A third suspect has been arrested in the killing of Tasia Fortune, a 29-year-old Jackson mother of four whose body was found hanging from a tree behind an abandoned home in west Jackson on Aug. 3. A Jackson Municipal Court judge set bond at $5 million on Monday, Sept. 28, for Jessie Clark, 45, as police said the investigation is still active and more charges could follow.
The case drew wide attention in Mississippi after Fortune’s death was first discovered in a hanging position, raising public questions about whether the scene reflected a hate crime or a suicide. Jackson police have since said the scene was staged after Fortune was killed in what a detective described in court as a drug dispute.
Court hearing adds a third defendant
Clark turned himself in Friday after police issued a warrant, according to court testimony and later coverage of Monday’s bond hearing. He is the third person charged with murder in Fortune’s death, after earlier arrests of Earnest Lloyd Jr. and Jarques Ratliff.
At Lloyd’s preliminary hearing Friday, Jackson Police Department Detective Samuel Dukes testified that Fortune was killed after a dispute over drugs and that the hanging scene was staged. Authorities have not publicly disclosed Fortune’s exact cause of death, but they have ruled the case a homicide.
Monday’s hearing added another public step in a case that has moved quickly over the past week. Judge Jeffrey Reynolds called it “an extremely heinous act,” according to Mississippi Today, when setting Clark’s $5 million bond.
What is clear is where the case centers: Jackson, specifically the area behind an abandoned home on the 500 block of Road of Remembrance, where Fortune’s body was found. Police have said Lloyd is accused of using a black cable cord to hang Fortune after her death, though investigators still have not publicly explained why they believe the body was staged that way.
Fortune’s mother, Christy Spivey, has spoken publicly throughout the case and attended the recent court hearings. After earlier arrests, she said she was “ecstatic” to see movement in the investigation, and after Monday’s hearing she spoke to reporters in tears outside the courthouse.
Some basic facts remain unresolved in public. Police have not said how Fortune was killed, have not laid out each suspect’s exact alleged role in court filings made public through these reports, and have not announced when additional charges might be filed.
Jackson Police Chief RaShall Brackney said Monday that the investigation is ongoing and that more arrests and charges could be coming. That means the three murder cases already filed may not be the end of the criminal case tied to Fortune’s death.
Brackney also suggested the intense public debate around another Mississippi death case, involving Nolan Wells on the Gulf Coast, may have spilled into public assumptions about Fortune’s death before investigators finished sorting out the facts. A Mississippi grand jury later said it found no evidence of criminal conduct in Wells’ death.
For now, the next phase will play out in court as prosecutors continue building the case against Clark, Lloyd and Ratliff. As of Monday, the most concrete new fact was this: a third defendant is now in custody, and Jackson police say they are not done yet.