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.”
