Print Page - Grave Exhumations & Investigation at The Dozier School for Boys, Marianna, FL

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/08/07/university-researchers-get-permission-to-exhume-bodies-from-florida-reform/?intcmp=trending
Bodies to be exhumed from notorious Florida reform school for boys
August 7, 2013

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FILE: Dec. 10, 2012: White metal crosses mark graves at the cemetery of the former Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, Florida. (REUTERS)

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.

Researchers received nearly $200,000 from state legislators to begin their project later this month on the site 60 miles west of Tallahassee. The decision by the governor and others came despite opposition of some Jackson County residents who maintain the effort will result in negative publicity.

Attorney General Pam Bondi said the state needed to act.

"We have to look at our history, we have to go back," Bondi said. "We know there are unmarked graves currently on that property that deserve a proper burial. It's the right thing to do."
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John Bonner, who called some of the Dozier employees "vicious," said the university's work could help people and families get answers about what happened at the school.

"There's just so many things that could come out of this that could benefit people," said Bonner, who was at Dozier in the late '60s.

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Sid Riley, the managing editor of the weekly Jackson County Times, wrote to state officials in July, calling the plans a "terrible project."

"We have an active industrial development program and a tourist development program here. If they proceed with this terrible project, our community will be exposed to over a year of negative publicity," Riley wrote.

Riley said the groups "promoting this effort" would ultimately seek compensation and the "politicians are playing up to the minority voters."

Jackson County Commissioner Jeremy Branch said the project would continue to blemish the county and Marianna, where the school is located. He said he was confused as to what the exhumation of the bodies would discover.

"Are we trying to determine if bad things happened 100 years ago in America?" Branch said. "We know bad things happened in America."

Researchers said they have already used historical documents to discover more deaths and gravesites than what the law enforcement agency found.

Researchers said they verified the deaths of two adult staff members and 96 children — ranging in age from 6 to 18 — between 1914 and 1973.

Records indicated 45 people were buried on the 1,400-acre tract from 1914 to 1952 and 31 bodies were sent elsewhere, leaving some bodies with whereabouts unknown.

In May, a judge rejected a request to exhume bodies from what is called "Boot Hill Cemetery," saying the case did not meet the "threshold" to grant the order.

Secretary of State Ken Detzner, who reports to Scott, said in July his agency lacked the legal authority to grant a permit even though the land is state-owned. That led to a push by Bondi to get approval from the state agency that oversees state land. The agency is controlled by Scott and the Cabinet.

Documents obtained by The Associated Press show State Archaeologist Mary Glowacki in late April distributed a list of recommendations to the head of the state's Division of Historical Resources, raising questions about the project.

The list asked questions about why an entire cemetery had to be disturbed and she raised doubts about the ability of researchers to find and identify everyone buried there.

http://www.actionnewsjax.com/content/topstories/story/State-approves-USF-plan-to-exhume-bodies-at-the/3_AYNGVibkKZ00431X8qGg.cspx
State approves USF plan to exhume bodies at the Dozier School for Boys
August 6, 2013

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Tuesday, the Florida Cabinet voted to grant the exhumation permit. "Dozier has a history and we are not proud of it," said Attorney General Pam Bondi.

Last month, Action News told you how the state repeatedly denied USF researchers in their efforts to dig up the grounds at the Dozier School for Boys where there are stories of abuse and torture.

USF has been fighting to bring these bodies up from the graves at the now defunct school.

The state denials were a big concern for the Commissioner of Agriculture before the vote.

"I don't why the Department of State was unable to find the appropriate rationale two times when they applied and were denied," said Adam Putnam.
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It's the answer Roger Kiser has been waiting years to hear. The bodies beneath the crosses can finally be exhumed. The secrets he says are buried there can finally be exposed.

"I was really almost brought to tears. I've been working over 22 years for this.

The Brunswick man went to the school for boys in the 1960s. He wrote a book about the abuse he and others endured in what they called the "White House."

Researchers from USF discovered the state has no record of the bodies.

That's why they've pushed to exhume the bodies.

USF Dr. Erin Kimerle says she has always wanted one thing, to bring closure to the families.

"This is hopefully that missing piece to fill in that," Kimerle says.

But we had just one question for the attorney general. Why did it take so long?

"It's sad, isn't it. It's very sad it took this long," said Bondi. "We can't answer why it took so long but it's being dealt with now."

The permit is for one year. The exhumations will start later this month.

Researchers will also be looking to see if there are more gravesites on the property.
Video at Link

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/08/06/19899018-theyre-going-to-find-out-the-truth-florida-to-excavate-remains-of-boys-who-died-at-reform-school?lite
'They're going to find out the truth': Florida to excavate remains of boys who died at reform school
August 7, 2013

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Michael Spooneybarger / Reuters
White metal crosses mark graves at the cemetery of the former Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, Florida,

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Gov. Rick Scott and the Florida Cabinet issued a permit allowing University of South Florida anthropologists and archaeologists to begin unearthing the bodies of boys who died at the defunct Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in the panhandle city of Marianna over several decades.
The vote in Tallahassee drew a round of applause from former wards in the audience, some of whom broke down crying, according to Roger Kiser, 67, who says he was brutally attacked by administrators and staff during two stints at Dozier between 1959 and 1961.
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The state's decision was also welcome news for researchers at the University of South Florida, who have spent years pushing the state to allow them to exhume the boys' bodies.
"I was so relieved," said Erin Kimmerle, the forensic anthropologist heading up the project.
The excavations of an estimated 50 or more unmarked graves at Dozier may help investigators determine the circumstances surrounding scores of mysterious deaths, which likely transpired between 1914 and 1952, Kimmerle said.
The bodies of some of the boys recovered from grave shafts marked by rusting pipe crosses may be reburied in their hometowns, near their families and loved ones, Kimmerle said.
Kimmerle and her colleagues began researching Dozier's dark history more than two years ago, in the wake of news reports detailing disturbing allegations from aging former students and the relatives of deceased children.

Victims have alleged that the school, once one of the country’s largest reform institutions, was a veritable hellhole of savagery and degradation in which hundreds of boys were routinely bludgeoned and battered, sometimes to death, at the hands of administrators and staff.
Kiser, who said he was once beaten so mercilessly that his bloodied underwear had to be picked off his skin with tweezers, has lobbied the state government for nearly 25 years to investigate accusations of criminality at Dozier.
"When the evidence is just so overwhelming, you can't deny it anymore," Kiser said.
In "The White House Boys — An American Tragedy," a book Kiser wrote about the horrors he purportedly witnessed and experienced while incarcerated at Dozier in the 1950s, he described the school as a "concentration camp for little boys."
They’re called the White House Boys because much of the alleged abuse took place in a squalid 11-room building on the campus known as the White House.
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A group of those former students sued the state in 2010 after reports of criminal activity captured national attention in 2008. But the case was tossed out because the statute of limitations had expired.
Records had shown that 31 boys were buried on school grounds and that most of them died in a fire and an influenza outbreak at Dozier at the turn of the century.
But Kimmerle and her colleagues say they now estimate there are at least 50 grave shafts in the school’s makeshift graveyard and scattered throughout the nearby woods — 19 more than state investigators discovered during a 2009 inquiry ordered by former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist.
“There’s not going to be enough crime scene tape in the state of Florida to take care of this situation,” Jerry Cooper of Cape Coral, Fla., who says he was lashed more than 100 times during a beating at the school, told The Miami Herald on Tuesday.
Nearly two dozen former wards of the school, which was also known as the Florida State Reform School, rose to their feet, clapped and wiped tears from their eyes when Scott and the Cabinet announced their decision Tuesday.

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Kimmerle, who worked with an international forensics team to gather evidence presented in Yugoslavian war crimes trials, said that she doesn’t know how long the excavation project will take.
What's more, there may be another, secret graveyard somewhere on the grounds, given the number of still-unaccounted-for boys, Kimmerle told reporters in December 2012. African-American boys made up the majority of the school's population for much of history and may not have been buried beside white boys.
"I didn't realize going in how much of a story of civil rights it was," Kimmerle told reporters last year.
The research team used ground-penetrating radar and other techniques to map the school's graveyard and chemically analyzed the soil to identify the number of graves, nearly all of them on the north side of campus, called Boot Hill, where African-American boys were segregated.
It will involve painstaking forensic examination, identification of the remains and, in some cases, DNA testing, she said.
The state signed off on a use agreement that gives the university researchers one year to excavate the backwoods graveyard.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/06/us/florida-reform-school-exhumations/index.html
Florida lets university exhume bodies at school where boys disappeared
August 6, 2013

