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The search for bodies at the former Dozier School for boys in the Panhandle entered into its third day. The search for answers is moving one inch at a time.

Inch-by-inch the antagonizing nightmare of the Dozier’s past is creeping closer to the surface…a bittersweet reminder of Florida’s troubled history.

“It’s really amazing to be able to put sort of a face to this list of individuals, these children we’ve been researching about, thinking about, meeting their family,” said USF Anthropologist Erin Kimmerle.

A team of researchers have been digging since Saturday. Sunday evening teeth and skull fragments were discovered in a grave being unearthed.
Monday the careful dig for answers continues.

“As the exhuming of bodies continue — family members are providing DNA to the researchers in an attempt to figure out who is buried at the closed school,” Matt Horn reported.

31 crosses dot the gravesites where the excavating is taking place. The chilling part – around 100 students are thought to be buried on the school
grounds. A lack of state records make it difficult for researchers to locate all of the bodies.

“When we initially came out here and started that is an area that would have been under thick brush,” said Kimmerle.

Questions started to surface in 2008 as abuse allegations made it to then-Governor Charlie Crist. An investigation he requested showed there were at least 31 bodies unaccounted for in the cemetery. Researchers are now working to put together additional missing links.

”It’s very meticulous work, I don’t think the public knows exactly the hard work it is. But, I have the blisters to show you its very hard work,” said research volunteer Brett Harding.

As the process continues, the shell of Dozier is all that remains intact outside of Marianna. As the chilling history is starting to rear it’s ugly head one inch at a time.

Governor Rick Scott and the Cabinet voted to allow USF researchers to exhume the bodies earlier this summer.