Crime Weekly - S3 Ep173: Crime Weekly News: Hundreds of Bodies Buried Behind Prison

Episode Date: January 17, 2024

At the end of Bettersten Wade's monthslong search for her missing son, Dexter Wade, 215 bodies were discovered in makeshift graves near Hinds County Penal Farm in Mississippi, with markers indicating that there could be hundreds more. Police insist the graves aren't a secret and that they're meant for inmates and homeless people without next of kin to contact, but the suspicious death and burial of 37-year-old Dexter Wade have his family and the community believing otherwise. Try our coffee!! - www.CriminalCoffeeCo.com Become a Patreon member -- > https://www.patreon.com/CrimeWeekly Shop for your Crime Weekly gear here --> https://crimeweeklypodcast.com/shop Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcast Website: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com Instagram: @CrimeWeeklyPod Twitter: @CrimeWeeklyPod Facebook: @CrimeWeeklyPod  

Dear McDonald's, your breakfast menu, fire. Tens across the board. I could be happy with anything, even though I order the same thing every time. Thanks for not judging me. I'll try something new next time. Maybe. Score a two for $5 deal on a sausage McMuffin with egg and more. Limited time only.

Price and participation may vary. Cannot be combined with any other offer. Single item at regular price. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Crime Weekly News. I'm Derek Levasseur. And I'm Stephanie Harlow. And we're going to get right into this week's episode, but before we do a couple house cleaning things, first off, CrimeCon Nashville. I should know this, but I don't. I believe it's in May. I think it's in May, but it's on their website, CrimeCon. You can go check it out.

But I will tell you, if you use our code CRIMEWEEKLY, you get a discount. And obviously, that lets us know that you're coming. We usually wait a long time to put this out. But then we do that, and people are like, I already bought my tickets with a different code. So we're telling you ahead of time this year, if you're going to CrimeCon, we will be there. CrimeCon is awesome. It is such a great time. We will be there. CrimeCon is awesome. It is such a great time. We enjoy ourselves thoroughly.

It's an opportunity to meet you guys, to talk about the show, to get some ideas. And then at night, it's more of a relaxed setting where we're all drinking and eating, hanging out. It's a lot of fun. And it's in Nashville, which is a great place. So if you're looking to go- Yeah, I have some info. I have some info for you.

It's May 31st. Oh, okay. Okay. Some intelligence? Yep. I have some intelligence. It's May 31st through June 2nd, 2024. Now this is going to be- Summertime in Nashville? Yep. This is going to be such a popular crime con that the Gold VIP and Platinum VIP are already sold out. They still have the standard. Yep. And it's at the Gaylord Opry, the Gaylord Opryland Hotel, which Derek and I stayed at when we were at Podcast Movement

and this hotel is probably one of the coolest hotels I've ever been at. You don't even have to leave. There's restaurants and bars and it looks like you're outside when you're indoors because they have all of these amazing

like tropical plants and everything's like kind of just glass so it seems like you're outside. This is the cool and they have that remember that good pizza shop where you kept eating at? I literally was going to wait for you to finish. I was going

to go, remember how many times we got the pizza, but you beat me to it. The pizza, yep. And then we went to that one restaurant where it was like a buffet and then we kept going back to the buffet. We were so fat, but it's like a great place. They've got great food and it's just a, such a cool atmosphere. This is going to be probably the best CrimeCon that we've ever been to. So y'all need to join us there. We're going to have a great time. Use our code.

What is it, Derek? Very simple, Crime Weekly. Crime Weekly. Very simple, Crime Weekly, all one word. Go check it out at CrimeCon.com. Secondly, we haven't mentioned it in the new year. Criminal Coffee, it's doing great. You guys are killing it.

Thank you for supporting it. We're working behind the scenes in the new year. Criminal Coffee, it's doing great. You guys are killing it. Thank you for supporting it. We're working behind the scenes on the next case. We have the lab that we believe we're going to be working with, barring any setbacks. So we're going to keep you updated. I don't like to put anything out there until we have something in stone, but there are things going on behind the scenes. We have raised enough money to fund the next case. So thank you so much for being a part of that.

We had a big spike after the Albert Frost announcement. So that's why we started this company. That's what we're doing. We're going to continue to grow. So if you want to try some really good coffee and support a good cause, head on over to criminalcoffeeco.com. We got bags, we got ground, we got whole bean, we got K-cups. And we actually have something else coming out soon. Not going to say what it is right now, but we are also working on it. Some of you detectives out there can probably figure out what that is. You've only asked for it a million times.

