Investigators believe Tasia Fortune was dead before her body was hanged from a tree behind an abandoned house in Mississippi’s capital this summer, a detective testified Friday.
The display involving Fortune’s body, discovered Aug. 3, was staged, Jackson police Detective Samuel Dukes said, citing the medical examiner’s findings.
Authorities have not released the precise cause of Fortune’s death, but they have classified it as a homicide. Two men, both of whom are Black, have been arrested on murder charges, while a warrant has been issued for a third suspect.
Dukes testified that the apparent motive was a dispute involving drugs. Interviews with witnesses and others also indicated that Fortune fought intensely before she was killed, he said.
The case has drawn widespread attention because the scene evoked the history of lynchings in Mississippi, a Southern state long marked by racial violence.
Investigators have not explained why they believe Fortune’s body was hanged after her death.
Dukes gave his testimony during a preliminary hearing for 51-year-old Jarques Ratliff, the first person arrested in the case earlier this month. Ratliff has pleaded not guilty and remains jailed without bond at the Hinds County jail.
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The hearing, which is scheduled to resume Sept. 30, will determine whether prosecutors have enough evidence to present the case to a grand jury for a possible indictment.
Police arrested the second defendant, 25-year-old Earnest Lloyd Jr., this week.
At Friday’s hearing, Ratliff said Fortune had been his friend.
Fortune’s mother, Christy Spivey, said her daughter had struggled with homelessness in recent years and that she did not know where Fortune had been living when she died. Fortune, who had four children, had spoken about launching a cleaning business and was working to rebuild her life, her mother said.