(CNN) -- The Florida Cabinet gave the go-ahead Tuesday for dozens of unmarked graves, buried deep in the woods near a now-defunct reform school, to be exhumed, in an attempt to return the bodies to their families.
Gov. Rick Scott along with the rest of the Florida Cabinet voted to allow University of South Florida researchers to begin exhumation at the site of the former Dozier School for Boys in the panhandle city of Marianna.
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Many of the families were present in Tallahassee at the Cabinet meeting. Attorney General Pam Bondi voted in favor of the effort.
"From the beginning, I have supported efforts at the Dozier School for Boys in order to provide family members who lost loved ones with closure," she said in a written statement.
The small cemetery dates back to the early 1900s. For years, former inmates say children who were sent to the reform school were beaten and mysteriously disappeared.
Rusting white steel crosses mark the graves of 31 unidentified former students. Using ground-penetrating radar, Kimmerle's team have located what she says appears to be 18 more remains than previously thought. All are unidentified.
State and school records show that out of nearly 100 children who died while at the school, there are no burial records for 22 of them, Kimmerle said.
"This decision puts us a step closer to finishing the investigation," said U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida. "Nothing can bring these boys back, but I'm hopeful that their families will now get the closure they deserve."
Only 10 families have been identified as having descendants who are buried here. Many are seeking to claim the bodies of their loved ones so they can be buried properly in family cemeteries. DNA has already been collected from many of them.
Glenn Varnadoe says his father, Hubert Varnadoe, and Hubert's brother, Thomas Varnadoe, were sent to Dozier for stealing. A month later, administrators allegedly woke up Hubert Varnadoe and took him to a place in the woods where men had just buried Thomas Varnadoe.
The cause of death was listed as pneumonia. Glenn Varnadoe wants his uncle's body found so his uncle can be buried properly.
"I think this is a banner day for every kid who ever went through Dozier, for the kids who are dead, buried and forgotten," he told CNN. "They will finally be remembered and given a proper burial and finally respected as human beings."
Former students said the deaths were at the hands of abusive administrators, but a 2009 state investigation determined there was no evidence of criminal activity.

In the wake of that investigation, more former students -- now senior citizens -- have come forward with stories of abuse, including alleged beatings, killings and the disappearance of students,during the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s.
"These are children who came here and died, for one reason or another, and have just been lost in the woods," Kimmerle said in an interview earlier this year. "When there's no knowledge and no information, then people will speculate and rumors will persist or questions remain."
Kimmerle, who worked on an international forensics team that amassed evidence used in Yugoslavian war crimes trials, called the Florida project a humanitarian effort for the families of the former students and for the community.
Many wonder if the tales of beating and murder are true or if anyone can be charged with any crimes.
Glenn Hess, the state attorney for Jackson County, Florida, where Marianna is located, said, "From a prosecutor's point of view, these things happened so far in the past, the probability that they're going to be able to put a probable cause with a homicide with a probable cause that somebody did it, are probably remote."

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/breakingnews/os-florida-graves-dozier-school-boys-20130806,0,3789366.story
Graves can be exhumed at notorious boys school in Panhandle, state says
August 6, 2013

TALLAHASSEE — Gov. Rick Scott and the Florida Cabinet on Tuesday authorized a year-long dig for human remains at a closed Panhandle reform school, saying the state cannot ignore abuse that went on for decades.

Scott and Cabinet members --- Attorney General Pam Bondi, Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater and Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam --- approved a land-use agreement with the Department of Environmental Protection that allows University of South Florida researchers to search for reportedly unaccounted-for bodies of boys who died between 1900 and 1952 at the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Marianna.
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Putnam said that the search for bodies is not an indictment of the Marianna or Jackson County communities, but against a facility "that was ignored for too long by state."

"There is no shame in searching for the truth," Putnam added. "Families who want closure, who want answers, deserve those things."

A temporary restraining order, issued in October 2012 by Leon County Circuit Judge John Cooper, has delayed the state's intention to sell the Dozier property.

The efforts of USF researchers have faced opposition from some longtime Jackson County residents who expressed concerns about what effect exhuming bodies from lands around the one-time "high risk" reform school will have on the local economy and the image of the community.

Sid Riley, publisher of the Jackson County Times, implored Scott on Aug. 1 to deny USF's request "to dig up those Christian buried grave sites at Dozier."

Riley expressed concern about how removing of bodies will impact the local economy and that survivors will try to use what may be found to seek "reparations" from the state.

"The bad publicity which will ensue during the year or more of time which will be involved will seriously hamper our local tourism development programs, as well as economic development efforts for our county," Riley wrote. "Please do not allow them to engage in this greed motivated waste of money."

Cooper's order allows the research work to proceed until the body of Thomas Varnadoe is exhumed.

Varnadoe died a month after arriving at the school in the 1930s. He was 13. A family member from central Florida has sought to move the remains to a family graveyard.

The researchers have been investigating the Panhandle school, which at one time encompassed 1,400 acres, to determine whether boys at the reform school were possibly killed and buried on school grounds.

Robert Strayley, 66, who was sent to the school in 1963 after running away from his home in Tampa several times, recalled that floggings were still being administered to boys at the school throughout his 10-month stay.

"This is a historic moment for Florida because they reached into a past for Florida that was so dark that nobody wants to talk about it," said Strayley, who attended the Cabinet meeting with others who had been sent to the school and are known as the "the White House Boys" and "Dozier Boys."

"Even after they banned flogging in 1922, by Gov. (Cary) Hardee, as being too cruel punishment for even the most hardened criminal, it went on at this boy's school," Strayley said.

Researchers using ground-penetrating radar have identified potential graves on what is considered the "colored" cemetery within the site and believe there should also be a "white" cemetery on the grounds.
The Legislature put $190,000 into the state budget to fund the research, determine the causes of death, identify remains, locate potential family members and cover the costs for any re-internment.

However, the excavation work has been on hold as researchers have been unable to get needed approval to dig.

On July 15, Secretary of State Ken Detzner denied a permit sought by the USF researchers to dig at the Panhandle site.

Detzner said his department's Bureau of Archaeological Research didn't have the authority to approve the excavation, noting that the department is "restricted to the recovery of objects of historical or archaeological value," but "not human remains."

In May, Jackson County Circuit Judge William L. Wright denied a request by Bondi's office that also could have cleared the way for exhuming remains.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/07/florida-exhume-remains-dozier-school
Florida to exhume remains found at notorious Dozier School for Boys
Dozens of unmarked graves found in woods near school for boys that closed in 2011 following pupils' revelations of abuse
August 7, 2013

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A team of anthropologists and archaeologists found that 45 people had been buried on school grounds between 1914 and 1952, with 31 bodies sent elsewhere for burial. There were 22 more cases in which no burial site was listed.

Of the 98 deaths they confirmed, two were adult staff members and the rest children aged from six to 18.

Many of the graves were unmarked and had been lost in the woods under brush and trees. Where causes of death could be determined the most common were infectious disease, fires, physical trauma and drowning, Erin Kimmerle, who led the investigating team, had previously found.

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Many of the victims were young black males who were sent to the reform school for seemingly minor offences such as truancy. Kimmerle's team found that pupil's deaths commonly followed escape attempts or occurred within three months of their arrival.

Dozier survivors, who call themselves the "White House Boys" – after a small outbuilding where beatings are said to have taken place – have come forward with stories of beatings, rapes and murders by staff during the 1940s, 50s and 60s. Children as young as five are said to have been chained to walls or tied to a bed and beaten.

"I know of one that I personally saw die in the bathtub that had been beaten half to death," one survivor, Roger Kiser, told NPR in an interview last year.

"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."
Another former pupil, Marshall Drawdy, told the Florida Times Union that he say bodies "burned in barrels with diesel fuel".

"This decision puts us a step closer to finishing the investigation," said US senator Bill Nelson of Florida. "Nothing can bring these boys back, but I'm hopeful that their families will now get the closure they deserve."

Researchers are hoping to begin the exhumation process later this month, CNN reported. Despite the outrage over the dozens of bodies buried at the school, with former teachers mostly long dead, no charges are expected. The investigation may, however, allow families to reclaim bodies of their loved ones so they can be buried properly.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-57597430-504083/the-search-for-the-dead-families-of-boys-who-died-at-shuttered-dozier-juvenile-detention-facility-seek-answers/
The Search for the Dead: Families of boys who died at shuttered Dozier juvenile detention facility seek answers
August 8, 2013

Editor's note: This story is the first in a four-part Web series about the former Dozier School for Boys, a shuttered Florida juvenile detention facility that garnered a lasting reputation for brutality. 96 boys died while incarcerated there, and 45 are believed to be buried at the site. As reported by the CBS Evening News, Florida officials voted this week to begin exhumations there. This is the story of the search for the dead.

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On September 21, 1934, 13-year old Thomas Varnadoe was sent to the Florida Industrial School for Boys. 35 days later, he would be dead. Varnadoe, front, is pictured here as a child. / Courtesy Glen Varnadoe

(CBS) MARIANNA, Fla. -- On an overcast January morning in the remote Florida panhandle town of Marianna, a metal Badger wrenched the rural silence with its motorized bucket, burrowing the earth in search of graves. Each shovelful of dirt thickened the air with insects as a small group of scientists from the University of South Florida looked for clues in the soil, planting orange flags where they suspected a child's body was buried beneath. CBS News had been invited to witness the search.

Thirty-one metal crosses, coated in peeling white paint, were planted a hundred yards from where forensic anthropologist Dr. Erin Kimmerle excavated for grave shafts. Erected by a local troop of Boy Scouts, the crosses served a symbolic rather than substantive purpose. Dr. Kimmerle's team was searching for what those crosses and Florida's Department of Juvenile Justice could not provide. They were looking for the exact burial sites of at least 45 boys who died and were buried on school grounds while in the state's custody.

