US news This article is more than 9 years oldIdentification of Florida boy's remains marks end of 'long journey' for family
This article is more than 9 years oldThe 85-year-old sister of George Owen Smith, who disappeared in 1940 at a notorious Florida reform school, tells the Guardian about the ‘bittersweet’ news she thought she’d never hear
The sister of a boy whose remains are the first to have been identified from a mass grave at a notorious Florida reform school has spoken of her relief at reaching “the end of a long, hard journey”.
Researchers from the University of South Florida announced on Thursday that DNA tests proved one of 55 bodies retrieved last year during an excavation at the Arthur G Dozier School for Boys in Marianna was that of George Owen Smith, who disappeared from the school in 1940 at the age of 14.
Official records suggested Smith died of pneumonia after running away, but his sister, Ovell Krell, has been convinced for decades that her sibling was one of dozens of teenage victims systematically beaten, raped or murdered by staff and guards, and whose bodies were thrown into unmarked graves to cover up the scale of the abuse.
“I had come to the conclusion that I might not live long enough to see this day,” Krell, now 85, told the Guardian.
“Bittersweet would be a good word to describe it. George was taken from this world far too early. It’s the end of a long, hard journey for me and brings a lot of relief and a lot of closure. I hope a lot of other people can get the same result.”
The grim history of the reform school, which was closed down for financial reasons in 2011 after more than a century, came to light through the recollections of former attendees, who were often sent there for minor transgressions including truancy.
The survivors became known as the White House Boys, named for the building where they say staff administered the worst beatings and abuse.
Smith was ordered to attend in 1940 after running away from home and allegedly stealing a car with an older teenager, who was sent home to be with his parents. School officials wrote to the Smith family in January 1941 to say George had run away from the school and was later found dead under a house in Marianna.
One witness, however, said he saw staff taking Smith to the White House after he was caught, and recalled that he later saw him being carried out again motionless. Other allegations involved guards setting dogs on boys for “crimes” such as smoking, and chaining boys to walls and beds and beating them.
An investigation by the Florida department of law enforcement concluded five years ago that there was not enough evidence to prove or disprove any of the allegations of abuse by school staff, many by then already dead, against the mostly black teenagers.
But federal and state lawmakers approved grants totaling more than half a million dollars to fund a series of excavations at the 1,400-acre site by a team of Tampa-based USF anthropologists, called in to investigate deaths ranging from the first world war to the 1960s.
The FDLE reported in 2010 that they had evidence of 31 graves, explained in school records as those of attendees who had died of illness or in a fire, an estimate more than doubled when the USF team began work in 2012.
Researchers revealed in January that they had uncovered 55 graves, one of them now known to be Smith’s, after four months of excavations last year. DNA from his remains was matched to a cheek swab from Ovell Krell; the team was unable to establish a cause of death.
“We may never know the full circumstances of what happened to Owen or why his case was handled the way it was,” said professor Erin Kimmerle, leader of the USF forensic team, in a statement. “But we do know that he now will be buried under his own name and beside family members who longed for answers.”
Ovell Krell, said her parents’ health mental was destroyed by not knowing the truth about what happened to her brother. Before their deaths she promised both of them she would keep fighting for him.
“Somehow, somewhere, they know what’s happened. I know they would be deliriously happy if there were here,” she said.
She said she planned to have George’s ashes cremated once his body is returned to her, and the ashes scattered over her parents’ graves.
“It’s been an emotional journey and now I can finally get some closure, some peace of mind,” she said.
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