Mississippi's Most Controversial Murder Trial: The Jessica Chambers Case

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Hey, before we get started with your story today, if you look at the duration of this episode,

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you'll notice it's not 10 minutes.

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It's much more than that.

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This happens from time to time.

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I get a little carried away with the episode and forget to go back and weed out some of

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the details that make it come in at around 10 minutes or so.

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I didn't do that with this one.

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I decided to let this one go, let this be the unedited version of the episode.

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But because of that, I won't be back on at the end to remind you to subscribe if you're

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new and blah, blah, blah, blah.

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So just know when the story ends, the episode ends, and you can binge on to the next one.

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Okay, bye.

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December 6, 2014.

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A 19-year-old walks toward firefighters on a rural Mississippi back road.

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She's only wearing her underwear.

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93% of her body is burned.

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Before she dies the next day, she tries to tell them who did this to her.

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What she says becomes evidence that no prosecutor can overcome.

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This is the story of Jessica Chambers.

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Alright, buckle up because this one is brutal.

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We're talking about a case where the victim literally walked toward help while 93% of her

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body was on fire.

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93% that's almost your entire body.

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And she's still moving, still trying to communicate, still fighting.

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December 6, 2014.

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Courtland, Mississippi.

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Population around 500.

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Jessica Chambers, 19-years-old former cheerleader working at Goodie's department store in Batesville,

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Bates set on fire.

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And despite injuries that should have killed her instantly, she gets out of that car and

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walks toward the firefighters who show up around 8 p.m.

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thinking they're just dealing with the car fire.

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When they see her, they're horrified.

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She's only wearing underwear in 40-degree weather.

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Her blonde hair is fried.

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She's burned beyond recognition.

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Firefighter Shane Mills knew Jessica personally.

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He didn't recognize her when he first saw her that night.

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She said it was one of the worst things he could imagine.

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And despite everything, she's trying to tell them something.

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That detail right there, what she said to those first responders, becomes the thing that

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derails two murder trials and leaves this case stuck in legal limbo a decade later.

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At least eight first responders are on scene.

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Multiple people ask Jessica the same question.

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Who did this to you?

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And she gives them a name.

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The problem is every single person who heard it says she said Eric or Derrick.

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Some heard Eric, some heard Derrick.

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But they're all basically hearing the same thing.

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Now the guy who gets charged with the murder, his name is Quentin Tellus.

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Not Eric.

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Not Derrick.

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Quentin.

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Jessica knew Quentin.

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They'd been texting.

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They'd been hanging out for about two weeks.

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She absolutely knew his name.

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So if Quentin just set her on fire, why on earth would she say a completely different name?

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That's the question the defense hammered into the jury's head.

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And honestly, pretty damn good question.

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The prosecution answer was basically well her throat was destroyed.

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Her mouth was full of burns.

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She had smoke inhalation.

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Maybe she was trying to say Quentin or Tellus.

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And it came out sounding like Eric.

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Or maybe the first responders who are dealing with a scene straight out of a horror movie,

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but heard it wrong.

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They brought in a speech pathologist to testify.

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They had a doctor explain how severe throat and mouth burns affect your ability to form words.

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A doctor testified that Jessica had so much damage to her mouth, throat, and chest that

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she wouldn't have been able to properly say and pronounce any words.

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The argument was clinical and technical.

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But here's the thing.

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Eight different people heard the same thing, essentially.

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That's a lot of people to miss here the same way.

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And you know what a dying declaration is when someone is about to die and they tell you

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who hurt them.

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That testimony carries a massive amount of waiting court.

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There's this legal assumption that when you're dying, you're not going to lie.

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You're not going to play games and mess around.

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You're going to tell the truth.

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Jessica was airlifted to a hospital in Memphis.

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She died early the next morning, December 7, around 2.36 a.m.

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She never got another chance to clarify.

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And that one name, Eric or Derek, became the thing prosecutors would never overcome.

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So who is Quentin Tellus?

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He's 26 when this happens.

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He's got three prior convictions in Panola County, two for burglary, one for fleeing police.

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He got out of prison in October 2014 just two months before Jessica was killed.

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And here's what's not disputed.

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He was the last person confirmed to be with Jessica on December 6.

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The prosecution's theory goes like this.

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Quentin had met Jessica about two weeks earlier.

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He'd been contacting her repeatedly, asking for sex.

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She kept saying no.

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Text messages recovered from her phone showed she turned him down four times on the day she

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died.

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December 6, they meet up.

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They have sex in her car.

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Something goes wrong.

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The prosecutor, District Attorney John Champion, theorized that Quentin tried to suffocate

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her.

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He was dead, then realized she's still alive and he panicked.

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So he drives her car out to this back road, gets out and runs to a sister's house nearby.

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Barrow's her car goes back to his place to grab some gasoline from a shed.

