Jessica Lane Chambers was murdered when she and her car were set on fire outside her small Mississippi hometown in December 2014. When first responders found her clinging to life, her body covered by at least 90% burns and wearing only underwear, the teenager managed to whisper a name... perhaps a clue to her killer. Unfortunately, Jessica died the next day at a Memphis hospital, and her death shocked the nation.
Jessica’s story and the ensuing trials made global headlines and have been the subject of countless documentaries and podcasts. Her death birthed a whole cottage industry of internet sleuths, all determined to solve her mysterious, bafflingly complex, and labyrinthine murder. Yet, to this day, no one knows what happened that terrible night, and justice continues to elude Jessica’s family. Today, we bring you Jessica Chambers’ story. But be warned, it's not for the faint-hearted.
HORRIFIC SIGHT
December 6th, 2014 is a day the residents of sleepy rural backwater, Courtland, Mississippi, will never forget. At 8:09 pm, fire crews responded to a call from a truck driver that a car was on fire on a backroad just outside town. Expecting to find a regular abandoned car fire, they discovered a burning 2005 Kia Rio between the road and a wooded area. But the firefighters were greeted with a nightmarish sight they too would never forget. Next to the car stood a girl, naked apart from her underwear. Responders said she looked like a zombie. Worse, her whole body had been engulfed in flames.
First responder Cole Haley, who was traumatized for months afterwards, reported, "She had her arms out, saying, 'Help me, help me, help me,' ... Her hair was fried like it had been stuck in a light socket ... Her face was black, and her body was severely burned." He asked her name, and she responded: "Jessica Tame-bers." Then, with her mouth "charred black" by the fire, Haley realized she was trying to say her name; Jessica Chambers.
SAY MY NAME
Cole Haley (pictured, below) continued: "I didn't even ask her if it was an accident; I just asked her who did this to her.” As Jessica attempted to answer his questions about her killer's identity, Cole knew he must try to absorb all the information he could before she passed. But Jessica’s speech was practically unintelligible due to her horrific injuries.
After wrapping her in a blanket, Cole walked the poor, dying girl to the back of his fire truck. When "she couldn't go anymore," he laid her down, and she reached for his hand. Jessica was desperately trying to whisper something in his ear. "She knew we couldn't understand her, and she was getting frustrated with us … and we were getting frustrated." Finally, fighting for her life, Jessica managed to whisper one last, cryptic clue; "Eric did this to me." And then, she was gone, unconscious. But they had something to go on; ‘Eric’ - although several of the five or six attending responders heard ‘Derrick’.
MURDER INVESTIGATION
The popular, bubbly 19-year-old former high-school cheerleader with a caring personality was airlifted from Panola County to hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, where doctors fought in vain to save her life. It was later determined that she had suffered burns to 98% of her body. After her mom told her it was okay to let go, Jessica died in the hospital, surrounded by her family, six hours after being found. Now, the hunt was on for her murderer in this small Mississippi town with a population of just 500, and where everybody knew everybody’s business.
Naturally, the police inquiry centered around Jessica’s last words, the name Eric (or Derrick), but every lead and avenue came up blank. Detectives interviewed hundreds of people, including Erics and Derricks and even drug dealers Jessica may have known. They all checked out. Then, it came to light that in the six weeks before her death, Jessica had told her father, who worked as a mechanic for the county sheriff’s department, ten or fifteen times: “Everybody thinks I’m snitching because you work for the police.”
TECHNOLOGICAL BREAKTHROUGH
Months passed without any new leads, but a year later, and with no arrests made, District Attorney John Champion called the case: "The most baffling case [he'd] ever worked on" in his 22 years of employment. Eventually, the local police investigation expanded to include the FBI, US Marshals, and the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. Authorities posted billboards in three different states offering a $54,000 reward for information leading to Jessica’s killer. Nought came of it, but one name kept cropping up in their investigations.
The breakthrough came after investigators utilized modern tech data, including cell phone records and new-fangled triangulation techniques, taken from pings from cell phone towers. This led to a local man’s arrest and indictment for Jessica Chambers' murder. "It wasn't until we received information from subpoenas and began analyzing information we obtained that certain things began falling in place," D.A. John Champion said.
PRIME SUSPECT
The deep-south state of Mississippi has long been a hotbed for racial tension, and the town of Courtland was no different. A local African-American man named Quinton Tellis had been on police radar for a long time after Jessica’s friend suggested he could have something to do with the murder. Furthermore, WMC reporter Janice Broach also spotted Quinton Tellis hanging around at the M&M gas station and listening intently as she interviewed Ali, the gas station clerk.
