Families of people who were buried in a pauper's field next to the Hinds County Penal Farm near Jackson, Miss., are calling for a federal investigation into the burials, which took place without families being notified. With their attorney now saying the field holds hundreds more graves, the families want a full accounting of the bodies buried there.
The issue became national news last fall, when several families said they had waited months to hear about a missing loved one — only to learn their relative had died months earlier, and were buried in a grassy field, their graves marked only by a metal tag bearing a number. Their attorney, civil rights lawyer Ben Crump, says he believes many more people were buried under similar circumstances.
