He laid in a Horry County morgue with no name. It took years to give him one
A young, Black man’s body laid for more than a decade in the morgue of the Horry County Coroner’s Office.
With no identification, and no one looking for him, he became a face without a name, a “John Doe” listed only as Case No. 15051.
The case haunted Chief Deputy Coroner Tamara Willard.
The typical avenues used to identify someone who dies had little success. The man, who Willard deduced was in his 20s, drowned in a hotel pool in the Myrtle Beach area in 2016. But his only belongings were his clothes — pants, a shirt and a hoodie — that were placed on a nearby table.
He had no wallet, no driver’s license and no criminal record based on his fingerprints. In the following years, the coroner’s office attempted to identify the man by reaching out to the media and the public seeking somebody who may recognize his face or know who he is.
But no tips came in. He soon became the coroner’s oldest cold case.
They had the man’s DNA, but nothing to match it to.
It wasn’t until 2024 during a chance meeting at a law enforcement meeting that Willard was asked a question that changed everything: “Do you have any cases you need help on?”
It came from Michael Fanning, the Pawleys Island police chief, who offered his abilities using genealogy that gave the first real break in the case and a connection with a potential family member.
Between the three of them, along with genealogist Christine Burke with Genetic Genealogy for Law Enforcement, they were able to finally give the young man a name: Malquan Tyreek Hawkins.
Finding her Horry County cousin
Dena Chasten had been conducting her own ancestry and genetic research when she came across a male relative on her father’s side that she and her father didn’t know about.
Chasten had been contacted by the coroner’s office in 2019 after her and her father’s DNA turned out to have the highest match to the “John Doe.”
“And then, just for years after, I couldn’t let it go,” the Philadelphia woman said during a Facetime call. “But as somebody who was also adopted, also put in the foster care system and found my biological family, I felt like I couldn’t let this go. ... We need to figure out who he is.”
Chasten was the first relative that the coroner’s office came across when Parabon, a company that provides DNA phenotyping services for law enforcement organizations, researched the man’s DNA. It was determined that Chasten is most likely second cousins with the unidentified man.
When Willard contacted Chasten about the discovery, “it was shocking,” Chasten said. “Because I just got a call ... ‘Hi, this is the coroner’s office, and it looks like you and your biological father match a young man who was found unidentified, submerged ... in a resort (pool).’ It was extremely shocking, to say the least, but also jarring.”
“Dena actually tried to claim him several times, but because she couldn’t tell me his name, who he was, I couldn’t let her,” Willard said. “She and her dad really wanted to claim him.”
As Chasten continued to do genetic research into her family and the unknown young man, she found a DNA match to another second cousin, who was determined to be related to the unidentified man, who Chasten called her “Horry County cousin.”
“I never liked the idea of calling him John Doe,’ she said. “So to me, he was always Horry County cousin.”
Once the cousin moved her DNA to GEDmatch, Fanning was able to access its findings. This part was key because such genealogy and DNA companies including Ancestry and 23andMe won’t allow law enforcement to access its findings, even with the family’s permission, Fanning said.
Through the DNA results of the cousin, officials were able to find two half sisters of the man. Chasten was able to make contact with one of the sisters, letting her know she may have found her brother.
“She was so warm and open, and just you could tell, no matter what the journey was before that moment, there was definitely love for her brother, and everyone just wanted to excitedly welcome him in if that was who he was,’ Chasten said. “They wanted to do everything they could to ID him.”
The sisters connected Willard to their mother, who lives in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. She was able to collect her DNA and then have it tested in Richland County.
By September 2025, they finally had their confirmation. It was a match.
But discovering Malquan’s identity didn’t end the work. Officials now have to figure out what happened that February night in 2016, and how the 22-year-old ended up in a resort pool in Myrtle Beach.
“We want to know exactly how he came to be in Myrtle Beach,” Willard said. “We want to know, was he with somebody, who was that? What was the circumstance that he was here? How long had he been here? Why was he in Ocean Creek (Resort)? You know, there’s a lot of questions.”
‘A kid who fell through the cracks’
Malquan Hawkins’ biological mother never thought she would be able to see him again, Willard said.