Then, in February 2016, Quinton Tellis was arrested. Though he was eight years older than Jessica, the two had attended the same school, and he lived just a mile and a quarter from where she was found. Soon, Tellis was indicted by a grand jury for capital murder. Evidence showed that within an hour of Jessica's death, he had deleted her contact information and text messages he and Jessica had sent each other in the days leading up to her death. Piecing together GPS location data from Jessica and Quintons’ phones, CCTV and witnesses, police were able to create a timeline of Jessica’s last day on earth. It clearly incriminated Quinton Tellis… or did it?
POLICE TIMELINE
Though it was reported Quinton Tellis had been pestering Jessica for sex, phone records show the two knew each other well. Although he’d only recently been released from prison for burglary, they hung out lots in the short two weeks they knew each other. They corresponded frequently and could even have been conducting a romantic relationship, even though both parties already had partners. Most murder victims are killed by someone they know, often a partner. In Jessica’s case, her boyfriend, Travis Sanford, was in prison at the time, ruling him out as a suspect.
On 29th November, just two weeks before her death, Quinton Tellis and Jessica Chambers first swapped phone numbers. Less than a week later, they were engaged in conversations about sex. By December 3rd, Tellis was texting Jessica saying: "I'm horny," to which she simply replied, "Oh Lord." Despite that, they kept hanging out. Further texts revealed Jessica turning down multiple sexual advances from Quinton, including on the day she was murdered.
RELATIONS
In a text conversation on December 5th, the day before the murder, Jessica asks Quinton Tellis for money for food. Instead, he replies, asking for sex. Jessica told him she only needed about $6. Minutes later, CCTV footage from the M&M gas station in Cortland shows Tellis walking across the street to where Jessica's car has come into view before walking back to his driveway.
The two spent some of the morning of December 6th together, riding around town. Both spend the afternoon napping at their respective houses until around 4.30 pm when Quinton texts Jessica. Chambers replies saying she will get food with him if he was paying. The hazy winter sun dipped below the horizon, darkness descended on Mississippi and Jessica left her mom’s house for the very last time.
JESSICA’S LAST HOURS
An hour later, Jessica was captured on CCTV at the M&M gas station in Courtland. She is shown pumping gas before bending down to pick up a penny for good luck… about a mile-and-a-half from where she would be found, burning alive. The gas station clerk remembers she filled her car with $14 of gas instead of her usual $5 as she was “going somewhere”. Jessica pulled out of the M&M gas station and headed south down U.S. 51. This was the last time Jessica was seen by anyone except Quinton Tellis… and her killer. Who police believed were one-and-the-same person.
Jessicas' phone records showed that by six o’clock, she was on her way to the neighboring town of Batesville, where it’s believed the two ate Taco Bell together. They arrived back in Courtland between 6.30 pm, and at 6:48 pm, when Jessica makes the last call she will ever make. Likewise, it was the last time her mother ever heard her voice.
JESSICA’S FINAL MINUTES
The last call Jess ever made lasted 76 seconds. Her mother says there was no background noise nor music, which she found unusual, and led her to believe her daughter was with someone. Quinton Tellis says they went back to his house and admits to smoking marijuana and having sex with Jessica for the first time in an area behind his house.
At that time. Jessica’s cell phone has shifted dramatically west onto Herron Road, where she would be found, burned almost to death. Just 12 minutes later, Quinton leaves a voicemail on Jessica’s phone, followed almost immediately by a text that says: “Bae my friend is coming over tonight, I’ll call you tomorrow. Good night, sweet dreams.” Firefighters find her and her burning car at 8.09 pm. Quinton is then alleged to have fled the scene and hitchhiked as far away as possible.
POLICE INTERROGATION
When police questioned Quinton, his alibis soon started falling apart. Initially, he said he was with Jessica until 7:30 pm. When police said this was around the time she was murdered, he changed his story, saying that he was with her until only 7:00 pm. But cell phone data shows the two were in close proximity until around 7:30 pm. Police felt it was unlikely Jessica encountered someone else in the thirty minutes between leaving Tellis's home and being discovered on fire.
So, he changed his story again, saying he was at a local store at the time Jessica must have been murdered. After surveillance footage showed him at that store at 8:26 pm, he changed his story yet again, saying he had spent the night with his friend, Mike. When police contacted Mike, he denied he was with Quinton on the night of December 6th and said he was at a football game in Memphis. All the evidence was pointing towards Quinton Tellis. His fleeing the area was later corroborated when a witness revealed she had driven someone resembling Tellis out of town, as he had claimed that there was “a fire at his aunt’s house.”
