Following the disclosure of Dexter Wade‘s death and subsequent secret burial in a pauper’s grave, a new report revealed that more than 200 people were buried in the same way and Mississippi officials left their families completely in the dark.
NBC News released a list of names of 215 people who were buried in the same field in Hinds County where Wade’s body was buried.
That same outlet was also the first to report Wade’s death and his mother’s long-concerted efforts to find him after he mysteriously disappeared in March 2023. The day he went missing, he was run over by an off-duty corporal in a Jackson police car. Authorities took his body and buried it in a grave only marked by a number behind a penal farm. His mother, Bettersten Wade, didn’t learn of her son’s death until August 2023.
The name of the corporal who struck Wade was never released.
Now that new information has come to light, many families have come forward saying they had no knowledge of their relatives’ whereabouts or how they were buried until the list of names was released. NBC reported that the roster covers a list of people who had been buried in the field since 2016.
The county coroner’s office told the outlet that “records before 2016 could not be located.”
Civil rights attorney Ben Crump was already representing Bettersten Wade and calling for a federal investigation into Wade’s death and secret burial. Now, he, as well as Jackson attorney Dennis Sweet, are representing the families of 40-year-old Marrio Moore and 39-year-old Jonathan Hankins.
Each of these men was reported missing, and, like Wade’s mother, their families were never notified about how they died or how their bodies were interred.
Moore was killed on Feb. 2, 2023, but his family was left to search for him for eight months before learning about his death from the NBC News report. His mother, Mary Moore Glenn, discovered her son was struck 22 times and died of blunt-force trauma. His body was wrapped in a tarp and left on the street.
“I never thought that he would leave ahead of me,” Glenn told the Jackson Advocate. “He’s gone away, my baby. And they threw him in a hole like he wasn’t nobody, like he wasn’t important. Me and my family deserve better than that.”
For Gretchen Hankins, it took almost two years for her to learn of her son Jonathan’s fate. The last time she saw him alive was on May 20, 2022. He was killed three days later. His body was found in a hotel room in Jackson. His loved ones reported him missing in June of that year, but his mother never learned about his death until December 2023 when NBC News released the list of names.
“I didn’t know it for a year and seven months,” Hankins said. “It’s like they threw him out like trash, just like they did the others.”
To add insult to injury, the families of Moore and Hankins now have to pay Hinds County hundreds of dollars to retrieve the bodies of their loved ones since they’re classified as state property.
“My heart goes out to all the ladies that are here today,” Bettersten said. “I know how it feels to find out that your son was thrown away in the ground.”
Crump and Sweet will reportedly continue to call on the Justice Department to launch an investigation.
“People all across America are scratching their heads in disbelief about what’s happening in Jackson, Mississippi, with this paupers graveyard…what is going on in Jackson, Mississippi?” Crump remarked.
“Jackson, we can do better. We can do better,” Sweet said. “You’re going to hear from these families, they’re going to tell you their stories … they’re citizens, their children were citizens. We can do better.”
