The families of three individuals buried in pauper’s graves behind the Raymond Detention Center are calling for answers after going months without notice from the Jackson Police Department.
Civil rights attorney Ben Crump joined the mothers of Marrio Moore, Jonathan Hankins, and Dexter Wade during a press conference on Wednesday, where family members protested JPD’s lack of notification about their passing for months.
40-year-old Moore was found wrapped in a tarp on February 2, 2023, with blunt force trauma to the head, resulting in officials ruling his death a homicide. Moore’s mother, Mary Glenn, was not notified of his death until October despite his body being buried on July 14.
Hankins, the 39-year-old father of a teenage daughter, was discovered dead at a Motel 6 on Interstate 55 in Jackson on May 23, 2022, with his family receiving word that he had been buried three months after his death for over a year and a half.
“I feel like Rankin County and Hinds County are not doing their job at all. There is no telling what they are doing that we don’t know about. It’s very heartbreaking,” his mother, Gretchen Hankins, explained. “It’s like they just threw him out like trash like the others.”
As for Wade’s death, his family has raised accusations against JPD saying that law enforcement officers were attempting to cover up his cause of death.
According to an independent autopsy, the 37-year-old was fatally struck by a JPD cruiser in March before being buried near the Hinds County prison. Wade’s mother, Bettersten Wade, did not hear of her son’s death until late August.
“What did JPD do? They didn’t do their job. I’ve been living at my address for over 20 years, same address. When Dexter took his fingerprints, the same address came up,” Bettersten Wade stated. “How many more mistakes do we have to have in Jackson, Mississippi from JPD? How many more? We need justice. We need accountability. We need some answers instead of knowing our children are down there in some pauper’s field.”
Each family claimed to have contacted JPD and the Hinds County coroner’s office for months, as well as put out missing persons alerts for all three men. So far, only two of the families have received a death certificate after paying $250 to retrieve the bodies from the state, while only one has received an official coroner’s report.
All three men allegedly had some form of identification on their person at the time of their deaths, leading the families to question why JPD or the coroner’s office failed to notify others of their passings and burials.
