A brush fire, an unidentified body and a woman on a mission in Dubai
In the summer of 2022, when firefighters responded to a brush fire at an empty lot in a depressed neighborhood of west Jackson, Mississippi, they happened upon the partially skeletonized remains of a man who appeared to have suffered a gunshot wound to the head.
It was not clear how long the body had been there, nor who the man was. Such crimes are not uncommon in Mississippi’s capital, which has the highest murder rate of any city in the United States, and the remains would likely have languished among Hinds County’s voluminous cold cases were it not for a Mississippi expat named Carla Davis.
Davis, who is originally from the small Mississippi town of Purvis and now lives in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, is a benefactor who funds investigations of unidentified human remains in hopes of giving them a name. Though pursuing relevant homicide investigations is not part of her specific agenda, Davis is also interested in ensuring justice is served. It seems logical that law enforcement officials would pursue what was presumed to be a homicide case once they knew whose body had been found in the weeds.
The remains were found near the intersection of Dixon Road and a memorial thoroughfare known as Officer Thomas Catchings Sr. Drive, named for a Jackson policeman who was reportedly shot and killed in 2005 by a carjacking suspect after a brief vehicle pursuit. (Before he died, Catchings shot and killed the suspect, 18-year-old Omar Hampton, who had a history of mental illness and run-ins with the law.) In short, this was not a safe part of town. The two salient questions were: Whose remains had been found in the empty lot, and what had happened to him?
A Davis-funded investigation led to a 36-year-old man named Andrew Bert Coker, whose identity was announced on Jan. 5, 2025, by Texas-based Othram Laboratories, with which Davis is affiliated, and the Mississippi Department of Public Safety. Though Othram reportedly collaborated in the identification effort with the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation and the State Medical Examiner’s Office (both part of the Department of Public Safety), a spokesperson for MBI said that was “a misprint,” which is a generous way of saying it was wrong — a significant miscue for a release about forensic identification.
Only one local outlets appears to have reported on the announcement, and it primarily highlighted the success of the investigation, with almost no details about the deceased man nor how he may have died. This is typical of contemporary news, which often leaves out key details, seldom explores backstories and rarely includes follow-up. Yet verifying and documenting are what this story is all about, including who Coker was and how he died.
In hopes of filling in some of the many blanks, I looked further into the story and emailed Davis, Othram and MBI. I am still waiting to hear back from Davis and Othram, and will report further details if and when I respond. Several online background sites list a person who appears to be Coker, along with “possible” relatives and associates, yet such databases are typically riddled with errors. In addition to questions about who Coker was and how he came to die, an obvious question is whether this presumed homicide is being criminally investigated.
Davis, who is identified as a “genetic genealogist” in this article on Oxygen.com, told the outlet she is on a mission to help identify scores of unknown Mississippi remains.
“If I’m going to do any philanthropy work, I would like it to be in my home state and I want to continue those efforts until they are exhausted,” she said. According to the article, as of 2021 there were about 60 Mississippi cases of unidentified remains in The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, and Davis planned to contribute to investigations into each one that had available DNA evidence, and once all those were solved, to fund similar cases in other states.
A site maintained by the Association of Professional Genealogists identifies Davis as chief genetic genealogist at Othram, and notes that her focus is not limited to solving such cases. Also a part of her agenda is “reconnecting families, delivering long-awaited justice, and paving the way for a new era in forensic investigation,” according to her bio on the site.
The only substantive local report on the identification of Coker’s remains was this article, which mentioned his identity almost in passing, with a notation that he had died from a gunshot wound to the head. His name was provided at the very end, almost as a postscript, and was erroneous, at that. Like several other online sites, it identified him as Gary Andrew Coker when his actual name, according to Othram, was Andrew Bert Coker. The article made no mention of a homicide investigation.
The site websleuth added a few more details about the story, noting that investigators whom Davis funded had produced new leads that eventually led to “a potential relative of the man,” which resulted in his identification. A strangely-named site, Unidentified-Awareness.fandom.com, added “Gary” as a middle name and an erroneous birth year (1956), with no citations of sources. The same website later revised its entry, listing his correct full name, “Andrew Bert Coker” and a corrected birth year, 1986. Another site, which uses Coker’s correct middle name, claims he was arrested for shoplifting in 2016. Yet another site claims he faced a felony charge the same year. An ancestry site lists Coker as having lived most recently at 180 Safe Harbor Circle in Brandon, Mississippi, which appears to be a camper lot or trailer park. However, the same site erroneously reports that he was born in 1956. It seems prudent to hold all of these details in abeyance pending interviews with an Othram source and/or Davis.
According to Othram’s webpage on Coker, the forensic investigation was launched after firefighters discovered the remains of “an adult male with likely European ancestry” who had been shot in the head. The few available details were entered into the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs) as UP100513. When no match was found to a known individual, the remains became known as Hinds County John Doe.
In 2023, a team led by Othram set out to use advanced DNA testing to determine the man’s identity. Forensic evidence was submitted to Othram’s lab in Texas, where scientists developed a DNA extract from the evidence to use for forensic genome sequencing. Once the team had a DNA profile, investigators undertook records research to develop new leads, with Davis providing the funding. Those leads led to Coker’s identification. According to the Othram site, it was the 34th publicly announced Mississippi identification case solved through technology developed at its lab. Othram summarizes the cases here.
Davis has reportedly funded six such cases and partially funded two others that use Othram’s forensic genomics lab. Of the eight cases, three have reportedly been solved and one is currently pending DNA confirmation. Davis’s funding led to the June 2024 identification of Kimberly Funk, who had just moved to Mississippi from Pennsylvania when she disappeared. Funk’s skeletal remains were discovered by hunters in Vancleave, Mississippi in 1991 and for decades she was known as simply “Vancleave Jane Doe.” Davis also funded the successful identification of Mississippi resident Anderson Bolls, whose skeletal remains were discovered in 2020, and of Clara Birdlong, who for 44 years was known only as “Escatawpa Jane Doe.” The latter ID implicated deceased serial killer Samuel Little as the prime suspect in her murder.
Before helping fund these cases, Davis had solved more than 200 unknown-parentage cases, which often involve adult adoptees searching for biological parents. She is also a public speaker on the topic and does volunteer work for DNA detectives.
According to the Oxygen article, Davis’s interest was sparked by a murder that affected her deeply in the 1990s. Lauren Easterling, age 11, was a friend of Davis’s daughter and had attended a birthday party at their home in 1998 when Davis struck up a conversation with her that would haunt her, about what the girl wanted to be when she grew up. Days later, Easterling was kidnapped from her front yard and raped and strangled to death. Her body was discovered in a New Orleans canal.
The article described Davis fighting back tears as she said, “I often think what if they would have found her years later and they couldn’t have identified her and it took DNA to identify her? She was an only child. How long would her mother have lived without knowing that information?”
Another article about Davis described her as a real estate developer who works with a team of 11 certified genealogists, former prosecutors and attorneys across the U.S. Both she and Coker seem worthy of further exploration.
More to come.
Image: Andrew Coker (source unattributed)
A haunting story, Alan! I look forward to reading updates.
that picture is of him, back in high school we were really good friends.