Once the nation's largest boys' school, and later known as Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys, the institution in Marianna was closed after a 2009 newspaper investigation revealed a century of abuse and failed reform. Records show that his remains were shipped home by freight and, after a funeral at St. Bridget parish in East Falls, buried without a headstone, stacked upon his great-grandparents' graves. Curry, 17, became part of that tally in 1925 when he died "under suspicious circumstances while escaping Dozier twenty-nine days after arriving," says the court order permitting his exhumation this week. The ledger entry at the Dozier school said he was "killed on RR Bridge Chattahoochee, Fla." Another document at Old Cathedral Cemetery in Philadelphia says he was "killed by train." 9 photos: Florida graves mystery 9 photos: Florida graves mystery Florida graves mystery – After their investigation at a former Florida boys school led them to a grave in Philadelphia, anthropologist Erin Kimmerle and Cpl. Thomas McAndrew of the state police Criminal Investigation Assessment Unit looked on. Perhaps Curry's remains were among those found in the school cemetery. Hide Caption 7 of 9 9 photos: Florida graves mystery Search for answers at gravesite near school – Forensic anthropologists -- who once worked for the U.N. in the former Yugoslavia searching for mass graves -- used ground penetrating radar to find out how many remains were buried in a small makeshift cemetery built on the grounds of the former reform school for boys near Tallahassee, Florida. It wasn't until a state investigation beginning in 2008 that Curry's death certificate was found at Dozier. In 1925, a Florida coroner ruled, vaguely, that Curry died from a "wound on the forehead: skull crushed from an unknown cause." The silence became shock as they came to realize what this likely meant: Someone had shipped a coffin to Philadelphia weighted down with wood and not the remains of a possible victim of crime. 'Decades of efforts to deceive' 
 
 Kimmerle was still incredulous Wednesday, as was Cpl. Tom McAndrew of the Pennsylvania State Police, who along with Philadelphia Assistant District Attorney Brendan O'Malley, was instrumental in clearing the path for Kimmerle's team to exhume Curry's remains, she said, 
 
 "It was a little bit of a shock. "Something was shipped up from Florida, and it was buried, and someone believed it was Thomas Curry." "Their interest lies in justice being served," McAndrew said of the cousins. "Rather to be able to shed light, it just raises so many more questions." Though ex-students provided detailed accounts of vicious beatings, sexual abuse and disappearances, guards and administrators who are still alive have denied the beatings occurred. The state investigation in 2008 and 2009 said there was insufficient evidence of abuse at Dozier, but dozens of men, many of them now senior citizens, have come forward with stories. "It definitely had to be done," McAndrew said.
– Anthropologists who have been working to locate and identify the remains of the boys who died at a notorious Florida reform school traveled to Philadelphia this week, hoping to get answers in the death of yet another student. But when they exhumed Thomas Curry's casket Tuesday, they found that instead of a body, it held only planks of wood, CNN reports. Curry escaped 29 days after arriving at Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in 1925. The school's ledger describes him as being killed on a railroad bridge; a death certificate found in 2008 revealed the teen's skull was "crushed from an unknown cause." His body was supposedly returned to his family, and they buried what they thought was Thomas in the same Philadelphia plot where his great-grandparents lay. Thomas, believed to be either 15 or 17, was one of the 100 boys who died at the Marianna school between 1900 and 1952; about half were buried on the grounds, but the rest were—at least supposedly—returned to their families. "Something was shipped up from Florida, and it was buried, and someone believed it was Thomas Curry," the Pennsylvania State Police officer who helped get the casket exhumed tells the Philadelphia Inquirer, adding that he "absolutely" sees the casket as another of the school's "efforts to deceive, coverups." Says the lead anthropologist on the case, "What we have is more questions than answers." A cousin provided DNA to help identify Thomas, so the team will now attempt to match it to one of the bodies dug up on the former campus—whose former occupants told stories of sexual abuse, being locked in sweat boxes or hog-tied, and, writes the Inquirer, "hunted down when they ran."