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by CALLIE LYONS
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When 36-year-old Mark Kearns, Jr. walked away from the Galivants Ferry, South Carolina home he shared with his common-law wife and their children on July 5, 2023, he appeared to be taking a temporary reprieve from a very stressful situation.
The couple’s car had broken down and they were facing a daunting diagnostic surgery that would confirm Kearns’ wife – 43-year-old Amanda Hatcher – was suffering from lymphoma. Life was overwhelming, but Kearns had been clean and sober for nine months – and was fighting for his family. Accordingly, Hatcher did not find it terribly surprising – or alarming – that he needed some time to himself.
However, when she didn’t hear from him in the following days – like she always did in the 15 years they had been together – her worst fears quickly turned into a waking nightmare.
When Hatcher reported Kearns missing nearly a week later, she had no way of knowing his body was already in the Horry County morgue.
It would be weeks before she would find out…
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On July 7, 2023 – less than 48 hours after he left home – Kearns‘ lifeless body was found at a residence on Old Woods Road in the Socastee region of Myrtle Beach, S.C., approximately 17 miles south of his home.
He had been dead for an estimated seven hours when the homeowner contacted authorities, according to a police report. According to the homeowner, Kearns “was not acting right” the night before – but wasn’t drinking or doing drugs.
Kearns was found “clothed only in underwear” in a bathroom at the residence – “laying on top of a broken table that is normally in a corner in the bathroom,” per the document (.pdf).
The homeowner – whose name was redacted from investigative reports – told authorities Kearns was at his residence because he needed a break from his wife for a day or two.
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Officers from the Horry County Police Department (HCPD) responded alongside Horry County deputy coroner Dale Trevathan – who quickly declared Kearns’ death the result of a cardiac event. This assumption halted what otherwise might have been a drug overdose investigation in keeping with the cause of death – which was later confirmed by the autopsy and toxicology report.
The long list of competing drugs ultimately found in Kearns’ system was no recreational cocktail and included fatal doses of morphine, fentanyl, and amphetamine — which, according to Hatcher, was not at all in keeping with his preferences.
Nor did the combination resemble the relapse of a person who had been clean for nine months. Some of the drugs in the mix were designed to negate the more desirable attributes of others. Some were street drugs and some were prescription drugs. On the whole, the combination did not make sense.
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Another factor might have attracted attention from law enforcement – but it, too, was absent from the incident report. Another person resided at the address where Kearns died and – according to filings with the S.C. Secretary of State’s office (SCSOS) – operated a small business from that location. However, the misdirect – prompted by the conclusion that Kearns’ death was a cardiac event and nothing more – preempted further inquiry on the part of law enforcement.
The incident report also shifted wildly in its descriptions of the scenario: Kearns was first described as “not a known drug user,” one with “no medical issues” – only to later conclude he had a “history of drug abuse.” Accounts of why he left home changed, too. The impetus for Kearns leaving home was first referred to as a break – time away from his wife. A few pages later the report calls it a “domestic dispute.”
HCPD closed its case more than two weeks later – on July 24, 2023. Meanwhile, Hatcher – now diagnosed with lymphoma and recovering from surgery – continued to search and pray for her husband’s safe return home, unaware he was already dead and that the “investigation” into his death had already been closed.
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For weeks, Hatcher did all she could to search for Kearns even as she recovered from surgery – documenting her efforts on social media. On August 4, 2025, officers from the Aynor Police Department finally delivered a message – Kearns had been located. They told Hatcher to call deputy coroner Trevathan, who reportedly repeated his faulty assumption – even though the results of the toxicology screening had been made available to him days before on July 31, 2023.
Hatcher said she challenged Trevathan’s conclusion – and asked about a drug overdose – but the deputy coroner allegedly insisted it was not an overdose but a cardiac event that led to Kearns’ death.
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Five months passed before Hatcher finally received the autopsy and toxicology report, and with it the truth about what caused Kearns’ death. But the delayed notification that cost her something even greater: the precious time and critical evidence she needed to begin the process of grieving.
“We didn’t get to say goodbye,” Hatcher told FITSNews. “We didn’t get to see his body.”
The situation left the family traumatized and uncertain. At times, Hatcher had questioned whether the body in the morgue really was that of Kearns because no one would provide her with photographic evidence. The proof she craved eluded her for two years – until the case file was turned over to FITSNews in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. Included in the response from HCPD were photos of Kearns.
Adding further to the confusion surrounding his death, the coroner’s portion of the HCPD report made the specious claim that one of Kearns’ parents was notified of his death at a South Carolina hospital. Kearns’ mother is deceased, and his father was hospitalized in another state at the time. Another page indicated next of kin was notified at the scene.
The record appears to have been backfilled – perhaps as an administrative attempt to cover the fact his common-law wife (and the mother of his child) was not notified of Kearns’ death for a month.
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Unsurprisingly, the conflicting notifications that appear in the report did not prompt anyone to claim Kearns’ body, which remained in the morgue until his remains were finally released to Hatcher on August 7, 2023.
These notifications were never mentioned to Hatcher, she says. According to her, she was never provided an explanation as to why she was left to continue searching for weeks while the coroner’s office withheld the truth about her husband’s death.
This lapse is incomprehensible for many reasons, not the least of which is because law enforcement knew of the couple’s shared addresses; two of them appear in the investigative report itself, including the address for the home they shared at the time of his death.
For Hatcher, the erroneous cause of death and failure to notify next of kin were signs that she could not trust the information being given to her by the very authorities responsible for providing it. Because of unreliability of the investigation, Hatcher and her sons remain haunted by the grim possibility that someone may have ended Kearns’ life intentionally. As she continues to battle lymphoma, Hatcher badly wants to know what happened to her husband two years ago.
It is the one wish on her bucket list — to know the truth before the disease takes her life.
If anyone has information about what happened to Mark Kearns, Jr. between July 5, 2023 and July 7, 2023 in the Socastee area of Myrtle Beach, please reach out to law enforcement or FITSNews. Even the smallest detail could help to provide some closure for this grieving family.
FITSNews reached out to the Horry County Coroner’s office for comment, but as of this writing we have received no response.
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THE INVESTIGATIVE FILE…
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR…
Callie Lyons is a relentless investigative journalist, researcher, and author known for exposing hard truths with heart and precision. As a journalist for FITSNews, she dives into high-profile and murky cases—like that of Mica Francis Miller— with fearless resolve and a sharp eye for detail, whether it’s tracking white-collar crime, uncovering religious abuse, or examining the often-bizarre behavior of those who believe they’re above the law.
Callie made waves with her groundbreaking 2007 book Stain-Resistant, Nonstick, Waterproof and Lethal, the first to reveal the dangers of forever chemicals, a story that helped inspire the film Dark Waters and influenced global scientific dialogue. Her work has appeared in numerous documentaries, including Toxic Soup, National Geographic’s Parched: Toxic Waters, and more recently Citizen Sleuth, which examines the complexities of true crime podcasting.
Whether she’s navigating environmental disasters or the darker corners of society, Lyons operates with one guiding belief: “Truth never damages a cause that is just.”
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