PANOLA COUNTY, Miss. — A year later and police have no idea who doused Jessica Chambers in gasoline and set her on fire on a rural road in Panola County.
Around 98 percent of her body was burned. Sadly, she would succumb to those injuries hours later.
Investigators said they are following some promising leads.
No arrests have been made, despite numerous leads and a $54,000 reward being offered in the case.
District Attorney John Champion said investigators have determined Chambers was mostly at home up until about 5 p.m. the day of the murder.
He said she left home and headed to a gas station in Courtland shortly before 6 p.m. after she received a phone call from a friend. The teen was captured on surveillance video at a gas station filling up her car.
Authorities were able to determine Chambers was then in the area of Highway 6’s first set of stop lights, coming into Batesville, a town about five miles away, and was there for 10 to 15 minutes. The D.A. said he cannot elaborate further about where she was specifically.
Chambers was back in Courtland around 6:30 p.m., he said. What happened during the next hour or so is unclear.
“I would have never let her walk out that door had I known,” her mother Lisa Chambers said.
She spent Sunday trying to sleep away the pain.
“A living nightmare. Constantly just wanting to wake up,” she said.
A passing motorist found the 19-year-old on the side of the road, lying near her burning Kia Rio sedan just before 8:15 p.m. that night.
Champion said investigators believe Chambers was at the murder scene as early as 7:31 p.m.
The teen was still alive when rescue workers responded. Champion has said Chambers spoke to rescue workers, but what she said has not been revealed.
She died several hours later at a Memphis hospital.
State and local agents said this case has been hard to solve. Over the past year, they’ve interviewed dozens of people, given polygraph tests, posted billboards and sorted through phone records.
Champion said at least four times they thought they solved the case, but then it fell apart.
The mystery garnered attention across the country.
Sunday night, a vigil was held on Facebook. People who knew Jessica and those who didn’t posted pictures of candles, hoping to shine light on the case.
Lisa Chambers said she went back to the spot her daughter was found.
“I carried a flower there the other day, but I visit the grave now because it’s more comfortable there,” she said.
Sadly, her daughter’s grave is the only place that seems to numb the pain.
Anyone with information on the case is asked to contact Crime Stoppers at 1-800-729-2169 or the ATF at 1-888-283-3473.