THE PLOT THICKENS
This wasn’t the first time Quinton Tellis had been in trouble with the law. He’d not long got out of jail and had a rap sheet including burglary, drug possession and fleeing from the police, who said he had gang affiliations. Nor was it Quinton’s first murder charge. Eight months after Jessica’s death, but before police arrested him, Quinton had missed a meeting with his parole officer. Shortly after, he and his girlfriend, Chakita Jackson, moved to Monroe, Louisiana.
In 2015, Tellis was arrested in Louisiana and charged with murder for the July 2015 death of Meing-Chen "Mandy" Hsiao, a 34-year-old Taiwanese woman, and recent graduate of the University of Louisiana Monroe. Mandy and Quinton had been heard arguing at her apartment. Meing-Chen’s lifeless body was found ten days later, on Quinton and Chakita’s wedding day. The international student had been tortured and stabbed more than 30 times. Tellis was arrested for using her credit card and was placed on a $300,000 bond, as they also suspected he was her murderer, but the police needed more evidence before they could indict him.
PRISON SENTENCE
There was a plethora of incriminating evidence against Quinton Tellis, including the fact that he had phoned the bank that issued Meing-Chen’s credit card, asking how to get hold of the PIN number. At trial, some of the evidence against Tellis came from one Eric Hill Jr., who was and identified as the cousin of Tellis’s wife, Chakita Jackson. Hill claimed Tellis told him about a credit card robbery where someone was stabbed. In 2016, Quinton pleaded guilty to the unauthorized use of Meing-Chen Hsiao’s credit card and was sent to prison for this crime and for being a habitual offender.
After completing his sentence for the credit card crime, he was subsequently arrested for Ming-Chen Hsiao’s murder. At the time of writing, Quinton Tellis remains behind bars at the Ouachita Correctional Center in Monroe, with Meing-Chen Hsiao’s murder trial on hold until the outcome of Jessica’s murder trial. Speaking of which…
TRIAL NUMBER ONE
On October 10th, 2017, Tellis went on trial for Jessica’s murder. The state deemed a bevy of GPS location data, CCTV footage, eyewitness and DNA evidence from Jessica’s burnt car and car keys, which were found in an alley leading to Quinton’s sister’s house. In the Batesville, Mississippi courthouse, the prosecution argued that after Jessica refused to have sex with Quinton in his car parked on his driveway, he became enraged and asphyxiated her.
Portraying Tellis as a super-criminal and “as dangerous as there is”, the prosecution stated Tellis (believing he'd killed Jessica) drove her car to the wooded area where she was found. He then ran back to his sister’s home, retrieved a jerry-can of gasoline, returned to where he left Jessica, doused the unconscious girl’s car with gasoline and set the vehicle alight with her inside. CCTV footage had also shown Tellis driving his sister’s car to a shed. A shed where, he had already admitted to police, he stored a 5-gallon gas can.
IT WASN’T ME
Yet even with all this circumstantial evidence, the police had no primary evidence against Quinton Tellis. His defence team argued that the person who Jessica had identified as Eric or Derrick was the real killer. Then came a bombshell that rocked the trial. Quinton told police that a registered sex offender and Courtland resident named Derrick Holmes had been stalking Jessica. Things got really weird when local residents claimed to have seen Jessica with Derrick Holmes. As unlikely as it seemed, it certainly seemed to stack up.
Yet, according to police, Derrick Holmes had a watertight alibi. Mississippi Bureau of Investigation agent Tim Douglas said of Holmes on the night of December 6th: "His mother had a medical issue, and I'm telling you, Mr Peterson, he was at the house rubbing his mother's feet at the time Jessica was burning in her vehicle." Moreover, cell phone data did not tie Derrick Holmes to the scene. The burden was back on Quinton Tellis.
MISTRIAL OF THE CENTURY
D.A. John Champion showed the court and jury minute-by-minute data showing the last days of Jessica Chamber's life, including her interactions with Quinton Tellis. The jury even went on a field trip to see the burned-out car and watched videotaped interrogations in which Tellis repeatedly changed his story when confronted with new evidence.
On October 16th, 2017, after a six-day murder trial, and despite what seemed overwhelming circumstantial evidence against Quinton Tellis, the 12 members of the jury returned a verdict of not guilty. That is until one of them stood up and exclaimed: “That’s not my verdict”. The judge sent the jury away four times to try to reach a decision. Finally, upon returning to the courtroom for a fifth time, the foreman informed the judge that they found it impossible to arrive at a unanimous decision. In a nutshell, the jury couldn't find Quinton Tellis guilty, but they also couldn’t find him not guilty, either. It was a hung jury, and the hearing ended in a mistrial.