According to state records, 96 boys died while incarcerated at the Dozier School for Boys, formerly known as the Florida State Reform School and the Florida Industrial School for Boys. Opened at the turn of the twentieth century on 1400 hundred acres west of Tallahassee, the juvenile detention facility quickly earned a lasting reputation for brutality. That legacy haunts its former inmates as well as the families of boys who died mysteriously at the school and whose bodies have yet to be found.

On Tuesday, state legislators approved a plan to let researchers excavate for human skeletal remains at the school. That means they can, for the first time, start bringing up the bones of boys buried at the school. DNA testing to match for identities will soon follow and the search for truth can begin.

THE DEAD

On September 21, 1934, 13-year old Thomas Varnadoe was sent to the Florida Industrial School for Boys, as it was then called. He and his 15-year old brother Hubert had been accused of stealing a typewriter from the back porch of a woman's house. They frequently used her yard as a shortcut home from school.

Despite their protestations of innocence and an inability to locate the stolen item, the local sheriff decided to send both boys immediately to the reform school nearly three hundred miles away. Almost eighty years later, the only evidence that remains of the boys' alleged crime is their names written in the school's inmate logbook along with their ages, parents' names and crime, "malicious trespass."

Richard Varnadoe, who was 6-years-old when his brothers became wards of the state, says having them taken away was a devastating blow to the family. "The only way I know to explain it. My mother cried for a week about that. And of course I did too. I grew up without Thomas. It wasn't easy."

And it soon got worse. Thirty-five days after being admitted to the Florida Industrial School for Boys, Thomas was dead.

"I know that we only got a letter from the school up there that he was dead and had been buried. And all that had happened without even notifying the family. Something wrong with that picture," Richard recalls.

The death certificate cited cause of death as pneumonia.

"I don't believe that. I've got no way of proving anything. No way. But that doesn't alter the fact that I don't believe it. He was healthy when he left home. I can vouch for that."

Hubert, the brother sent to Marianna with Thomas, never spoke of what happened at the school for fear he would be sent back. When Hubert died years later, his son, Glen, decided to bring home the body of the uncle he never met. But when Glen went to the school and requested an exhumation the school came back with an answer he never expected. They had no record of where his uncle was buried.

The school couldn't tell Ovell Krell Smith, a retired Lakeland police officer, where her brother was buried either. In the summer of 1940, Ovell's 14-year old brother, Owen Smith, was sent to the Florida Industrial School for Boys accused of wrecking a stolen car.

Shortly after arriving at the school, Owen tried to escape but was captured. In a letter home to his family, Owen said upon his return that he "got what was coming to him." Despite the threat of further punishment, Owen escaped from the school again in December 1940 with another boy. Only this time, Owen was never seen alive again.

On January 1, 1941 the school's superintendent, Millard Davidson, sent a letter to Owen's parents. It read, "...so far, we have not been able to get any information concerning his whereabouts."

Owen's mother replied to the school announcing intentions to travel to Marianna in search of her son. As the family prepared to travel north, they received further communiqué from the school. A telephone call alerting them that Owen's body had been found underneath a home in a residential area, miles from school property.

School officials said Owen's body was so badly decomposed they couldn't determine cause of death, but suspected he had perished from the cold. Owen's family didn't believe them.

"The boy who ran away with Owen said the last time he saw Owen, guards were shooting at him as he ran across a field," Ovell Krell Smith told CBS News.

The family asked that Owen's body be taken to a local mortuary where they would collect his remains. But when 11-year old Ovell and her parents arrived in Marianna, school employees pointed to a plot of recently disturbed soil as the site of Owen's final resting place.

The rector of a nearby Episcopal Church later wrote to the Smith family, consoling them with the knowledge that he had performed the burial service for their son. In his letter V.G. Lowery wrote, "It was in the Burial Plot of the School, that is kept nicely cleaned and cared for, and will be looked after in the years to come."

That letter is the only proof that Owen's body was buried in Marianna. In fact, it's the only proof that he died at all. According to Ovell, she's been unable to get a death certificate for Owen, not even the Bureau of Vital Statistics has a record of him dying.
More...

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-57597677-504083/the-search-for-the-dead-former-inmates-at-shuttered-dozier-juvenile-detention-facility-detail-alleged-abuse/
The Search for the Dead: Former inmates at shuttered Dozier juvenile detention facility detail alleged abuse
August 9, 2013

Editor's note: This story is the second in a four-part Web series about the former Dozier School for Boys, a shuttered Florida juvenile detention facility that garnered a lasting reputation for brutality. 96 boys died while incarcerated there, and at least 45 are believed to be buried at the site. As reported by the CBS Evening News, Florida officials voted this week to begin exhumations there. This is the story of the search for the dead.

(http://i.imgur.com/CZitmE3.jpg)
A historic photo of the Florida Industrial School for Boys, later known as the Dozier School for Boys, in an undated photo between 1940 and 1959. / State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory

A TAINTED HISTORY

(CBS) MARIANNA, Fla. -- Nearly from the date of its opening in January 1900 to its eventual close in 2011, the boys' school was plagued by scandal. Investigators discovered boys in shackles at the facility in 1903. In 1914, six boys died trapped inside a burning dormitory while school administrators were in town on a "pleasure bent." And in the 1920s boys from the reform school were being rented out by the school to work with state convicts.

One thing state investigators who came calling in Marianna always seemed to find was evidence of physical abuse against the students. Reports of beatings with a leather strap attached to a wooden handle were legendary at the school. So was a little building off to the side of the dining hall where all the beatings allegedly took place -- a small stucco building that would come to be known as the White House.

Multiple accounts describe the White House as a 20 by 10 foot building with two rooms: one for weigh in and the other for the beatings. The latter contained only a cot. Boys were told to lie face down on the mattress and grab the head rail to keep from moving. Other boys waited outside in line for their beatings.

Donald Stratton was 13 years old when he was sent to Marianna in 1958. He described that cot in a sworn affidavit in 2010. "I was made to lie on a cot with my face in a pillow. The pillow was covered with vomit, blood and bits of tongue."

William A. Haynes, 14, arrived the same year as Stratton. Years later, he described the effects of the 45 licks with a leather strap he received on his first trip to the White House. "As I left, my buttocks had become numb, but I could feel blood running down my legs. I was taken back to the cottage and allowed to shower. My back side was black and bloody and pieces of my undershorts were embedded in my skin."

Haynes, who would later be employed by the Alabama Department of Corrections for thirty years, received 100 licks the next time he wound up in the White House.

Some staff members became concerned about the abuse. On March 4, 1958, a psychologist named Dr. Eugene Byrd who worked at the Florida School for Boys for a year gave testimony during a U.S. Congressional hearing.

Byrd had received so many complaints about what was happening in the White House, he asked permission to witness one of the beatings.

"The blows are very severe," he said in recorded testimony. "They are dealt with a great deal of force with a full arm swing over his head and down, with a strap, a leather strap approximately a half inch thick and about 10 inches long with a wooden formed handle. Each boy received a minimum of 15."

He later added, "In my personal opinion it is brutality."

Marvin Floyd worked as a cottage father, overseeing the living quarters of 60 boys at the school from 1961 to 1963. He told CBS News, "It was standard everyday. Everyday, someone was going to the White House."
More...

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-57597861-504083/the-search-for-the-dead-victims-of-alleged-abuse-at-shuttered-dozier-juvenile-detention-facility-push-for-justice/
The Search for the Dead: Victims of alleged abuse at shuttered Dozier juvenile detention facility push for justice
August 12, 2013

Editor's note: This story is the third in a four-part Web series about the former Dozier School for Boys, a shuttered Florida juvenile detention facility that garnered a lasting reputation for brutality. 96 boys died while incarcerated there, and at least 45 are believed to be buried at the site. As reported by the CBS Evening News, Florida officials voted this week to begin exhumations there.

THE WHITE HOUSE BOYS

(CBS) MARIANNA, Fla. -- Long after leaving the Marianna reform school behind, the men who'd been sent to the White House as boys speak of a common memory. Images of a blood stained cot where they were made to lie down for their beatings. A head rail they had to grab to keep from moving. The sound of a leather whip slicing through the air. Then, the pain

In a 2009 article for the Tampa Bay Times, Ben Montgomery wrote that boys aged 5 to 20 sent to Marianna "...went in damaged and came out destroyed."

A substantial number of former child inmates went on to become adult criminals. Others turned to alcohol and substance abuse. A lot of boys left the school, scarred.

Robert Straley was sent to Marianna in 1963 for running away from an abusive home. He was 13 years old. Straley says during his time at the Dozier School for Boys he suffered regular beatings at the hands of guards, abuse that haunted him in the form of recurring nightmares in later life.

"I was always walking down steps into darkness and in my dream it became larger than life, the walls beating like Poe's Tell Tale Heart, stairs becoming stone, winding down and ever down towards something that gleamed red in the dark. It lay waiting at the bottom. Something so terrible that I would surely go mad if I came to it face to face," Straley wrote.

Finally, after 48 years of silence, Straley decided to share his story with a friend. She did some research which led Straley to other boys who had memories of similar abuse. They decided to bring their truths to light. They named themselves the White House Boys.

