Court document: Tellis' victim tortured to death

Meing-Chen Hsiao of Taiwan was stabbed over 30 times in her Monroe, Louisian,a apartment before she gave her debit card PIN to her killer, a law enforcement officer said in court records.

Monroe Police Detective Duane Cookson's affidavit also stated that killer is one known to Mississippians as being the suspect in one of the most notorious homicides in recent years.

Quinton Tellis, who was charged in the 2014 Panola County burning death of Jessica Chambers, has been accused of torturing Hsiao to death on her bedroom floor. He was indicted in the Mississippi homicide as he sat in jail in Ouachita Parish, Louisiana, in February, and then an arrest warrant for the Louisiana homicide was filed on Thursday as he sat in jail in DeSoto County.

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"After gaining possession of the debit card, he brutally murdered her by repeatedly stabbing her and letting her body rot and decompose until being discovered," read part of Cookson's statement included in the Louisiana arrest warrant.

The homicide allegedly took place on July 29, and her body was found Aug. 8. As authorities worked the death scene, Tellis was celebrating his wedding to Chikita Jackson.

While they weren't immediately connected, police knew Tellis knew Hsiao because they were seen together on a Wal-Mart security video, and a neighbor also provided a license plate number of a man who gave her a "creepy feeling." She told police that man, whom she later identified as Tellis, had been to Hsiao's apartment July 27 and 28. She had heard them arguing.

Hsiao had friends and neighbors nearby, but her family was in Taiwan. It was 10 days before her body was found inside her apartment.

Someone had made an attempt to clean the crime scene, the warrant stated. Police said that means there's no DNA to tie Tellis to the crime scene, but authorities held that the data trail and witness statements were enough to arrest him.

Other evidence included a receipt for $0.07 from a local gas station, paid with Hsiao's card, found in Tellis' bedroom.

Search warrants for phone and bank records showed calls to Hsiao's bank from Tellis' phone on the day she died, and GPS records showed Tellis "more than likely was inside (Hsiao's) apartment."

Withdrawals from a Vicksburg ATM coincide with phone records and statements that Tellis and Jackson were there that day.

A pair of tennis shoes was found in an outside storage shed, and they had been spray-painted white, according to the affidavit. Under the paint were dark stains police believed to be blood.

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Jackson told police Tellis didn't work but stayed home and watched her son. When he wasn't doing that, she said, he was with her cousin, Eric Hill.

Hill initially told police that another man named Curtis Lemons had allegedly told him he had stabbed Hsiao until she gave up the PIN to her debit card. Hill then picked Lemons out of a photo lineup but wouldn't initial it. He then looked at another lineup that included Tellis and said he didn't know anyone in it.

Court documents stated Hill told police Hsiao was stabbed and sliced in various ways meant to inflict pain until she gave up the PIN and that not all the wounds were meant to kill her — details only the killer would know.

Lemons was cleared. When police confronted Hill with the fact that they knew he was Jackson's cousin and associated with Tellis, Hill admitted he knew the details because Tellis had told him and that he had wanted to frame Lemons. Hill told police he and Tellis were telling "war stories" about their criminal histories, even trying to "one up" each other, when Tellis told him about going "to a lady's house" where he "robbed her of her credit cards, beat her up pretty bad, and stabbed her."

Meanwhile, Tellis faces arraignment in Mississippi in theChamberscase on July 15.

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Contact Therese Apel at tapel@gannett.com. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter.