UPDATE: Police Say Black Woman’s Hanging Was “Staged”, After 3rd (Black) Man Arrested For Her Murder

00:00:09
Speaker 1: Hey there, folks.

00:00:10
Speaker 2: It is Sunday, September 27th, and we have gotten an update on the death of a.

00:00:16
Speaker 1: Black woman found hanging from a tree in Mississippi.

00:00:21
Speaker 2: The update is that now three black men have been charged with her murder. And with that, welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ, a case we've been following for the past month or so, Robes. And yes, it got nationwide attention because a black woman found hanging from a tree in Mississippi.

00:00:37
Speaker 1: Well, there's been another arrest now.

00:00:39
Speaker 3: Yes.

00:00:40
Speaker 4: So this story keeps getting more interesting and some details are starting to get filled in finally, because this was a case. She was found hanging, I believe, August 3rd.

00:00:51
Speaker 5: So well over a month ago.

00:00:53
Speaker 4: And the first thing her family was shouting from the rooftops, she did not do.

00:00:59
Speaker 5: This to herself. And they said this because There had been.

00:01:02
Speaker 4: Two previous hangings found in that state in the past year, and they were both ruled suicide.

00:01:08
Speaker 5: So that was the big initial, oh, no, please. She would never have done this to herself.

00:01:12
Speaker 4: Well, police did finally say, you're right, she was murdered, but to have not one, not two, but three people now charged, and all of them are also black.

00:01:21
Speaker 2: And they made a point to say that, and I think it's important for all of us to say that. Robes, this is Mississippi. This is a black woman. She's 29 years old. It makes no sense, Robes, and it still doesn't. We don't have these answers because, Robes, even if you did, even if these black men did kill her, why would you display the body and draw attention to a murder? That didn't make any sense, and we still don't have that answer, but, Robes, it's significant. The conversation very much, hell, even MLK's daughter got involved and put out a statement when this woman was first found. So at least that part of the story, Robes, is not there, but now we have other details to fill in. And this latest arrest, Robes, they're still trying to piece together how this guy, what her relationship is to any of these guys. But police, we finally got a first indication of what they possibly think could have happened. So let's get you all updated here. This latest arrest, Robes is another guy, Eric Clark, 45-year-old black man. They said he turned himself in.

00:02:16
Speaker 5: Yeah, they had a warrant out for his arrest.

00:02:18
Speaker 4: They didn't release his name at the time, but they said they knew his name, they knew who he was, and U.S. Marshals had an arrest warrant for him. So he knew they were coming for him. Probably figured it was better for him if he turned himself in, which he did on Friday.

00:02:31
Speaker 2: Now, the first one, though, and again, this is a, quite frankly, it's a hell of a mugshot. The first guy that was arrested, Jarquez Ratcliffe. He goes by Jock, right? I think you told me. But, Rose, when you juxtapose, and we don't know this young lady at all, Tasia Fortune, 29 years old, mother of four. You see her, you see her pictures. We hear about her struggles. She had struggled with homelessness, was getting her life together and all this. She'd had a tough go of it.

00:02:58
Speaker 1: Fine. But Robes, just looking and putting the images of.

00:03:04
Speaker 2: Her next to the image, the only image right now we have of him, and I know he is not just his mugshot.

00:03:09
Speaker 3: We were all like, what the hell was the relationship? It's a rough mugshot. First of all, she is a gorgeous girl. She's 29 years old and mother of four. But you just saw every time I see her smiling face, I just see her potential.

00:03:22
Speaker 4: I see what she could have been. It makes it just breaks my heart. And look, everyone has that in them. But yes, the jocks. mugshot looks like he is an insane person.

00:03:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, we can't judge everybody by one picture.

00:03:37
Speaker 4: Of course.

00:03:38
Speaker 1: We see a lot of mugshots.

00:03:40
Speaker 2: But Robes, because we had so few answers, that added to our confusion.

00:03:45
Speaker 1: What the actual hell is this guy and this girl? And they never told us what the relationship, what was the word they associated?

00:03:52
Speaker 4: Acquaintance, association, had a known association with him.

00:03:57
Speaker 1: It was bizarre.

00:03:57
Speaker 4: I believe it was not like, Friendly, certainly not romantic, certainly not paternal, even though I guess numbers wise it could have been.

00:04:05
Speaker 5: Yes, but he.

00:04:06
Speaker 4: Looked kind of like that uncle you don't want coming to the family barbecue.

