FL - White House Boys, Dozier School for Boys, Marianna

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Backwoods said:
Just wanted to link a couple of articles that have come out since the most recent posts in this thread were made:


http://www.dallasnews.com/news/metr...ns-from-boys-reform-school.ece?nclick_check=1




http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-florida-reform-school-20131027,0,4423204.story
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Thanks for the links; I am reminded of the recent case re: amber alerts for the several boys at that reform type place...looking for thread...going to post this over there for reference as well...I wonder what the latest is on that case as well...<edit: ugh, can't find thread>
 
http://www.jcfloridan.com/news/article_a716d3f6-82ec-11e3-8b6e-001a4bcf6878.html
Dozier excavations update expected next week

Posted: Tuesday, January 21, 2014 4:50 pm

Kimmerle will provide updates on several topics, including: excavations to date, the search for additional families for DNA testing, upcoming fieldwork and the next steps in the research. Members of the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office also will speak on their work with DNA identification and collection. Artifacts from the Dozier research, including coffin hardware and personal items recovered from the site, will be shown.
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corq said:
Just a blurb with not a lot of detail to add but sounds like there will be more news soon:

5 more bodies found at Dozier School for Boys, researchers say
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That is a lot of deaths, recorded or not. Seems to me that if a child were that ill they would have taken them to a regular hospital. And then not turning their bodies over to families for burial? Hope they have signed statements from family members giving the facility permission to bury these boys.

Just reading the story is one thing because it was so long ago. Seeing their names just makes you realize there was something wrong with these deaths. jmo
 
http://www.wfaa.com/news/local/Nort...humed-from-Florida-boys-school-242475491.html

North Texas team to identify bodies exhumed at Florida boys school
Posted on January 28, 2014 at 6:22 PM
A team at the University of North Texas Department of Forensic and Investigative Genetics will now work to identify the names of the dead.

"Essentially, we’re going to process these samples and then use the DNA technology that we work with on a daily basis to see if we can get any association between the reference samples and the remains,” department chairman Dr. Arthur Eisenberg told reporters.
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video & more at link.
 
http://news.yahoo.com/remains-55-bodies-found-near-former-florida-reform-232708887.html

"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."

"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."

Oh boy.
 
That's a hot mess if there ever was one.

JMO
 
The Wiki article is pretty interesting - sounds like some borstal out of Edwardian England.
 
And a little bit more news this afternoon:

USF researchers find 55 bodies at Dozier site
24 more than official records indicate; Work continues to identify remains

I'm hopeful yet somehow doubtful that they'll resolve a great number of these identities, if Dozier took in lot of boys from circumstances of abject poverty, and those families themselves haven't broken the cycle over the years, there may still not be means to give those kids a proper family burial.

At least many families will know what happened to that brother or cousin that "no one ever heard from again", or assumed they were runaways.

I'm in awe of the teams of people who took this on and hope they bring some closure to some families.
 
Here's the USF news link published today, with video (the researchers are from USF): http://news.usf.edu/article/templates/?a=5997
· The team recovered bones, teeth, and numerous artifacts in every one of the 55 burials.
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· Researchers will continue searching for additional unmarked burials on the school grounds, both in the areas adjacent to Boot Hill and in other areas of the school grounds. Over the next few months fieldwork will resume - including additional excavations, ground-penetrating radar analysis and the use of specially-trained K9 teams to locate burials.
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· Analysis of the excavated remains is underway. Through this process, a summary report will be written for each body, including all of the information learned from skeletal and dental remains, artifacts, and burial context. Bone and tooth samples will be submitted to the University of North Texas Health Science Center for DNA testing.
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A list of families for which the researchers are searching can be found here.

Anyone with information is asked to contact Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Master Detective Greg Thomas at (813) 247-8678
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Also today's Wall Street Journal online article ("Remains of 55 Bodies Found at Former Florida Reform School" updated Jan 28, 2014 7:07 PMET - sorry, subscriber content, but they are repeating what has been published elsewhere) had this reminder:
A Florida Department of Law Enforcement inquiry completed in 2009 had concluded that 31 boys were buried in a cemetery on the 1,400-acre campus.
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So this research, which finally broke through all the bureaucracy thrown in its way, appears to have already far exceeded the FDLE body count, and they're really only started. So glad some families may finally have an opportunity to know the fates of their loved ones.
 
Interesting, I had seen something on TV about this, and read up a bit on it several months ago. It is both interesting, sad and scary to see what they have found.
 
Hi all. Didn't see this referenced anywhere, but if it is, I apologize for the repeat.

Dr Bill Bass of the University of Tennessee's "Body Farm", is half of the writing team known as Jefferson Bass. They wrote a fictional book a few years ago, The Bone Yard, about the Dozier School. If you "look inside" the book at its Amazon site, The Bone Yard LP (Body Farm Novel): Jefferson Bass: 9780062017789: Amazon.com: Books , and scroll down to page 412, you can see several pages of the "Author's Note" from Dr. Bass. He talks about the history of the school and the juvenile system in general.

Just thought some of you might be interested.

P.S. I liked the forensics parts of the book; the political commentary, not so much.
 
http://tbo.com/list/news-opinion-editorials/dozier-victims-deserve-closure-20140206/
Dozier victims deserve closure
Published: February 6, 2014
Editorial on the Tampa Tribune website today.

But that would take an interest in justice that the state has been shamefully slow to exhibit. In fact, the state seemed determined to obstruct efforts to identify the bodies buried at Dozier. It had identified only 31 graves, 24 fewer than USF investigators ultimately found. USF’s initial attempts to exhume the bodies for a proper burial were blocked by Secretary of State Ken Detzner for bureaucratic reasons that defied logic.
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