TRIAL NUMBER TWO
Less than a year later, in September 2018, Quinton Tellis went on trial in Batesville, Mississippi, for Jessica Chapman’s murder for a second time. Again, doctors and experts were called to ascertain if Jessica could or could not have uttered the name of her killer. Speech pathologist and professor in Communication Sciences Dr Carolyn Wiles Higdon cast doubt that Jessica could have communicated at all with over 90% of her body covered in burns.
The prosecution argued that with severe, ongoing burns to her lips, mouth, tongue and throat, Jessica couldn’t pronounce T sounds, and had been saying "Tellis" all along. After much deliberation, this second attempt to try Quinton returned another hung jury. After the second mistrial in the Chambers case, Tellis returned to Ouachita Correctional Center, Louisiana, where he awaits trial for Ming-Chen Hsiao’s murder. But this baffling story doesn’t end there.
BEWARE THE IDES OF MARCH
On Friday, March 15th, 2019, Jessica’s former boyfriend Travis Sanford was found shot to death at his home in Courtland, Panola County. Ironically, March 15th is the Ides of March, the day in Shakespeare's play that Julius Caesar’s soothsayer warned Emperor Caesar he would die with the portentous words “Beware the Ides of March”. Police arrested and 24-year-old Myron Ardyl Powell Jr. of Batesville, Mississippi with Travis Sanford’s murder. However, the authorities did not believe that Travis Sanford’s murder was connected to Jessica Chambers.
Travis Sanford and Myron Ardyl Powell Jr. had been playing dice and drinking all night before the fatal shooting. Sanford was shot with a double-barrel shotgun loaded with buckshot. The gun was later found on the road that Powell Jr. had escaped along. Only two shots were fired; the first is thought to have blown a hole in the wall of the house where Sanford's girlfriend and his children were present at the time. The other shot killed Sanford. Myron murdered Travis for the meagre sum of $700.
CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER
Now, remember Eric Hill, Jr., who testified at the May 2016 pre-trial hearing? He just so happens to be Quinton’s wife, Chakita’s cousin. He was the guy who testified Quintin told him about the credit card robbery where someone was stabbed. Well… in a notarized letter signed by Hill and filed with the court on August 18th, 2020, Eric Hill Jr. now says he was pressured into testifying against Tellis by the police. Hill’s letter reads:
"My name is Eric Hill Jr. I'm writing and filing this affidavit on my own free will to state on about May 11, 2016, I, Eric Hill Jr. was pressured by Monroe Police to take the stand to make a false statement against Quinton Tellis … Quinton Tellis never told me anything about a crime, and I don't know anything other than what was put on TV. I, Eric Hill Jr., was charged with accessory to murder and was forced to falsely testify on stand against Quinton Tellis by Monroe Police or be convicted of murder, a crime I had no knowledge of that supposedly happened if I didn't take the stand against Quinton Tellis."
UNSPEAKABLE CRIME: THE KILLING OF JESSICA CHAMBERS
If you want to find out more about Jessica Chambers’ murder, check out the excellent Oxygen five-part series, Unspeakable Crime: The Killing of Jessica Chambers. This documentary only covers the first trial but is a fascinating watch that dives deep into the horrendous crime and shows the case against Quinton Tellis may not be so cut and dried… though perhaps black and white might be a better descriptor as the series unearths a disturbing racial divide over Quinton’s guilt or innocence that ripped the small Mississippi town and community of Courtland apart.
You can also check out the two-hour special Jessica Chambers: An ID Murder Mystery (2020). After multiple years, multiple trials and more twists than any fictional murder mystery, one question remains unanswered: With Quinton Tellis incarcerated at the Ouachita Correctional Center in Tennessee, is the right man behind bars awaiting another trial or is a murderer still at large and on the loose? Only time––and perhaps internet sleuths––will tell.
JULY 2026 UPDATE
Remember that Quinton Tellis had been awaiting a trial for the death of Ming-Chen Hsiao at Louisiana's Ouachita Correctional Center since 2019? Well, that trial finally made it to court in March 2026, at the Ouachita Parish Courthouse. Prosecutors argued Tellis tortured and killed Hsiao in July 2015 to get her bank information and steal money from her account. After four months, on 23rd July, Judge Larry Jefferson finally delivered the verdict. Quinton Tellis was found not guilty of the second-degree murder of Ming-Chen Hsiao. He went back to prison on a burglary charge.
But just one day after being acquitted for Ming Chen Hsiao’s murder, Quinton Tellis was charged again. According to the Ouachita Parish Sheriff’s Office, Tellis was arrested on July 24th, for “intimidating, impeding, or injuring witnesses.” During his murder trial, a witness testified he was afraid Tellis would hurt him or his family, but it is unclear if that is connected to the charge or not. If the intimidating witness charge is related to the murder case, it could carry up to 40 years behind bars.