The University of South Florida announced on Tuesday, Excavations at a makeshift burial ground 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.
According to the USF professor Erin Kimmerle (head of the research project), this is precisely why excavation was necessary.
On a hillside in the rising and falling, tall-pine forests near the Alabama-Georgia boundary, a team of more than 50 searchers from nine agencies last year dug up the graves to check out local mythology and family tales of boys, mostly black, who died or moved out without explanation from the Dozier School for Boys early in the last century.
Excavation begins last September with bones, teeth and several artifacts from grave sites sent to the University of North Texas Science Center for DNA testing.
State investigators to begin with positioned 31 supposed graves in the woods transversely a busy thoroughfare from the shuttered reorganization school. Kimmerle’s more comprehensive probes raised the number to 50 or 51 last year, and USF announced on Tuesday the searchers had found remains of 55 bodies.
According to the Kimmerle, “Locating 55 burials is a significant finding, which opens up a whole new set of questions for our team,”
Research will continue in areas adjacent to the graveyard, dubbed “boot hill” by school officials and inmates a century ago.
According to the Greg Ridgeway (acting director of the National Institute of Justice), will not only bring resolution to these cases but will add to our knowledge about investigations of missing and unidentified persons in jurisdictions throughout the country.
55 Bodies Originate Close To Former Florida Reform School, University Of South Florida
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