USF researchers find 19 more graves at Dozier School for Boys

[Draggingtree]

Tampa Bay Online:

USF researchers find 19 more graves at Dozier School for Boys

By JEROME R. STOCKFISCH The Tampa Tribune

Published: December 10, 2012

Updated: December 10, 2012 - 8:56 PM

 

Researchers from the University of South Florida say there are at least 50 graves on the grounds of a former Panhandle reform school – higher than a state estimate of 31 graves – and that a second cemetery is likely to exist.

Anthropologists and archaeologists from USF have spent months conducting field work, scientific analysis and ethnographic research at the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, which has been the subject of investigations into abuse allegations and suspicious deaths. The school, which opened in 1900, was closed last year.

A USF report contradicts a previous state report that said the identities of all 31 people buried at the school cemetery were confirmed.

Video: Lost graves found

[Geee]

Oh my goodness!!!

[Draggingtree]

Oh my goodness!!!

this is just unbelievable

[Draggingtree]

Nineteen unmarked graves found at Florida boys' reform school where students were 'beaten with leather straps, raped and murdered'

 

Researchers from the University of South Florida in Tampa found at least 50 grave shafts at the Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, Florida - 19 more than had previously been identified. And their investigation is not complete, with scientists believing as many as 98 boys died between 1911 and the 1973, including Thomas Varnadoe (right) who school officials claim died of pneumonia 34 days after his arrival. The investigation comes after former students have spoken out about decades of widespread physical and sexual abuse. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2246378/Dozier-School-Report-reveals-19-unmarked-graves-Florida-boys-reform-school.html

[nickydog]

Poor little guys. It's worse than Dickensian.

[Pepper]

Two years ago the State of Florida conclude that it was end of the matter, perhaps in hopes of preventing damage claims. Now it may resurface like a nightmare..

[Draggingtree]

Bodies to be exhumed from notorious Florida reform school for boys

 

Published August 07, 2013

FoxNews.com

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Saying it was time to provide answers from a painful period in the state's past, Florida's top officials voted Tuesday to let researchers dig up and try to identify remains buried at a closed reform school for boys.

Former students have accused employees and guards at The Dozier School for Boys of physical and sexual abuse, so severe in some cases it may have led to death. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigated, but in 2009 the agency concluded it was unable to substantiate or dispute the claims.

Researchers at the University of South Florida hope to identify boys in unmarked graves, and perhaps return them to family members for a proper burial.

In its quest to exhume bodies, the university was rebuffed by a judge and by one state agency before Gov. Rick Scott and Florida Cabinet members approved the plan Tuesday. http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/08/07/university-researchers-get-permission-to-exhume-bodies-from-florida-reform/?intcmp=trending

[Draggingtree]

Grave excavation begins at Fla. reform school site

 

BRENDAN FARRINGTON1 hour ago

 

Grave excavation begins at Fla. reform school site

MARIANNA, Fla. (AP) — University of South Florida researchers began exhuming dozens of graves Saturday at a former Panhandle reform school where horrific beatings have been reported in hopes of identifying the boys and learning how they died.

 

The digging and work at the site of the former Dozier Boys School will continue until Tuesday, with researchers hoping to unearth the remains of four to six boys before resuming at a later date, said Erin Kimmerle, the USF anthropologist leading the excavation.

 

After work began Saturday, relatives of one of the boys believed to be buried at the school held a private prayer at the grave sites. snipMARIANNA, Fla. (AP) — University of South Florida researchers began exhuming dozens of graves Saturday at a former Panhandle reform school where horrific beatings have been reported in hopes of identifying the boys and learning how they died.

 

The digging and work at the site of the former Dozier Boys School will continue until Tuesday, with researchers hoping to unearth the remains of four to six boys before resuming at a later date, said Erin Kimmerle, the USF anthropologist leading the excavation.

 

After work began Saturday, relatives of one of the boys believed to be buried at the school held a private prayer at the grave sites.

[pollyannaish]

May God have mercy on those poor boys! To think something like that existed even a couple of years ago is sickening! Horrible.

[Draggingtree]

Remains of 55 bodies found near former Florida reform school

 

By Bill Cotterell 15 hours ago

 

TALLAHASSEE (Reuters) - Excavations at a makeshift graveyard near a now-closed reform school in the Florida Panhandle have yielded remains of 55 bodies, almost twice the number official records say are there, the University of South Florida announced on Tuesday.

