Judge sets $5M bond for third man charged in death of Black woman whose body was later hung in tree

By SOPHIE BATES

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A Mississippi judge set a $5 million bond 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 Friday that Tasia Fortune, 29, was killed before her body was placed in a tree behind an abandoned house in Jackson.

Fortune was Black, and the discovery of her hanging body stoked fear because the scene recalled actual lynchings in the Southern state, which has 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 the state capital.

Reynolds presided at a hearing for Eric Clark, 45, who turned himself in 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 are Black.

Later outside court, Jackson Police Chief RaShall Brackney repeated what was disclosed in court Friday, telling reporters that Fortune was killed as a result of a dispute over drugs. The body was discovered in a tree on Aug. 3.

Brackney said props were left at the scene “as part of the staging” of a hanging and that more arrests were likely.

Fortune’s mother, Christy Spivey, said Clark approached her at the courthouse last week and hugged her following a hearing for co-defendant Jarques Ratliff.

“He never said he did it, but he said he was there to turn himself in for murder,” Spivey told reporters on Monday.

AP writer Ed White in Detroit contributed.