Toddler boy found dead on Texas beach — and no one knows who he is or how he died

More than two month after a passerby saw the tiny body of a toddler in a beach in Galveston, Texas, authorities there are no closer to understand who the little boy is or what happened to him.

The mystery of the boy, now called “Little Jacob,” has gripped the resort town on the Gulf Coast of Texas as thousands of potential leads have poured in and eventually fizzled out.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the FBI has offered a $10,000 reward for information about the dead toddler, and his face appears in a sketch on billboards throughout Texas and neighboring states.

Still, no one with credible information has come forward. Police still aren’t sure if the boy drowned or if he was dead before he got into the water.

“The surreal-ness of standing on a beach with a three-year-old lying dead and nobody looking for them, nobody calling for them — I have never experienced that in my time here,” Galveston Police spokesperson Captain Josh Schirard told the Wall Street Journal.

Little Jacob got his name after an FBI agent working on the investigation was at church when a boy named Jacob was being baptized. The agent reportedly felt a connection between the two boys, and the unidentified toddler has gone by the name ever since.

According to the Wall Street Journal, investigators on the Little Jacob case are still awaiting the results of his autopsy, and are treating his death as a homicide in the meantime.

Galveston police told the newspaper they believe the boy was in the water for less than 12 hours after he was found. Investigators believed they would have solved the case by Christmas, and the cold weather has brought even further diminished hope.

“I can’t wrap my head around what is happening here,” Special Agent Richard Rennison told the Wall Street Journal.

“It’s unfathomable.”

 

[Feature image: Galveston Police Department/Little Jacob]