 

"This is precisely why excavation was necessary," said USF professor Erin Kimmerle, head of the research project. "The only way to truly establish the facts about the deaths and burials at the school is to follow scientific processes

[Geee]

This story still puts absolute chills up my spine, but then so does killing millions of babies as a matter of convenience.

[Draggingtree]

First of 55 bodies buried at Florida reform school identified. Researchers seek more DNA matches.

 

By Lindsey Bever August 11 at 4:13 AM

 

When the Florida School for Boys opened in 1900, it was a reform school for juveniles who had committed serious crimes such as theft, rape and murder. Soon, it became home to lesser offenders accused of incorrigibility, truancy or dependency. The school, known for brutality, became a chilling memory for many who survived and a burial ground for some who didn’t.

 

Erin Kimmerle, a forensic anthropologist at the University of South Florida, led a team last year to recover the remains of 55 bodies buried there, in Marianna, Fla., about 65 miles west of Tallahassee. A few were buried beneath crooked crosses planted years later to honor the dead.

 

Others were forgotten beneath roads and overgrown trees. Some died in fires, from physical trauma, drowning or disease such as influenza or pneumonia, according to the university’s report. However, the way in which some died is still unknown.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/08/11/first-of-55-bodies-buried-at-florida-reform-school-identified/?tid=hp_mm

[Draggingtree]

Texas researchers ID bones of boys killed at deadly reform school

By Carol Christian | September 26, 2014 | Updated: September 26, 2014 10:33pm

• 
  Photo By .
  An unidentified funeral at the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, Fla. Researchers have identified three sets of remains found in unmarked graves at the school, Sept. 26, 2014. (University of South Florida)

Texas researchers are playing a major role in the painstaking identification of bones unearthed at an infamous Florida reform school that closed in 2011.

The Missing Persons Lab at the University of North Texas Health Science Center is working with a team from the University of South Florida in Tampa to identify remains found in 55 unmarked graves on the school grounds. Excavation of the remains began in late summer 2013.

The Florida State Reform School, most recently known as the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys, opened Jan. 1, 1900, on 1,400 acres in Marianna, Fla. As early as 1901, there were reports of children being chained to walls in irons, brutal whippings and involuntary servitude, according to a report on the school's cemetery by researchers at the University of South Florida

http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/texas/article/Fort-Worth-center-helps-match-families-with-bones-5782815.php

[Draggingtree]

A new Dozier mystery

 

Michael Kruse, Times Staff Writer

Wednesday, October 8, 2014 11:53am

 

PHILADELPHIA — Thomas Curry met his death by some railroad tracks near Chattahoochee in 1925, trying to run away from the Florida School for Boys. He'd served just 29 days for delinquency at the hellish reform school snip

His body was shipped by train to his grandmother in Philadelphia, where services were held at a Catholic church, and a box was buried at the Old Cathedral Cemetery in West Philadelphia, on top of a casket that held his great grandmother.

 

With permission from officials in Pennsylvania, the University of South Florida forensic anthropologists dug down six feet to Curry's casket and found a partially intact wooden box. They found thumbscrews used to clamp shut the casket that were identical to those found in burials on the Florida reform school campus. They found a small cross, like a rosary necklace, atop the casket.

 

But inside, there was no body, no human remains.

http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/state/a-new-dozier-mystery/2201208

[Draggingtree]

Florida boys raped in ‘dungeon,’ beaten to death at Arthur G. Dozier School: report

 

Researchers investigating 51 bodies exhumed from old graves at the Arthur G. Dozier School in Marianna, Fla., released a new report this week. The reform school had a ‘rape dungeon’ where boys were abused and at least one of the boys was shot to death, investigators said. The report also identifies two more people buried in the graves — an employee and an 18-year-old boy — in addition to three who were identified previously. The rest of the bodies remain nameless.

 

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Friday, February 6, 2015, 9:28 AM

 

A new report about the bodies found at Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, Fla. detail the abuse the boys faced.

 

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — As the bodies exhumed from dozens of old graves at a shuttered Florida reform school continue to yield grudging answers to stubborn mysteries, researchers investigating the cases this week released a report on what they know so far.

 

There was the 6-year-old boy who ended up dead after being sent to work as a house boy. And another boy who escaped but was later found shot to death with a blanket pulled over his body and a shotgun across his legs. Then there was the "rape dungeon" where boys were taken and abused.

 

What the researchers have learned about decades of horrific acts carried out at the now closed Arthur G. Dozier School in Marianna is outlined in a report released by the University of South Florida as researchers continue grappling with the mystery of the graves and deaths there.

 

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www.nydailynews.com/.../report-details-deaths-abuse-horror-

[Geee]

This is so sad and disturbing. Makes me choke up.

