Separate events in Rankin County detailed below include:
–Dexter Wade discovered to have been killed and secretly buried by police in Rankin County in 2023
–Marrio Terrell Moore allegedly found beaten to death and secretly buried by Rankin County police in 2023
–Discovery of 215 bodies in the shallow mass grave where the first 2 were found in 2023
-The Goon Squad in Rankin County consisting of deputies who raped, beat and killed black citizens, most recently Michael Jenkins who was raped and shot in the mouth by deputies on January 24, 2023
–Update on 2024 trial of Goon Squad officers
–History of the Goon Squad since the 1970s and Sheriff Lloyd “Goon” Jones who founded the Goon Squad in the aftermath of the Civil Rights era
–Current Rankin County Sheriff Bryan Bailey, who succeeded Sheriff “Goon” Jones, was trained by Jones gets re-elected as sheriff
–Deep KKK history of Rankin County, MS
All topics above addressed individually with additional links below. All events involve police rapes, killings and other crimes, coverup and systemic racism in law enforcement agencies in and around Jackson, MS.
Dexter Wade discovered to have been secretly buried by Rankin County police
Dexter Wade, killed by Rankin County deputy, secretly buried in 2023
Death of Dexter Wade
March 5, 2023: Dexter Wade vanished while walking near a convenience store at night had been run over and killed by a Rankin County off-duty officer whose identity was kept a secret. Police had found ID and knew his name. This was recorded by the coroner. Police left his body at the coroner’s office for months while the coroner demanded the family be notified which was never done. Finally, Rankin County buried him in a body bag in a shallow grave without telling the family. By then, his mother, Ms. Bettersten Wade, had been calling the same officers relentlessly looking for her vanished son and was told for 8 months that police knew nothing. Police finally buried him in a shallow grave in a “pauper’s field” behind the jail marked only by a stick with the number 672.
November 2023: Family discovers that police had killed and secretly buried Wade.
Wade’s grave marker in mass grave field of 215 bodies discovered behind the jail
Preceding Events2019” Ms. Wade states that her brother George Robinson, 62, was also killed by Jackson PD Officer Anthony Fox in 2019 when they slammed him to the ground and that this occurred in the same county where her family was well-known to police due to the family’s lawsuit involving Robinson’s death. Officer Fox was charged by the DA and convicted for manslaughter only to have the Attorney General overturn the officer’s conviction, openly protecting the killer cop.
dexter Wade’s uncle George Robinson, murdered by Jackson police in 2019, officer convicted, conviction overturned by Attorney General
Dexter Wade’s uncle George Robinson, killed by Jackson police in 2019. Jackson PD and Rankin County Sheriff’s Department are adjacent law enforcement agencies with many cross connections.
Ms. Bettersten Wade feels the cases of her brother and her son are connected as police knew the family well due to the human rights lawsuit and were fully aware that Dexter Wade was the nephew of the man whom they had previously murdered.
Ben Crump takes the case
In October of 2023, family lawyer Ben Crump called for a federal investigation of the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department. Attorney Crump also had the body of Dexter Wade exhumed and an independent autopsy conducted before properly burying him. Autopsy showed that his head, chest and ribs and pelvis were totally crushed by a vehicle and his leg had also been amputated. Autopsy also confirmed that a wallet with his ID was found on his body and that the police knew his identity at all times while his mother who had filed a missing person report and called police for frequent updates was continually lied to by police who told her that their investigation had not turned up her missing son.
Also see Dexter Wade in our archive.
2023: Marrio Terrell Moore discovered to have been secretly buried by Rankin County police
A Second black man found to have been buried in unmarked grave by police without notifying family on February 2, 2023 was 40-year-old Marrio Terrell Moore who was killed by unknown attackers and found and quietly buried by the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department without notifying his family like Dexter Wade. Moore’s family finally found out eight months later when news broke that another 24 people had been found to have been buried in shallow graves. The family read through the list presented by media and discovered their long missing son Marrio Terrell Moore was among them.