But it is coming slowly but surely. But other than that, that's the house cleaning. I know people love when we open the show talking about things unrelated to the crime itself. So I just wanted to make sure I lived up to that expectation. Got that out, really pissed everyone off, yeah. But did it in under three minutes. It's pretty damn good. High five, virtual.

Okay, virtual, boom. All right, what's up with this week's episode? Another, I'm sure, terrible. I know nothing about it. You just pulled this one up. I don't have any script on it, know nothing. I'm hearing it for the first time. Yeah, we have actually gotten a lot of people who asked us to cover it.

We were gonna cover a different case this week, but we'll cover that case next week because this is relevant. This is happening now and it's kind of crazy. So what happened is 215 people have been were buried in a pauper's field next to the Hines County penal farm near Jackson, Mississippi, are calling for a federal investigation into the burials, which took place without families being notified. With their attorneys now saying the fields holds hundreds more graves, the families want a full accounting of the bodies buried there. And from what I've found and kind of gathered from looking into this, these bodies were not embalmed. They weren't like put in caskets. They were kind of just buried. into this. These bodies were not embalmed.

They weren't like put in caskets. They were kind of just buried. Dumped there. Yeah. Which is crazy to think in this kind of time. You know, these modern times. Is it one big grave site or like all individual like little burial spots? Or like is it one mass grave?

I think they have individual burial spots because these people didn't all die at once. Right. So this wasn't of like, not all of them, at least. This wasn't like a nefarious situation where there was a ton of people that were being dumped there after they were being murdered. People were using this as a grave site, even though it wasn't like an official graveyard, basically, is what you're telling me. So according to the officials of the jail, they said, quote, it's not a secret burial ground. In those graves are the bodies of those who went unclaimed by family when they died. These persons are either homeless people, inmates from local jails who died, but relatives never claimed their bodies, unidentified persons who officials were never able to connect with family or even persons who died, whose

families couldn't afford a funeral. So but it seems like it's kind of messed up, man, because you can afford to house them and feed them with the taxpayers money while they're alive. But when they're dead, you can't even get them like a proper burial. Like you can't even do that. You can't you can't use a little of the money that you were putting to feed them and house them, which you don't have to do anymore to give them a proper burial. They're still humans.

So wait, so now I'm following you and I'm sorry, I'm catching up again, hearing it for the first time. The prison was using this as a graveyard for the inmates after they expired. Yes. Holy shit. Okay. Now I'm following you. Yeah.

It's pretty messed up. Yeah. I mean, they'm following you. Yeah. It's pretty messed up. Yeah. I mean, they're not currently using it. Was it back in the day? Not that it was acceptable then, but this is something, this is an old practice. I'm assuming they're not doing this now. It says from 2016 on, hold on, let me go up. And it says, we know based on the records from the coroner's offices since 2016, in

the last eight years, we can identify 215 individuals that were buried behind the jail and their families have not been notified. And this is from the attorney representing the families. And this is what he told PBS NewsHour this week. And like the jail is saying, hey, listen, these were unidentified people, people who didn't have families, people whose bodies went unclaimed. But they're arguing this because one of the mothers of one of these prisoners, Betterstein Wade, she told NBC News how she filed a missing persons report on her son, Dexter Wade, and she was finally told that her son was dead at the age of 37. The police also told her that county officials had buried him in the local pauper's field. Police investigators said Dexter Wade had been struck and killed by an SUV driven by an off-duty Jackson Police Department officer on Interstate 55 just hours after his mother last

saw him. The police report said Wade was on foot at the time. So it doesn't even look like this person was in jail. He was killed by a police officer and buried in this pauper's field behind the jail. And the mayor said, quote, the accident was investigated and it was determined that it was in fact an accident and there was no malicious intent. But officials failed to inform the family of Dexter Wade. And the mayor said, quote, there was a lack of communication with the missing persons division, the coroner's office and the police department's accident investigation unit. By the time that Betterstein Wade learned about her son's fate, she'd spent months looking for him.

She had contacted police in Jackson, gave them potential leads, asked for updates about where her son might be. She also asked for help on social media finding him. She feels like he basically disappeared off the face of the earth. And the worst part is they could have identified him. They could have notified the family because he was buried with a prescription medicine bottle that had his name on it. He also had his wallet, which contained his state ID, a credit card, and other identifying information.

