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Last Name Not Given, Actel/ILM051008; DuPage County, IL October 8 2005
Topic Started: Jul 5 2006, 08:13 PM (768 Views)
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FC #06-04
Date Remains Found: October 2005
Location: DuPage County, Illinois
Profile:
Age: 3-5 years
Sex: Male
Race: Native American/Hispanic
Stature: unknown
Weight: unknown
Hair Color: Black
Dental Info: available

http://www.lsu.edu/faceslab/unidentified/2005.htm
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year later, dead boy is still unidentified
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By Angela Rozas
Tribune staff reporter

October 9, 2006

He's still a boy without a name.

A year ago this week, the body of a boy believed to be 3 to 5 years old was found in a blue canvas laundry bag in a field near Naperville, his body too decomposed to be identified.

After working more than 200 leads, authorities say they are no closer to finding out just who the boy is, how he died or why he was left near a roadside in unincorporated DuPage County.

It has been a frustrating and emotional case for investigators.

Mark Edwalds, commander of the detective division in the DuPage County sheriff's office, keeps on his desk renderings of what the boy is believed to have looked like, as do a number of investigators. A dark-haired boy with large eyes and pronounced ears, he appears to be East Asian or Native American or perhaps of Hispanic heritage. Edwalds also keeps a candle he lit for a memorial vigil in December.

With just a trickle of new leads in the last few months, Edwalds said he has little hope that the boy's identity will be determined through a missing person's report.

"We have pretty much exhausted the leads we have," he said.

For now, Edwalds and two investigators working the case are pinning hopes on painstakingly slow forensic tests of material collected from the boy and the canvas bag he was found in.

"The frustrating thing for all of us is the fact that people can treat a family member, a little boy this age, like this," Edwalds said. "Tossing him out like the garbage and not providing for a proper funeral. It's disgusting."

Although DuPage County State's Atty. Joseph Birkett declared the case a homicide last year, pointing to the way the body was discarded, Edwalds said his office has never characterized the death as such. There was no obvious trauma to the body, and the coroner's office was unable to determine a cause of death. Edwalds said his office has not ruled out the possibility that the boy died of natural causes or accidentally and family members were afraid to come forward.

A Bolingbrook man found the boy's body Oct. 8, 2005, after dropping his children off at a nearby recreation center and deciding to walk his dog. The dog caught the scent of the child and led the man to a brushy area where he found the canvas bag.

The child's approximate age is one of the biggest obstacles to determining who he was, Edwalds said. Children that age are less likely to have dental or medical records, and his advanced state of decomposition made infant footprints impossible to match.

Investigators turned instead to forensic artists, who over the last year made three drawings of what the boy may have looked like. Investigators also enlisted the help of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which began scouring missing person's reports. Investigators there also entered the child's DNA into a database called the Combined DNA Index System but haven't found any matches yet.

The case has resonated with Jerry Nance, senior case manager at the national center.

"That's truly the age of innocence," Nance said. "The magical thinking age, believing your mom and dad can do anything. Don't get me wrong, [losing a child is] bad at any age. But that particular age is especially tough."

The boy was wearing a navy collar-less Faded Glory shirt with three buttons and navy pants. The clothing is sold exclusively at Wal-Mart, and investigators found three stores where both items were purchased together.

Two of those outfits--one in New Mexico and one in Mississippi--were bought with credit cards. The New Mexico family didn't match the description of the boy.

The family in Mississippi had long ago donated the outfit to Hurricane Katrina refugees, Edwalds said.

The third outfit, purchased in a Forest Park Wal-Mart, was bought with cash. Investigators haven't been able to figure out who purchased it.

"So far, that's been a dead end," Edwalds said.

The case has been posted on the "America's Most Wanted" Web site but has not been profiled on the show. Investigators also tried unsuccessfully to get the case on an episode of "The Oprah Winfrey Show" about missing children, Edwalds said.

Time reduces the chance of determining the boy's identity but doesn't extinguish it, Nance said. He pointed to an 11-year-old case similar to this one that was solved last year in Philadelphia.