Family of Marrio Terrell Moore
Discovery of hundreds more bodies secretly buried by police in the same pauper’s field
215 bodies found buried in shallow unmarked graves behind the Rankin County Jail. It is reported that buzzards circled overhead because the unenbalmed bodies were buried in a shallow mass grave without attempt to notify families.
This unknown mass grave behind the jail sits in Rankin County which has been in the news for the Goon Squad, a group of officers from the same Rankin County Sheriff’s Department which conspired to bury the hundreds of bodies last year. Dexter Wade and Marrio Terrell Moore were among them.
Rankin County cop Goon Squad rapes, beats and shoots Black after burglarizing his home
A separate case involving some of the same law enforcement agencies in the same Rankin County was discovered when the
consisting of 5 Rankin County Sheriff’s deputies and 1 Jackson PD officer were off-duty on January 23, 2023, broke into the home of black men
and Eddie Parker and spent hours beating, raping Jenkins with a sex toy, torturing him with a taser and humiliating both men for 90 minutes before the officers fired a gunshot directly into Jenkins’ mouth, covered up evidence and snuck away from the crime scene. He survived with severe injuries to his tongue and mouth. The Rankin County Goon Squad was identified as deputies Brett McAlpin, Jeffrey Middleton, Christian Lee Dedmon, Hunter Thomas Elward, Daniel Opdyke and Joshua Hartfield. Of note, the assault took place in Simpson County which is just across the southern Rankin County line. Simpson County is where the Goon Squad was originally founded in the early 1970s by Simpson Sheriff Lloyd “Goon” Jones whose claim to fame was the murder of a black man in a 1967 Civil Rights protest (see Ben Brown case described below).
Michael Corey Jenkins
Rankin County Goon Squad
This was not a random occurrence. It was the tip of an iceberg of Rankin County Goon Squad officers abusing citizens and pistol-whipping, knocking out teeth, beating people with clubs, breaking limbs and terrorizing Rankin County residents while covering up their crimes, falsifying police reports and spreading terror in the community for 20 years while the roots of the Goon Squad reach back to approximately 1970. The history, to the degree it is emerging, is detailed below.
Jenkins after police torture and shooting
Are these cases all connected?
The cases of the 215 people secretly buried by police behind the jail and the Goon Squad are not known to be directly related but both were crimes committed by some of the 215 Rankin County deputies who committed all crimes combined in this summary.
The Currently Convicted Goon Squad Cops
The Good Squad are not regular officers. They are an elite of chief investigators, a lieutenant, a narcotics cop and respected officers. They were charged and pleaded as follows:
- Brett McAlpin – former chief investigator for Rankin County Sheriff’s Department; pleaded guilty to seven counts
- Jeffrey Middleton – former lieutenant with Rankin County Sheriff’s Department; pleaded guilty to six counts
- Christian Dedmon – former narcotics investigator for Rankin County Sheriff’s Department; pleaded guilty to eight counts
- Hunter Elward – former patrol deputy for Rankin County Sheriff’s Department; pleaded guilty to 11 counts
- Daniel Opdyke – former patrol deputy for Rankin County Sheriff’s Department; pleaded guilty to eight counts
- Joshua Hartfield – former narcotics investigator and flex officer for Richland Police; pleaded guilty to six counts
Update on sentencing of the Goon Squad officers
A federal judge has postponed the sentencing of the six officers who raped, beat and shot a black resident for March of 2024. Specifically, Hunter Elward will be sentenced on march 19, 2024. Jeffrey Middleton sentencing set for March 19, 2024. Christian Dedmon March 20, 2024. Daniel Opdyke March 20, 2024. Joshua Hartfield March 21, 2024. Brett McAlpin March 21, 2024. Their sentences will be updated when the information becomes available.
History of the Rankin County Goon Squad – from Jim Crow to Sheriff Lloyd “Goon” Jones in 1967
On May 12, 1967, a Civil Rights protest took place in Jackson, MS during which 2 Jackson officers shot and killed Ben Brown. Brown had been shot in his back by a police shotgun in the street while walking to a shop to get his wife a sandwich. It was the day after his 22nd birthday and he had walked through an area where civil rights protests took place and shot in his back by 3 agitated cops firing 400 bullets into a crowd. One of them, Lloyd “Goon” Jones, then a Mississippi Highway Patrol officer who bragged that the detective “didn’t shoot that n—–, I did.” DOJ document on the murder of Ben Brown is here. DOJ dragged out a probe and when Goon Jones died in 1995, they conveniently closed the Ben Brown case. Several other protests with more civil rights protest casualties involving the same Jackson area law enforcement from the 1967-1970 time frame agencies are described here.
