A Mississippi judge set a $۵m bond on Monday for a third man charged in the death of a Black woman whose body was found hanging from a tree in August.
Police disclosed on Friday that Tasia Fortune, ۲۹, was killed before her body was placed in a tree behind an abandoned house in Jackson, Mississippi’s capital city.
Fortune was Black, and the discovery of her hanging body stoked fear because the scene recalled actual lynchings in Mississippi, a southern US state with 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 Monday.
He said it was a “heinous” act that shocked Jackson.
Reynolds presided at a hearing for Eric Clark, ۴۵, who turned himself in on Friday. The Hinds county public defender’s office, which is representing him, declined to comment. Clark and two other men charged in Fortune’s death – Jarques Ratliff and Earnest Lloyd Jr – are Black.
Ratliff and Lloyd Jr have been denied bond.
Outside court on Monday, RaShall Brackney, Jackson police chief, repeated what was disclosed at a hearing on Friday, telling reporters that Fortune was killed as a result of a dispute over drugs. The body was discovered in a tree on ۳ August.
Brackney said props were left at the scene “as part of the staging” of a hanging and – as she has remarked before – that more arrests were likely.
Fortune’s mother, Christy Spivey, said Clark approached her following a hearing for co-defendant Ratliff and hugged her at the courthouse.
“He never said he did it, but he said he was there to turn himself in for murder,” Spivey told reporters on Monday.
Guardian staff contributed reporting
