Naman Shrestha
In 2014, a 19-year-old named Jessica Chambers was found burned and nearly dead in a Mississippi road. But before she took her final breath, she did mention a name — “Eric” or maybe “Derrick” — when she was asked about the person behind this by the first responders at the scene. When the police came to know that the accused, Quinton Tellis, had an acquaintance named Eric Hill Jr., things developed further. In ‘Jessica Chambers: An ID Murder Mystery,’ we get taken right into the middle of the mysterious case as it covers the events that led to the tragic incident and the intense investigation that followed.
Who is Eric Hill?
The cousin of Quinton Tellis’ wife and Quinton’s sister’s ex-boyfriend from several years ago, Eric Hill Jr. first became a person of interest in the eyes of the authorities when he was involved in the Ming-Chen Hsiao murder case in Monroe as one of the witnesses for the prosecutors, according to a police warrant. The accused used to hang out with Eric quite frequently. So, when the police came to Eric, he implicated a man named Curtis Lemons out of the lineup he was shown.
Eric was shown another lineup, which included Quinton, but he lied and denied knowing anyone in that lineup. After investigating and clearing out Curtis’ name, they told him that they knew about his relation to Quinton, after which he quickly changed his story and allegedly blurted out the truth. According to Eric, one day, he and Quinton were boasting about their respective criminal histories and comparing who had the best story. That was when the prime suspect told him about the time he robbed a woman’s credit cards and killed her.
Thanks to the information provided by him to the police, Quinton was forced to plead guilty to one count of unauthorized use of Hsiao’s access (debit) card. In light of the evidence, he was handed a 10-year imprisonment sentence for being a habitual offender. Laquinta Tellis, Quinton’s sister who used to date Eric Hill, sat down with legal analyst Beth Karas who asked her some questions about Eric and her “Eric” tattoo. She explained, “It’s somebody from my past. We both got each other’s name tattooed on us. This tattoo has been on my hand…almost six, seven years.” When asked if he was still in the picture, Laquinta told her that he had been out of the picture for several years.
What Happened to Eric Hill?
In an unexpected turn of events, Eric Hill Jr. filed a notarized letter on August 18, 2020, claiming that the allegations and testimony he made against Quinton in 2016 were untrue. He expanded on the same in the letter, which read, “My name is Eric Hill Jr. I’m writing and filing this affidavit on my own free will to state on about May 11, 2016, I, Eric Hill Jr. was pressured by Monroe Police to take the stand to make a false statement against Quinton Tellis.”
The letter further read, “Quinton Tellis never told me anything about a crime, and I don’t know anything other than what was put on TV. I, Eric Hill Jr., was charged with accessory to murder and was forced to falsely testify on the stand against Quinton Tellis by Monroe Police or be convicted of murder, a crime I had no knowledge of that supposedly happened if I didn’t take the stand against Quinton Tellis.” Besides this, Eric himself had trouble with the law as he was accused of robbing a convenience store on Christmas Day of 2019. As of November 2020, he had been in custody with a $250,000 bond since February 2020 at OCC while the charges of armed robbery against him were pending.
