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This story was taken in part from The Ledger Newspaper online March 16th 2014, written by Kevin Bouffard.
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LAKELAND | Ovell Krell remembers her late brother, Owen Smith, as a talented musician who dreamed of fame as a country music artist.
"Owen was a child born very gifted in music," Krell said. "His fondest wish was to go to Nashville for his music."
When their father, an agricultural laborer, couldn't afford to buy Owen a guitar, he made one himself from a cigar box at age 9, Krell said. The brother-sister duo performed at local churches and venues.
Owen learned to play by ear with no formal training, she added. When they went to the local theater to see the latest Gene Autry film, Owen would memorize the music and Krell the lyrics.
Owen's dreams led to his death at age 14 in 1940 at the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Marianna.
Krell, now 85, of Lakeland said she thinks Owen died after being severely beaten at the Dozier school following a September 1940 escape attempt, his second in just a few months there. Local officials sent him to Dozier after Owen tried to run away from the family's Auburndale home earlier that year to Nashville, Tenn., still country music's capital city.
Dozier officials told the family they discovered Owen's body under a Marianna woman's home. They told her parents and Krell, then just 12 years old, he died from exposure while hiding there during the escape attempt.
Even at 12 years old, Krell told The Ledger last month, she thought the official story was a lie.
Among the troubling aspects of the official version was that residents of the home where Owen's body was found, even though the escape attempt was months earlier.
The timing of the discovery also raised suspicions.
Krell said she wrote a "stern letter" to the school on behalf of her mother, who was angry at Dozier officials because Owen had not responded to her earlier letters for more than a month.
"By this time, she's getting very, very concerned," Krell added.
The letter informed the superintendent that the parents would be there the following week, Jan. 25, 1941, expecting answers regarding Owen's condition and why he was sent to Dozier.
There was never a juvenile court hearing after Owen was picked up near Tavares while hitchhiking to Nashville, she said, and the parents were never notified their son had been sent to Dozier until after he arrived. Later, they learned Owen was arrested in a car stolen by a Georgia teenager and sent to Dozier from a Tavares jail.
After other boys at her school told of the whippings and severe abuse at Dozier while Owen was there, Krell said she came to think her brother died as a result of the 100 lashes escapees typically got when returned, she said.
His body was probably buried in the school cemetery, she said, then exhumed after the mother's letter arrived and placed underneath the local house. That's why the residents didn't smell anything until the night before the body was "found," according to the official version.
The final Jan. 29, 2010, FDLE report on Dozier noted there were consistent stories on whippings and physical abuse from former residents and some staff, but it concluded there was "no tangible physical evidence to either support or refute the allegations."
Krell was one of the first female officers in the Lakeland Police Department, retiring in 1978 after 22 years. She agreed with many former Dozier residents the FDLE report was a whitewash.
"It was a piss poor investigation," she said.
Krell and others say they hope another investigation being conducted by a team of University of South Florida forensic anthropologists, which exhumed 55 marked and unmarked burial sites at the school, will find that physical evidence.
Her mother never recovered from her grief over Owen's death and battled depression for the rest of her life, Krell said.
And to this day, Krell herself feels "sadness, grief and anger" when thinking about what might have happened to Owen.
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This story was taken in part from The Ledger Newspaper online March 16th 2014, wriiten by Kevin Bouffard
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