Dexter Wade’s family wasn’t only one to be cheated out of saying their last goodbyes in Jackson, Miss.: The family of Marrio Moore said their loved one was deceased and buried without their knowledge.
Marquita Moore told NBC that she saw her 40-year-old brother’s name on a list of 24 homicide victims published by WLBT3, whose names were never made known to the public. Moore’s family retained civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump, who also worked the Wade case.
According to Crump, Moore was bludgeoned to death in February and left in the street wrapped in a tarp. His body went unclaimed for months in the Hinds County morgue until he was buried in a pauper’s grave in July by inmates in the penal farm, per NBC.
Moore was buried the same day as Wade, whose mother gained national attention for exposing the handling (or mishandling) of her son’s death. Like the Moores, she found out her son was dead and buried months after the fact. She was able to exhume his body and give him a proper funeral nine months after his death.
“It is inhumane to leave a family without answers and deprive them of the ability to give their loved one a proper burial. Jackson authorities instead chose to bury these men in a pauper’s field with only a three-digit number to memorialize them. Shame on the Jackson Police Department for their inaction, their apathy, and their cruelty,” said Crump in a statement.
Now, Moore’s family seeks answers as to what happened to him before he died, including who killed him and why the family wasn’t alerted of his passing.
“This begs the question once again, why was the next of kin left in the dark?” asked Crump.
Well, maybe these cases getting so much attention is why the Jackson Police Chief suddenly adopted a new next-of-kin policy to alert families promptly about the death of their loved ones. If you ask the families of Wade and Moore, they’d likely tell you this policy came nearly a year too late.
More than a dozen families of the deceased on WLBT’s list continue looking for answers into their deaths.
Correction: It is not confirmed that Jackson police did not notify the families of the all 24 victims. The names were hidden from the public.