From Civil Rights era killer to Simpson County Sheriff, the career of Lloyd “Goon” Jones, founder of the Goon Squad
Sheriff Lloyd “Goon” Jones, Godfather of the Goon Squad
Sheriff Lloyd “Goon” Jones, Simpson County, MS
Proud racist killer cop “Goon” Jones who had killed Ben Brown during a Civil Rights protest in 1967 was well rewarded and never charged for his crimes and would later become famous for being a very dangerous racist corrupt sheriff who would become the sheriff of Simpson County and cherished mentor of the current sitting Sheriff Bryan Bailey who is currently presiding over the adjacent Rankin County Sheriff’s Department which provided most of the Goon Squad elite officers who burglarized, sodomized and shot Michael Corey Jenkins in 2023. Sheriff “Goon” Jones allegedly spawned the Goon Squad in the 1970s and its wrath visibly extended across both Rankin and adjacent Simpson Counties.
Ben Brown, killed by Lloyd “Goon” Jones in 1967
Sheriff Lloyd Goon Jones Shot and Killed in 1995
Goon Jones was on his front lawn when he and a jail trustee who was with him were targeted, shot and killedon the lawn on October 4, 1995 at age 66. Carl Ray Jones was manhunted, convicted and sentenced to LWOP for the killing of Sheriff Jones and appealed the conviction in 1999.
11/2023: Rankin County Sheriff Bryan Bailey gets re-elected in the midst of numerous investigations of his department during the secret mass burial discovery on his watch
After both the Goon Squad and the mass grave containing Dexter Wade and 214 other bodies were discovered, activists demanded that Rankin County Sheriff who presided over this Sheriff’s Department step down but instead, he ran for re-election unopposed and was re-elected for another term in November of 2023. More on the controversial sheriff can be found here.
History of the Ku Klux Klan in Rankin County, Mississippi
A summary of the role of the Ku Klux Klan and the UDC (United Daughters of the Confederacy) in Rankin County, MS is here.
2016-2021 Incidents in adjacent Hinds and Rankin Countie
After both the Goon Squad and the mass grave containing Dexter Wade and 214 other bodies were discovered, activists demanded that Rankin County Sheriff who presided over this Sheriff’s Department step down but instead, he ran for re-election unopposed and was re-elected for another term in November of 2023. More on the controversial sheriff can be found here.
Incidents in the community were blamed on the KKK in Rankin County in 2021 but the sheriff declared this to be essentially fake news. KKK flyers had been thrown onto properties in black communities in 2016 and for many years before the 2021 incident.
Additional flyers found in Belhaven, a part of Jackson, MS in Hinds County. Some of the officers involved in the Goon Squad were from Jackson and employed in Hinds County.
Sam Dobbins, the racist police Chief in Holmes County, Mississippi, was recorded bragging about murdering a black man with 119 bullets
Just 80 miles to the north of Rankin County which sits just east of Jackson, Holmes County is to the north. The trio of counties discussed on this page sits in a semi-circle around the city of Jackson, MS with Hinds County being Jackson City proper. Located in Holmes County is the predominantly black town of Lexington which has a proudly racist homicidal police chief named Sam Dobbins who was recorded in a racist tirade bragging about killing people and favoring the n-word. Simpson County where former Sheriff Lloyd “Goon” Jones would become the founder of the Goon Squad currently on trial in adjacent Rankin County is marked on the map.
Yellow shaded area is the approximate footprint of the city of Jackson, MS
The audio is here. ACLU has filed repeated complaints against Chief Dobbins without result so far. Here is a different issue involving Dobbins. More detail on the extortion and targeting of black residents by Chief Dobbins is here. Yet another case is here.
A message from Nina Simone on Mississippi