In the late 2000s the newly formed group contacted the Director of Residential Facilities at the Department of Juvenile Justice, a man named Gus Barreiro. Coincidentally, Barreiro had recently been assigned the task of finding out what was going on at the Dozier School for Boys due to new allegations of physical abuse.

After visiting the school and hearing the White House Boy's stories, Barreiro convinced the Department of Juvenile Justice to pay the group tribute at the site of their alleged former torture.

On October 21, 2008, the White House Boys assembled at the school. Outside the White House, a plaque was erected. It read, "In memory of the children who passed these doors, we acknowledge their tribulations and offer our hope that they have found some measure of peace. May this building stand as a reminder of the need to remain vigilant in protecting our children as we help them seek a brighter future."

The plaque has since been taken down. When CBS News visited in January 2013 a patch of discolored paint to the left of the front door, marks where it used to be.

Governor Charlie Crist learned of the White House Boy's plight and, in December 2008, demanded that the Florida Department of Law Enforcement open an investigation into the allegations of abuse.

The following month, on January 22, 2009, the White House Boys filed a class action lawsuit against Florida's Departments of Children and Family Services, Juvenile Justice and Corrections. The lawsuit also named one individual, a one-armed man who worked at the school form May 1943 to 1982 and was feared by all the students who reported abuse -- Troy Tidwell.

Much to Straley's surprise, Tidwell was still alive and living in Jackson County. On May 21, 2009 he was deposed.

Tidwell said when he first started working at the school they punished boys using a board but soon switched to a strap that was designed after a razor strap at the barbers.

"I spanked children when I was there, when I was told to," Tidwell said in his deposition. "I didn't like the job spanking boys, but it wasn't my rule. I just did what I was told to do or asked to do."

"The years that I worked at that school I tried to be as fair as I could to those kids and I would want anybody working with mine in a school like that to be the same," Tidwell testified.

The lawsuit against Tidwell and the state was dismissed in 2010 because the statute of limitations on the alleged crimes had run out decades ago. Legal precedents also stated that claimants could not receive damages for constitutional rights violations.

::snipping3::

Attorneys for the White House Boys say it's not a matter of it happened, rather what they can do about it now.

"It's not a matter of proving that this happened...we can prove that. It's getting the opportunity to present it that's key," said Greg Hoag of the Masterson Law Group in St. Petersburg, FL.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-57598268-504083/the-search-for-the-dead-exhumation-of-bodies-set-to-begin-at-shuttered-dozier-juvenile-detention-facility/
The Search for the Dead: Exhumation of bodies set to begin at shuttered Dozier juvenile detention facility
August 12, 2013

Editor's note: This story is the final installment in a four-part Web series about the former Dozier School for Boys, a shuttered Florida juvenile detention facility that garnered a lasting reputation for brutality. 96 boys died while incarcerated there, and at least 50 are believed to be buried at the site. As reported by the CBS Evening News, Florida officials voted this week to begin exhumations there.

THE QUEST FOR EXHUMATIONS

(CBS) MARIANNA, Fla. -- Dr. Erin Kimmerle first learned of the Marianna boy's school by reading a local newspaper article in 2011. Later, after meeting the article's author, Ben Montgomery, White House Boy Robert Straley and Ovell Krell Smith, Dr. Kimmerle was struck by the similarities to many of the international cases she had worked on as a forensic anthropologist.

That same year, through the University of South Florida, Dr. Kimmerle applied for and was granted a permit to conduct archaeological research at the Dozier School for Boys. Working alongside Dr. Richard Estabrook and the Florida Public Archaeological Network, the team's stated mission was to determine the number, location and identity of graves buried in an area of the school known as the Boot Hill Cemetery.

The project was led by Dr. Kimmerle, whose resume includes the role of chief anthropologist for the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in 2001 and work with a Peruvian team in 2008 exhuming the bodies of men, women and children from a mass grave in the small hamlet of Putis. She has also worked with the state of Florida on more than 90 unsolved cold case homicides.

After extensive archival research and interviews with former students and employees, the team determined that a minimum of 98 people, including boys aged 6 to 18 years old and two adults, died at the school between 1914 and 1973. They also discovered that seven of those boys died following escape attempts from the school and that 20 died within three months of being sent to the school.

Dr. Kimmerle also learned that on multiple occasions, school officials did not report deaths to the state, have a physician certify death or include all of the deaths in public reports and state investigations.

Through the use of ground penetrating radar in the field, the team found what appear to be the grave shafts of at least 50 unmarked burial sites.
"At a minimum what we're trying to do is find and identify the graves and mark them," Kimmerle told us in January, adding, "I don't want to just leave and see the woods grow back over the burials and the work that we've done."
More...

Video at Link

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/08/31/20273510-human-bones-found-in-dig-at-notorious-dozier-reform-school-in-florida
Human bones found in dig at notorious Dozier reform school in Florida
August 31, 2013

MARIANNA, Fla. - Teams of searchers recovered human bones from the sands of Florida Panhandle woodlands on Saturday in a "boot hill" graveyard where juveniles who disappeared from a notorious reform school more than a half-century ago are believed to have been secretly buried.
"We have found evidence of burial hardware - hinges on coffins," said Dr. Christian Wells, an anthropologist from the University of South Florida, in a briefing about a mile from the closed excavation site near the former Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys.
"There appear to be a few pieces associated with burial shrouds, and there are pins consistent with the 1920s and 1930s, - based on the style of the pins - and they appear to be brass," he said.
Some "large-bone fragments" were found on the first day of digging, Wells said. They were human bones, he added, but it was impossible to know if they came from any of the teenaged boys who were housed at Dozier during its infamous 111-year existence. The school was closed in mid-2011.
The bones will be examined in laboratories at the University of South Florida and the University of North Texas, as part of a program funded by the U.S. Department of Justice and state of Florida.
After forensic investigators, using ground-piercing radar and old public records, detected 31 spots showing possible human remains, researchers planted crude white crosses on a nearby hillside to commemorate the unaccounted-for boys.

::snipping3::

The forensic teams will work through Tuesday. Remains that can be identified will be re-interred at family plots and any unidentified remains will be numbered and buried - with records kept for later return to families, if any come forward.

http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/stateroundup/human-remains-found-in-shallow-hole-at-dozier-school/2139448
Human remains found in shallow hole at Dozier school
August 31, 2013

MARIANNA — At sunup Saturday, in a clearing surrounded by kudzu-heavy woods on the campus of a brutal reform school, a team of researchers carefully began digging holes around a little clandestine cemetery, hoping the red dirt would give up its secrets.

They were searching for the remains of young wards of the Dozier School for Boys, who died in state custody and were buried without the dignity of a permanent marker.
::snipping3::
The team of about 20 anthropologists, archaeologists, police detectives and graduate students say their fieldwork on this inaugural trip will end Tuesday, but they plan to return later for several more weeks of work. The first day "went very well, as we expected," Kimmerle said. "It's a very slow process and we wanted to start out using very traditional archaeological methods to control the context."

By sundown, they had opened three large holes, slowly digging deeper into the red clay and darker patches of mottled earth, which indicate burial shafts. They sifted the dirt for coffin nails, burial furniture and other artifacts that might add context.

Across Pennsylvania Avenue, on what was the white side of campus before integration, a group of older men stood before a tall chain-linked fence topped with razor wire. They call themselves the Black Boys of Dozier and the White House Boys, and they're the impetus for the archaeological work.

In 2008, after decades of silence, a group of them went public with stories of physical and sexual abuse in the 1950s and 1960s at the school, then called the Florida School for Boys or the Florida Industrial School. As their numbers grew into the hundreds, stories surfaced of classmates who disappeared and of ruthless guards who beat them bloody in a squat building on campus called the White House. The men felt insulted when the Florida Department of Law Enforcement in 2009 found no evidence of foul play and didn't use ground penetrating radar to map the graveyard. Using GPR two years later, USF found 50 possible grave shafts, 19 more than the FDLE found.

The men came Saturday to show solidarity, and to bear witness.

Among them stood Tananarive Due, an author and professor from Atlanta. Her great uncle, Robert Stephens, died at the school in 1937. School records say he was killed by another student, but the family has heard conflicting stories. They want to learn what happened to him, and to rebury his remains at the family plot in Quincy.

"That would be a great sense of homecoming," she said.

She and her family drove to the little cemetery and stood among the crosses as pastor Ronald Mizer, from the local St. James AME Church, prayed with them.

"We're not here to castigate the state of Florida, but it was important to me to be here so that my grandson could understand," said her father, John Due, a lawyer, who draped his arm over the 9-year-old grandson's shoulder. "So that we could resolve some of the bitterness."

"Thank you all for your good work," Tananarive Due told the researchers.

"Thank you for keeping the story alive," her father said.

The Dues and the families of six other boys who died here have submitted DNA samples to help identify remains. They were happy the project was approved by the Florida Cabinet last month, after several challenges.

Some Jackson County residents, led mostly by amateur historian Dale Cox, have been upset by the project and have tried to stop it. Cox only recently quit his campaign to halt the exhumations. Local politicians say they're worried the media coverage of the exhumations will reflect poorly on rural Jackson County and on Marianna, "the City of Southern Charm," population 9,000.

