audio, stills, text and or video: Go to zReportage.com to see more - For more than a century, boys were sent to the Florida School for Boys reformatory in the north Florida town of Marianna. Many were beaten brutally and bear the physical and psychological scars to this day. Many boys, though, never came home. They died, some under mysterious circumstances. They were buried in unmarked graves and they were forgotten. Several years ago, a young anthropology professor from the University of South Florida decided she would try to answer the many questions about what happened to these boys and, if she could, return their remains to their families. To get to the truth she would have to fight.
© Edmund D. Fountain/Tampa Bay Times/zReportage.com via ZUMA Press

Dec 20, 2013 - Marianna, Florida, U.S. - University of South Florida assistant professor of anthropology Dr. ERIN KIMMERLE passes open graves at the Boot Hill cemetery at the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys. Since they began in late August, researchers from the University of South Florida have removed dozens of sets of human remains. Over the past decade, hundreds of men have come forward to tell gruesome stories of abuse and terrible beatings they suffered at Florida's Dozier School for Boys, a notorious, state-run institution that closed last year after more than a century. Known as the 'White House Boys' these 300-some men were sent as boys to the reform school in the small panhandle town of Mariana in the 1950s and 1960s.
© Edmund D. Fountain/Tampa Bay Times/zReportage.com via ZUMA Press

Feb 5, 2014 - Marianna, Florida, U.S. - University of South Florida assistant professor of Anthropology Dr. ERIN KIMMERLE inside of a building at the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys known as the White House. Dozens of men have alleged that the staff of the school beat them horribly inside of the building.
© Edmund D. Fountain/Tampa Bay Times/zReportage.com via ZUMA Press

May 17, 2012 - Marianna, Florida, U.S. - Trenches dug by a team of archaeologists and biologists from the University of South Florida allow the location of grave shafts at the Boot Hill cemetery to be exposed. The cemetery, located at the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys, contains the remains of dozens of children who died while in the care of the school.
© Edmund D. Fountain/Tampa Bay Times/zReportage.com via ZUMA Press

May 17, 2012 - Marianna, Florida, U.S. - A team of archaeologists and biologists from the University of South Florida walk through the Boot Hill cemetery. The cemetery, located at the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys, contains the remains of dozens of children who died while in the care of the school. The team, lead by Dr. Erin Kimmerle, hopes to ultimately exhume the remains and repatriate them to their families.
© Edmund D. Fountain/Tampa Bay Times/zReportage.com via ZUMA Press

Sep 1, 2013 - Marianna, Florida, U.S. - Anthropologists from the University of South Florida continued exhuming grave sites at the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys after discovering human remains buried in an unmarked grave the night before. The area covered by the trash bag contains skull fragments. The anthropologists are attempting to uncover the rest of the remains.
© Edmund D. Fountain/Tampa Bay Times/zReportage.com via ZUMA Press/ZUMAPRESS.com

Sept. 2, 2013 - Marianna, Florida, U.S. - The remains of a child, later identified as George Owen Smith, wait to be loaded into a van at the Boot Hill cemetery on the campus of the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys.
© Edmund D. Fountain/Tampa Bay Times/zReportage.com via ZUMA Press

May 7, 2009 - Lakeland, Florida, U.S. - OVELL SMITH KRELL's brother George Owen Smith was sent to the Florida School for Boys in the 1940's, when Millard Davidson was superintendent of the institution. At age 14, George Owen Smith was dead. Krell's family was told by the school that George Owen died of exposure, but they never believed it. To this day, Krell, 80, believes Owen was shot by guards as he attempted to escape, and his death was covered up by the school and the town.
© Edmund D. Fountain/Tampa Bay Times/zReportage.com via ZUMA Press

Jan 13, 2014 - Marianna, Florida, U.S. - A cross from the Boot Hill cemetery at the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys rests in a storage closet at the University of South Florida with boxes of human remains removed from the cemetery. The cemetery was marked with 31 such crosses, researchers removed 55 sets of remains.
© Edmund D. Fountain/Tampa Bay Times/zReportage.com via ZUMA Press

