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A Mississippi man accused of retrial in Jessica Chambers' murder trial erased text messages at age 19 shortly after his assassination, an FBI agent said Thursday.
29-year-old Quinton Tellis faces murder charges in connection with Chambers' death. Tellis watered Chambers with gasoline and then set it on fire on December 6, 2014 in the town of Courtland. Courtland is a rural town in northwestern Mississippi.
The first trial of Tellis ended in 2017 with a jury without conviction. Thursday marked the third of the new trial.
Dustin Blount, the FBI agent, told jurors at the Panola County Circuit Court that Tellis had already admitted to bypassing Chambers and a friend while both women were smoking marijuana.
The accused Quinton Tellis, in the center, looks around during a court visit to the crime scene in Courtland, Miss.
(AP)
Blount said Tellis had denied seeing Chambers again and that his only contact was when Chambers asked for money. Tellis reportedly told the agent that he had deleted his text messages with Chambers after hearing about his death.
Reports said rescuers found Chambers coming out of the woods near his car on fire. Chambers was reported to have severe burns covering 93% of his body and wearing only his underwear. She died a few hours later in a hospital in Memphis.
Deputy Attorney Jay Hale shows a picture of Jessica Chambers on the first day of Quinton Tellis' new trial in Batesville, Miss.
(AP)
On Tuesday, Tellis' lawyers claimed that several interveners had heard the victim mention "Derek" or "Eric" before dying. But prosecutors cast doubt on these allegations, arguing that the victim's condition rendered her incapable of formulating words. A nurse who treated Chambers in a hospital told the jurors: "(Chambers) could have made sounds, but not sounds we could say, that's saying."
On Thursday, jurors were brought to the scene of the murder and half a dozen other places related to the case. Gerald Chatham, Circuit Court Judge, suggested that prosecutors could recreate the crime scene on Thursday night, partly to give the jurors an idea of how noisy and obscure they were, but defense attorneys 39 are opposed to it.
On Wednesday, a woman who did not testify at Tellis' initial trial said she took a hitchhiker the night Chambers was killed. She told the jurors that she initially thought Tellis was her cousin, but still gave her a ride. When asked why she did not show up at the first trial, she said, "I did not remember and found it useless."
Tellis faces a new murder charge during the 2015 stabbing of a Taiwanese graduate student in Monroe, Louisiana. He has already pleaded guilty to unauthorized use of his debit card. The 29-year-old is currently serving a jail sentence in Mississippi on an unrelated robbery charge.
The Associated Press contributed to this report
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