But many here have been welcoming. Deputies from the Jackson County Sheriff's Office are providing security at the site. The Marianna police chief drove out to see if the researchers needed anything. One woman approached the group at a Mexican restaurant on Friday evening.

"Are you the folks doing the exhumations?" she whispered. "I hope you find the truth."

Jan Poller, who has lived in Marianna since 1983, drove to the site Saturday morning and introduced herself to a USF representative. She said she wanted to thank the team.

"I know you got a lot of negative responses, but this is something that needs to be resolved," she said. "If you had a relative missing all these years, you'd want to know what happened."

http://www.tallahassee.com/viewart/20130901/NEWS01/309010023/Town-tight-lipped-about-publicity-old-wound-
Town tight-lipped about publicity on 'old wound'
August 31, 2013

MARIANNA — As university researchers dig into an unsavory chapter of Marianna’s past, many in the rural Panhandle community would simply prefer the issue remain buried.

With the name of the city repeatedly associated with news reports about decades of questionable deaths at the former state-run Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys, many in downtown Marianna on Thursday preferred to remain tight-lipped about the excavation of unmarked graves that began Saturday.

At Florida Land Title, an employee noted he served on a number of local boards as a reason not to publicly discuss how the coverage and research is impacting the city. Meanwhile, a worker at ERA Chipola Realty in Marianna declined to comment, saying the firm’s “clientele is the community, and we try not to choose sides on things that could be political.”

Those willing to speak called the work — approved by Gov. Rick Scott and the Florida Cabinet — a waste of taxpayer money, with one saying the effort by University of South Florida researchers is to “make a reputation and make money.”

When asked about the excavation, long-time Marianna resident Ken Stoutamire summed up his feelings by saying he had “disgust” with the government for allowing the dig to proceed.

“I don’t know of anybody who approves of it around here,” said Stoutamire, whose family has been farming in the Panhandle since before Florida achieved statehood. “It doesn’t reflect good on Marianna. There is just Marianna and the boy’s school. The association is hurting us. And we need them to get out of here.”

Marianna resident Bill Hopkins said the excavation is “dragging up an old wound.”

“I haven’t heard anybody saying that just because this is happening out here I’m not going to stop here, but it’s just a shadow over our community that we don’t need,” said Hopkins, a World War II veteran who has lived in the city of just more than 6,000 for 43 years.
::snipping3::

The university researchers, led by Erin Kimmerle and Christian Wells, have a one-year window to search the grounds for reportedly unaccounted-for bodies of boys who died between 1900 and 1952.

“The lady (researcher) had the best of intentions, that’s my gut feeling, but she probably didn’t know the lay of the land before she got into it,” said Jesse Smallwood a retiree who moved from Melbourne to Marianna two years ago as a less-expensive place to take care of his wife. “They’ll do a lot of digging but not get much done from it.”

http://www.pnj.com/viewart/20130903/NEWS02/130903014/First-phase-grave-excavations-former-Dozier-School-Boys-complete
First phase of grave excavations at former Dozier School for Boys complete
September 3, 2013

MARIANNA — Researchers unearthed the remains of two children buried at a former reform school that had a history of extreme abuse, and the bones will be analyzed in hopes of identifying the children and determining how they died, the anthropologist leading the excavation said Tuesday.

Based on the size of the remains, the children probably were between the ages of 10 and 13 when they died, said Erin Kimmerle, the University of South Florida professor who is heading the project to exhume an estimated 50 graves.

The remains were buried close to each other, but one had a very elaborate coffin and the other was plain, Kimmerle said. The coffins were different sizes and one was found a little less than 1.5 feet below the surface and the other more than 2.5 feet below the ground.

"It probably reflects a very different period in time and different people involved in the burial," she said.
::snipping3::
On Tuesday, researchers were restoring the area they dug. The remains will be brought to Tampa, where they'll be studied.

DNA from the remains will be sent to the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification for analysis. The hope is that it can be matched to relatives. Ten families have contacted researchers in hopes of identifying relatives that might be buried at Dozier.

Based on the art deco style of the more elaborate coffin, Kimmerle said she believes it was made sometime after the 1930s. Shroud pins were found with the remains, meaning the child was wrapped in a shroud before he was buried. Buttons were found with the other set of remains. There wasn't enough information to estimate when that child was buried.

The team will return to the area in the fall to excavate the other graves. The four days of work was done in part to work out logistics on how to complete the project.

Families of any children identified through the research will be able to claim the remains and bury them in family plots. Files will be kept of any unidentified remains and they will be reinterred where they were found.

USF will also look for any other areas where people might be buried.

"We have some additional areas that we're interested in searching and winter months are best because if you're checking out in the woods you don't want the vegetation," Kimmerle said.

http://www.firstcoastnews.com/topstories/article/326466/483/Remains-of-two-boys-exhumed-at-controversial-Dozier-School-for-Boys
Remains of two boys exhumed at controversial Dozier School for Boys
September 3, 2013

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- The first phase of exhuming bodies from the former Dozier School for Boys has wrapped up following four days of excavation work by University of South Florida researchers in Marianna.

The USF team led by Professor Erin Kimmerle focused this past weekend on exhuming the remains of two boys located deep in the woods on the property of the reform school formerly operated by the state of Florida.

Dr. Kimmerle says a preliminary analysis of the boys' dental remains indicates they were between the ages of 10 and 13.

Now the skeletal and dental remains are heading to a secure facility at USF where they will be analyzed. DNA samples will be sent to the University of North Texas to try to find a match with families.

Kimmerle says that's the main goal of this mission -- reunite families with the remains of their loved ones.
::snipping3::
So far, 10 families have submitted DNA samples in the hopes they can find a long lost relative.

Kimmerle says the condition of the remains is good, but it's too early to know how the boys died.

The two burials are quite different even though they are close to each other in the area known as Boot Hill Cemetery.

Kimmerle says one of the coffins has very extensive and elaborate hardware, while the other has none. One was buried about 80 centimeters down, while the other was only in a shallow grave of about 40 centimeters below the surface.

"So it probably reflects very different periods of time and different people involved in the burial."

The unmarked graves are located about 40 meters from an area marked with 31 white, metal crosses. Those crosses were placed years after burials and have no correlation to the location of bodies in the cemetery.

But Kimmerle says the excavated graves had been covered by thick brush and the roots caused a lot of damage.

"We see a lot of roots into the graves and root damage with the remains and that compromised them. So they were literally lost in the woods."

The team of USF anthropologists limited their work to the two bodies in this first phase because they wanted to test their equipment and protocols for future work.

They were surprised to discover the water table was so high, even on the hill where they believe about 50 boys were buried between 1900 and 1960.

It's unclear who is buried in the area around the old Boot Hill Cemetery and how they died.
::snipping3::
Kimmerle says the team of about 25 USF researchers will return to the property later this fall to excavate more bodies. The timing will depend on the weather.

If September is dry, she says they'll be back in October. But if it's wet, the work may be delayed until November.

They have one year to complete their work under rules set by Gov. Rick Scott and the Florida Cabinet.

Kimmerle says she thinks that will be enough time.

"We want to get it done in a year. We're very focused on that so I think if we find what we expect, we'll be able to hit that. If there's something unexpected, then who knows."
::snipping3::
Kimmerle is making a point of thanking local residents for the support they've expressed in the team's work. She says residents are writing letters and verbally expressing their support for the work now under way at the old Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys, which operated from 1900 to 2011.

Photo slide show at link.

http://www.wctv.tv/home/headlines/Local-Man-Speaks-Out-About-His-Experience-at-Dozier-School-For-Boys--222115331.html
Local Man Speaks Out On Dozier School Experience
September 2, 2013

::snipping3::

Herbert Alexander attended Dozier School for Boys in 1962 and again in '63. He explained one of his experiences, "It's a white building but inside they got a bed and they got leather beside the wall and you lay on that bed and hold that bed and that's where they beat you down."

Herbert Alexander says he was sent to the Dozier School for Boys, and beat during his time there explaining, "So they beat you straight, some of them they couldn't beat straight. Some of them don't last."

The 67-year old was sent to the school twice. He says his time there made him who he is today-- a decorated and proud war veteran. Still, he says there's a dark cloud he cannot erase; "Those crosses that were up there, back then looked like toothpicks. You know they were little sticks with a cross and we would sit up there and think how are these boys going to get home."

That memory encouraged him to contact the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, in hope the families of those boys will find closure. FDLE's investigative findings stated "interviews confirmed... administrators used corporal punishment as a tool to encourage obedience."

Alexander says, "These boys that were left up there they weren't gonna never leave. So now I feel good about it that they taking the bodies and finally taking them home to wherever they came from."

Crews started excavating on the grounds Sunday. Anthropologists believe 19 more bodies-- on top of the 31 believed to be there-- are buried on the grounds. The bodies of 22 others still have not been accounted for.

Video at Link

http://www.wfaa.com/news/local/tarrant/Fort-Worth-center-will-help-ID-boys-with-no-names-224347501.html
Fort Worth center will help ID boys with no names
September 18, 2013

(http://i.imgur.com/15u68rx.jpg)
Boys with no name Credit: CNN
The UNT Health Science Center in Fort Worth will attempt to identify skeletal remains found buried on the campus of the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Florida.