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And then he returns, torches Jessica and the vehicle to eliminate a witness.

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And look, gasoline was definitely involved.

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A small piece of Jessica's bra tested positive for gasoline at an ATF lab.

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Quentin used an accelerant.

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Investigators found a gasoline canister in TELUS's garage.

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But proving Quentin was that someone, that's where the prosecution ran into numerous problems.

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Because Quentin lied a lot.

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When cops first talked to him, he said he only saw Jessica that morning.

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Quick interaction, nothing else.

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Then they came back with phone records and suddenly his story changed.

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"Oh yeah, we were actually together that evening.

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We had sex.

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I drove her car."

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MBI agent Tim Douglas testified that Quentin repeatedly lied during interviews.

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The prosecutor called him a liar to his face in court.

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And yet lying to cops is a terrible look.

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It makes you seem guilty.

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But the defense had an answer.

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Quentin had a girlfriend in Louisiana.

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He was probably cheating.

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Maybe he was selling drugs.

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He told investigators he met Jessica to sell her marijuana.

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So maybe he was long low to cover up other crimes.

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Not murder.

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By the time the FBI sat him down for a formal interrogation in January 2016, more than a

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year after Jessica died, his memory of the exact timeline was fuzzy at best.

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Lies tell you someone has something to hide.

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They don't automatically tell you they're hiding murder.

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The prosecution's best evidence was digital.

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Phone records tell a detailed story.

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Jessica left her mom's house around 6.30 pm after telling her she was going to clean her

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car and get something to eat.

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She stopped at an M&M first stop gas station.

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Put $14 worth of gas in her car, the clerk, Ali, said she seemed normal.

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Nothing seemed wrong.

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Surveillance footage shows her at the gas station and at one point something or someone catches

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her attention outside.

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Her last call to her mom was around 6.45 pm.

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After that, nothing.

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At 7.26 pm, surveillance footage from a store across from Quinten's house show a vehicle

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leaving his driveway area heading south.

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At the same time, Jessica's phone starts moving in the same direction.

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By 804 or 806 pm, someone calls 911 to report a car fire.

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Cell phone data showed Quinten's phone communicating with Jessica's phone throughout the evening.

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His DNA was found on her car keys.

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Found an eighth of a mile away from the burn vehicle.

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On paper, that sounds solid, but here's the problem.

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Rule Mississippi doesn't exactly have cell towers on every corner.

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When defense experts testified about triangulation, they had to admit something crucial.

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In Panola County, cell phone pings can only narrow your location down to somewhere between

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two and twenty square miles.

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Twenty square miles.

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That's not putting someone at the crime scene.

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That's saying someone was in the general vicinity of a small town.

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They could have been miles apart.

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The defense argued Quinten was in Batesville, miles away, buying a prepaid debit card called

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a green dot card for his girlfriend when Jessica was attacked.

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And with cell data that unreliable, the prosecution couldn't definitively prove otherwise.

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So you've got circumstantial evidence, suggestive evidence, but not proof beyond a reasonable

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doubt.

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Here's something that makes this even more disturbing.

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About seven months after Jessica's murder and late July 2015, a graduate student named

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Ming Chen Zhao was killed in Monroe, Louisiana.

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She was 34 years old from Taiwan, studying at the University of Louisiana at Monroe.

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Her body was found ten days later in her apartment on August 8.

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She'd been tortured and stabbed more than 30 times.

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Someone wanted her debit card pen, forced her to give it up, and then killed her.

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Quinten Tellus was caught using her debit cards after she died.

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Within days of her death, he withdrew several hundred dollars from her accounts at different

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times.

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Surveillance footage captured him at ATM machines using her card.

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On August 20, 2015, he was arrested.

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He admitted to using the cards.

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And here's some pretty interesting information.

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At 5.22 pm on July 29, she made her last phone call to a friend asking for a ride to

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church.

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Then, at 8.16 pm, someone called her bank using her account and pen.

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Immediately after that, a call to the same bank was made from Tellus' phone.

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That's some pretty damning evidence.

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Quinten pleaded guilty to unauthorized use of her card, May 2016.

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Got sentenced to ten years as a habitual offender.

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He was also indicted on May 17, 2019 for second degree murder in her death.

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Now here's the really wild part.

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That Louisiana murder case has been delayed over and over for years.

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It was finally scheduled to go to trial December 1, 2025.

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But just days before the trial was supposed to start, on November 29, 2025, a key expert witness

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died in a car crash.

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He was driving to Monroe to testify and he was killed in a wreck in Hattiesburg.

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And the prosecutor said that his testimony was vital for connecting physical evidence to

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Tellus.

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So, the trial got rescheduled to January 5, 2026.

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So more than ten years after Zal's murder, Tellus is finally about to face trial for it.

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And get this, he asked for a bench trial.

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Meaning a judge will decide his fate instead of a jury.