00:04:10
Speaker 2: And again, we only are going by a picture we saw. No knock against this man and his family. But given what this story is, we were confused. Now, the new info came to us from a preliminary hearing that happened Friday. And this is where they're trying to determine whether or not there is enough evidence to move forward with a trial for jock.

00:04:31
Speaker 1: What was his last name? Ratcliffe.

00:04:33
Speaker 4: Yes.

00:04:33
Speaker 2: So this is where, Robes, we started to get some new info and new details.

00:04:38
Speaker 1: It's not new.

00:04:38
Speaker 2: The medical examiner did rule the manner of death was homicide, but the cause of death, Robes, is still not determined, but... She did not die by hanging.

00:04:48
Speaker 4: Yes. And we always thought that might be the case because police were so careful in their wording.

00:04:52
Speaker 5: They didn't say it was a hanging death.

00:04:55
Speaker 4: They said her body was found hanging and that the manner of death was homicide.

00:04:59
Speaker 5: So now, yes, police are getting more specific.

00:05:02
Speaker 4: And they said they believe that Tasia Fortune was killed first and then hanged in.

00:05:08
Speaker 5: A staged murder.

00:05:10
Speaker 4: And they believe that she was killed at an entirely different location and that she had been hanging there for two to three days. I know that they had stated her body was in a stage of decomposition that suggested she had been there for a couple of days.

00:05:25
Speaker 5: And now they're saying two or three days.

00:05:27
Speaker 2: Robes, please correct me if I'm wrong or if I overlooked somewhere. No part of this story have I seen had anything to do with anyone reporting her missing. They were looking for her for a while, and then she was found. And where the hell are the four kids if Mama is gone for days?

00:05:47
Speaker 1: That's just, we don't know, but am I missing something? This should have been a missing persons report. Yes.

00:05:53
Speaker 5: Well, her mom, look, her mom has been so outspoken.

00:05:56
Speaker 4: Look, and it sounds like she loved her daughter, and she is very active in this stage of the investigation in terms of speaking to the press and talking about her daughter and keeping her daughter's memory alive. She seems and appears to be a loving mother, but she did describe Tasia as being in a period of homelessness, that she would sleep on different friends' couches, that her children were dispersed among family members while she was trying to get her life together.

00:06:23
Speaker 5: And that's where she was. And because of this, I guess.

00:06:26
Speaker 4: Transitionary period, perhaps everyone thought she was with someone else, and that's unfortunately, and maybe days would go by before she would check in with her daughter.

00:06:34
Speaker 5: So, yes, this is just tragic.

00:06:36
Speaker 4: That probably everyone thought she was with someone else or at someone else's home.

00:06:40
Speaker 2: She hadn't seen the kids in two or three days, and no one's concerned? And Mama, where's Mama?

00:06:44
Speaker 5: How come Mama hasn't called the kids?

00:06:46
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, look, and they did also acknowledge that she was struggling with addiction, so there might have just been this, oh, She's on one of those couple of days where we don't.

00:06:56
Speaker 5: Hear from her moments.

00:06:58
Speaker 4: We don't know the dynamics of the family, but there was enough of, I guess, a history with how she behaved that this wasn't, her being gone for a couple days didn't rise to the level of anyone calling police.

00:07:09
Speaker 1: That's sad. And it's sad on top of sad on top of sad.

00:07:12
Speaker 5: It's very sad.

00:07:12
Speaker 2: There should have been a nationwide search with her picture up. This mother of four hasn't been seen in two days. That's a national story.

00:07:21
Speaker 5: It would have been.

00:07:22
Speaker 1: It would have been. It absolutely would have been.

00:07:24
Speaker 2: And again, so many of these robes are just sad on top of sad on top of sad. A tragedy before the tragedy that we're aware of at this point. How did they track these guys down in the first place?

00:07:36
Speaker 1: They said they had.

00:07:37
Speaker 2: Plenty of witnesses, like a lot of witnesses that directed them to the first guy. And then they ended up finding the others. Now, Robes, you mentioned something. We haven't mentioned it here, but Ratcliffe was the first that was arrested. And several days ago, Another was arrested, Ernest Lloyd Jr. He's 25 years old. Again, we don't know the relationships these men have to each other or to her. But Robes, have they corrected how they said Ernest Lloyd Jr. was involved with Tasia Fortune, we still haven't figured this out.

00:08:06
Speaker 1: What do they mean by this?

00:08:07
Speaker 4: The local affiliate down there in Jackson, Mississippi quoted police as saying that witnesses said Ernest Lloyd Jr. and Tasia Fortune had a physical altercation in the days or minutes before her death. So that obviously I was like, did they mean to say hours or minutes or days or hours?

