Prosecution pressures defense in Tellis trial
Where he said he was on day of Chambers’ death is not where phone data says he was
Throughout the retrial of Quinton Tellis, Department of Justice Analyst Paul Rowlett’s name has come up dozens of times as the prosecution laid out the elements of their case.
Rowlett was the one the agents, officers, and deputies of dozens of agencies gave their information to as they did interviews, gathered information and extracted data.
On Saturday, Rowlett, entered as an expert witness in the field of intelligence analysis, took the stand and began to outline for the jury how his process is similar to taking 50 1,000-piece puzzles and dumping them all on the ground, eliminating some pieces, and then putting one puzzle together from all those mixed pieces.
You don’t throw any pieces away, he said, but if they don’t fit, you move them to the edge of the table. As the picture starts to clarify, then you may have to go back to the pieces you put aside earlier.
That, Rowlett said, is how Tellis’ name came back up after he was put aside earlier in the case.
Rowlett said he received location data from several cellphones, including Tellis’ and something major jumped out at him: Where Tellis said he was on the day of Jessica Chambers’ death is not where his cellphone data says he was.
As a matter of fact, it showed he was with Chambers that evening. Shortly following that realization — what investigators have called the “ah-ha moment” — Rowlett called Special Agent Scott Meadows of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Agent Tim Douglas of the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, District Attorney John Champion, and ADA Jay Hale.
“Come to my office in the morning, ASAP,” was the gist of the conversation, he testified.
Several other people’s statements were looked at versus their location data, but Tellis’ was the one that didn’t match.
Now that Tellis was back on the radar, authorities zoomed in on him. Another inconsistency in his story was that he had told them he met Chambers around Thanksgiving, and that they had known each other about two weeks when she died.
Cellphone records proved they’d only known each other for a week. Chambers didn’t have his name saved in her phone. Investigators couldn’t even find where she had referred to him by name ever in her phone, leaving the question open: Did she call him Quinton, or did she call him Tellis like so many other Courtland residents?
It also appeared that he had been inconsistent on how he and Chambers had met, Rowlett said, echoing some of the details other officials had stated: Tellis said he met her through her friend Kesha Meyer. Meyer testified in court that she met Tellis through Chambers, who never referred to him in their introduction as anything other than “a friend.”
And then there were the text messages: Rowlett pointed to cell data that showed that for three days, Tellis asked Chambers for sex and she declined.
Rowlett showed videos from the local gas station, then known as M&M, where both Tellis and Chambers can be seen. In those videos he established how long it took Tellis to walk across from his house and the fact Tellis’ driveway can be seen from the gas station cameras.
The jury then saw the widely distributed video from the night Chambers died.
“This is the last time we’ll see Jessica Chambers on video,” said Hale.
Rowlett showed the data police used to deduce that Chambers picked Tellis up, and the two went to go get food at Taco Bell. Tellis had claimed that much of that evening he had been with a friend, Mike Sanford, known as Big Mike, and he had ridden to Batesville with him.
Sanford, who also testified Saturday, said he wasn’t in town that day, that he had left around 2 p.m. for Nashville to see a friend who plays for the New York Giants play the Tennessee Titans. When prosecutors asked if Tellis was telling the truth when he said he was in Sanford’s truck that night, Sanford said he was “lying, because my truck was in Nashville.”
Cellphone data also showed both Tellis and Chambers in the area just south of M&M, in the small field behind Tellis’ home where he told police he and Chambers had sex.
Tellis had told police that when he had sex with Chambers, the seat was laid back. Rowlett reiterated that Chambers was found in her underwear and the seat was found in the reclined position. All day, Chambers had been trying to reach Meyer to take her to Memphis for a birthday surprise. And after that time in the field, Chambers would never send a text again.
Phone calls and texts were also coming into Tellis’ phone, according to the timeline, fromfour other women who were texting him during that time prosecutors say he was with Chambers and he didn’t answer any of them. One of them, Chakita Jackson, would later become his wife.
Two cars could be seen on video leaving Tellis’ home, Rowlett showed the jury, and both of them turned in to M&M. One car can be seen leaving the driveway to the field where officials say Tellis and Chambers were at 7:26 p.m., and Chambers did not try to contact Meyer again. At 7:30 p.m., Chambers’ phone shows up at the crime scene, which was roughly three to four minutes away.
Shortly thereafter was when prosecution witness Sherry Flowers said she she was flagged down by and picked up a male hitchhiker she didn’t know in that area. She drove him to an area close to where Tellis’ sister lived about 350 yards away.
The prosecution contends Tellis was that man, and as he walked to his sister’s house, he called Chambers at 7:42 p.m. to tell her voicemail he couldn’t see her later that night. He would make the statement that he was going to borrow his sister’s white SUV to go to Batesville to buy a Green Dot card.
Tellis later would send Chambers a text that said, “Bae, my friend is coming over tonight. I’m going to call you tomorrow. Goodnite. Sweet dreams.” Rowlett said the text seemed odd given that the last time Tellis had spoken to Jackson, who he had been saying was coming to see him, was at 4:25 p.m., and she had sent him a text that said, “Oh well,” when she got no reply. At 7:46 p.m., he called Jackson.
From 7:46 p.m. to 8 p.m., Tellis’ phone goes quiet again, but an SUV comes from the south and can be seen on video going into the Tellis driveway where it sits near a shed at the front of the home for a minute and a half. Then it leaves and goes back south, toward Courtland and away from Batesville. Rowlett admitted that he could not definitively identify the vehicle, but that it looked like a light-colored SUV.
The prosecution noted that, in spite of being in constant contact with Chambers that day, Tellis did not attempt to call or text her when he heard the news, but he did begin to return texts and calls from the other women who had been trying to reach him. Sometime in the days that follow, Tellis deleted Chambers’ texts, calls and contact information from his phone.
“And he erased her from his life,” Hale said.
Defense attorney Alton Peterson asked Meadows if he, Douglas and Rowlett had used “trickery” to get Tellis to change his story. Meadows said no, that they had all been as forthright as possible, even showing Tellis what evidence they had so that he could weigh it for himself.
Peterson put particular weight on Meadows’ statement that at one point in talking to Tellis he was trying to “help him remember” events of that night because there were some he might have forgotten. Meadows also said, however, he felt very strongly that there were also things Tellis intentionally was hiding.
Peterson appeared to be implying investigators had attempted to coerce or manipulate Tellis’ story. District Attorney John Champion pointed out, however, that throughout the interviews, Rowlett, Douglas, and Meadows had given him time to think, had showed him their hand, and had been courteous.
At one point on the video, Douglas told Tellis his being honest could be a matter of life or death, bringing up that this could end up being a death penalty case. Peterson also brought that up, saying it seemed Tellis was threatened with the death penalty.