And the lawyer, who's Ben Crump, by the way, he said, quote, the fact that Dexter had a state ID card and several other identifying items shows that there was a concerted effort to keep the truth and manner of death from his family. And I agree. This was not even a prisoner. It wasn't somebody who was in prison. No, it sounds shady. It sounds like something was, it was obviously either a murder or something at minimum. They were trying to hide. Yeah. Something that occurred and they were trying to cover it up at minimum.

Yeah. And that's terrible. Yeah. No, I think I'm pointing out the obvious here. This is obviously terrible. It's unprofessional. It's again, that's at minimum. It's nefarious, man.

It's criminal. It's criminal. It's criminal. And it's a situation where even just as far as to use the phrase chain of custody, when you have these individuals who may not have family members at the time that they pass away, well, what if down the road those family members come forward and they want to see where their loved one was buried? There's no way to even reunite them. There's no way if someone comes forward and says, hey, you know what? I know that my uncle who I wasn't close with is buried over in this lot. I want to move them to a more appropriate location where the rest of the family is with a proper gravestone, tombstone or whatever. Can't even do that because they're just kind of thrown all over the place. I would venture to say that there's no inventory list, for lack of a better way of describing it, where they can say, yeah, Derek Levasseur, he's buried over in this quadrant here under

slot A, B, or C. They're just kind of thrown everywhere. So this is going to be a big undertaking. I'm assuming that they're going to have to go in there for biohazard reasons as well just just on the surface just that for the biohazard isn't it illegal to just put somebody in the ground without embalming them like embalming them but also it doesn't i don't know all the specifics of i'm not gonna act like i'm an expert but when you bury someone there's usually like some form of concrete used or whatever to keep the thek. And it has to be buried at a certain depth so that if there's a flood or if there's something that goes on in

the area, all those bodies don't rise to the surface. I mean, it's kind of in a weird way, what happened with Albert Frost to a certain degree, he was buried in a shallow grave. There was a bad flood and his bones came up to the surface and that's how they found him. But yeah, no, there's, there's a lot of issues here, morally, legally, ethically, whatever, whatever you want to label, put it on. And like Crump was saying here, and it's probably not the only one by having this generic dumping site. Yeah. It could be used for prisoners that fit, you know, check all those boxes, which is still wrong, but it also opens up the opportunity to do something criminal,

kill someone and dump them there. And it'll probably go unnoticed because it's just going to be amongst all the other bodies. And then you have a situation like this where there's no accountability, there's no record, and it could be considered a destruction of evidence for sure at minimum. So major issues here, Jackson, Mississippi. Let's get our stuff together. Not good. This is going to be a huge undertaking to fix this. So here's my question, right? Like as a former police officer, let's say somebody's walking on the road and they get hit by like a random person hit and run and they're dead. The police normally wouldn't be like, oh, this person's dead. We don't know who hit them.

Let's bury them behind the jail. They'd probably take a picture of this person, put it out on the news. Hey, this body was found unidentified, even though that's not true, because he had identification on him, plenty of it. Does anybody know him so you can claim him? That's what they would do. The fact that this person, Dexter Wade, was hit by a police officer and nobody said anything and then he was just buried in an unmarked grave. That looks terrible. obviously there's a lot of activists involved. There's a lot of people, a lot of family members who are saying a lot of things. And we don't know what all is true, right? Because we're not getting a lot of confirmation or denial from the authorities themselves at this point. So we don't

know what all is true. But based on what we see, based on the face value of this, there's something going on here that's not on the up and up. And that's all I'll say. We definitely have to see in this particular case with Dexter, obviously, if he was hit on the side of the road, whatever the case may be, what type of investigation was conducted, not only in regards to identifying the victim, but also running the driver through the proper, you know, the proper steps to see if they were intoxicated. What happened to the police officer? Like, we don't even know. Yeah, where they issued a citation,

everything that was done. And then also what measures were taken to try to notify a next of kin, to notify a family member who could come in and claim the victim. According to his mother, zero efforts were made. Well, that's- And she was in contact with the police department

about him being missing, dude. That's what blows my mind. Well, that's the problem, right? And so, as you mentioned, and it's probably pretty accurate. Let's just say what it is. Her side of the story, she was never contacted. As you mentioned quickly, let's hear what the other side is. On the surface, it sounds terrible, especially if she was in contact with him.

They can't even use the excuse like, you know, listen, we had this person. There's no number. There's no name. There's no nothing. How do you contact someone? Well, then you could make the Stephanie Harlow argument, which was right. You put out something on the news. You put out something in the newspaper. You put up posters, whatever you can do to try to have someone come forward. But at minimum, if they have a woman coming into the station saying, I can't find my loved one, you would think the first step would be, hey, we just had that hit and run over on so-and-so. Who's she describing? What's their name? What's their description? Because it kind of matches the person that just got killed in a car accident.

