Remains of 55 bodies found near former Florida reform school

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Remains of 55 bodies found near former Florida reform school

Reuters
By Bill Cotterell Jan 28, 2014

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."

On a hillside in the rolling, tall-pine forests near the Alabama-Georgia border, a team of more than 50 searchers from nine agencies last year dug up the graves to check out local legends and family tales of boys, mostly black, who died or disappeared without explanation from the Dozier School for Boys early in the last century.

The school, infamous for accounts of brutality told by former inmates, was closed by the state in 2011.

The University of South Florida was commissioned to look into deaths at the school in the Panhandle city of Marianna, after the Florida Department of Law Enforcement announced the presence of 31 official grave sites in 2010.

Excavation began last September with bones, teeth and several artifacts from grave sites sent to the University of North Texas Science Center for DNA testing.

Members of 11 families who lost boys at Dozier have been located by the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office for DNA sampling and researchers hope to find 42 more families for possible matching.

State investigators initially located 31 suspected graves in the woods across a busy highway from the shuttered reform school. Kimmerle's more detailed probes raised the number to 50 or 51 last year, and USF announced on Tuesday the searchers had found remains of 55 bodies.

"Locating 55 burials is a significant finding, which opens up a whole new set of questions for our team," said Kimmerle.

"All of the analyses needed to answer these important questions are yet to be done, but it is our intention to answer as many of these questions as possible."

Research will continue in areas adjacent to the graveyard, dubbed "boot hill" by school officials and inmates a century ago.

Greg Ridgeway, acting director of the National Institute of Justice, praised Kimmerle's work. He said the discoveries made by the USF team "will not only bring resolution to these cases but will add to our knowledge about investigations of missing and unidentified persons in jurisdictions throughout the country."

(Editing by David Adams and Eric Walsh)

 

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Published on Jan 28, 2014

TAMPA, Fla. (Jan. 28, 2014) -- Researchers from the University of South Florida have located and excavated the remains of 55 people in a graveyard at the former Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys -- five more bodies than previous fieldwork had indicated might be there and 24 more burials than official records indicate should be there.

The team of more than 50 people from nine agencies is attempting to identify the remains, as well as any information on cause of death from those buried at the now closed reform school. Using cutting-edge scientific methods, DNA matches and advanced technology, scientists working on the nearly two-year-old project aim to identify the bodies buried at the school in Marianna, Florida, which has been the subject of repeated state and federal investigations and claims of brutality and child abuse during its 100 year history.

On Tuesday, researchers from USF updated the public on the status of the research. Associate Professor Erin Kimmerle, the project's leader, announced several key developments:

· The team recovered bones, teeth, and numerous artifacts in every one of the 55 burials. The excavation work began in September 2013 and continued through December 2013.

· Researchers will continue searching for additional unmarked burials on the school grounds, both in the areas adjacent to Boot Hill and in other areas of the school grounds. Over the next few months fieldwork will resume - including additional excavations, ground-penetrating radar analysis and the use of specially-trained K9 teams to locate burials.

· Analysis of the excavated remains is underway. Through this process, a summary report will be written for each body, including all of the information learned from skeletal and dental remains, artifacts, and burial context. Bone and tooth samples will be submitted to the University of North Texas Health Science Center for DNA testing.

· Researchers continue to work with UNT, the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs), and the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office to locate possible next of kin to collect reference samples for identification. At this point, 11 surviving families of former Dozier students have been located and the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office is in the process of collecting DNA samples from them. Researchers still hope to collect DNA from 42 more families.

A list of families for which the researchers are searching can be found here.

Anyone with information is asked to contact Hillsborough County Sheriff's Master Detective Greg Thomas at (813) 247-8678.

"Locating 55 burials is a significant finding, which opens up a whole new set of questions for our team," Kimmerle said. At this time, we know very little about the burials and the children in terms of who specifically was buried there, their ages or ancestry, as well as the timing and circumstances of their deaths.

"All of the analyses needed to answer these important questions are yet to be done. But it is our intention to and answer as many of these questions as possible," she added.

The Dozier project is funded by both the State of Florida and the National Institute of Justice.

"I am very pleased that we are playing a critical role in the forensic investigations at the former Dozier School," said Greg Ridgeway, the Acting Director of the National Institute of Justice. "The National Institute of Justice has paved the way to ever-more advanced and effective uses of forensics in solving crimes, and I am confident that the discoveries made by the USF team will not only bring resolution to these cases but will add to our knowledge about investigations of missing and unidentified persons in jurisdictions across the country."