The Greece Police Department is asking for the public’s help in solving a 41-year-old cold case. It involves the remains of a child, found on March 9, 1976 inside a blue metal footlocker at a Greece apartment complex.
Police say the skeletal remains were of a three-to-five year old boy with brown hair, wearing pajamas and a plastic diaper. He had an enlarged skull and doctors say it likely meant he had developmental issues and could neither walk nor talk. Isotope testing suggests he wasn’t local to Rochester, probably spending the first years of his life in the Pacific Northwest, then the last years in the Southeastern states. His remains had probably been in the footlocker for six months.
Sgt. Dave Mancuso took over this case in 2015, and decided with the National Center for Missing and Exploited children to exhume the body for DNA and other new testing. They’re hoping this will jog someone’s memory to provide that crucial piece of information that lets them put a name to this young child after 41 years. Mancuso says they’ve already had a couple of tips and are checking them out.
Police canvassed the entire apartment building at 18 Winston Drive at the time, but it was a transient building and records were imperfect back then.