Tampa reporter targets my deceased father over Dozier story

At 11:06 p.m. on Friday night (September 6, 2013), Ben Montgomery of the Tampa Bay Times (formerly the St. Petersburg Times) informed me that he is investigating my late father.

Mr. Montgomery sent me an email informing me of this action on his part roughly 10 minutes after sending out a Tweet demanding that I change the content of a story I posted on this blog two days ago about a dog being exhumed by the University of South Florida at the Dozier School Cemetery. I have refused to make the change requested by Mr. Montgomery.

Subsequently, ten minutes after making his demand for the story change, he sent me the following email:

 ----- Forwarded Message -----

From: "BMontgomery@tampabay.com"
To: Dale Cox
Sent: Friday, September 6, 2013 11:06 PM
Subject: Re: Dozier

Dale --

Do you know what your father's role was at ACI? I've requested his employment records, but I was wondering if you might shed any light on his time there. I know trustees from ACI were often involved in helping track down Dozier escapees, but do you know whether your father would have been involved in any of those efforts? 

Ben

Sent from my iPhone

--

As you can see, Mr. Montgomery indicates he has requested my late father's employment records. 

I find this action on his part to be uncalled for and disgusting. My father was never an employee of Dozier School for Boys and died at about the time the whole "White House Boys" story first developed. He was never involved with the story.

Mr. Montgomery followed at 12:06 a.m. today with another email explaining that he was investigating my late father because he was "just trying to figure out why you're so vociferous." In other words, he is investigating my late father because I have exercised my Constitutional right of Free Speech.

The media considers itself the guardian of the First Amendment, yet in this case Mr. Montgomery is targeting my late father because I have spoken publicly about the Dozier School story. You can judge for yourself whether that is right or wrong.

My dad, as all who knew him will testify, was an honorable and decent man. To know that a reporter who disagrees with me on the Dozier issue has decided to investigate him is disgusting and sickening.

If you would like to voice your opinion on this matter, I encourage you to do so by writing to the managing editor of the Tampa Bay Times. He is Mr. Montgomery's boss.  His email address is mike@tampabay.com.


Dale Cox
September 7, 2013

White House Boy now claims "missing" boys must have been eaten by hogs or sent to dump!

Student with a Prize Hog
(State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory Collection)

Just when it seemed as if the wild stories told by some of the so-called "White House Boys" couldn't get any wilder, one now says that the reason murdered boys won't be found in the current dig at the Dozier School Cemetery is because they were "thrown in the dump" or "fed to the hogs."

Even though various members of the various White House Boys groups have been demanding for years that the cemetery be dug up by the University of South Florida, they now seem to be hedging their bets. This after more than $600,000 in taxpayer money has been provided for the project they demanded and after Governor Rick Scott and the members of the Florida Cabinet overruled the system set up by Florida law for such projects. A circuit judge, the state archaeologist and the Secretary of State all had denied permission for the project to go forward.

Memorial Area of Dozier School Cemetery

In an interview this week with the Graceville News - a Jackson County newspaper - one of the "White House Boys" said that the world would no longer be able to call him "a liar," but then launched into a long explanation of why the bodies of murdered students won't be found.

The man, who I am not identifying because he has received enough publicity from his changing stories, once claimed he had seen a boy burned to death in a dryer at the school's laundry. According to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, however, he changed his story under oath to claim that he hadn't actually seen the alleged event that the Tampa Bay Times breathlessly reported he had witnessed.

Students tend to hogs at Dozier School
(State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory)

He now says that murdered boys won't be found on the campus of the Marianna school because they were burned in the incinerator, tossed in the dump, buried under the road or even chopped into pieces and fed to the hogs!

Apparently these would be the same hogs that were cared for by the students themselves and that they often entered in the Jackson County Fair, just as did students from other schools throughout the county.

The wild story is just the latest in a series of stories that have grown wilder and wilder since the groups surfaced a little over 5 years ago with claims that boys were beaten to death and murdered at the school more than 50 years ago. They have yet to provide a single name of a single boy they allege was murdered, but the claims by some of them grow wilder and wilder.

All graves exhumed so far were inside the traditional cemetery
and within the view of this photo, which shows the memorial
erected by staff members and students in the background.

The Graceville News also joined the growing list of U.S. newspapers to falsely report that the University of South Florida has located graves "outside the known burial grounds." The reporter seems not to understand that the small memorial of crosses erected by Dozier School employees and students in the 1960s is not the known burial ground, but instead is simply a memorial placed by them in memory of the students and employees known to be buried on the hill.

The actual burial ground is larger, was shown on federal and state maps as far back as the 1940s and originally was surrounded with a wire fence that no longer can be seen, although parts of it were found in the dirt that USF researchers had bulldozed from the cemetery along with ornamental cedar trees that once marked actual grave sites.

Partially surviving row of cedar trees at Dozier School Cemetery

The anthropologists, archaeologists and even a reporter they allowed to help them appear clueless to the fact that in the South, cedar trees often were planted at the head of graves. In earlier times, graves often were marked with wooden crosses or markers that deteriorated with time. To make sure graves could always found, people of earlier generations often planted cedar trees to help mark them far into the future.

The Dozier School Cemetery once included rows of cedar trees marking the actual grave sites. USF, however, had some of these trees pushed away using heavy equipment so researchers could search for graves - apparently not realizing the trees actually marked the graves.

Some of the trees survive and, as expected, one stands directly at the head of one of the two graves exhumed so far.

To read more about the real facts of the dig so far, please visit these links:

Facts from the first phase of the Dozier School Cemetery digging

USF digs up a dog at Dozier School