On the same night, which was the last night she saw him. Yeah, no, it's March 5th. It's not good. Not good. And there's clearly something going on here. And also, I will say, this story has been circulating enough for long enough where if the Jackson Police Department had not heard from Dexter's mom at all, and she hadn't been contacting them and telling them her son was missing and giving them leads of where they could find him and run this

investigation, if that had not happened, I think by now they would have come out and been like, okay, we don't know exactly what's going on here, but we can tell you that we never spoke to this woman. They would say something by now. And the fact that they haven't said anything really to defend themselves at this point, it speaks volumes to me that's all i'll say i don't disagree no we're gonna i'm now i gotta follow up on it i gotta see what's gonna happen with it because i'm sure dexter's case is not the only incident like this you're talking over 200 bodies the question now becomes how many other dexters are buried back there a lot of the other people who are not prisoners, who are currently maybe even

labeled as missing by their loved ones, are buried behind the prison? That's a really tragic thing to think about. Which is happening. Lots of family members are coming out and saying similar things. Hey, listen, my loved one was missing. Maybe someone who's not even from Jackson, Mississippi, but from a surrounding state or whatever. This person's a transient. They're passing through there. They may not have had the best situation possibly where, you know, they were going through a time or whatever, but they still may have people who love and care about them who to this day are wondering what happened to them. And again, there's no record, no accountability on the part of the prison. So you can't even go back, retrace your steps and find out who's back there. I guarantee you,

however many bodies are back there, they probably don't know 10 or 20 percent of who the people are. They just know they're there. Which is fine. And then in those cases, you can't identify anybody. But at least you could like put pictures out like there's a website for the Jackson, Mississippi police where you could say, hey, this person died. They are currently buried in an unmarked grave in a pauper's field. But if you know this person, this person that we have a picture of, then come forward and claim your loved one. There's things that can be done and steps that can be taken even for the people who can't be identified on the spot. And the fact

that you're not treating these people like humans and you're not even taking into consideration that they may have people out there who are missing them is a problem. And I'm going to do a full video on this on YouTube in February. So I'm going to start really getting everything together and trying to piece everything together and more information is coming out every day. So we'll see. I'll be watching that episode for sure. We're thinking about the family. We hope that this comes to a quick resolution and that hopefully there is a record of the majority of people that are buried back there so they can start to correct this wrong, make it right. And also I'm looking forward to hearing out about what happens with Dexter's case and any other cases similar to this that come to the surface now that there's a

potential, you know, one good thing here, silver lining, there's a potential that family members who've been looking for their loved ones for years may get the answers as to what happened to them and may be reunited with their loved ones so that they can have a proper burial for them, a proper ceremony, and they can finally rest in peace. So that's all I got on this one. Anything else from you? Yeah, no, I think, you know, we'll just keep an eye on this. And it's very sad. I would say like, I'm stunned. I'm stunned by this. I can't believe this is happening, but nothing surprises me anymore these days. No, this is a crazy one. I know everyone gets mad when I say I haven't heard of these.

Yeah, it hasn't gotten the national attention that it really should be getting. That's the point. Like you didn't hear about it, right? But I'm not a big like, you know, when it comes to me not hearing about cases and stuff, like I'm working on my stuff. I'm staying in my lane. In this situation, really the only reason I heard about it was because I'm on TikTok. And you know how TikTok be. And I'm not on TikTok. They're all over this shit as soon as it happens.

And then they force the national news media to start talking about it because they get called out. So now CNN and NPR and everybody's covering it. But this has been unfolding for much longer than it's been hitting the national stage. And that's a problem. Once again, these people matter. Well, I'm glad we're on it now. And now everybody knows about it and you know about it. So you'll be on top of it as well.

Guys, we appreciate you being here. If you're liking what you're seeing or you're liking what you're hearing, please consider subscribing. Make sure you like the video. Comment down below. We've got a big ratio here. We'll get tens of thousands of views on the Crime Weekly News episodes. only like 5,000 or 6,000 likes, maybe even less. So take a second right now before you click off the video, like it, just click that thumbs up button. It takes no effort at all. We would really appreciate it. We appreciate you being here. Everyone stay safe out there. We will see

you later this week for part four of the Dan Markell series. It's a really good episode. You don't want to miss it. Stay safe. We'll see you soon. Bye.