Malquan was placed into the foster care system and adopted as an infant, and the family hadn’t had contact with him for years. At some point, Malquan ended up back into North Carolina Department of Social Services custody as a teenager, eventually aging out of the foster care system.
It appears that Malquan had at least 12 siblings, many of them from a different father, officials said. There is about a six-year age difference between him and his one sister, who had only met Malquan once or twice, Willard said.
His adopted mother died in 2022, and after being contacted about his death, his adopted sister relinquished rights to Malquan’s biological family.
Before ending up in Myrtle Beach, it is believed the 22-year-old lived in the New Hanover County area, just outside of Wilmington, North Carolina, but also had ties to Edgecombe and Nash counties
Malquan had been listed as a “John Doe” since February 2016 after he died in Horry County, Willard said. Malquan drowned in a Myrtle Beach hotel pool. The coroner in 2021 said it was unknown how Hawkins got there. He had no identification on him and was wearing nice clothing. He was found in the pool at Ocean Creek Plantation, but he wasn’t staying there.
There were no car keys and no abandoned vehicle, Willard said. He also had no trauma to his body. Authorities have no idea how he got to the coastal city and what he was doing when he got here. Willard even went as far as checking to see if he had a Myrtle Beach address, or maybe a bill in his name, but each search came up empty.
Officials did discover an earlier photo of Malquan. The late Wendy’s founder Dave Thomas, who was a big proponent of adoption, had conducted an adoption event in the Rocky Mount area, and standing with him were four or five kids — one was Malquan.
“Unfortunately, it’s just a kid that fell through the cracks,” Fanning said of Malquan.
Now officials are hoping that someone will come forward who knew Malquan and share information.
“We’re extremely happy that he’s reunited with his family,” Willard said. “We hate that it’s under these circumstances, but he was absolutely wanted. He was welcomed home. They were excited to know what happened to him. They were excited to be able to come and hear the story, understand what we could provide for them, which was minimal, to be honest, because there’s not a lot that we know about why he was here, how he got here, anything like that. But it’s great to have been able to reunite him with his family.”
Another person waiting to be named
Law enforcement agencies over the years have been able to use DNA and genealogy to solve crimes and identify victims or suspects. As new technology continues to be developed, it has become an integral tool in investigations.
The Horry County Coroner’s Office also has used such technology. But it is an expensive process, Willard said.
The coroner’s office had money placed in the budget in 2018 to have Malquan’s DNA tested. It cost $10,000 just to have it looked at and then $275 an hour for additional work.
In the last 10 years, the coroner’s office has had five cases that were identified relatively quickly, Willard said.
While Malquan’s case was the oldest for the coroner’s office, it wasn’t the only one waiting be solved. A pedestrian struck and killed in May 2023 in the Myrtle Beach area remains unnamed.
There also are a number of skeletal remains, including two cases that the office has received within the last month, Willard said. Those, however, will have to be sent to state anthropologists, which there are only two in South Carolina.
But if the office doesn’t have DNA to compare, then it won’t put information into the system. “Every time we put DNA into a system, it costs many thousands of dollars,” Willard said.
Willard hopes to use Fanning’s help in tracking down the genealogy of the pedestrian. They have just started to work on his identification.
The pedestrian was killed near 9440 North Kings Highway on May 27, 2023. The coroner’s office released in July 2023 a computer-generated composite of the man, as well as a photo of his tattoo, in the hopes that someone would recognize him.
The man has a military tattoo, but his fingerprints and DNA didn’t match any military records. The man, believed to be in his late 40s, white, weighing 170 pounds and between 5 feet 9 inches and 5 feet 11 inches tall, was not in any local or federal database, Willard said.
Fanning, who is self-taught in tracking genealogy, said larger law enforcement agencies such as New York City Police Department may have one or two genetic genealogists, but most small agencies “are so taxed ... they can’t dedicate the training and cost to it, and then having somebody do the work day in and day out.”
It’s up to volunteers and groups such as the DNA Doe Project, a nonprofit, volunteer organization that seeks to identify unidentified deceased persons using forensic genealogy, to assist in naming the deceased.
Fanning said he’s afraid to say how many hours he worked on Malquan’s case. And while it was time consuming, getting a person back to their family, “that’s just priceless.”
This story was originally published November 23, 2025 at 6:00 AM.
