Jackson Police Say Tasia Fortune Was Dead Before Hanging; Third Man Held on $5 Million Bond

A Mississippi judge on Monday set a $5 million bond for a third man charged in the death of Tasia Fortune, a 29-year-old Black woman whose body was found hanging from a tree in Jackson in August.

Police disclosed last week that Fortune was killed during a drug dispute before her body was placed in a tree behind an abandoned house. The discovery had initially raised fears of a racial lynching in a state with a long history of racial violence, prompting some officials to call for a federal civil rights investigation before a Jackson police detective determined the scene had been staged.

"People justifiably didn't know if we had a killer on the loose who might hang people for racial reasons," Judge Jeffery Reynolds said during Monday's hearing, calling the act "heinous" and saying it had shocked the state capital.

Reynolds presided over the hearing for Eric Clark, 45, who turned himself in on Friday. The Hinds County Public Defender's Office, which is representing Clark, declined to comment. Clark and the two other men charged in Fortune's death are Black.

Fortune's body was discovered in the tree on August 3. Jackson Police Chief RaShall Brackney said props were left at the scene "as part of the staging" of the death and that further arrests were likely.

"Tasia Fortune was, uh, that we now know was deceased before this hanging was staged," Brackney told reporters.

The chief said investigators would not speculate on the intent behind the staging. "We will not get into what we believe to be the intent behind that, and again you cannot get into the mind of someone who is participating in this type of event," she said.

Brackney said the act itself was heinous and that what it appeared intended to imply was also heinous. She added that the case had caused additional harm to communities still living with the legacy of racial terror.

"This has created even more damage in our communities," she said. "We know we have a very sordid history around lynchings and racial terror across this nation and particularly around the South. That is still a very current narrative. It is still a very raw narrative."

Brackney said the investigation remains active and that more arrests are expected, noting that three people will eventually face conspiracy charges as the case develops.

She also said she believes the Fortune case has been conflated with that of Nolan Wells, an 18-year-old Black college student whose July 4 disappearance from an island off Mississippi's Gulf Coast sparked speculation that his death could have been racially motivated. A Mississippi grand jury found no evidence of criminal conduct in Wells' death, a conclusion his family and its legal team have rejected as they work to keep the investigation open.

Outside the courthouse, Fortune's mother, Christy Spivey, said her daughter deserved justice.

"She deserves justice. She didn't deserve that. She didn't deserve that at all," Spivey said. "I don't care, you know, not just that it's my daughter or just anybody. I mean, I would expect anybody to fight for their child if, if they were done like that, you know. I don't see how you couldn't."