55 bodies found near Reform School in Florida | Pathetic State and pathetic people

[Ethan_Hunt]

Remains of 55 bodies found near former Florida reform school | Reuters

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Extra stuff
Florida’s Dozier School For Boys: A True Horror Story : NPR
Dozier School for Boys survivor speaks out for first time

Too bad I can’t post a picture here:

[Doi69]

Re: 55 bodies found near Reform School in Florida | Pathetic State and pathetic peopl

KKK?

[TS]

Re: 55 bodies found near Reform School in Florida | Pathetic State and pathetic peopl

Comment at end of article. Scary.

peacethrulove wrote:
Almost went there in 1961. Went to Georgia Training School For Boys Milledgeville Ga 1961-1963 for running away from home and breaking into coke machines. This place was insane. Minor infractions would give you 8 hours of walking in a circle. If you talked or if you were picked on by the staff that was watching you walk in that circle you had to carry 2 – 1 gallon cans filled with dried concrete with a thin coat hanger type handle. 1 gallon can in each hand. There would usually be around 20 kids forming the circle. 5 or 6 would be carrying the buckets. End of day they would take you to the infirmary to get your hands dressed and bandaged. If you got 3 infractions you would go to the cells. During the day you would pick and shovel dirt. You would be put against a dirt bank and pick and shovel dirt for 8 hour. If you fell out you would be handcuffed around a fat pine. I never was put in that position but these kids were between the ages of 8-15. At the end of the day our hands were bloody messes. The ones the hugged a tree all day thier inside arms were pretty nasty. At the end of the day they would take use to the cells which was conviently located behind the infirmary so they could patch us up before going back the next day to start all over again. A couple of kids I knew went missing and the rumour was the ran away somehow and fell asleep on a set of railroad tracks and a train ran over them. There were a lot of sick people working at that place.

Feb 01, 2014 12:35am EST

[Muzna]

Re: 55 bodies found near Reform School in Florida | Pathetic State and pathetic peopl

so sad…so extremely sad.