Researchers have discovered the remains of 55 people from the site of a former reform school known for its violent past.
University of South Florida investigators started digging at what was once the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys last September, then finished excavating the site three months later. Initial records show officials found 31 graves, but researches first believed they'd find about 50 burial places.
All bodies were housed in coffins, each of which were made at the school or bought from local craftsmen, according to one of the forensic anthropologists heading up the probe, Erin Kimmerle.
Some of the bodies were discovered far from the graveyard, where white crosses marked the remains that lay beneath. Although much isn't known at this point in the investigation, Kimmerle told the Albany Democrat-Herald that the people were believed to be buried at the school in the late 1920s to 1950s.
"We know very little about those who are buried," Kimmerle told the Democrat-Herald.
Excavators also found buttons, a stone marble in one child's pocket and pieces of coffins strewn about, including a brass plate that read, "At rest."
Kimmerle said investigators are slated to keep digging sometime in February, as local families have requested that DNA from the remains be sent to the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification. Some say they're looking to find long lost family members.
"We are hoping for closure," Auburndale resident Ovell Krell told the Democrat-Herald, who said her brother George Owen Smith went to Dozier in 1941 at 14 years old. He was found dead a couple months later, but his family never received his body.