Welcome to

Marianna,  and Jackson County Florida, population 50 thousand, are about to become the center of attention. Reports of beatings and boys being sent  to the Dozier School for Boys, never to return, have fueled speculation about brutality at the facility.

 Over Labor Day weekend the University of South Florida began exhuming bodies from unmarked graves. The majority of local residents are unhappy. They say the past is the past and should stay that way. 

“I believe it’s going to be a hornets nest” said John Cooper, a motorcyclist. Glenda Retherford works at Walmart. She believes whatever happened, couldn’t happen today.“Times are different. Things are different, People were different. It wouldn’t happen today, I don’t think.”

Insurance agent John Perkins says the money could be better spent taking care of kids today. “I mean, its something that happened fifty-sixty years ago. You know, let bye gones be bye gones” says Perkins.

 In allowing researchers to begin exhuming bodies, Attorney General Pam Bondi acknowledged local concerns. “Marianna, Florida currently is a beautiful place to live” says Bondi. The community is not universally opposed. Charlie Robert owns rental property.

“I think they need to do it” he told us. But a local judge and county commissioners…all of whom must face voters…took a stand against allowing the search for bodies. County Commissioner Jeremy Branch worries about the negative light being cast on the community. “What we are acting on are allegations made by criminals and juvenile deliquents” says Branch

The look for bodies could go on for as long as a year. But finding out what really happened over the one hundred year plus history of the school  is likely to remain buried forever.