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Author Topic: Grave Exhumations & Investigation at The Dozier School for Boys, Marianna, FL  (Read 36887 times)
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« on: August 07, 2013, 02:47:41 PM »

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


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."
 

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.

 

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.
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« Reply #1 on: August 07, 2013, 02:51:33 PM »

Snipped from the above article.  Some of these folks are acting like the Aruba Tourist Board imo.     Shameful.  It's never too late to find out about injustices, imo. 

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

 

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."
 
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« Reply #2 on: August 07, 2013, 02:54:57 PM »

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

 
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.
 
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
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« Reply #3 on: August 07, 2013, 03:01:23 PM »

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


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


 
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.
 
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.
 
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.



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.
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« Reply #4 on: August 07, 2013, 03:04:19 PM »

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

(photos)


Phil Coale / AP
Dick Colon, right, and Mike McCarthy, left, recall their times in one of the white house rooms at the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys during ceremonies dedicating a memorial to the suffering of the "White House Boys" in 2008.


Andrew Wardlow / AP
Professor Erin Kimmerle, University of South Florida's lead researcher, and U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson speak before touring the building known as the "White House" on March 27.
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« Reply #5 on: August 07, 2013, 03:08:51 PM »

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.
 
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."
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« Reply #6 on: August 07, 2013, 03:16:24 PM »

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.

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.
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« Reply #7 on: August 07, 2013, 03:20:17 PM »

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

 
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.

 
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.
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« Reply #8 on: August 07, 2013, 03:25:55 PM »

A lot of information, photos, links etc.

Link to Website:

http://thewhitehouseboys.com/




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« Reply #9 on: August 07, 2013, 04:08:09 PM »

Go to the link below.  There is a lot of information.

http://www.officialwhitehouseboys.org/White_House_Boys_Photos.html
THE OFFICIAL WHITE HOUSE BOYS ORGANIZATION

White House Boys Photos
THIS EVENT WAS IN TAMPA, FLORIDA ON  JANUARY 8th, 2013 at 7pm
(read on for details)

First, please read about the Dart Award that Tampabay Times photographer Edmund Fountain won as seen in The Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma on Nov 2, 2011.  Then the info about the January 8, 2013 exhibit follows.

The Hurt In Their Eyes

By Stan Alcorn
St. Petersburg Times photographer Edmund Fountain talks about his Dart Award-winning portraits of men whose lives are still shaped, up to 50 years later, by the brutal abuse they suffered at the Florida School for Boys.
More...
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« Reply #10 on: August 07, 2013, 04:10:01 PM »




http://www.tampabay.com/features/humaninterest/for-their-own-good-a-st-petersburg-times-special-report-on-child-abuse-at/992939
For their own good: a St. Petersburg Times special report on child abuse at the Florida School for Boys
By Ben Montgomery and Waveney Ann Moore, Times Staff Writers
Friday, April 17, 2009 11:55am


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« Reply #11 on: August 07, 2013, 04:14:21 PM »

Lots of links, info, etc. here


http://thewhitehouseboysonline.com/
THE WHITE HOUSE BOYS SURVIVOR'S ORGANIZATION CORP
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« Reply #12 on: August 07, 2013, 04:16:22 PM »

Lots of links, info, etc. here


http://thewhitehouseboysonline.com/
THE WHITE HOUSE BOYS SURVIVOR'S ORGANIZATION CORP

NEW! For a short take on the Dozier
story go to this site. All new stories will
be added to blog starting June 14, 2013
The blog is at:
http://TheWhiteHouseBoysBlog.com/
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« Reply #13 on: August 08, 2013, 11:28:47 AM »

Thanks for posting all of this Miss 

There needs to be answers!

 
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« Reply #14 on: August 08, 2013, 03:17:26 PM »

Thanks for posting all of this Miss 

There needs to be answers!

 

You're welcome Sister.  I agree, there needs to be answers! 
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RIP Grumpy Cat :( I will miss you.


« Reply #15 on: August 11, 2013, 04:07:46 AM »

   thanks!! Very interesting, indeed.
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« Reply #16 on: August 13, 2013, 11:17:20 AM »

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.


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.
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« Reply #17 on: August 13, 2013, 11:21:29 AM »

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.


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."
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« Reply #18 on: August 13, 2013, 11:26:02 AM »

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.

 
 
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.
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« Reply #19 on: August 13, 2013, 11:29:24 AM »

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."
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