In that case, a 4-year-old boy had been beaten to death and left in a gym bag, unidentifiable. An uncle of that child, who wondered for years what had happened to him, checked the national center's Web site in February 2005 and found a sculpture of what looked like his nephew. The child was then positively identified, and his parents were charged with murder and are awaiting trial.

"Our hope is that someone in the family or a friend will finally step up and do the right thing and tell us who this little boy is," Edwalds said.

An $11,000 reward is still offered for information leading to the identity of the boy. Police are asking anyone with information to call the toll-free tip line at 800-669-7109.

----------

* Source, Chicago Tribune
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http://doenetwork.us/hot/hotcase75.html

http://www.angelsmissing.com/forum/page-2-t3578-s15.html

http://www.dupageco.org/sheriff/
http://www.wbbm780.com/pages/361.php?

Reward, New Image, Possible New Lead In DuPage Case

[attachmentid=2830]

07 December 2005
Julie Mann Reporting
Suburban Bureau Chief

WHEATON, Ill. (WBBM) -- There is now a five-thousand dollar reward and a possible new lead into to the identity of a toddler found dead along side a road in unincorporated DuPage County back in October.

Toll free tip line at 1-800-669-7109.

DuPage County Sheriff http://www.dupageco.org/sheriff/

The reward is considered an unprecedented move by the DuPage County Sheriff's office, but Chief of Law enforcement Michael Blazek said considering the unique circumstances of the case, it's necessary to motivate someone with information to come forward with the little boy's identity.

The reward money comes from a fund created by assets seized by the Sheriff's office.

Dupage County Sheriff John Zaruba made this appeal "It is disturbing and unfair that this little boy is still lying in the county morgue without a name two months after his body was found, especially now during this holiday season." Sheriff Zaruba went on to say "I am asking the public again to please help us, this little boy can no longer speak for himself; he needs someone out there to do it for him. Christmas is almost upon us. Help us identify this child and bring him back to his family for Christmas so he can rest in peace." Anyone with information is asked to call a toll free tip line at 1-800-669-7109. No one will ask your name, you may remain anonymous."

The boy, believed to be between the ages of three and five, was found inside a blue canvas laundry bag in Naperville Township Oct. 8th. The cause of his death is still unknown.

However, investigators have found three Wal-Mart stores where the three-button navy blue collarless shirt and navy blue pants the boy was wearing at the time of his death were purchased on the same transaction receipt. The clothing is not sold as a matched set. One of the three locations investigators are following up on is in northern Illinois.

Sheriff's police have also released a new rendering of the child's face in hopes of generating new leads in the case. The picture is much more realistic and almost photograph like and was created by experts at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

http://www.wbbm780.com/pages/361.php
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Vigil honors unidentified boy By Sarah Schulte
December 11, 2005 (Aurora) - A candlelight vigil was held Sunday night in Aurora for parents who have lost children. They also remembered a boy, who investigators still have not identified. The boy's body was found in October.

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Attending the vigil was a member of the DuPage County sheriff's office who says his department has become the unidentified boy's family.
DuPage County sheriff's investigators are determined to solve this case, but Sunday night their main focus was to honor and remember the unidentified boy. They did so with other parents of the support group compassionate friends.

The group holds a vigil every year before the holidays.

One at a time, parents lit a candle in memory of their child. A candle was also passed to the DuPage County sheriff's commander mark Edwalds, he was there to remember a boy that has no name.

Ever since the child's decomposed body was found in Naperville two months ago, Edwalds says the sheriff's department has become the boy's family

"For lack of a better word we have adopted the boy he is one of our family," Edwalds said.

Edwalds held up a new forensic sketch that was made by reconstructing the face with clay and then scanning it into a computer.

Police hope the mystery surrounding the child's death and the whereabouts of his family will be solved by Christmas. Although, so far Edwalds, says the investigation has been very frustrating.

The boy, who is believed to be 3 to 5 years old when he died, was found in a laundry bag in a wooded area of unincorporated Naperville Township. He wore a navy blue shirt and pants.

The organizer of Sunday's vigil has lost a child herself. Sherry Stewart says she can't imagine what the mystery boy's mother is going through.

The DuPage County sheriff's department is hoping a now $6,000 dollar reward will help solve the mystery.