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Maybe he's thinking juries haven't worked out too well for him in the past, even when

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they couldn't convict him.

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If you're an investigator and your suspect is in a burning death case also connected

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to a torture and stabbing murder where the victim was attacked more than 30 times for

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her debit pin number, that paints a pretty clear picture.

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It tells you this person is capable of extreme violence for financial gain.

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It tells you there's a pattern of killing to eliminate witnesses.

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But in the Mississippi trials, that evidence was mostly inadmissible.

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You can't tell a jury about another crime to suggest that he probably did this one too.

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So the Louisiana murder stayed mostly out of the courtroom, even though it's the whole

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reason Mississippi investigators zeroed in on Quentin in the first place.

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October 2017, first trial in Batesville, Mississippi.

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The jury was selected from Pike County, 225 miles away, to avoid local bias.

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The trial was emotional.

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Witnesses broke down.

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Spectators cried looking at graphic photos.

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First responders gave tearful testimony.

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One firefighter hugged Jessica's father as he stepped down from the stand.

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Her mother, Lisa Chambers, took the stand.

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She teared up, identifying her daughter.

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"That's my baby girl," she said.

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After days of deliberation, the jury sends out a note.

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They've reached a verdict.

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But when Judge Gerald Chatham asked if they unanimously agreed, confusion erupts.

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Turns out they misunderstood the instructions.

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Many voted guilty.

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But they weren't unanimous.

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Hung jury.

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Missed trial.

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September 2018, they try again in a different county.

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Same result.

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Hung jury.

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Missed trial.

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The jury was stuck between two versions of reality.

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On one side, circumstantial evidence.

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Quentin lied repeatedly.

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His phone was in the area.

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His DNA was found on her car keys.

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Surveillance footage shows his sister's car pulling into his driveway at 750 and staying

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for about two minutes before heading back out.

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Prosecutors said that's when he grabbed the gasoline.

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Cell phone records show his and Jessica's phones moving together.

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On the other side, Jessica's dying words.

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Eric or Derek.

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A name eight people heard.

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A name that doesn't match.

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Investigators questioned 10 to 15 people named Eric or Derek in the area and cleared all

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of them.

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And here's a detail that makes this even weirder.

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A cousin of Tellus' wife told police that days after it's Al's death, Tellus allegedly

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bragged about torturing a woman to get her debit card pin.

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Court documents say she described details of her wounds and other facts that prosecutors

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claim only the killer would know.

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She's expected to be a witness in the upcoming Louisiana trial.

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So the jury in Mississippi couldn't get past that reasonable doubt.

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And you know what?

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I get that.

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When you've got eight first responders all hearing the same thing essentially and it's

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not the defendant's name, that creates massive doubt.

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After two mistrials, prosecutors face the tough call.

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Try him a third time.

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Former DA John Champion who died in 2019 said at the time, quote, "I mean he's as dangerous

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as a criminal as I've ever dealt with in 26 years.

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I mean he's as dangerous as there is.

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So it's very important that either Louisiana get him convicted or we get him convicted."

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In quote, "As of now, current Mississippi DA Jay Hale hasn't said whether he'll pursue

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a third trial.

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Clinton is 38 now, serving time for the credit card fraud.

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But for Jessica's murder, there's no resolution, no conviction, no justice.

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Jessica's mother Lisa Chambers died in October 2021 at age 52 without ever seeing justice

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for her daughter.

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Jessica Chambers fought to survive.

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She walked toward help when most people would have died instantly.

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She tried to give first responders a name.

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11 years later we still don't know for sure who killed her."

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Quentin Telis lied to police repeatedly.

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The evidence against him is circumstantial but compelling.

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His phone data places him in the vicinity.

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His DNA is on her keys.

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Surveillance shows suspicious movements at his house.

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He changed his story multiple times.

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He was caught using another murdered woman's debit cards seven months later.

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The two juries couldn't convict him because of those dying words.

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That name, Eric or Derek.

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This case sits in limbo.

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Jessica's family has no closure.

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Her father, Ben, a mechanic with the Penola County Sheriff's Office said after Quentin's

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arrest that investigators worked tirelessly on the case.

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But after two mistrials, that optimism has faded.

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The community remains divided, and legally there's no clear path forward for the Mississippi

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case.

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That's the frustrating reality when the victim's final words contradict the evidence pointing

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at the accused.

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Maybe Jessica was trying to say Quentin or Telis and it came out wrong.

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Maybe the first responders misheard or maybe there is someone else.

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Someone named Derek or Eric out there who got away with murder while Quentin Telis took

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the heat.

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What we do know is that in January 2026, Telis will finally face trial for Ming-Chen's

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spouse, murder in Louisiana.

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Maybe that trial will provide some answers.

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Maybe it won't, but after more than a decade, at least one of these cases is moving forward.

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[Music]