Luke Ford

(CNN For 14 months, a town of 500 in northwest Mississippi grappled with the mysterious burning death of one of its daughters, Jessica Chambers, a 19-year-old who left her mother’s house in pajama pants, reportedly to clean her car. She never returned.

When police found her later the night of December 6, 2014, not far from her mother’s Courtland home, her car was on fire and Chambers had burns over 98% of her body. She said something to a firefighter — authorities wouldn’t say what — before she was rushed to a hospital, where she died the next day.
Courtland and Panola County residents didn’t get all their answers Wednesday, but they learned that a man being held in Louisiana in connection with another homicide victim was indicted this week in Chambers’ death.

Quinton Tellis, 27, faces a capital murder charge in her slaying, said John Champion, district attorney for Mississippi’s 17th Circuit Court. The charge is capital murder because her death occurred during the commission of another crime, third-degree arson, he said.
Champion added he was “very, very confident” that there would be no additional charges or suspects.
“We do feel like, at this point, that he acted alone in this case,” he said.
Capital murder opens the door for a death penalty case, but Champion said he isn’t sure whether he will pursue it. That decision will come “down the road” after he consults with the Chambers family, Champion said.
Longtime mystery
Until Wednesday, investigators had released few details about how the former high school cheerleader and her car ended up severely burned in a wooded area near Courtland.
That could be because authorities had ascertained so little about her death until late last year. Champion explained how police interviewed about 150 people, and each agreed to cooperate, he said. That’s odd in a case such as this, according to the prosecutor.
On four occasions, Champion said he thought the case had been solved, but he was wrong. Investigators received no information from their street sources, he said, and though authorities chased leads as far-flung as Tennessee, Iowa and eastern Mississippi, nothing panned out until they started taking a close look at cell phone and other data evidence.
Tellis had been a suspect early during the investigation, the prosecutor said, but he did not become investigators’ focus until the fall.
“Things started to match up for us, and that’s when we began to take a second look at Mr. Tellis,” Champion said, adding that forensic evidence will be integral to driving the prosecution.

REPORT: Meing Chen-Hsiao of Taiwan was stabbed over 30 times in her Monroe, Louisiana apartment before she gave her debit card PIN number to her killer, police said.

They say that killer is one known to Mississippians as being the suspect in one of the most notorious homicides in recent years.

Quinton Tellis, also accused in the Panola County burning death of Jessica Chambers, is accused of torturing Hsiao to death on her own bedroom floor. He was indicted in the Mississippi homicide as he sat in jail in Ouachita Parish, Louisiana, in February, and in the Louisiana homicide as he sat in jail in DeSoto County, Mississippi.

“After gaining possession of the debit card, he brutally murdered her by repeatedly stabbing her and letting her body rot and decompose until being discovered,” the indictment reads. The grisly homicide allegedly took place on July 29, and her body was found August 8. As authorities worked her death scene, Tellis was celebrating his wedding to his girlfriend, Chikita Jackson.

But while they weren’t immediately connected, police knew Tellis knew Hsiao because they were seen on Wal-Mart security video, and a neighbor also provided a license plate number of a man who gave her a creepy feeling. She told police that man, whom she later identified as Tellis, had been to Hsiao’s apartment on July 27 and 28. She had heard them arguing.

Hsiao’s apartment lights, which burned at night, burned continuously through the days between July 29 and August 8. Hsiao’s bicycle never moved. Hsiao had friends and neighbors nearby, but her family was in Taiwan. It was 10 days before her body was found inside her own apartment.

Someone had made an attempt to clean the crime scene, the indictment states. Police say that means there’s no DNA to tie Tellis to the crime scene, but authorities hold the data trail and witness statements were enough to indict him in the brutal homicide. There were other things too, such as a receipt for $.07 at a local gas station, paid with Hsiao’s card, found in Tellis’ bedroom.

Search warrants for phone and bank records showed calls to Hsiao’s bank from Tellis’ phone on the day she died, and GPS records showed that Tellis “more than likely was inside (Hsiao’s) apartment.”