MEDFORD, Ore. (AP) -- In the summer of 1963 the body of a bundled up unidentified toddler snagged in Keene Creek Reservoir by a fisherman was buried in a white $114 plastic casket, courtesy of Jackson County.

Now, 45 years later, Jackson County sheriff's deputies have reopened the case after it was found in one of 11 forgotten paper boxes marked "old sheriff's cases" and hope to find out who he was and what happened to him.

The boy was wrapped in a blanket and quilt, weighted down and wrapped in wire. He was buried in Medford, police records say, under a flat metal marker reading "John Doe name known only to God."

For a time it looked like investigators might be close.

The Medford Mail Tribune ran stories about reactivating the case, and it tweaked a memory of the children of Mrs. Cecil Johnson of Central Point. She had taken in a 10-day-old welfare baby born to a developmentally disabled teenager in the state's Fairview Home in Salem.

His name was Cecil Rapp, but there already were two Cecils in the house so they named him "Peewee." When state welfare workers took the child back he would have been about the age of the boy found in the lake six months later.

Her daughters, Janice and Christine, still live in the Rogue Valley and remember his tearstained face framed in the car window as he was driven away.

Their mother, who was obsessed with the memory after the body was found, would recall the red-and-white striped T-shirt, corduroy pants and white shoes he was wearing, similar to the clothes on the unidentified toddler, they said.

"It was so painful they stopped taking in foster kids," Detective Sgt. Colin Fagan said.

But with the reopening of the case, Cecil Rapp, now Cecil Schwalb, 48, surfaced in Medford, working at Harry and David.

He was in several foster homes before he was adopted at age 13.

He had found an aunt, Rosie Griffin, while seeking information about his birth parents. The Schwalbs had his birth mother's name on his adoption papers. Her maiden name was Rapp.

But nobody realized he might have been the boy in the lake. She called him with the news when she read the story in the Mail Tribune, and he filled in a part of his life he had known nothing about.

Then who was the boy in the lake?

The casket has been disinterred. Jackson County Medical Examiner Tim Pike said the remains were in surprisingly good shape and should yield good forensic evidence but no cause of death has been determined.

"What we want is a proper burial with a proper casket, ideally with his name on the headstone," Fagan said. Hillcrest Cemetery officials waived exhumation fees and promised a free new marker.

The body was wrapped in an aqua blanket and a handmade patchwork quilt that included red gingham squares. "This was as though someone was saying goodbye," Fagan said.

When the old files appeared, he asked special investigator Jim Tattersall to have a look.

Tattersall is retired from law enforcement but volunteers for cases detectives can't get to, the "one-person cold case guy here," he says.

He found suicides, homicides and a little boy with no name. "All of them had a conclusion," he said. "But this one just stopped."

"We owe it to this little boy to get him identified and to connect him to his family," said Fagan, who initially revived the case.

Foot patterns were taken and compared with those taken at local hospitals at about the time the boy would have been born, probably 22 to 26 months before he died.

Tattersall said a forensic anthropologist will try to create a face that might be recognized and DNA will be sent to a national database in hopes of a match, all technology unavailable in the 1960s.

Of the matching clothes, he said, "Back in those days the main store was J.C. Penny. Lots of parents bought the same clothes at the same place."

Some investigators have been holding back tears, he said. "We still don't know who the little boy is."

He will be reburied, Tattersall said, still "known but to God" at least for now.

Soon after the initial burial a bouquet of sweet peas appeared on the grave but Fagan said they may have been meant for another baby buried nearby.

Tattersall said it could take months to process data that might identify the boy.

"Forty-some-odd years have gone by," he said. "We can wait a little longer."

(Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.)