University of South Florida forensic experts announced Thursday that for the first time they have identified the remains of a boy buried at a now-closed Florida reform school where some guards were accused of brutality.

The researchers said they used DNA and other tests to identify the remains of George Owen Smith, who was 14 when he disappeared from the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in 1940. They couldn't say how Smith died. Official records indicated 31 burials at the school, but researchers found the remains of 55 people during a four-month excavation last year.

Researchers said Smith's body was found in a hastily-buried graved wrapped only in a burial shroud. His remains' DNA matched a sample taken from his sister, Ovell Krell.

Krell said she has waited 73 years for this moment.

"You know it took a couple of days for it to hit me, and then I almost had to put my pillow over my head and not get up," she said.

"I think we were all sort of in disbelief," said USF researcher Erin Kimmerle. "She said she could hardly believe it. I think we all felt that way."

University officials in a press release said his mother wrote the school's superintendent, Millard Davidson, in December 1940 asking about her son. She got a letter back saying no one knew where he was. A press conference was held Thursday to give further details.

"Now we have him back we're going to put him at rest," said Krell. "I hope my mommy and daddies at rest, and I know I'm at rest."

Some former students from the 1950s and 1960s have accused employees and guards at the Panhandle school of physical and sexual abuse, but the Florida Department of Law Enforcement concluded after an investigation that it couldn't substantiate or dispute the claims.

"This is not the end of the story," said Kimmerle. "It's the beginning and we hope we are able to find all the boys for the families that we are working with."

Many former Dozier inmates from that era call themselves "The White House Boys" after the white building where they say the worst abuse took place.

Researchers began last September excavating the graveyard at the school, which closed in 2011 for budgetary reasons. The dig finished in December.

The school opened in 1900 and housed over 500 boys at its peak in the 1960s, most of them for minor offenses such as truancy or running away from home.

In 1968, when corporal punishment was outlawed at state-run institutions, then-Gov. Claude Kirk visited and found the institution in disrepair with leaky ceilings, holes in walls, cramped sleeping quarters, no heating for the winters and buckets used as toilets.

"If one of your kids were kept in such circumstances," he said then, "you'd be up there with rifles."

All the bodies found were interred in coffins either made at the school or bought from manufacturers, university officials have said. Some were found under roads or overgrown trees, well away from the white, metal crosses marking the 31 officially recorded graves.

Officials have said that it's unclear if there are other graves elsewhere on the school site. The team excavated about five acres of the property's 1,400 acres.

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Statements from Florida public officials

Attorney General Pam Bondi

"I am proud to continue to support the University of South Florida's important research to find answers to the many questions surrounding the deaths that occurred at Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, and I congratulate them on their work and findings. I will continue to provide whatever support I can as they move forward with their efforts."

Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam

"The University of South Florida has made great progress in answering a number of questions about the dark history of the Dozier School for Boys. In order to bring resolution to the community and the families, the USF researchers should quickly and thoroughly complete the work that they have begun. The victims’ families and the people of Florida deserve to have the best answers that science can provide.”