Feb 5, 2014 - Tampa , Florida, U.S. - University of South Florida assistant professor Dr. ERIN KIMMERLE stands for a portrait in the site of the Boot Hill cemetery at the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys. The white metal crosses that dotted the area where Kimmerle stands became iconic representations of the abuse that occurred at the state-run reform school. Kimmerle and a team of forensic anthropologists removed the remains of 55 persons from the area although only 31 grave markers were present on the site.
© Edmund D. Fountain/Tampa Bay Times/zReportage.com via ZUMA Press

Aug.18, 2011 - Marianna, Florida, U.S. - DALE COX, an amateur Jackson County historian and outspoken critic of media coverage of the Arthur G. Dozier School and the exhumation of the school's cemetery sits for a portrait at his home.
© Edmund D. Fountain/Tampa Bay Times/zReportage.com via ZUMA Press/ZUMAPRESS.com

Feb 5, 2014 - Marianna, Florida, U.S. - The exterior of the White House, a small building on the campus of the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys where dozens of men have alleged they were beaten by members of the schools staff. Over the past decade, hundreds of men have come forward to tell gruesome stories of abuse and terrible beatings they suffered at Florida's Dozier School for Boys, a notorious, state-run institution that closed last year after more than a century.
© Edmund D. Fountain/Tampa Bay Times/zReportage.com via ZUMA Press

Feb 5, 2014 - Marianna, Florida, U.S. - University of South Florida assistant professor Dr. ERIN KIMMERLE watches over excavation efforts in the Boot Hill cemetery at Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys.
© Edmund D. Fountain/Tampa Bay Times/zReportage.com via ZUMA Press/ZUMAPRESS.com

Feb 5, 2014 - Tampa, Florida, U.S. - Researchers from the University of South Florida enlisted the help of teams of cadaver dogs in their search for additional grave sites at the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys.
© Edmund D. Fountain/Tampa Bay Times/zReportage.com via ZUMA Press/ZUMAPRESS.com

May 20, 2014 - Fort Worth, Texas, U.S. - Technicians work in the University of North Texas' Health Sciences Center for Human Identification. The lab is analyzing the remains recovered at the Arthur G. Dozer School for Boys in Marianna and is extracting DNA from the remains.
© Edmund D. Fountain/Tampa Bay Times/zReportage.com via ZUMA Press

Oct 7, 2014 - Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, U.S. - University of South Florida forensic anthropologist ERIN KIMMERLE and Pennsylvania State Police Cpl. THOMAS MCANDREW lift a casket panel from the burial shaft in Philadelphia's Old Cathedral Cemetery where Thomas Curry, a runaway from the Florida School for Boys, was said to have been buried in December 1925.
© Ben Montgomery/Tampa Bay Times/ZUMAPRESS.com

Nov 8, 2014 - Mulberry, Florida, U.S. - GLEN VARNADOE and sister BARBARA CACCAMISI stand for a portrait, where Glen is the CEO of a chemical company. The pair's father Hubert was sentenced to the Florida School for Boys along with their uncle (Hubert's brother) Thomas Varnadoe. Thomas never came back, an otherwise healthy boy succumbing to pneumonia at age 13, a month after his arrival.
© Edmund D. Fountain/Tampa Bay Times/zReportage.com via ZUMA Press

Nov 24, 2014 - Plant City, Florida, U.S. - GLEN VARNADOE, the nephew of Thomas Varnadoe, is overcome with emotion at Thomas Varnadoe's burial. Thomas Varnadoe died at the Florida School for Boys in 1934 and his family fought for decades to have them returned so that he could be buried properly. His remains were identified by a team of researchers from USF who exhumed a cemetery at the school in the Florida Panhandle.
© Fountain, Edmund D./Tampa Bay Times/Tampa Bay Times

Dec 9, 2014 - Marianna, Florida, U.S. - A copy of a photo from 1925 of THOMAS VARNADOE, Jr. at 3-4 yrs. old. He is the little boy, front of the photo. The other boy behind him, RICHARD VARNADOE. These brothers were both sent to Dozier, one died and one came home after 9 months.
© Edmund D. Fountain/Tampa Bay Times/zReportage.com via ZUMA Press/ZUMAPRESS.com