FORT WORTH — The University of North Texas Health Science Center in Fort Worth is working to identify skeletal remains found buried on the grounds of a Florida reform school.
The Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys opened in 1900 and closed its doors two years ago.
“There have been allegations of abuse of the boys, and possibly even boys that were claimed to have run away but were never heard from,” said Arthur Eisenberg, Ph.D., chairman of Forensic and Investigative Genetics at the UNT facility. “They never returned to their families. They just disappeared.”
The center teamed up with the University of South Florida to identify the remains. The USF team started digging on the school lot Labor Day weekend. Two coffins with remains inside were found and the digging continues.
Eisenberg’s team will be in charge of DNA testing and analysis.
“You have to get whatever DNA is left in the remains, but then you need to compare the bones to samples, family reference samples,” Dr. Eisenberg explained.
At least ten families provided DNA samples. According to the center, the remains are expected to arrive later this year.
“We need those remains to be compared to close relatives who may still be alive,” Eisenberg said.
It’s the unknown and the pain that families have to live with every day that drives him.
::snipping3::

(http://i.imgur.com/UDNwPtC.jpg)
Boys with no name Credit: CNN

(http://i.imgur.com/VFqLHeS.jpg)
Boys with no name Credit: CNN

(http://i.imgur.com/FyGdB42.jpg)
Boys with no name Credit: CNN

http://www.dallasnews.com/news/metro/20131005-unt-sleuths-to-help-florida-identify-remains-from-boys-reform-school.ece
UNT sleuths to help Florida identify remains from boys’ reform school
October 5, 2013

::snipping3::

At least 96 boys, the youngest 6 years old, and two adults died between 1914 and 1973 at Florida’s school for troubled boys (eventually called the Arthur G. Dozier School) investigations have found.
But old ledgers are a jumble, grave markers are misplaced and 22 known deaths have no recorded burials. Forensic anthropologists from the University of South Florida needed ground-penetrating radar to find the remains — in the school cemetery and the woods.
After exhumation and analysis, bones will be sent to Fort Worth, to the Center for Human Identification at the University of North Texas Health Science Center. So will DNA samples from as many living relatives as can be found.
“Who’s alive?” asked center co-director Arthur Eisenberg. “Who may be related to that missing boy from the 1950s — or the 1930s?”
Eisenberg’s hope: to turn bones back into boys.
•
“Incorrigible children [should] be sent, without conviction, for an indefinite period, leaving the term to be fixed by the management.” — School head W.H. Milton, 1903
•
Opened in 1900, the north Florida school soon needed more boys and income. Florida sent more young criminals, rebellious teens and sinless orphans.
Disease, accidents or murder; escape and disappearance; escape and violent death came to some.
Finding the missing and restoring names to the unknown dead is nationwide work. Yet only a few institutions and people specialize in it.
DNA expert Rhonda Roby is an associate professor at the UNT Health Science Center. She has helped identify U.S. servicemen and servicewomen, Branch Davidians, the Romanovs and victims of the 9/11 attacks, airplane crashes and murders.
Eisenberg, also a DNA expert, worked on 9/11 and advises police worldwide.
In Fort Worth, the center’s missing persons unit extracts DNA from remains. At UNT in Denton, the center’s forensic anthropologists examine bones for age, sex, race and cause of death.
The University of South Florida in Tampa is doing the forensic anthropology before DNA tests in Fort Worth. The Justice Department’s National Institute of Justice is paying for forensics and DNA work.
USF forensics leader Erin H. Kimmerle and colleagues pressed for the Dozier School exhumation. She has investigated genocide, war crimes and other human-rights cases.
•
“We found them in irons, just as common criminals. … It is nothing more nor less than a prison where juveniles are confined.” — Legislative committee, 1903
•
Dozier bones might reveal homegrown abuses and the legacy of Jim Crow. White and black boys ate, slept and were buried apart.
•
“[The black section] impressed your committee as being more in the nature of a convict camp, than anything else we can think of.” — Legislative committee, 1911
•
In 1911 came the first recorded death: “unknown colored boy,” no name, cause of death or gravesite.
Bones come to Fort Worth from around the country; the most recent Cut Day, held every other Tuesday, handled 30 cases: Michigan, Arkansas, elsewhere. Dozier bones haven’t been sent yet.
Most arrive by standard delivery, said missing-persons unit technical leader Dixie Peters, who, like most of the technicians, earned her master’s degree at the UNT Health Science Center. Some agencies deliver in person; in 2011, a Chicago officer flew down with nameless remains of eight boys killed by John Wayne Gacy.
Remains are criminal evidence, photographed, given ID numbers and locked away until Cut Day.
Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi has ruled out prosecutions in the Dozier cases, saying any guilty parties are dead. The UNT Health Science Center will use standard care anyway.
Bones are washed with bleach, with water numerous times, then with ethanol. Once cut, small pieces go into cylinders for freezing and pulverizing into powder.
The powder goes into a separate room where automated equipment extracts the DNA. Reference samples from family members get analyzed, too.
DNA results go into CODIS, a nationwide DNA database limited to official use, and NamUs, a public federal missing-persons system managed by the UNT Health Science Center.
It’s not known what trauma Dozier bones might yield.
•
“Dormitories of industrial school burned last night. Ten lives lost. Among the dead was your son, Joe Wetherbee. Bodies charred beyond identification. Will be buried here. Greatest sympathy to family.” — Telegram to a mother from acting Superintendent W.H. Bell, 1914
•
Bones might reveal daily life.
•
“Thirty five cases of pneumonia … boys lying under wool blankets, naked. With dirty husk mattresses on the cement floor … filth, body lice … [Black boys’ dinner] was hoe cake and bacon grease thickened with flour. The dinner of the white boys was rice and bacon grease gravy.
“One boy said he was flogged for refusing to cook peas full of worms and that meat sent to the boys was kept until spoiled and then fed [to] them and they were all sick.” — Dr. G.W. Klock, state inspector, 1918
•
Or they might reveal the fates of those who fled.
•
“Skull crushed from an unknown cause … date of birth … birthplace … father … mother [all] unknown.” — Death certificate of Thomas E. Curry, 15, sentenced indefinitely for delinquency; escaped 29 days later; killed on a bridge, 1925
•
Dozier married incarceration and child labor. Boys worked at a farm, a dairy, a brick factory or a plant that did state printing “at a savings to the taxpayers,” a superintendent wrote in 1926.
•
“A sad occurrence of Tuesday, January 5, was the death of Lee Smith, fifteen year old colored boy [trapped between two hitched mules]. … This marks the first serious accident in the school in many years and is regretted very much.” — The Yellow Jacket (school newspaper), 1932
•
Parents sometimes got different stories.
•
“[Superintendent Millard Davidson] told me how troubled he was about this untimely end to George’s life. … [Services were] in the Burial Plot of the School, that is kept nicely cleaned and cared for, and will be looked after in the years to come. So please know your son’s last rites were tenderly and considerately performed.” — The Rev. V.G. Lowery, letter to the mother of George Owen Smith, 14, found dead under a house two months after his second escape, 1941
•
George’s sister recalled otherwise.
•
“[Davidson] told us he did not receive any call from the minister and so my brother had been buried the afternoon before our arrival … within hours of his being found. We learned that he had not even been embalmed — no casket NOTHING. We were shown a fresh pile of dirt in a cemetery and were told that was where my brother was buried. …
“[Another boy] said the last thing he heard or saw were two or three guards shooting at my brother. I have always felt that he was shot and killed that night and had been buried to cover up that fact.” — Ovell Krell, George Owen Smith’s sister, letter to the Florida Division of Law Enforcement, 2008
•
Mitochondrial DNA, passed from mothers, could allow identification through any relative with the same mother or maternal grandmother as a Dozier boy. More recent cases might increase the chance of finding relatives. Even into more modern times, Dozier was dangerous.
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“Boys volunteer for beatings to work way out of Marianna school … Brutality count to be aired … State board to meet on boy-beating … Hell’s 1400 acres … Spare the Rod.” — Newspaper headlines, 1957-58
“Gun shot wounds in chest: inflicted by person or persons unknown.” — Death certificate of Robert Jerald Hewett, 16, escaped 11 days after arrival; found dead of a shotgun blast two days later, 1960.
•
Unknown. Joe. Thomas. Lee. George. Robert. The rest. Some have families waiting to know; others are waiting for families to come forward.
::snipping3::

Slide show with 4 images at link.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/remains-excavated-fla-reform-school-yard-22266126
More Remains Excavated at Fla. Reform School Yard
January 28, 2014

The remains of 55 people have been unearthed from a graveyard at a former reform school with a history of abuse, researchers said Tuesday.

University of South Florida researchers began excavating the graveyard at the now-closed Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in September. The dig finished in December.

Official records indicated 31 burials at the Marianna site, but researchers had estimated there would be about 50 graves.

All the bodies found were interred in coffins either made at the school or bought from manufacturers, said Erin Kimmerle, a forensic anthropologist leading the university's investigation. Some were found under roads or overgrown trees, well away from the white, metal crosses marking the 31 officially recorded graves.

