Boxcar Boy,” said Det. Matt Hefner, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department, Cold Case Unit.
Hefner is trying to find out who the boy was.
“For someone to die and not have their name with them and no one knew who they are, what an unfortunate circumstance,” he said.
Newspaper clippings from the Charlotte Observer on Sept. 25, 1932, reads, “The lad had been killed when steel beams in the (box)car crushed him as he lay sleeping.”
The photo of the dead 14- or 15-year-old boy was in the newspaper hoping someone would identify him.
“We hope to find family that has been looking for him forever,” Hefner said.
CMPD partnered with Ramapo College in New Jersey, which is raising money to exhume the grave, get a DNA sample, and bury the boy again.
“I fully believe that our team is capable of identifying him,” said Cairenn Binder, Ramapo College Investigative Genetic Genealogy Center.
Binder’s team will work to run a DNA sample from the grave through genetic genealogy databases.
“We end up with a list of genetic relatives of the person we are trying to identify, and we use genealogy and the numbers that tell us how closely people are related in order to reverse engineer the family tree of the person we are trying to identify,” Binder said.
They still must raise more than $9,000 to do it. Click here to help.
“It’s a shame it’s taken this long, but we have the technology now, so let’s do it,” Hefner said.
The boy’s death happened during the Great Depression when the community rallied around the unknown boy.
About 1,000 strangers attended his funeral. Someone even donated the suit he wore in his casket.
The hope is the community will care now and donate to try to help identify him.
Ramapo College has helped CMPD solve cold cases in the past.
The Boxcar Boy’s mystery is not the oldest case they’ve worked on.
In the 1990s and 2000s, bones were found scattered along the coast of New Jersey.
Scientist coined the remains “Scattered Man John Doe”.
Using genetic genealogy, Ramapo College identified them as those of a sea captain who died in the 1800s.
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