Police are still waiting for DNA results to determine how the boy died. Because his body was decomposed, investigators do not know if the boy was murdered, killed by accident or by natural causes.
http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=local&id=3715738
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Tribune staff report
6:25 PM CDT, September 28, 2007
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Digg Del.icio.us Facebook Furl Google Newsvine Reddit Spurl Yahoo Print Single page view Reprints Reader feedback Text size: Nearly two years after it was found in a laundry bag near a dry creek bed in DuPage County, the still unidentified body of a 3- to 4-year-old boy finally will be buried.

The child will be laid to rest 2 p.m. Oct. 15 at Assumption Cemetery in Wheaton, in a plot donated by the Archdiocese of Joliet, according to the DuPage County sheriff's office.

The body was discovered Oct. 8, 2005, by a passerby walking a dog in a grassy, isolated area of Naperville Township near Warrenville. The body was found in a blue canvas laundry bag, clad in a navy blue shirt and pants, size 2T.



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The child had black hair, weighed 38 1/2 pounds, was about 3 feet tall and had large eyes and pronounced ears. He appeared to be of East Asian, American Indian or perhaps Hispanic heritage. But how he died and why his body was left in that isolated spot near Ferry and Meadow Roads off the Ronald Reagan Memorial Tollway has remained a mystery.

The case has haunted investigators, who enlisted the help of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which checked missing persons reports and entered the child's DNA into a national database. The sketches and details of the case were put on the "America's Most Wanted" TV show's Web site.

Because the boy was wearing clothing sold exclusively at Wal-Mart, investigators enlisted the company's help in finding three instances where his specific pants and shirt were purchased together. Two of the outfits were bought with credit cards, one by a family in Mississippi who donated it to Hurricane Katrina refugees and one by a New Mexico family who didn't match the boy's description. The third outfit was a cash purchase at the Forest Park Wal-mart and could not be tracked.

No children fitting his description were reported missing in the immediate vicinity.

The burial will not end the investigation in the case. It will continue "until he is identified and the circumstances of his death are resolved," sheriff's office officials said.

Sketches of boy, details of case on "America's Most Wanted" Web site
Video on site, showing clothing, recon...
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http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/c...ack=1&cset=true
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Who is 'Johnny Doe?'
Four years, no answers after boy's body found in field
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October 4, 2009

By BILL BIRD wbird@scn1.com
That helmet of jet-black hair and his almost-too-toothy grin might be what people familiar with the case first envision when thinking about the boy nicknamed "DuPage Johnny Doe."

He appears more pensive in later artists' renderings, but in the early ones he beams a smile designed to light up the world, and radiates an "I can't wait" eagerness for the adventures any new day might bring.

» Click to enlarge image The grave of an unknown boy (composite sketch inset) whose body was found on Oct. 8, 2005, near the corner of Ferry and Meadows Roads, just outside of Naperville. The boy's body has never been identified.
(Jonathan Miano/Staff Photographer)
» Click to enlarge image A composite image of the unidentified boy.

(Submitted/DuPage County Sheriff's Department)
» Click to enlarge image Mementos rest atop the gravesite of the still-unidentified boy known as "DuPage Johnny Doe" at Assumption Cemetery in Wheaton in this 2007 photo.
(Jonathan Miano/Staff Photographer)
RELATED STORIES• Slide show: Unidentified boy buried
• Archive: Boy is laid to rest
FROM THE STORYTELLERStories don’t come much more awful than this one.

Who would do such a thing? Who would bear witness to — or, worse yet, cause — the death of a defenseless human being barely taller than a yardstick, and then run away after literally dumping him by the side of the road?

DuPage County sheriff’s investigators surely must have their theories as to just what happened to the star-crossed, nameless boy they’ve nicknamed Johnny, though they rarely do much thinking aloud in the press.

But as someone who’s given this lurid mystery a fair amount of thought over the past four years, may I postulate the following:

Police and the county coroner found no signs of violence or visible injuries on the boy. No bullet to the head, no knife wound to the heart, no ligature marks on the neck. Nothing.

