Unknown graves at state reform school investigated
TALLAHASSEE (AP) – A former inmate at a Florida reform school known for severe beatings decades ago says he remembers walking into a laundry room, peering through a foggy dryer window and seeing a boy tumbling inside. Afraid of retribution, Dick Colon walked away.
But Colon now wonders whether the boy he saw could be buried near the school. Florida law enforcement said Tuesday they have started an investigation into the enduring mystery: Who lies beneath the more than 30 white metal crosses – bearing no names or dates or other details – at a makeshift cemetery near the grounds of the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys, where youngsters were routinely beaten and abused in the 1950s and ’60s.
“I think about it very often because I feel guilty. I felt as though I could have walked over there and opened the door and tried to give him some help, but then what the hell was going to happen to me if I did?” said Colon, now 65 and living in Baltimore. “That particular kid was never seen again.”
Gov. Charlie Crist ordered the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to investigate at the urging of Colon and other men who committed crimes as boys and were sent to the school. The agency was tapped to find out what was in the graves, identify any remains and determine if any crimes occurred.
“Justice always cries out for a conclusion and this is no different,” Crist told reporters. “If there’s an opportunity to find out exactly what happened there, to be able to verify if there were these kinds of horrible atrocities … we have a duty to do so.”
The Department of Juvenile Justice has no records that explain what’s in the cemetery near the 108-year-old reform school.
One theory is the graves contain the bodies of six boys who died in a 1914 school fire. That would only explain a fraction of the markers.
Current school superintendent Mary Zahasky hopes the graves do not contain children.
“When I first saw it – those kinds of things tug at your heart. I’m a mother myself,” she said. “I just can’t imagine having my child buried out there like that.”