Three-year-old William ’Billy’ Jones III disappeared from the yard of his Vineland, New Jersey home on a December day in 1962 while playing with his younger sister. Their mother had been watching from a window and briefly stepped away; when she returned the daughter was holding a plastic poinsettia and said Billy had given her the flower and that a man had taken him. At the time he vanished he was wearing a blue snowsuit with large silver buttons, tan high-top tennis shoes, and had a vaccination scar on his left arm shaped like a giraffe.

The family’s search quickly grew into a large effort: police were called within an hour, more than 100 people joined the search, and the New Jersey National Guard assisted. Divers, pilots, excavations at an automobile dump and searches of nearby woods turned up no trace. The case has been revisited over the years but produced no significant leads. Both parents have since died; the sister believes Billy might have been raised by another family and remains hopeful.

Did anyone in Vineland in 1962 ever hear about a small boy with a giraffe-shaped vaccination scar being taken or ending up with another family?