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Champion said Chambers and Tellis were friends for about two weeks. Chambers was trying to text another friend, Kesha Myers, with whom she was planning to spend time. Chambers couldn’t reach Kesha, however, because the pre-paid phone Myers used had run out of minutes and data, Champion said.

Champion argued that at this point, Chambers and Tellis started “riding around” and eventually went to Taco Bell to get food. Chambers and Tellis wound up back at the defendant’s house. Tellis claimed they were in his driveway, but Champion says the cell data indicates they were really in an area south of his house at around 6:30 p.m. Chambers made one call to her mother around 6:45 p.m.

At 7:26, a set of headlights left the defendant’s driveway area and headed south on Highway 51. At the same time, Jessica’s phone began to move in the same direction. Less than a mile away from the defendant’s residence, Champion said that the defendant and Chambers turned west onto Main Street and eventually into an area that leads towards a set of hunting camps.

That’s where, at around 8:04 or 8:06 p.m., a man called the local 911 center to report a car on fire.

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A very small piece of Chamber’s bra tested positive at an ATF lab for gasoline, which prosecutors believe was the accelerant used to set both Chambers and her car on fire.

Then, about an eighth of a mile from the burn area, a passerby found Chambers’ car keys. The keys tested positive for the defendant’s DNA, Champion told the jury.

When initially questioned about what happened, the defendant claimed he had been with Jessica Chambers the morning of the day she was set on fire, but later had gone to buy a money transfer card known as a “Green Dot Card.” He said he was going to be sending money to his girlfriend in Monroe, Louisiana.

Later, under FBI questioning, Tellis admitted to having sex with Chambers shortly before her death in an area near his home where cell phone tower records can place both the victim’s and the defendant’s phones. Tellis said the sex occurred in the passenger seat of the victim’s car, which was placed in a “laid back” position. The victim’s burned car was later found with the passenger seat in such a position, Champion told the jury. Tellis also told the FBI he kept a five-gallon can of gasoline in a shed at his house.

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Eventually armed with new cell phone data, authorities re-approached Tellis after he had moved to Louisiana and married his girlfriend. Tellis hadn’t told authorities all of the details of his contact with Chambers the day she was burned, Champion told the jury.

Tellis then copped a series of alibis and excuses which never panned out, Champion said. The three alibi witnesses Tellis provided all said they were not with him around the time Chambers was burned.

Champion said that around the time Chambers was set on fire, the defendant’s phone switched over to a different tower, and his car was seen leaving at a high rate of speed.

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Champion, the prosecutor, said he believes that after Chambers left the Tellis house, Tellis borrowed his sister’s car, got his gas can, drove to the scene, poured gas in the Chambers car, lit it on fire, and then drove to Batesville, Mississippi to purchase the “Green Dot” cash card he was planning to send to his girlfriend in Louisiana.

Champion again repeated that Tillis’s phone was off, but became active again around 7:42 p.m. when he called the victim. She had left his house at 7:26, but at 7:42, he texted her something along the lines of, “hey honey I can’t be with you tonight, my girl’s coming up.” Then, Champion said, for the first time, Tellis called his girlfriend in Louisiana. His phone then went dead again. “How in the world did he know his girl was coming up [from Louisiana] if he didn’t talk to her before then?” Champion asked rhetorically. The text to Chambers “was an alibi text,” Champion believes, and an attempt “to throw the police off.”

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She acknowledged that the crime, a burning death, was “horrible,” but that the evidence does not point to the defendant. At least eight first responders talked to Chambers at the scene of the burning. She was able to clearly identify herself, clearly indicated that someone set her on fire, and stated a name: “Eric set me on fire.” Palmer told the jury that Chambers didn’t say another name. “Eric did this to me,” Palmer repeated. Chambers also said she didn’t know her attacker’s last name. She did know Quinton’s last name was Tellis, but did not state it to first responders when she was still alive.

Palmer, the defense attorney, went on to say that cell phone records, which the state says tie the victim and the defendant together, cannot pinpoint a person’s location.

Perhaps most crucially, the defense says that the “Green Dot” card purchased by the defendant was bought at 7:53 or 7:58 p.m., the very time prosecutors claim Tillis was setting Chambers on fire. (The car fire was reported just minutes later, at 8:04 or 8:06, according to prosecutors.)

Palmer concluded by saying that the case is “full of reasonable doubt” and that Chambers, the victim, did not name Quinton Tellis, the defendant, after she was burned.