00:08:27
Speaker 5: It was just a strange way to put something.

00:08:30
Speaker 4: So At some point, some people saw them have a physical altercation before she died.

00:08:36
Speaker 5: That's how I would sum it up.

00:08:38
Speaker 1: Could have been on Monday. Could have been 10 minutes ago. Don't know.

00:08:41
Speaker 5: It was a bizarre way to put it. Never heard anything phrased like that before. Days or minutes ago.

00:08:47
Speaker 2: So now we have a 51-year-old, a 45-year-old, and a 25-year-old, all black men, charged. They have all been charged now with her murder. What was the... Was it the Lloyd? Was he the one that was described with the black cord?

00:09:03
Speaker 4: Yes.

00:09:04
Speaker 1: Specifically, it was him.

00:09:05
Speaker 5: Yes. Police believe that. Ernest Lloyd Jr.

00:09:08
Speaker 4: the 25-year-old, the second man arrested, they specifically used language saying that he used a black cord to tie her up on the tree. And that's when it really seemed like this. She was already dead at that point. They didn't say they hanged her while she was struggling. No. So it looks like for whatever reason, he decided to display her body with a black cord hanging from a tree.

00:09:32
Speaker 1: Still that point there, Robes, is.

00:09:35
Speaker 2: they've been testifying and they've been going through some evidence in this preliminary hearing. They still robes. They don't have an answer to that. Like, okay, you killed her.

00:09:46
Speaker 1: Why did they hang her up? That no one has answered that yet. The police haven't answered that yet.

00:09:52
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:09:52
Speaker 4: And the only thing that we could come up with is that why would three black men hang a black woman from a tree in Mississippi? And the only, only thought we had was that perhaps they thought this could look like a racial crime and they'd be looking for white men.

00:10:06
Speaker 2: Why would you alert somebody that a murder had taken place that you committed? To throw them off the side.

00:10:14
Speaker 1: I know criminals aren't known for being the smartest.

00:10:17
Speaker 2: But you kill somebody. The last thing you want anybody to know is that somebody is dead. Hey, somebody needs to look into this. That's the first thing they're going to do. Robes, it doesn't make sense.

00:10:27
Speaker 5: It doesn't make any sense. It absolutely does not.

00:10:30
Speaker 1: And then as far as a motive goes, Robes, this is the closest they've gotten.

00:10:33
Speaker 2: I mean, that's as good a guess as anything else.

00:10:36
Speaker 1: It's just that part of it is sad as well.

00:10:39
Speaker 4: Yeah, they said they believed that maybe Tasia Fortune, or at least these men believed Tasia stole drugs from them. And that was some sort of a drug dispute. Her mother did acknowledge that Tasia was... Struggling with addiction. And this, again, again, so sad. Why don't we help people?

00:10:57
Speaker 5: I don't know.

00:10:58
Speaker 4: This is such a root of so much evil is drugs and getting drugs and having access to drugs and selling drugs and stealing drugs.

00:11:07
Speaker 5: Because you're desperate.

00:11:08
Speaker 4: If there was a way to help people through addiction, I mean, the murder rate would plummet.

00:11:14
Speaker 1: Well, we treat them as criminals and not people who are sick. Yep. And to a certain degree, we get that. But Robeson.

00:11:22
Speaker 2: I don't want to get into all those dynamics and racial dynamics and everything else, but this is all just sad.

00:11:27
Speaker 1: But you mentioned her mom. Stay here, folks.

00:11:31
Speaker 2: You need to hear, first of all, what her mom said initially that made us both think, wow, this is a strong, a powerful, and loving mother. But then she said something after the preliminary hearing on Friday in direct response to what one of the guys accused of killing her daughter said in court.

00:11:49
Speaker 1: Stay here.

00:12:00
Speaker 4: Welcome back everyone to Amy and TJ. And we are here on this Sunday talking about a story we've been covering for the past six weeks now at this point. And her mother, Tasia Fortune's mom has been very outspoken from the beginning, initially saying no way my daughter committed suicide and then really getting us up to beat on her daughter. And she had beautiful, wonderful things to say about her daughter while also acknowledging her struggles. But she, I really do appreciate the fact that she's almost... Well, she has.

00:12:30
Speaker 5: She's opened the.

00:12:31
Speaker 4: Door into her daughter's life. I feel like we've gotten to know her. It feels personal, this murder. And that's important because they aren't just numbers and statistics.

00:12:39
Speaker 1: These were.

00:12:40
Speaker 5: When we talk about murder victims.

