A Florence, Miss., mother now knows what happened to her missing son, Jonathan David Hankins, over a year after his disappearance. Last summer, Gretchen Hankins reported him missing to the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department after he didn’t return home from a weekend out with friends.
Only on Dec. 4, 2023, when an NBC News reporter visited her home did she learn the truth: He had been found dead in a Jackson hotel room on May 23, 2022—and the Hinds County Coroner’s Office knew his identity.
Despite that, officials failed to notify his family of his death before burying him in a pauper’s field at the Hinds County penal farm on Sept. 14, 2022. NBC News reported on his death and burial on Sunday, Dec. 10.
Hankins is the third man NBC News has identified since October that Hinds County officials buried at the Hinds County Penal Farm without notifying his next-of-kin of his death.
The Jackson Police Department and the Hinds County Coroner’s Office’s handling of the deaths of Dexter Wade and Marrio Moore drew national attention and outrage. In both cases, the County buried the men in pauper’s graves, which are typically used for a person who has no next-of-kin who can claim their body or afford to bury them after their death. Like Hankins’ family, officials did not inform either Wade or Moore’s families about their deaths before burying them.
“I want people to know that somebody is not doing their job and making folks go through what I’ve been through,” Gretchen Hankins told NBC News. She said she believed her son died of a drug overdose.
“They can’t even do the job of notifying a dead person’s next of kin,” she said in the report. “They probably just thought, ‘Another drug addict, gone.’”
NBC News reported on Dec. 10, 2023, that Jackson Police found Jonathan Hankins dead at a hotel in Jackson on May 23, 2022, but no officials notified his mother of his death before the County buried him at the Hinds County Penal Farm in Jackson, Miss., on Sept. 14, 2022. Photo courtesy Rankin County