Now, researchers will try to identify the remains and determine the causes of death. The bodies were buried sometime between the late 1920s and early 1950s, researchers said.

"We know very little about those who are buried," Kimmerle said.

They found buttons, a stone marble in a boy's pocket and hardware from coffins. Researchers recovered thousands of nails and a brass plate that read, "At rest," likely from a coffin lid.

DNA from the remains will be sent to the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification for analysis. Twelve families have contacted researchers in the hopes of identifying relatives that might have been buried at the school, and officials hope dozens of other families will come forward and provide DNA samples to compare with the remains.
::snipping3::
Another dig is scheduled next month. Nearby residents and former employees and inmates at the northwest Florida school are helping investigators determine other potential burial sites, Kimmerle said.

Video at Link

http://www.wfaa.com/news/local/North-Texas-team-to-identify-bodies-exhumed-from-Florida-boys-school-242475491.html

North Texas team to identify bodies exhumed at Florida boys school

by DAVID SCHECHTER
Bio | Email | Follow: @davidschechter

WFAA

Posted on January 28, 2014 at 6:22 PM

FORT WORTH — Experts at the University of North Texas are preparing to identify the remains of additional dead bodies found at a shuttered juvenile detention facility in Florida.

Florida officials said Tuesday the number of bodies they've found at the Dozier School in Marianna is up to 55.

With long-standing allegations of abuse, rape, torture, and murder, the very thought of Florida's Dozier School — for a time the largest juvenile detention camp in America — still brings chills.

And now researchers believe they've discovered 55 unidentified graves at Dozier, five more than they previously believed existed.

A team at the University of North Texas Department of Forensic and Investigative Genetics will now work to identify the names of the dead.

"Essentially, we’re going to process these samples and then use the DNA technology that we work with on a daily basis to see if we can get any association between the reference samples and the remains,” department chairman Dr. Arthur Eisenberg told reporters.

Reference samples come from the DNA of living relatives. Right now, UNT already has five bone samples in house from earlier discoveries and reference for five missing boys.

Dr. Eisenberg also hopes anthropologists at the site in Florida find clues — like coffin fragments — that help date the time of a boy’s death.

::snipping3::

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/55-bodies-exhumed-at-shuttered-fla-reform-school/
55 BODIES EXHUMED AT SHUTTERED FLA. REFORM SCHOOL
January 28, 2014

Tampa, Fla. - An excavation has uncovered the remains of 55 people, apparently children, in a graveyard at the former Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Florida—five more than researchers expected to exhume and 24 more than officials records indicate should be there, researchers announced Tuesday.

According to state records, 96 boys died while incarcerated at the Dozier School for Boys, formerly known as the Florida State Reform School and the Florida Industrial School for Boys. Opened at the turn of the twentieth century in Marianna, west of Tallahassee, the juvenile detention center became notorious for allegations of abuse and brutality against the boys who were housed there and has been the subject of repeated state and federal investigations.
::snipping3::
All 55 bodies uncovered appear to be children, researchers said, a USF spokeswoman told CBS News’ Crimesider. Researchers hope DNA testing will reveal more information about the deceased.
::snipping3::

“This project has always been about fulfilling a fundamental human right for families who, like all of us, have a right to know what happened to their loved ones and are entitled to bury their relatives in a manner in which they deem proper,” said Erin Kimmerle, USF associate professor and project leader, during a press conference.

Through the university, Kimmerle and her team were granted a permit to conduct archaeological research at the site in 2011. Using technology including ground penetrating radar, the team found grave shafts of at least 50 unmarked burial sites. Five more bodies were uncovered during the excavation process.

Scientists hope to identify the remains using scientific techniques including DNA matching, according to the press release. Eleven surviving families of former Dozier students have been located and the Hillsborough County Sherriff’s Office is in the process of collecting DNA samples from them.

However, researchers are still in search of 42 families from which to collect DNA, according to the statement. They’ve released a list of those families online, and anyone with more information is urged to call Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Master Detective Greg Thomas at (813) 247-8678.

Researchers uncovered bones, teeth, and numerous artifacts in all of the 55 burials, according to the press statement. They will develop a “summary report” for each body, including information gleaned from skeletal and dental remains, artifacts, and burial context.

Bone and tooth samples will be submitted for DNA testing, according to the statement.

Fieldwork is set to resume at the shuttered school in coming months, according to the statement, and researchers will continue to search for unmarked burials using specially-trained K-9 teams and ground penetrating radar.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/07/us/florida-boys-school-dna-match/
Boy missing since 1940 ID'd at shuttered Florida boys school
August 7, 2014

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
* George Owen Smith went missing in 1940 after being sent to Florida boys school
* After bodies exhumed from site, Ovell Krell learns that one is long-lost brother
* Dozier School for Boys closed in 2011 after ex-students reported decades of abuse
* Krell says even at age 12 she never believed claims her brother died of pneumonia

CNN) -- On their deathbeds — her father's in the 1960s and her mother's in the 1980s — Ovell Krell's parents made her promise she'd never stop looking for her brother.
"Will you find Owen and bring him back?" she recalls her dad asking.
"I'll try until the day I die, Daddy," she replied.
After more than seven decades, the 85-year-old has found Owen. She hopes to soon lay him to rest at the Auburndale, Florida, cemetery where her parents are buried.
Her mom, after all, instructed her, "Put him with me and daddy."
George Owen Smith was sent at age 14 to the Florida Industrial School for Boys in 1940 for car theft. Krell never saw him again, and her family was told he died of pneumonia after running away from the school and hiding under a house in town.
::snipping3::
Aware of the school's history, Erin Kimmerle, a University of South Florida forensic anthropologist, led a team in 2012 that unearthed remains on the former campus. That bodies lay there was no secret -- 31 rusty, white crosses marked the resting places of victims who died from a dormitory fire, influenza, pneumonia and other causes -- but Kimmerle's team found 55 bodies on the 1,400-acre property.
Owen's body, the team found out last month, was the first to be pulled out of the ground. The university announced the finding Thursday.
"We hope it's the first of many identifications to come," Kimmerle said.
After sending DNA samples to the University of North Texas' Health Science Center, Kimmerle got a call July 25, telling her that one of the samples was a positive match for Krell, who, like other family members, had provided reference samples to researchers.
Kimmerle, who was chief forensic anthropologist for the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and has worked to excavate mass graves all over the world, including in Nigeria and Peru, was elated.
"Two years ago, (Krell) was inspirational to us to get involved and do this work. To find her brother and to find him first, we were all a little bit in shock," she said.
She drove to Lakeland with officers from the Hillsborough Sheriff's Department to tell Krell in person -- out of respect, but also because she didn't want Krell to be alone when she got the news.
"It was a total and complete surprise. It shocked me totally numb for a moment. I couldn't say a word. I just looked at her," Krell said. "This, to me, is a miracle because when I think of all the boys and all the graves -- I know they sent 55 remains to be tested, and I'm the only one where they found a match?"
Unfortunately, researchers still don't know how Owen died. It's unclear whether the medical examiner will be able to determine a cause of death, Kimmerle said, and Florida's District 14 medical examiner Michael Hunter did not return a call seeking comment.
::snipping3::
Dogged pursuit of the truth
Years ago, Krell became worried that her brother's story might go to the grave with her, so she thought, "I've got to write all this down while it's in my mind."
This is a stupid story to tell. ... It was all a bunch of lies.
Ovell Krell
She jotted down what she knew and sent it to the governor, media, FBI, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, anyone she thought might be able to help find out what happened to Owen.
The St. Petersburg Times produced a 2009 special report, "For their own good," and the FDLE opened a 2008 investigation at the behest of then-Gov. Charlie Crist.
Though ex-students provided detailed accounts of vicious beatings, sexual abuse and disappearances (Kimmerle's team found records indicating 22 boys who died at the school weren't accounted for), guards and administrators who are still alive denied the beatings.
The FDLE concluded there was insufficient evidence of physical or sexual abuse or that anyone died as a result of a criminal act.
"I really had begun to give up hope that they'd ever find him," Krell said.
At age 12, Krell thought the stories about her brother were baloney. Even his arrest seemed fishy. Car theft? Owen was 14 and had never been behind the wheel of a car. Automatic transmissions weren't as prevalent in those days. You had to know how to work a clutch and shift gears.
Despite coming from a loving but poor family, Owen ran away more than once. He always wanted to play in Nashville's "Grand Ole Opry." His passion was guitar, but "he could walk into any music store and play any instrument" without taking a single lesson, Krell said.
Krell suspects he was en route to Tennessee when he was arrested in Tavares, Florida, with a 19-year-old man.
"Owen had the wanderlust because he had so much in his body to give, and he just wanted to go out there and give it," she said. "He had God-given talent coming out of the pores of his skin. ... I never understood why God let him be born with that talent and let him be taken away like that."'
'I got what was coming to me'
Owen ran away a few weeks after arriving at the Florida Industrial School for Boys. He was quickly apprehended and wrote home to tell his family about it.
Krell remembers one chilling sentence in the letter: "I got what was coming to me."
"Those were the most ominous words," she said. "After that letter, we never heard from him again."
Her mother wrote the school, inquiring as to his whereabouts. She was told he'd run away again.
"So far we have been unable to get any information concerning his whereabouts. We will be glad to get in touch with you just as soon as we are able to locate George, and in the meantime, we will appreciate your notifying us immediately if you receive any word from or concerning him," Superintendent Millard Davidson wrote in January 1941.
Her mother wrote the school and said she would be traveling to Marianna, a five-hour drive today, "and she would not leave until she knew what happened," Krell recalled.
More...

