A secret graveyard tucked behind a Florida reform school is home to 31 cross-shaped grave markers, but nearly 50 unidentified bodies.
The small cemetery dates back to the early 1900s. Some former students at the Florida Industrial School for Boys in Marianna now say victims of abusive school administrators are buried there, CNN reported.
When the Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigated in 2009, it found that 31 boys buried in the woods behind the school died either from the flu or in a fire.
But University of South Florida anthropologist Dr. Erin Kimmerle found 18 more bodies buried without markers.
“We found burials within the current marked cemetery, and then we found burials that extend beyond that,” she said. “These are children who came here and died, for one reason or another, and have just been lost in the woods.”
None have been identified, and they can’t be exhumed without their families’ permission.
A group of men came forward in 2008 and said the “White House” — a small concrete building on school grounds — was the site of brutal beatings and whippings in the 1960s.
Former administrator Troy Tidwell downplayed their claims, saying only that “spankings” took place.
Another former student said a boy named Owen Smith was killed by rifle fire as they tried to run away from the school.
“I believe to this day that they shot my brother that night, and I think they probably killed him and brought him back to the school and buried him,” said his sister, Ovell Smith Krell.
Kimmerle said there could even be another secret cemetery on school grounds, a segregated one for black students.
Her team has petitioned the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice to allow them to investigate.
