This article is part 4 of Lost Ritual. series About the failure of America's death notification system.
The unclaimed dead in Hinds County, Mississippi, are buried along a dirt road on the grounds of a prison farm, their graves marked only by metal bars and numbers.
Every few months, inmates dig new graves, adding new bodies to the hundreds already buried on the desolate grounds.
For centuries, local governments have had the solemn duty to bury people who died without money or family knowledge. Some coroners and medical examiners conduct extensive searches for surviving family members, searching the Internet and government databases for clues.
But others don't complete the job.
This is evident in Hinds County. NBC News found several cases where people died and were buried in pauper's fields, even though their families were looking for them or even though they were not difficult to find.
Families say they would have gladly collected the bodies of their loved ones and given them proper funerals. Rather, they say, pauper burials have traumatized them and undermined their trust in the government.
lost ritual
- The mother reported her son missing in March. The police hid her truth from her for months.
- Another man buried without his family's knowledge in Jackson, Mississippi
- The third man was buried in a pauper's field in Hinds County, without telling anyone or his mother.
- The Jackson Police Department adopted a next-of-kin notification policy following an NBC News report.
The blame for these failures lies primarily with the Hinds County Coroner's Office and the Jackson Police Department. Each institution is blaming the other.
Meanwhile, other families wonder if their missing loved ones were also given pauper's burials on desolate land beyond the stables and scrapyards.
To help families find answers, NBC News is publishing a list of paupers buried in Hinds County since 2016. This list was provided by the county coroner's office in response to a public records request. The office said in an email that it does not have a list of those previously buried and “no records were found prior to 2016.”
In publishing this list, NBC News only releases the individuals' names, gender, race, date of death, age at death, and date of burial. The NBC News list includes only adults, including nine unclaimed bodies designated for indigent burial in Hinds County in recent months, but as of Nov. 1. name is not included.
NBC News could not confirm the accuracy of the information on the list and it may contain misspellings or other errors. NBC News also identified people who have been claimed or exhumed, including Dexter Wade, who was removed from the shantytown and given a proper funeral after NBC News reported that authorities failed to tell his mother that he had been murdered. The name was also deleted.
If you believe your loved one is on the list, you can contact the Hinds County Coroner's Office, which handles indigent burial requests, for more information. The Hinds County Board of Supervisors approves the request.
NBC News also continues to report on indigent burials and cremations. If you would like to share your experience, please contact reporter Jon Schuppe at jonathan.schuppe@nbcuni.com.