Video at Link

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/08/11/first-of-55-bodies-buried-at-florida-reform-school-identified/
First of 55 bodies buried at Florida reform school identified. Researchers seek more DNA matches.
August 11, 2014

(http://i.imgur.com/1lpbcu8.jpg) (http://imgur.com/1lpbcu8)
An undated photo of George Owen Smith is shown on Aug. 7th, 2014 at the University of South Florida in Tampa. George Owen Smith is the first victim positively identified from one of the 55 unmarked graves the former Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, Fla. (AP photos/Chis O'Meara)

::snipping3::
“Four months he was missing before my mother threatened to start investigating, and the day before she arrives, they very mysteriously find his body under a house, totally-and-completely-beyond-recognition decomposed,” Krell told CNN.

The details of Owen’s death were sketchy at best. The school told the family he was found dead under a nearby house where they suspected he crawled and died of exposure. Kimmerle told The Washington Post there is no death certificate for Owen, only a school roster and historical newspaper clips that report that same story. Still, Krell said she always had difficulty believing it. A fellow student allegedly with him during the second attempted escape later told Krell her brother was shot at by three men with rifles as he fled, according to news reports.

“If they shot him and killed him that night, I’d consider it a blessing because I know now what they did to him if they got him back to that school alive,” Krell told CNN.

During last year’s excavation, Kimmerle’s team had to clear trees and brush to reach many of the graves, which were hidden in thick woods. That’s where Owen’s body was found, buried in an unmarked grave shallower than the others, lying on his side with his hands covering his head, Kimmerle said. According to the university’s report, some did die following attempted escapes, but it’s unclear whether medical examiners will ever be able to determine what exactly happened to Owen.

It was never a secret there were bodies buried at the school. Official records cite 31 burials between its opening in 1900 and its closure in 2011. The excavation, Kimmerle said, was initially prompted by families searching for loved ones who never came home. Researchers applied for permits and, about a year ago, the Florida Cabinet met and approved the dig, she said.

But it wasn’t until late last month that DNA linked Owen to his sister. When Kimmerle and a small team recently knocked on her door to deliver the news, Kimmerle said Krell was in shock that researchers were actually able to find her brother and identify him.
::snipping3::

http://wusfnews.wusf.usf.edu/post/usf-announce-names-two-more-dozier-remains
USF to Announce Names of Two More Dozier Remains
September 24, 2014

(http://i.imgur.com/BejlO03.jpg) (http://imgur.com/BejlO03)
Thomas Varnadoe (right) in an undated family photo. Varnadoe died in 1934 at the age of 13 at the Dozier Reform School for Boys.
Credit USF Dept. of Anthropology

University of South Florida researchers will announce Thursday afternoon that they've determined the identities of two more sets of remains buried on the grounds of the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys.

The Ledger and a release from Senator Bill Nelson's office say that one is Thomas Varnadoe, 13, who died in 1934, a month after arriving at Dozier.

Nelson says the second boy, Earl Wilson, 12, died in 1944 under circumstances that were never satisfactorily explained by Dozier officials.

USF officials won't confirm either name.
::snipping3::
Glen Varnadoe told WUSF's Florida Matters in February 2013 that Thomas and his older brother Hubert were sent to Dozier in 1934 for allegedly stealing a typewriter from the home of a local teacher. Thomas died of pneumonia less than a month after arriving there.

Varnadoe said his family wasn't notified of Thomas' death until almost two weeks later. That, along with the fact he was buried in an unmarked grave, led them to long wonder what happened to Thomas.

"I think there's questions about records being destroyed and how many records were available and just total denial I think from the state's part of not embracing this and bringing closure to this horrible chapter in Florida's history," Glen said.

Glen's father, Hubert Varnadoe, returned home from Dozier after nine months. Hubert and Thomas' brother, Joseph, told WUSF's University Beat in December 2012 that Hubert never said anything about his time there.

“He would not speak to anybody about the conditions there or the people there or anything else. He was so traumatized by being there, to start with, and going through what they went through, that he would not talk about it," Hubert, then 83, said.

Last month, USF researchers announced DNA testing helped them identify the first set of remains as George Owen Smith, 14, of Auburndale, who died in 1940, reportedly after running away from the school. Smith's sister, Ovell Krell, told The Ledger she recently buried her brother next to their parents.

http://www.theledger.com/article/20140923/NEWS/140929628
Investigation Into Dozier School's Unmarked Graves Bring Peace to Lakeland Family
September 23, 2014

(http://i.imgur.com/sZO86hH.jpg) (http://imgur.com/sZO86hH)
This undated photo, as part of the USF report, identified the boy in the front as Thomas Varnadoe, 3, and the taller boy in the background as Hubert Varnadoe. Hubert is the father of Lakeland resident Glen Varnadoe, and Thomas is his uncle. Thomas Varnadoe was one the victims of the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys and his remains were identified recently.
SPECIAL TO THE LEDGER

"It was a moral issue for our family because these boys were never tried or convicted of anything," said Glen Varnadoe, 64, of Lakeland, referring to Hubert Varnadoe and Thomas Varnadoe. The brothers were sent to the former Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in 1934.

Only his late father, Hubert, returned from Dozier after a nine-month stay, Varnadoe said. Thomas Varnadoe died at age 13 just 34 days after his arrival.

"I'm very pleased with the outcome. My mission all along was to bring back my uncle's remains," Varnadoe said. "Now I can return his remains back from that atrocity-laden soil."

Varnadoe spoke to The Ledger on Tuesday about the identification of his uncle's remains. Researchers told him there was too little left of his uncle's skeletal remains to determine a cause of death, he said.

There have been numerous accounts from former Dozier residents and investigations into severe physical abuse, some of which may have resulted in deaths, at Dozier during its 111-year history. Stories have appeared in news media and books during the past several years, including a series of Ledger stories in March based on the testimony of local families and former Dozier residents.

USF has scheduled a news conference at 1 p.m. Thursday in the Galleria at the university's Research Park to discuss further results from its investigation headed by an associate professor, Erin Kimmerle, a forensic anthropologist.

Although his father never talked to him about Dozier, Glen Varnadoe said, the brothers' experiences there became part of the family history.

In 1988, his mother told him a little bit of what she learned from Hubert, he said. Glen Varnadoe visited Dozier the following year and has been looking into its history and what happened to his family ever since.

"I've been on this a long time. I'm glad it's over," Varnadoe said Tuesday.

According to Varnadoe, based on records he and USF researchers uncovered, Hubert and his younger brother Thomas were arrested near their Brooksville home after a local teacher reported the theft of a typewriter from her front porch. Although there was no evidence linking them to the theft, the teacher reported they were the only people she saw on her property that day.

The boys were charged with "malicious trespassing" and taken to Dozier the same day. Thomas died Oct. 26, 1934, of pneumonia, according to an article in the school newspaper, which also reported the 13-year-old had suffered from poor health for many years until his arrival there.
More....

http://www.wfaa.com/story/news/crime/2014/09/25/dna-id-dozier-school-remains-tampa-unt/16209115/
UNT helps ID remains found at Fla. school
September 25, 2014

Years of hard work and research are finally helping to bring closure to families who sons, brothers, and love ones died at the school decades ago.

TAMPA -- Researchers at the University of South Florida say they have successfully identified two more sets of skeletal remains from Florida's Dozier School for Boys.

On Thursday, officials say the remains of 13-year-old Thomas Varnadoe and 12-year-old Earl Wilson will be the second and third children recovered from unmarked graves to be returned to family members. Wilson is the first African American student to be identified.
Years of hard work and research are finally helping to bring closure to families who sons, brothers, and love ones died at the school decades ago.

Dozens of bodies have been found in unmarked graves at the former youth detention facility in Marianna, Florida.

Early last month, with the help of researchers at the University of North Texas, the first set of remains were identified as George Smith.

Smith's family attended a press conference where state dignitaries, researchers, and family members gathered to discuss the findings.

"At least I know he's dead," said Smith's sister, Ovell Krell, 85. "We didn't know for 73-and-a-half years."

Smith's bones were the first of 55 sets of remains to be identified using DNA, found by University of South Florida researchers.

Last month, state officials also agreed to allow USF to continue its research at Dozier for at least another year, through August 2015.

It's unknown just how many young boys, most of them African-American, were abused and killed at Dozier over the decades, but the state appears to be committed to uncovering the secretive, dark and shameful story of what happened there.

There are stories of beatings, floggings, and death for young prisoners, who in many cases were used for low-cost or even slave labor.

At the news conference where USF researchers identified Smith, they told the public they were close to identify at least three more sets of remains using DNA. Thursday's announcement appears to be for two of those three.
More...

Scared Monkeys Discussion Forum

Missing, Exploited and True Crime => Crimes Against Children, Elderly and the Disabled => Topic started by: MuffyBee on August 07, 2013, 02:47:41 PM