00:12:42
Speaker 4: Oftentimes it ends up being statistic-like and we focus on the murderers. But I've appreciated how much her mother has let us know about her daughter. Um.

00:12:53
Speaker 2: Robes, our introduction to Tasia Fortune.

00:12:57
Speaker 1: Was her hanging from a tree.

00:13:00
Speaker 2: So I appreciate when family and friends, loved ones come out and do kind of what Tasia Fortune's mom is doing. And it's just little things, little nuggets, little, you just don't want to get to know somebody in the worst horror of their lives. And that's oftentimes how we meet some folks. So yes, to your point, I appreciate which you were talking about her mom. First of all, this was Last week, after the first arrests were made, the mom was even, like, pumping the brakes and being open-minded, if you will, to the idea that she's not the only one and her family's not the only one hurting.

00:13:37
Speaker 1: I thought that was, like, who is this lady?

00:13:39
Speaker 4: Right? It's remarkable because she has to be in so much pain, but she was thinking of the other family's pain, the other family members of these three men. And so initially she said, my family... is not the only family that this is affecting. I feel for them as well. The only difference is that mine can never come back.

00:13:57
Speaker 2: I mean, just for her to be able to say and to have any sympathy for the other family, we thought was impressive. And so we've been keeping an eye on this lady ever since and everything she said. Now, Robes, after the hearing on Friday, at one point it's being described by the AP that Jacques Ratcliffe, who's charged with murder, actually blurted out in court at some point, we were friends, like he was trying to make a point that, no, he said he's innocent. His attorney says he's innocent. We'll wait and see how this evidence plays out. But he blurted out at some point in the hearing, we were friends. The mom afterwards, Robes, outside the court specifically spoke on that moment.

00:14:37
Speaker 1: I was surprised once again by this lady.

00:14:39
Speaker 4: Yep. She said, it sounded sincere. Tasia had a lot of friends. I hope if he is innocent that he can prove he's innocent. We don't want any innocent people going to jail.

00:14:50
Speaker 2: It sounded sincere. Again, I don't I didn't see any camera work from the courtroom. I would love to see that moment that even the mom heard it and wasn't thinking anger at the person.

00:15:01
Speaker 1: She was thinking it sounded sincere.

00:15:03
Speaker 5: Right.

00:15:03
Speaker 1: What the hell?

00:15:04
Speaker 5: That's remarkable.

00:15:05
Speaker 4: And look, part of me was thinking maybe as a mom, you want to believe your child was liked and loved. You don't want to think that three separate men were out to get her and viciously killed her that maybe. One of these men was actually her friend. Maybe one of these men was kind to her. Maybe she wants to think the best. But it is a pretty remarkable place to be in your head, given all that's going on and given what police are telling you this man did.

00:15:28
Speaker 2: What did she steal to make three grown adult men think they had to overpower and make an example and end the life of a mother of four?

00:15:40
Speaker 3: I know.

00:15:43
Speaker 2: I know.

00:15:44
Speaker 4: I mean, I don't know. I know what you're saying and that it doesn't make any sense to me. It's not like they would be physically threatened or they couldn't get it back from her or somehow come to some agreement. It wasn't as if they needed to.

00:15:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, they know this is a mom of four and three men choose to do this is what police are telling us right now.

00:16:05
Speaker 1: We will get more. We will hear more this week, actually.

00:16:08
Speaker 2: Because tomorrow, Robes, there's a first court appearance for the third guy who was just arrested.

00:16:14
Speaker 1: He's in court.

00:16:15
Speaker 2: And then the preliminary hearing we told you about that started for Ratliff on Friday will continue on Wednesday.

00:16:21
Speaker 1: Of this week.

00:16:22
Speaker 2: So we are going to hear, Robes, a lot more. And right now, I am desperate. I'm desperate for information. just as covering the story, but I can't imagine what her family's feeling right now.

00:16:33
Speaker 4: Yes, and just to know the why, everyone wants to know the why, somehow it does give you some peace to at least feel like you understand what happened. And look, if it is bizarre to have three separate men from like three decades of their lives, like these aren't like a group of friends that you would normally put together someone in their 50s someone in their 40s and someone in their 20s murdering a 29 year old so yes there are a lot of details that we need to to hear and learn about to understand what actually happened to Tasia Fortune we still don't know how she died we hope more of that information comes out this week of course we'll continue to keep our eye on this developing story as always but we appreciate you listening to us I'm Amy Robach alongside TJ Holmes we'll talk to you soon

00:17:24
Speaker 2: Thank you.