By Sophie Bates
Contributing Writer
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A Mississippi judge set a $5 million bond Sept. 28 for a third man charged in the death of a Black woman whose body was found hanging from a tree in August.
Police announced Sept. 25 that Tasia Fortune, 29, was killed in a drug dispute before her body was placed in a tree behind an abandoned house in Jackson.
Fortune was Black, and the discovery of her hanging body stoked fear because the scene recalled actual lynchings in the Southern state, which has a long history of racial violence. Some officials had called for a federal civil rights investigation before a Jackson police detective said the scene was “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 Sept. 28.
He said it was a “heinous” act that shocked the state capital.
Reynolds presided at a hearing for Eric Clark, 45, who turned himself in Sept. 25. The Hinds County Public Defender’s Office, which is representing him, declined to comment. Clark and two other men charged in Fortune’s death are Black.
Later outside the court, Fortune’s mother, Christy Spivey, said Clark approached her at the courthouse last week and hugged her following a hearing for co-defendant Jarques Ratliff.
“He never said he did it, but he said he was there to turn himself in for murder,” Spivey told reporters Sept. 28.
The body was discovered in a tree on Aug. 3. Jackson Police Chief RaShall Brackney said props were left at the scene “as part of the staging” of Fortune’s death and that more arrests were likely.
Brackney told reporters that she believes the 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 caused speculation that his death could have been racially motivated.
A Mississippi grand jury said it found no evidence of criminal conduct in Wells’ death. His family and its legal team have slammed the report and are working to keep the investigation open.
“This has created even more damage in our communities,” Brackney said, referring to the fear that the image of Fortune’s hanging body evoked. “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.”
As of Sept. 28, the family had raised $182,000 of its $190,000 goal on GoFundMe to help support Fortune’s family and her four children: Davion, 7, Terence Jr., 5, Tristian, 4, and Donte, 1.
Sophie Bates writes for the Associated Press. Wave staff contributed to this report.