So let us, for the sake of argument, give Johnny’s parents or guardians the benefit of the doubt, and at least rule out murder as the cause of his death. That leaves us with him choking to death on food, falling down a flight of stairs, having a fatal asthma attack, getting hit on the head with a baseball, being bitten by a rabid bat and probably scores of other ways to die other than homicide.

But then why fail to report the death to the proper authorities, as civilized people know to do? How about because maybe — just maybe — Johnny’s parents lead a nomadic existence. And maybe — just maybe — they do so because they’ve entered this country illegally, fleeing nightmare-ish living conditions real or imagined in their homeland.

And perhaps they have another child or children dependent on them. In which case the best-case scenario, after reporting the death, would find the entire family being deported.

And the worst-case scenario? That would find authorities arresting and jailing the parents for failing to report a death, followed by the deportation of their at least temporarily orphaned children.

That, of course, would hardly excuse the initial conduct. But desperate people, as they say, do desperate things, and I truly wonder — assuming my hypothesis is even close to the truth — would I have acted that much differently?

Feel free to let me know just how brilliant or boneheaded you think I am about all this. Likewise, feel free to share your theories.

Above all, spare a thought for a still-unidentified toddler, and the investigators who try to bring resolution to stories as awful as this one.

-- Bill Bird, staff writer


"Johnny" has likely been gone now for as many or more years as he was alive. Police, despite dogged efforts, find themselves no closer to knowing his real name or learning how he came to be forsaken on a lonesome patch of land in an unincorporated area of Naperville Township.

And while many people undoubtedly doubt the existence of guardian angels, Johnny without a doubt has at least three guardian mortals looking out for him, in the form of three determined DuPage County Sheriff's Office detectives.

Mark Edwalds, the agency's commander of criminal investigations, insists he and the other two men assigned to the case are unfazed by the passage of four years and a trail becoming only more vaporous.

"We always have hope," Edwalds said. "We plan on solving this one."

National news
The toddler's story has been recounted by local media, Internet bloggers and even the producers of the "America's Most Wanted" television series. It begins with Ted Bruder, a former Bolingbrook resident who was walking his dog on the afternoon of Oct. 8, 2005, and who made the heartrending discovery at Ferry and Meadow roads near Naperville's far northwest side.

Johnny's 3 feet 2 1/2-inch-tall frame had been slipped inside a blue canvas laundry bag. The bag, in turn, had been placed beneath a small grove of trees on a creek bed.

The body bore no bullet holes, stab wounds or other obvious injuries indicative of homicide. An autopsy and exhaustive laboratory testing have proven useless to authorities, who still cannot definitively declare Johnny was murdered or died accidentally. of illness or of natural causes.

Police have surmised Johnny was 3 to 5 years old and weighed between 25 and 30 pounds at the time of his death. An anthropologist in late 2005 declared he was of American Indian, tribal Indian, East Asian or Hispanic ancestry, or some combination of those races.

A Canadian university professor who scientifically analyzed the makeup of Johnny's teeth and bones concluded in 2007 his mother probably lived in Canada while she was pregnant with him and later moved to northern Illinois. The professor said he believed Johnny was of American Indian descent.

The potential need to take additional DNA samples or perform more testing on his remains meant Johnny's body would not be buried until two years after his death. An estimated 150 mourners gathered on Oct. 15, 2007, when he was laid to rest in Assumption Cemetery in Wheaton.

Early leads
Telephone tips and other potentially useful information concerning Johnny were fairly plentiful in the weeks and months following the discovery of his body. An $11,000 reward for information about him or his family remains unclaimed.

"In the past year, we've probably gotten about one (tip) a month," mostly from people reading about the case at various Internet sites, Edwalds said. "We've worked several leads that have come in from the public ... but unfortunately, we've been able to rule out all of them" based on such factors as the missing child's age, weight and ethnicity, he said.

A couple from Aurora believed for a time Johnny was their long-lost grandson, who had vanished along with his mother. Evidence ultimately showed the missing boy and Johnny were not one and the same.

A ray of hope
The most promising lead in the case also proved to be the most frustrating for Edwalds and his investigators.

Johnny was found clad in a collarless, three-button, navy blue shirt, navy pants and a nylon-and-cotton-blend shell with a white liner.

