since the shuttering of the school two years ago , forensic anthropologists and archaeologists from the university of south florida have been probing and digging up the cemetery by the school , accounting for victims .
the men told of beatings , torture , disappearances .
curry was a charge of marianna , florida 's arthur g. dozier school for boys , a now infamous juvenile detention facility that closed in 2011 for budgetary reasons , capping a chilling , 111 - year legacy of brutality .
in 1925 , a florida coroner ruled , vaguely , that curry died from a " wound on the forehead : skull crushed from an unknown cause . "
a renowned forensic anthropologist , kimmerle led the united nations effort to exhume mass graves in the former yugoslavia , and worked with the smithsonian institution to return american indian story highlights anthropologists , authorities exhumed casket of thomas curry in philadelphia this week exhumation part of probe into deaths , disappearances at florida 's infamous dozier school curry 's casket had no human remains ; authorities now searching for body at dozier ex - students allege beatings , sexual abuse , disappearances ; ex - guards deny abuse occurred for almost 90 years , the casket lay beneath the earth , thomas curry 's family believing the teen who died too young rested in peace there , in an unmarked plot with his great - grandparents .
the coroner at the time ruled curry 's manner of death was unknown .
curry , 17 , became part of that tally in 1925 when he died " under suspicious circumstances while escaping dozier twenty - nine days after arriving , " says the court order permitting his exhumation this week .
now , the inquiry had taken them to philadelphia .
the ledger entry at the dozier school said he was " killed on rr bridge chattahoochee , fla. " another document at old cathedral cemetery in philadelphia says he was " killed by train . "