Workers preparing for a cleanup of a fuel storage site near one of the nation’s most notorious reform schools have unearthed evidence of 27 possible secret graves, the Miami Herald reported.
A company hired to evaluate underground storage tanks adjacent to the Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, Fla., were doing ground-penetrating radar tests near the so-called Boot Hill Cemetery at Dozier – a youth prison linked to more than a century of horrifying abuse, the Herald reported.
A report on the study said there are 27 “anomalies” consistent with human burials. If they turn out to be human remains, the total number of known burials at the hellish reform school would rise to at least 82. University of South Florida researchers believe, however, there may have been 100 or more deaths at Dozier since its opening in 1900.
In a letter to a Jackson County commissioner, Gov. Ron DeSantis said he had asked the state Department of Environmental Regulation and other agencies “to develop a path forward” from the discovery, the Herald reported.
Originally called the Florida State Reform School, Dozier was established in 1897 as a progressive alternative for delinquent and orphaned children – a goal that appeared to have been abandoned almost from the start, with visitors reporting seeing kids in chains.
Reports over the years – including from survivors who formed a group in 2008 called the White House Boys – revealed shocking tales of beatings, rapes and abuse, the Herald reported.
Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning Colson Whitehead’s much-anticipated new book, “The Nickel Boys: A Novel,” due in July, is expected to dramatize the story of two boys sentenced to the infamous reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida.
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