The clothing was manufactured by Faded Glory, a brand under exclusive license to Walmart. Police are convinced the pants and shirt were bought together.

"We were able to determine there were three Walmarts" in Mississippi, New Mexico and northern Illinois where the clothes were bought at the same time and around the date of Johnny's death, Edwalds said. He declined to identify the cities where those stores are located.

Investigators had hoped the purchases had been made with checks or credit or bank debit cards, which would have created a "paper trail" leading back to the buyer. Unfortunately, "the three purchases were all in cash," Edwalds said.

Never surrender
Edwalds saluted the men and women who he said have devoted innumerable hours toward cracking the baffling case. They include members of the sheriff's crime lab and detective and forensic divisions; the DuPage County coroner's office; the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children; and the forensic artists and workers in private laboratories.

He conceded the lack of solid progress has been "extremely frustrating" for investigators and others involved in the case, but also expressed optimism there will one day be justice for Johnny.

"It's just the confidence in the people who are working the case, and the help we're getting from other agencies and the public," Edwalds said.

"We plan on getting to the bottom of this."

http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/foxvall...100409.article#
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http://www.missingkids.com/missingkids/ser...earchLang=en_US
JOHN DUPAGE COUNTY DOE
Case Type: Unidentified
DOB: Sex: Male
Missing Date: Oct 8, 2005 Race: White/Hisp
Age Now: 3-5 Height: 3'2" (97 cm)
Missing City: WARRENVILLE Weight: 30 lbs (14 kg)
Missing State : IL Hair Color: Black
Missing Country: United States Eye Color: Unknown
Case Number: NCMUU10142
Circumstances: On October 8th, 2005, the body of a young boy was found in un-incorporated Naperville, IL. The image shown in this flyer is a facial reconstruction as to how he may have appeared in life, but certain details were filled in by the artist to complete the image and should not be used in determining his possible identity. This image is not a photograph. He is a Hispanic or white/Hispanic male, aged between 3-5 years old. He weighed approximately 25-35 pounds, was 38 inches tall and had black hair. The boy was found inside a blue canvas laundry bag with a white drawstring top. He was dressed in a dark blue button down shirt, and dark blue pants, both with the brand name "Faded Glory".
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:( Heartbreaking. Rest in Peace, Actel.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/c...46.story?page=1

Mystery solved: Boy's body identified
Sister implicates stepfather in death of boy whose unidentified body was DuPage mystery
By Christy Gutowski, Tribune reporter
4:09 a.m. CST, February 18, 2011

After a worried friend tipped off school officials, the 14-year-old girl began to tell secrets she had been too frightened before to share.

She revealed to a social worker at Unity Junior High School in Cicero that her stepfather had kicked her with his steel work boots and slapped and whipped her with a belt "almost every other day," according to a state agency report.

Then the girl shared an even darker secret. She said her little brother was missing and that her grandmother told her the same man had killed him, according to state and federal records that detailed the April 2008 conversation.

The teen said her grandmother told her in 2006 that the stepfather put the boy in a bag "and dumped him," according to a U.S. Justice Department document obtained by the Tribune. The document said the teen's mother was also wanted for questioning in the boy's death.

The girl said she and her siblings were forbidden from asking about the missing boy and were physically punished if they disobeyed, the federal report states.

Although never publicized, the teen's grim revelations and fears about her brother led to a crucial break in one of the Chicago area's most haunting mysteries: determining the identity of a young boy whose badly decomposed body was found stuffed in a laundry bag Oct. 8, 2005 in DuPage County.

The dead child's name is Atcel, according to records and sources close to the investigation. He was almost 3 years old.

DuPage Sheriff John Zaruba has declined to comment publicly or discuss his reluctance to reveal the boy's identity, which was confirmed more than two years ago through a DNA match with one of the boy's five siblings, sources said. When the five-year anniversary of the discovery passed in October, and the Tribune wrote a front page story about it, authorities still did not reveal who the boy was.

Sources said the 36-year-old stepfather fled with the children's mother to the Mexico City area and that it was feared publicizing details about the case would hamper efforts to find them.


But several sources with knowledge of the case said they were answering the Tribune's questions because of their frustration with the lack of progress in the investigation.

