(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.
