The story of 19-year-old teen who was burned alive, after had rough sex with her boyfriend in the car

News24xx.com - It has been four years since 19-year-old Jessica Chambers were set alight inside her car at the woods near her hometown of Courtland in Mississippi. She died a short time later of her horrific injuries in hospital - but not before she named her killer as Eric'.

Now the scorched grass has grown back, and the burned out car has been removed, but the memories are like it happened just yesterday for Jessica's mother Lisa Chambers. The mom of a the poor girl who was burned alive in 2014, has returned to the scene of her brutal murder as the suspect prepares to go to retrial.

She returned to the scene for Oxygen's new docu-series Unspeakable Crime: The Killing of Jessica Chambers.

The suspect in her murder is facing a retrial later this month after his first ended in mistrial when the jury could not decide whether he was guilty or not. 

The man facing trial for her murder is named Quinton Tellis, 29, who had been dating the teen at the time.

Tellis has always insisted that he is innocent, telling police in the interrogation room, even after being threatened with the death penalty if it went to trial, "I told the truth. I didn't kill Jessica. It ain't even in my heart to kill nobody."

His family claim that the police are simply looking for someone to blame in the case, which has become a highly charged racial issue after Tellis, who is black, was arrested for the death of the pretty, white cheerleader. 

'I know my son didn't do this, they are just looking for someone to put this murder on,' his mother Rebecca Wright told Oxygen.

The case drove a wedge between people of different races in the small town of Courtland, which has a population of just over 500.

Lisa is hoping for justice for her daughter, and answers. Lisa shared her heartbreaking final communication with her daughter. 

The teen told her mom she was going out to get something to eat at around 5.15pm, on December 6, 2014. Lisa said she called Jessica while she was out to see what time she would be home.

"I called her and she said ill be home in a little while Momma, but I love you. I told her I loved her too. She said, 'See you in a little bit."

"That's the last I heard from her."

The last time she saw Jessica was at the hospital. Her daughter had suffered burns to 98 per cent of her body and was barely clinging on to life.

During the investigation, police interviewed several people called Eric. After Tellis was arrested, prosecutors told the court last year that Jessica may have been trying to say another name but her throat and mouth were so badly burned that it only appeared to sound like Eric or Derek. 

A burn doctor testified Chambers had so much damage to her mouth, throat and chest that she would be unable to properly say 'T' and pronounce words while she was speaking to firefighters.

Prosecutor, John Champion said during the trial that Tellis thought he suffocated while they were having sex before he drove her car to a back road. 

Prosecutors also showed a number of text messages, which appeared to show Tellis, who was from the same neighborhood as the victim, pestering Jessica for sex. 

After he believed he'd choked her to death, Champion said that Tellis ran to his sister's house nearby, jumped in his sisters' car, stopped to pick up gasoline from a shed at his house and torched Chambers' car and her. 

Prosecutors used cellphone location data and video surveillance footage from a store across the street from Tellis' home in an attempt to prove he was with Chambers the night she was burned.

During early interviews with law enforcement agents, Tellis said he only saw Chambers on the morning of the day she died. Tellis acknowledged that Chambers picked him up in her car at about 5.30pm that night, and said they spent about 1 and a half together. 

Investigators concluded that Tellis and Chambers were together until around 7.30pm, and stopping at Tellis' house at 7.50pm and staying for about two minutes before heading toward the crime scene.

Tellis, who had faced life in prison without parole if convicted, told investigators he kept a 5-gallon container of gasoline in a shed at his house.  

The trial was emotional, with spectators crying as jurors were shown graphic photos of Chambers' burned stomach and face. Eventually, with the jury unable to reach a verdict, the judge declared a mistrial. Tellis is due back on trial on September 24. 

Tellis faces another murder indictment in Louisiana, where he's accused in the torture death of Meing-Chen Hsiao, a 34-year-old Taiwanese graduate student at the University of Louisiana at Monroe.

Tellis will not return to Louisiana to face the charges or an indictment until the conclusion of his case in Mississippi because of the extradition agreement.

 

 

 

 

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