Dozier Update: DNA Tests, Facial Composite & A Second Graveyard?
By Mark Schreiner • Apr 15, 2014
A facial approximation of one of the sets of remains excavated at Dozier: an African-American boy believed to be between 10 and 12 years old
USF Dept. of Anthropology
USF researcher Erin Kimmerle, U.S. Senator Bill Nelson & Hillsborough Sheriff David Gee speak to reporters about the investigation Tuesday
Adam Freeman / USF Communications & Marketing
A list of families of students possibly buried at Dozier being sought. The six highlighted names are families that have come forward since the list was released in January & either have or are in the process of submitting DNA.
Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office
Senator Nelson and Professor Kimmerle
As is fitting for a case that dates back to the early 1900's, progress is slow in coming for researchers looking at the mysteries found on the grounds of the Dozier School for Boys - but it is being made.
The lead investigator, University of South Florida anthropologist Dr. Erin Kimmerle, and Hillsborough County Sheriff David Gee updated Sen. Bill Nelson on the investigation in downtown Tampa Tuesday.
Kimmerle said that her team has completed skeletal analysis of 12 young men whose bodies were among 55 the investigators excavated last year from the Boot Hill Cemetery at the now closed reform school in the Panhandle town of Marianna. In addition, DNA testing has been done on five of those bodies - but that doesn't mean their names are known just yet.
"The result from that testing is a DNA profile, which is entered into a number of databases, and every time we submit more references from families, they're compared and hopefully eventually they will be matched," Kimmerle said.
She added that family members of six more young men who were buried at Dozier between 1914 and 1936 have come forward to submit DNA samples. Investigators are hoping to find surviving family members of three dozen more boys who were also buried there.
Also raised at Tuesday's meetings was the possibility of a second graveyard where more former students' remains might be found - a possibility that Sen. Nelson backs.
He bases his belief on the fact that of the dozen bodies Kimmerle's team has completed skeletal analysis on, seven of them are African-American (there are no results yet on the other five). Combine that with the fact that there's long been rumors of other graveyards on the property and Nelson has a theory.
"I think eventually they're going to find another cemetery, because back then they did not bury the two races together, and so no telling what stories are going to unfold."
Kimmerle notes that they've thoroughly mapped out only a small portion of the grounds, but so far have no solid evidence of other burial sites.
"We have done extensive ground-penetrating radar (GPR) work and ground truthing and have not found burials in those locations, but it's 1,400 acres of land and a hundred years of occupation," Kimmerle said. "So we're continuing that search, we're not finished yet, there's still a number of areas we need to look at."
The search has also taken investigators out of Florida. They want to exhume the remains of a former student buried in Pennsylvania. The boy, 15-year-old Thomas Curry, was admitted to the reform school in 1925.
Nelson has sent a request to Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett requesting assistance, saying Curry died "violently and mysteriously" one month after he was admitted to Dozier.
The coroner's report says the boy's death was caused by "a wound to the forehead, skull crushed from unknown cause." The USF researchers are now trying to determine more about the nature and cause of his death.
And Kimmerle also unveiled the first facial approximation of one of the sets of remains excavated from the site: an African-American boy believed to be between 10 and 12 years old. Researchers reconstructed his skull from bone fragments and then used a computer program to superimpose an approximate image of his face on it.
"We don't have anything specific as to cause of death, the condition of the remains just don't allow for that," Kimmerle said.
She added that the team is about halfway done going through the thousands of artifacts found buried with the bodies, including a shirt button, coffin nails and hardware, and a stone marble. Those materials may help investigators narrow down the time period when a body was buried - and soil samples could even help identify the season a burial occurred.
Dozier was closed in 2011. Some former students allege staff abused them, and claim that some boys were murdered and buried in unmarked graves.
"I describe it - where there's smoke, there's fire," Nelson said. "And we owe it to the families to get to the bottom of this so that they can bring closure on what happened to their loved ones."
Dozier School for Boys
Erin Kimmerle
Senator Bill Nelson
White House Boys
Black Boys at Dozier
USF Anthropology
Dozier Exhumation Request Heads to Pennsylvania Governor
By Steve Newborn • Apr 1, 2014
Credit Michael Spooneybarger / Reuters/Landov
U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Florida, is asking the governor of Pennsylvania to have state police there work with a team of Florida researchers investigating the circumstances surrounding a young boy's death at a now-shuttered reform school.
USF Researchers Dig for Answers at Dozier, Find More Questions
By Mark Schreiner • Feb 4, 2014
Mark Schreiner / WUSF 89.7 News
Extended University Beat report updating USF's research at the former Dozier School for Boys.
A shirt button, a plaque saying "at rest" and a stone marble found in what's believed to have been the coffin of a 6-year-old boy are just some of the almost ten thousand artifacts USF researchers have removed from 55 graves at the former Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, Fla.
Those items - along with hundreds of coffin nails also recovered there - might help investigators identify the bodies buried in the school's mysterious Boot Hill cemetery and elsewhere on the site.
Reactions to Dozier Decision: 'Today Somebody Pulled Us Up Out of That Hole'
By Craig Kopp & Mark Schreiner • Aug 6, 2013
Katy Hennig / USF News
The excavation will soon begin to unearth the remains of boys believed to have died from alleged abuse at the Dozier School for Boys.
The Florida Cabinet today approved the request of USF researchers to exhume the bodies at the now-closed Florida Panhandle reform school to provide closure for the boys' loved ones.
For months, University of South Florida researchers have been trying to dig up the bodies at the Marianna school, but their request has been denied several times, twice by the state, which is why 66-year-old Robert Straley, a former Dozier resident, says he was happily shocked when Governor Rick Scott and the rest of the Florida Cabinet approved the researchers' request Tuesday.
Dozier Exhumations Finally Begin
By Associated Press • Aug 31, 2013
Pool/Edmund D. Fountain / Tampa Bay Times
University of South Florida researchers began work to exhume dozens of graves Saturday at a former Panhandle reform school in hopes of identifying the boys buried there and learning how they died.
USF spokeswoman Lara Wade said in a message Saturday that the work had begun, with researcher measuring and marking the site. Researchers then will remove dirt with trowels and by hand to find the remains, which are believed to be 19 inches to 3-plus feet under the surface.