[Valin]

There are some very sick people out there!!!

[Draggingtree]

CBS/AP August 7, 2014, 4:20 PM

Boy's remains identified from shutte

 

TAMPA, Fla. -- A boy buried in an unmarked grave at a reform school with a history of unsanitary and decrepit conditions was the first of 55 sets of remains found there to be positively identified, researchers said Thursday.

Researchers from the University of South Florida said they used DNA and other tests to identify the remains of George Owen Smith, who was 14 when he disappeared in 1940 from the now-closed school. They couldn't say how he died.

 

A large-scale exhumation effort will soon be underway at a former Florida juvenile detention facility where 96 boys died and 45 are believed to b...

 

Official records indicated 31 burials at the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys, but researchers found the remains of 55 people during a four-month excavation last year. All 55 bodies uncovered appeared to be children, a USF spokeswoman told CBS News' Crimesider at the time.

 

Researchers said Owen's body was found in a hastily-buried grave wrapped only in a burial shroud. His DNA matched a sample taken from his sister.

 

"We may never know the full circumstances of what happened to Owen or why his case was handled the way it was," Erin Kimmerle, the lead researcher and an associate anthropology professor, said in a news release. "But we do know that he now will be buried under his own name and beside family members who longed for answers."

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/55-bodies-exhumed-at-shuttered-fla-reform-school/

[Draggingtree]

In Final Report, Experts Identify Remains At Notorious Reform School

January 21, 20166:45 PM ET

Laura Wagner

 

Florida's Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys was a horror tale come to life.

 

"There's just too many stories," Roger Kiser, who was at the school in the 1950s, told NPR in 2012. "I know of one [boy] that I personally saw die in the bathtub that had been beaten half to death. I thought he'd been mauled by the dogs because I thought he had ran. I never did find out the true story on that. There was the boy I saw who was dead who came out of the dryer. They put him in one of those large dryers."

 

Closed since 2011, the reform school was located in the small panhandle town of Marianna, Fla., and served as a bleak destination for troublemakers, rule breakers and delinquents. In the 1900s, hundreds of boys were sent to the school — some never left.

 

Historical records show that nearly 100 boys ages 6 to 18 died at the school between 1900 and 1973. Many are not identified and were buried in unmarked locations.

 

Researchers from University of South Florida, led by forensic anthropologist Erin Kimmerle, have spent the past three years exhuming human remains from the school's land, ultimately discovering 51 sets of remains. The final report released Thursday says "in total, 55 burials were located ... at the former reform school."

 

It says that 13 of the graves were located in the school's cemetery and "the rest of the graves were outside this area in the woods, including under a roadway, brush, and a large mulberry tree." The researchers also announced that "seven positive DNA matches and 14 presumptive identifications have been made," noting that two of the DNA matches had not been released previously.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/01/21/463846093/in-final-report-experts-identify-remains-at-notorious-reform-school

[Draggingtree]

More bodies found than expected at the Dozier School for Boys

For more than a century, troubled boys were sent to a reform school in North Florida. Many never came home. A young professor had to fight for the truth.

BY BEN MONTGOMERY

Tampa Bay Times JANUARY, 15 ,2015

· TAMPA — There wasn't much left of the boys.

 

By the time she came for them and brought them up from the earth and spread them on tables in a basement lab on Maple Drive in Tampa, they were in hundreds of pieces, some as small as a fingernail. All that remained of some of them could fit inside a lunch box.

It took imagination to remember that they were boys once, before their childhoods ran out at the Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, before they were buried without the dignity of headstones, before they were lost to time. All 55 of them were, in the cold language of forensics, unidentified human remains.

Erin Kimmerle wanted to give them their names back.

 

She'd been working 14-hour days through January, February and March, stressing about finding time for teaching and advising on top of leading this massive project. She'd been missing her family, too. When her cell phone rang, the word BABE popped onto the screen — Mike, her husband. "Hey, babe," she'd sing, and walk out of earshot to get updates on school activities and runny noses.

 

When she started the project in 2012, her goal had been to map the cemetery on the reform school campus so that family would know where their relatives were buried. It would take a year, tops. But when ground penetrating radar showed 50 graves, 19 more than the state had said, and when families wanted the remains of their boys back, it became a mission.

 

Now she was in her third year. Now she had 55 sets of remains. Now she was trying to piece the boys back together, bone fragment by bone fragment, to figure out who they were and, she hoped, how they died.

 

She needed the bones to speak.

 

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/florida/article5427669.html#storylink=cpy