Marrio Terrell Moore is the latest victim, coming less than a month after Dexter Wade’s story of being buried without his family’s knowledge after being hit by Jackson, Mississippi, police.
Moore’s family heard about his death from an NBC News investigation, which reported “that Jackson police had failed to notify the public about dozens of homicides this year.”
The 40-year-old’s sister, Marquita, read the article after her aunt texted her one night in October. She marched to the Jackson Police Department headquarters downtown, though it was after 8 p.m., and demanded an explanation. But the officer on site said that there was no one available.
Over the next few days, Moore’s family members heard the news too. NBC News reported that “Marrio had been bludgeoned to death, wrapped in a tarp and left on the street. For months, his body had lain in the Hinds County morgue, unclaimed.”
The report added that “on July 14, inmates at the county penal farm had buried his remains in a pauper’s field.” NBC News reported that Moore was buried the same day and in the same place as 37-year-old Wade, whose death sparked public outrage and called for a federal investigation.
In a report, an investigator for the Hinds County coroner’s office said, “She called Marrio’s brother, but the phone number didn’t work. A police commander told the family that a detective left a card at Marrio’s mother’s house. But neither his mother, brother, nor two sisters recall being contacted by anyone responsible for reaching his next of kin.”
Moore would frequently go months without speaking to family members, so his family was used to his nomadic lifestyle and was not initially concerned. As a result, they saw no reason to file a missing person’s report in the months after his death.
However, his family insists that was no excuse for the police. “They just [thought], ‘Oh, well, he ain’t got nobody. And they just threw him away,” Marquita remarked.
It was not a case of unknown identity. Stephanie Horn, deputy medical examiner investigator, reported that when officers discovered Moore’s body on Gunda Street, they found “wet envelopes addressed to ‘Mario Moore’ and a debit card with the name ‘Mario Moore.’”
Moore’s family has lived nearby for twenty years, with his mother, Mary Moor Glenn, living only “2 miles from where his body was found and where he received child support bills and other mail.”
After learning about her son’s death, Mary had to pay $250 in order “to reclaim the rights” to her son’s remains. “A coroner’s office staffer told her it would cost another $500 to have Marrio exhumed.”
The Moores decided to have a memorial service without the body instead of exhuming it. To this day, they don’t have an idea of the exact location or grave number where Moore is buried.
Nevertheless, Mary intends to keep pushing to learn the truth about her son’s death. The grieving mother lamented, “What are you hiding? Why can’t you just come and just tell somebody that their child is gone?”
“It hurts bad that he’s gone. But nobody thought that I was important enough to let me know about my child.”
NBC News reports that Marrio was buried the same day and in the same place as 37-year-old Dexter Wade, a Jackson man whose death sparked public outrage and calls for a federal investigation.
