Warning: This article contains descriptions of injuries and murder; please take care while reading.
On Dec. 6, 2014, a young woman named Jessica Chambers was discovered walking down the side of a road in Mississippi, having been the victim of an unspeakable trauma. A call to emergency services reported a burning vehicle and a victim standing beside it, but that was just a small piece of a much larger puzzle.
As first responders rushed to the scene, they couldn’t have been prepared for what they’d be met with. The woman walking towards them had burns covering her body, charred hair, and was otherwise unrecognizable. Cole Haley, a former volunteer firefighter, was the first on the scene, and in an Oxygen docuseries, he tearfully described seeing Chambers as she tried to cry for help as she walked towards him with her arms outstretched, wearing next to nothing.
Chambers was able to mutter her name, albeit with mispronunciation due to the state of her mouth, which Haley says was black and charred inside. She was also able to say one more thing, and that statement from Chambers’ own mouth is an important one, but it’s also been at the center of a wide dispute regarding anyone familiar with the case.
What happened to Chambers that night remains a mystery, but a few details have been central to building a case in hopes of one day bringing Chambers’ story to a complete end with the right person in custody for her murder.
Jessica suffered burns on over 93% of her body
Chambers’ body was covered in burns when responders arrived at the scene, and medical professionals said that the body surface area burn was near 95%, with nearly all of them being 3rd degree. For reference, a 1st-degree burn is something like a sunburn, which we’ve all experienced, but a 3rd-degree burn prohibits the surface layer of skin from ever growing once again.
Her cause of death was listed as soot and smoke inhalation and thermal injuries, with the manner of death listed as homicide.
Jessica spoke this name at the scene of the crime
The name Chambers spoke is the highly disputed piece of evidence in the case, with good reason. While many first responders that night claimed that Chambers said “Eric” when asked who did this, further investigation led to police interviewing every Eric and Derrick in the area. The responders were attempting to ask Chambers questions in order to try to bring some sort of justice to this situation and to solve an unthinkable crime, but as has also been reported, her mouth was swollen and charred, making speech very hard.
Dr. Carolyn Wiles Higdon reported that it would have been nearly impossible for Chambers to speak with the level of injuries her body sustained, which has led people to wonder if instead of “Eric” or “Derrick,” she was trying to say “Tellis.” It was equally as impossible for those around her to hear exactly what she was trying to say.
Jessica knew suspect Quinton Tellis
At first, Tellis tried to downplay the relationship he had with Chambers but would initially go on to admit that the pair had a sexual relationship in the weeks leading up to her murder. He says they were intimate once but had known each other for a few weeks.
In the days after Chamber’s death, Tellis deleted every exchange the two had and would go on to delete her contact from his phone entirely, but as we all know, those messages were able to be recovered. It was then reported that Chambers told Tellis she didn’t want to have sex with him four times on the day she was set on fire.
Tellis would go on to say that his removing everything in his phone relating to Chambers was because he learned of her death:
“I wasn’t scared, but after we found out who it was…who died there, I mean, I just deleted my contact with her, because I didn’t want to have a deceased person on my phone, with a number in my phone that’s just gonna be no longer used.”
In addition to being intimate, Tellis said he would give Chambers money for food in the weeks they knew one another.
Cell phone evidence links Jessica to Quinton at the time of her death — or does it?
Alongside Chambers’ answering the question of “who did this,” cellphone data is another heavily debated topic in the murder case. The state says that cell phone evidence links Tellis and Chambers to being together on the night of her murder, but it’s also been reported that data that night on Tellis’ phone is unusable.
Two responders note seeing a man at the scene that night
The Oxygen documentary also describes the fact that two responders at the scene said there was a middle-aged Black man who was lingering around the burning vehicle that night. When he was told he couldn’t be standing at the crime scene, he didn’t respond, never speaking a word, but he eventually walked away.
The responders couldn’t give a description other than the details we shared above, but they agreed that he seemed suspicious. He also allegedly kept looking into the woods, at the burning car, and stared at the responder with a stare he “had never seen before,” when they first saw him, he had on a blue shirt, but as he continued walking away, the responder states that he then had a white shirt on.
The revelation seemed as if it could have been a big one, but little else has ever been said about the man responders claim they saw that night.
First Responders were traumatized upon arriving at the scene, especially Cole Haley
The most challenging part of the Oxygen series was seeing the first responders on camera, one of whom couldn’t bring himself to step foot into the courtroom for the trial. As they took the stand, many were shaking and in tears as they described seeing Chambers that night, and some of them left their careers in the wake of that night.
Chambers being set on fire, attempting to speak, trying to mutter words to help make sense of the unspeakable crime, and the state of her body was too hard for first responders to make sense of. It is evident that everyone involved in her case has been forever changed, and Haley’s story is perhaps one of the most heartbreaking.
As with any victim of a crime, it’s never just the victim that is impacted; it is each person whose lives they touched, and in this case, the mental and emotional health of responders is also a key piece of the case.
Jessica’s death quickly became a race war
Chambers was a girl who made friends with everyone, regardless of their race, sexuality, or circumstance, and many have said that the racial divide that happened in the wake of her murder would have been something that deeply upset her.
“She would probably be really mad about the fact that people became so separated,” said Chamber’s neighbor and friend, Ashunta Winfield, during an Oxygen docuseries on the case.
Throughout the docuseries, podcasts, and other looks into the Chambers case, many interviewed spoke about the depth of the race war that happened. White people believed the murderer to be Black, while Black people in the community felt targeted and said it just as soon could have been a white person.
The town in which Chambers was killed is a town that still has an overarching sense of racism in it, and while some in the documentary dispute that it exists, there are people interviewed who are both white and Black, stating that there is a divide of sorts. Some tried to “clean it up” by saying it’s just the way it’s “always been,” while others were able to admit that the sense of racism does hang in the air; but Chambers’ death has been a catalyst in cementing that feeling in the town.
Chambers’ mother also says that it would break her heart to see her death turning people against one another due to the color of their skin.
Quinton is a suspect in a second murder case
While some may say not enough evidence exists linking Tellis to Chambers’ death, there is another case in which he was suspected of murder as well. After jurors were deadlocked in both the 2017 and 2018 case of Chambers murder, he was also said to be the suspect in the murder of Ming-Chen Hsiao in 2015.
In a turn of events, Tellis was never charged for the stabbing death of Hsiao, and WREG Memphis describes the reason as follows:
“Fourth Judicial District Court Judge Larry Jefferson dismissed the indictment against Tellis on the basis of information that the State of Mississippi wanted Tellis to serve a five-year prison sentence for other offenses.”
Tellis did, however, plead guilty to possession of marijuana and three counts of unauthorized card use, having stolen Hsiao’s credit card on the night of her murder. As of now, a third trial for the case of Chambers is up in the air, but her family and loved ones hope that justice can be served. Her murder was one of the most horrific in the true crime realm, and those she loves deserve to feel that someone will be held responsible for her death.