Bodies Found in Police Graveyard

Jan 15, 2024

In March of last year, 37-year-old Dexter Wade of Jackson, Mississippi, went missing. His mother, Betterston Wade, filed a missing person’s report with the Jackson police. She continued calling them numerous times but still got no response from them.

Only in August did Ms. Wade hear that Dexter was killed when he was hit by a police car and later buried in a pauper’s cemetery behind a jail outside the city. After discovering where he was buried, his family had his body exhumed and an autopsy performed on him. In the process, it turned out Dexter was carrying a wallet with his I.D. and other identifying information. The police claim they tried to call his family and got no response—but even if that were true, they made little effort to contact anyone in his family to inform them of his whereabouts before burying his body.

After the Wade family went public about what happened to Dexter, 215 bodies were found in the same cemetery. All were buried there just since 2016. The bodies were buried with no coffins and with the graves marked with nothing but a metal rod and a number. It turns out one-third of these victims were carrying identification when they died.

Going further back, it appears there were many more. Dexter Wade’s grave was number 672, suggesting there had been 671 buried before him.

Other families have since come forward with similar stories about what happened to their loved ones. The city charges the families $250 to get the bodies exhumed for a proper burial.

The Jackson police try to justify their failure to notify the families of those buried there by saying most were drug addicts, but so what? Even if that were true, that doesn’t mean their families don’t have a right to know how they died.

And who knows what else the Jackson cops might be hiding?