MS coroner who buried men without telling families: ‘I don’t know how to find people’
The Hinds County, Mississippi, coroner told Jonathan David Hankins' mother that she had to leave the pauper’s field where her son’s body was being exhumed Friday.
This article is part of “Lost Rites,” a series on America’s failed death notification system.
RAYMOND, Miss. — Gretchen Hankins came to the Hinds County pauper’s field Friday morning for her son’s body, and for answers. She got neither.
Hankins’ son, Jonathan David Hankins, 39, died of a drug overdose in May 2022, and his body went unclaimed for more than a year as family, friends and police searched for him. Without anyone notifying his mother of his death, he was buried in a grave marked only with a number: 645. He was one of several men who were buried without their families being told, triggering widespread public outrage after NBC News exposed the issue last year.
Early Friday, Gretchen Hankins stepped onto the pauper’s field, on the grounds of the county jail’s work farm, for the first time, to witness her son being exhumed so that his body could be prepared for a proper funeral. She said a staff member at the Hinds County coroner’s office had told her she could attend the exhumation.
Hinds County Coroner Sharon Grisham-Stewart was there as well, and Hankins began pressing the coroner on why no one had told her her son was dead.
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