The Search for the Dead: Exhumation of bodies set to begin at shuttered Dozier juvenile detention fa

[Judi Lynn]

The Search for the Dead: Exhumation of bodies set to begin at shuttered Dozier juvenile detention facility

August 13, 2013 10:45 AM

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.

More:
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/

Links for the first 3 installments of this report appear above the beginning of this last segment.

[HooptieWagon]

1. The State has pretended it doesn't exist for many decades....

covering up to protect the guilty parties. The persistant stories coming from survivors are that of sadistic torture, rape, and renting out inmates for slave labor. Now that some daylight has been shed on the institutional abuse, we'll see if it leads to further investigation and prosecutions.

[mainer]

2. Permission to exhume kept getting denied and denied

That's a true scandal. Florida doesn't want the truth aired, and maybe the UN International Criminal Tribunal needs to be called.

Too bad the monsters guilty of these deaths are probably long-dead themselves.