Could be months before Jessica Chambers suspect is back

Even though a prosecutor was finally able to tell the public Wednesday that a man accused of killing a Mississippi teenager by setting her afire more than a year ago has been charged with capital murder, he had to couch the news with a message.

The man accused of killing 19-year-old Jessica Chambers won't be back in Mississippi for months, if not longer.

"I don't anticipate him being here anytime soon," Panola County District Attorney John Champion said of 27-year-old Quinton Verdell Tellis of Courtland. Tellis was indicted by a grand jury Tuesday.

Tellis is currently in jail in north Louisiana and will have to be extradited to Mississippi. Tellis, who lived in Panola County until he moved to Louisiana in 2015, was found in possession of items belonging to a woman who had been stabbed to death in Louisiana.

Champion said because the state doesn't participate in an interstate extradition program, what's known as a "Governor's Warrant" will have to be prepared and executed and that could take four to six weeks.

Tellis is also facing a May trial date that could delay his return to Mississippi, Champion said. He is charged with capital murder in Mississippi, and was indicted as a habitual offender under Mississippi law because of two previous burglary convictions and a felony fleeing conviction.

Authorities said because of the lack of street chatter, the indictment relied heavily on data collection.

"The technological data we had available to us was undoubtedly what helped us solve this case," Champion said.

Tellis was a suspect in the case early on, Champion said. He would not specify a motive or divulge anything Tellis said to investigators, citing the fact that the case has now to be prosecuted. Champion said he would consult with Chambers' parents on the death penalty but he said that the decision is ultimately up to him.

"Capital murder is when a death occurs in the commission of certain other felonies, and in this case it was third-degree arson," Champion said.

Authorities took their time with the case, Champion said, because they wanted to be "a million percent" sure they had the right suspect. Champion said they even presented their evidence to a group of prosecutors to see if the consensus was that they had enough.

"And I'm not going to go haphazard into a case without feeling that my evidentiary base is solid," he said. "And it took time to build this case. You know everybody wants these things solved immediately ... but this investigative team, for lack of a better word, just methodically plugged along."

Champion said the case has been a team effort by local, state and federal investigators.

"We had tremendous assistance from the U.S. Attorney's Office in Oxford that provided us with the manpower and the tools that we needed to get this case where we are today," Champion said. "I can't say enough to the assistance of the U.S. Attorney's office, as well as the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms, the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, and of course the Panola County Sheriff's office."

On four separate occasions, investigators thought they had solved the case, but each time they found they'd reached a dead end, Champion said. It was a final deep review of the technological data that led them to what they needed on Tellis.

Sheriff Dennis Darby spoke of Ben Chambers, Jessica's father, an employee of the sheriff's department.

"Our prayers go out to you," he said. "It's been a tremendous investigation ... They never laid down for a minute, they never gave up, and when they got on a trail they followed it to the end."

Darby touched on the fact that the investigation had turned over a lot of other corruption in the county, as evidenced by a federal operation called "Operation Bite Back" in December in which 17 arrests were made on gang and drug-related charges.

"It's edifying to know that we can offer some degree of closure, if there is such a thing, to Jessica's loved ones," said MBI spokesman Warren Strain. "Furthermore, it's very rewarding to know that someone who is capable of this degree of evil will have to answer for his actions."

Ben Chambers and Lisa Daugherty, Jessica's parents, said they'd never heard her speak of Tellis before. Ben Chambers said he'd never gone through her phone to see who she was talking to.

He said he's confident that Tellis will be convicted because as an employee of the sheriff's department, he had seen the investigation team at work.

"I've seen them work on the weekends, I've seen them work on their holidays, I've seen them work on their vacations," he said. "End over end, at 1 o'clock or 2 o'clock in the morning, they're here working on cases."

Lisa Daugherty said she was glad to hear there was a suspect, but she was even happier to know that he had been indicted by a grand jury.

"She's got to have justice. That doesn't come until the conviction," she said.

Daugherty said she's still carrying the weight of her daughter's death.

"I know that I've got to still sit through a trial with things I know nothing about that I will have to hear," she said, becoming emotional. "The road's nowhere near ... it's not there for me."

"Justice for Jessica is coming," Daugherty said. "One hurdle and on to the next. It's coming."

Contact Therese Apel at tapel@gannett.com. Follow @TRex21 on Twitter.