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Florida researchers exhume graves at reform school known for abuse Bones dug up near Dozier boys' home
(about 14 hours later)
University of South Florida researchers began work to exhume dozens of graves on Saturday at a former Panhandle reform school, in the hope of identifying the boys buried there and learning how they died. Searchers have recovered human bones in Florida from a "boot hill" graveyard where juveniles who disappeared from a notorious reform school more than half a century ago are believed to have been secretly buried.
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/>"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.
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/>"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.
A USF spokeswoman, Lara Wade, said in a message that the work had begun, with researchers measuring and marking the site. Researchers then will remove dirt with trowels and by hand to find the remains, which are believed to be 19in to 3ft or more under the surface. Some former residents of , now in their 60s and 70s, have told of brutal beatings and boys – mostly black juveniles – disappearing without explanation more than 50 years ago.
"In these historic cases, it's really about having an accurate record and finding out what happened and knowing the truth about what happened," said Erin Kimmerle, a USF anthropologist who is leading the excavation. Fragments of large human bones were found on the first day of digging, Wells said, but it was impossible to know if they came from any of the teenage boys housed at Dozier during its infamous 111-year existence. The school was closed in mid-2011.
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/>The bones will be examined in laboratories at the University of South Florida and the University of North Texas as part of a programme funded by the US department of justice and state of Florida. Blood relatives of some of the boys have given DNA samples, to be matched against evidence taken from the skeletal remains.
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/>The dig came after forensic investigators using ground-piercing radar and old public records detected 31 spots showing possible human remains. Researchers planted white crosses on a nearby hillside to commemorate the unaccounted-for boys.
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/>Tananarive Due, who came to the dig with some family members, said her great-uncle, Robert Stephens, died at the school in 1937. "The story was ... he tried to run away at one point," she said. "The official cause of death was a stabbing by another inmate, that's what it was listed as. But with so many of these boys, who knows how they died? Their families never had a chance to say goodbye to their loved ones."
Former inmates at the Dozier school for boys from the 1950s and 1960s have detailed horrific beatings that took place in a small, white concrete block building at the facility. A group of survivors call themselves the "White House Boys" and five years ago called for an investigation into the graves. In 2010, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement ended an investigation and said it could not substantiate or refute claims that boys died at the hands of staff. Johnny Lee Gaddy, 67, said he was locked up from 1957 to 1961 for truancy. He said he was severely beaten but in his teens became a good farm worker, hoping to be released.
USF later began its own research and discovered more graves than the State Department had identified. USF has worked for months to secure a permit to exhume the remains, finally receiving permission from governor Rick Scott and the state cabinet after being rejected by secretary of state Ken Detzner, who reports to Scott. "I know some [boys] they said had gome home, but they hadn't been here long enough to go home," Gaddy said. "They said some others ran away or were transferred to other places. We never saw any bodies or funerals."
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/>John Due, father of Tananarive, said descendants and civil-rights activists who pressed the state for disclosure of what happened to the young men ran into rigid resistance from authorities for decades.
/>"People didn't want to talk about it, and we found that particularly among black families," he said.
Robert Straley, a spokesman for the White House Boys, said the school segregated white and black inmates and that the remains are located where black inmates were held. He suspects there is another white cemetery that hasn't been discovered. Officials have said 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.
"I think that there are at least 100 more bodies up there," he said. "At some point they are going to find more bodies, I'm dead certain of that. There has to be a white graveyard on the white side."
Among those that have pushed to allow USF to conduct the research are Republican attorney general Pam Bondi and Democratic US senator Bill Nelson.
"My goal all along has been to help bring closure to the families who lost loved ones at Dozier. I feel great relief that the work to identify human remains is now underway," Bondi said, through a spokeswoman.
USF will work at the site until Tuesday and hopes to unearth the remains of two to four boys before resuming the excavation at a later date, Kimmerle said. The initial work will ensure that the process works smoothly before researchers return to the site.
DNA obtained at the site 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. If matches are found, remains will be returned to the families.
"They want to bury them in family plots and next to the boys' mothers and things like that," Kimmerle said. "Anyone whose remains are unidentified will be re-interned here at Boot Hill."
Any remains that are reinterned will have a grave marker and their DNA will be recorded in case anyone other families seek to identify remains.
"Hopefully a lot of questions will soon be answered once the scientists finish unearthing these unmarked graves in 'Boot Hill Cemetery,' " Nelson spokesman Dan McLaughlin wrote in an email.
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