University of South Florida Forensic anthropologists unearthed 55 graves at the Old Cathedral Cemetery in Marianna, Florida's Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in West Philadelphia Tuesday, Oct.7 trying to dig for answers. Where are the remains of Thomas Curry who died in 1925?
The mystery still remains unresolved. How did Thomas Curry, a teenage ward from the notorious Dozier school for Boys now a closed juvenile detention facility come to meet a brutal death on a railroad 89 years earlier?
The team of University of South Florida researchers says they're going to keep on searching for the remains of Curry believed to have died at the former Dozier School for Boys, after an effort to exhume his remains in another state failed.
Thomas Curry, who is presumed 17 when he died, had fled from the school, a hellish place where most of the boys were tortured, isolated, locked in irons and beaten to death with leather straps. He served only 29 days in the reform school, about 20 miles away in Marianna before he ran.
Reports show that a former Chattahoochee coroner L.H. Sanders indicated on the boy's death certificate that Curry died from a "wound on the forehead, skull crushed from an unknown cause."
It was also reported that the body of the boy was sent through cargo, and right after his funeral at the St. Bridget parish in East Falls, he was buried without a gravestone atop his great grandparent's grave in Philadelphia. But this is not what happened.
And it was only on Tuesday when USF anthropologists who have been working to identify remains on the former campus visited Philadelphia with Pennsylvania authorities, that the family discovered Curry wasn't in the coffin. There were only piles of woods and wooden planks, no sign of Thomas Curry at all.
"Where is he?" asked state police Cpl. Thomas McAndrew.
Using DNA, the University of South Florida researchers have identified three boys and transferred their remains to families for reburial. But because of the unfortunate condition of the remains, the cause of death has been difficult to determine.
Still this week's exhumation didn't answer a lot of questions, this just means that the Dozier case still remains a mystery.