Why the bodies of hundreds of people reported missing were dumped in unmarked graves in Jackson, Mississippi, behind a US prison

Now, it has emerged law enforcement authorities were aware of the identities of 215 of the 672 bodies dumped in the ground behind Hinds County Jail in Jackson, Mississippi – but had failed to notify family members of their burials, or even their deaths.

Bodies which are unidentified, or are of people who do not have family financially able to give them a funeral, are the responsibility of the state. However, in many of these cases, bodies in the “paupers’ graves” – some of which were only identified by a number and marked with a metal rod – belong to people whose families have reported them missing. However, authorities in Jackson had not notified them their loved ones’ bodies have been found, or they had been buried.

Meanwhile, families are being told they could have to pay out hundreds of dollars in fines to retrieve the bodies to give their loved ones a proper funeral.

Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who is advocating for justice on behalf of the relatives and friends of the individuals buried outside the jail, is representing six family members who were never informed of their relatives' deaths.

"Obviously, we're seeing a pattern in practice, negligence, and worse, unconstitutional and criminal activities,” Mr Crump told Atlanta-based news outlet Scripps News. “It’s just horrific that they put them in the ground in a bag in the first place, but it’s even worse when people are trying to ask you to assist and you won't assist them in locating their loved one even though they're in the back of your jail.”

Mr Crump added: “The message is very simple – we have to be able to exhume and identify all of these individuals because they had a mother and father, a son or daughter, or a relative who loved them and needs to know whether their loved one is still missing or if their loved one is one of these 215 dead people behind the Hinds County Jail.”

The graves are generally dug by inmates at the nearby prison and the bodies buried in bags, rather than coffins.

In one case reported by US media, the family of 40-year-old Marrio Moore did not learn about his death until three months afterwards – after his name appeared on a list of undisclosed homicide victims published by a local television station.

The death of Mr Moore, who was found wrapped in a tarpaulin, was ruled a homicide due to "blunt force" to the head. He was buried behind the jail on July 14. However, his family was not notified by the police or the coroner's office.

One mother ofa missing man, Jonathan David Hankins, only found out about her son's death and burial a year and seven months after she reported him missing.

Gretchen Hankins said her 39-year-old son was reported missing to the Rankin County Sheriff’s Office in July 2022 and his photograph posted on the police department’s Facebook page as a missing person. Yet although Mr Hankins was buried in the paupers' grave in 2022, the family only found out where he was – or that he had, in fact, died – in 2023.

“They said they were looking, but they weren’t looking too hard," Gretchen Hankins told US broadcaster CNN. “I want them to lose their jobs because they didn’t do their job."

In an even more shocking case, Bettersten Wade spent seven months searching for her son, Dexter Wade, last year before discovering he had died after being hit by a police car while crossing a six-lane highway – and buried in an unmarked grave without his family being informed.

A father of two teenage daughters, Mr Wade, 37, went missing on March 5 last year and, despite his mother reporting him missing, Jackson police reportedly failed to inform her he had been fatally struck by a police car less than an hour after leaving home.

His body was identified due to a bottle of prescription medication in his pocket, but his family were not contacted and after four months of being left unclaimed in the city morgue, it was buried in the pauper’s grave.

Mr Wade was eventually given a funeral by his family eight months after his death.

Late last year, Jackson mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba apologised for Ms Wade’s situation, but said there were no indications of police misconduct or "malicious intent" against the dead man or his family.

"It is tragic to lose your child,” Mr Lumumba said. “It is tragic to suffer the consequences of having to bury your child before you pass. But to add insult to that trauma, it is even more difficult to not have the ability to have a proper burial for your child. And for that we regret a circumstance that Mr Wade's family has had to deal with."

Local news outlets in the US have published lists of the identities of the bodies believed to be buried in the numbered graves to allow family members of missing persons to check for their loved ones.

Analysis

What I find most shocking about this story is how little the American public is shocked by this.

The litany of mistakes made by law enforcement authorities in Jackson did not just mean that bodies of people relatives already knew were dead were buried in unmarked graves without a proper funeral, although this would have been bad enough.

The reality is many of the families of these people did not know they were dead at all. Most had reported their loved ones missing, with police documents to prove it. Many of those will have still been holding out hope their family member would one day reappear, healthy and happy, with a good explanation for their disappearance.

Others will have known, deep down, their relative was likely to be dead, but had been unable to experience the closure they would have had if the death had been confirmed earlier. In the case of one of these men, he was killed, by a police car, within an hour of leaving the house. Yet it was months before his family found out the truth.

It is likely to be a sad indictment the lack of shock comes from a country – and a community, Jackson’s population is around 80 per cent black – with low expectations of its law force in the wake of incidents such as the killing of George Floyd.