The Tribune is not naming the stepfather or the children's mother because prosecutors have not charged them with Atcel's death.

The boy's remains were so decomposed that the cause of his death remains unknown, said DuPage Coroner Pete Siekmann.

The newspaper's review of the federal document, reports from the state and interviews with more than a dozen sources with knowledge of the case shed light on Atcel's short life.

A Bolingbrook man walking his German shepherd had stumbled across the boy's remains in a drawstring canvas laundry bag. The bag was in a roadside thicket near Interstate Highway 88, a quarter-mile west of Illinois Highway 59 in Naperville Township.

Forensic experts and artists later offered this portrait of the child: a preschool-age boy who had black hair and a wide smile, weighed 38.5 pounds and was about 3 feet tall. Sheriff's detectives put out national alerts and followed more than 100 leads, including telephone tips from California to New York, officials said.

They traced the boy's blue shirt and pants to a Forest Park Walmart, but the August 2005 purchase, which included other children's clothing, was made in cash, leaving no trail.

DuPage Johnny Doe, as he came to be known, was buried Oct. 15, 2007, during a public funeral, where nearly 150 mourners turned out to say goodbye. Ted Bruder, who found the body, was among them. Mourners prayed the boy's family would claim his remains.

Six months later, Atcel's big sister began to tell her story, the records show. It was April 14, 2008, her 14th birthday. Instead of having a celebration, she was pulled out of bed by her stepfather at 2:30 a.m., she said, and told that if he had to get up early for work, so did she.

Later that morning at school, the teen began detailing how the stepfather kicked, slapped and whipped her and two other siblings, according to the reports.

Child welfare officials quickly placed the girl and all of her siblings in protective custody. Doctors determined that two of the other children showed signs of similar abuse. One of them said the stepfather beat her too, the records said.

In foster care, the oldest girl began to share more details about Atcel. She said her mother and stepfather had brought the boy and a younger sister to live in Cicero, temporarily leaving her and the other children with relatives in the Mexico City area, records show. The teen told police that when her mother and stepfather returned to Mexico, Atcel was not with them and they were ordered not to speak about him.

The description and time frame the teen provided fit that of the unidentified boy, sources said. Cicero police reached out to DuPage County sheriff's officials. Forensic experts later gleaned a DNA match after comparing genetic profiles from one of the siblings to deep thigh tissue from the remains, several sources confirmed.

The stepfather, they said, moved to the Mexico City area after the girl's April 2008 abuse complaint and before he was named in a federal indictment targeting members of a fraudulent identification ring in the Little Village neighborhood.

The children's 32-year-old mother also is wanted on a June 2008 warrant alleging she endangered the life of at least two of her children by not intervening during abuse, court records show.

The teen said her mother, who was in the country illegally, pressured them not to tell anyone after they were beaten, according to state reports.

The mother wept after learning her children were being placed in a foster home and came for supervised visits in the following weeks, the records state. But by June 2008, her whereabouts were unknown.

The 14-year-old girl told authorities she believed her mother was saying goodbye the last time they saw her. The teen said she told her children, "to remember her, that she loved them and will miss them."

The stepfather had been arrested more than a dozen times under various identities from 2000 to late 2007, according to court records.

Besides the federal charges, he has an outstanding DuPage County battery warrant from 2000 for a fight outside his apartment. He also was charged with beating up the teen's mother in 2003 and 2006, but prosecutors dropped domestic battery charges in both cases after she failed to show up for court, according to records.

By fall 2008, the man had been charged with conspiring with nearly two dozen other defendants to illegally produce and sell false identification documents in Chicago, according to a federal complaint.

DuPage County State's Attorney Robert Berlin confirmed this week that no murder charges are pending against the man or the teen's mother, but he said the investigation is continuing.

Atcel was laid to rest in a coffin the size of a toy chest. A teddy bear was tucked under the left arm of his blue blazer, and he was covered by a blue-and-white checkered blanket with stars, clouds and a little plane. A message on the blanket read, "Sweet Baby Boy."

His gravestone at Assumption Cemetery in Wheaton reads: "Son. Unknown. But Not Forgotten." It does not name him.
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