Quinton TellisMONROE, La. — An almost physical chill passed through Judge Larry Jefferson’s courtroom in the Ouachita Parish Courthouse in Louisiana on Monday when Quinton Tellis said in a taped interview, “I’m not a murderer. I’m not a murderer!”
If Tellis told Louisiana investigators, “I’ve got no reason to lie to you,” or “I’m telling the truth” once during his 2015 interviews after the brutal stabbing of Ming Chen “Mandy” Hsiao, he said it 1,000 times.
The interviews took place after the 2015 death of Hsiao and during the investigation into the 2014 death of Jessica Chambers in Panola County, Mississippi, in which he was the prime suspect. Over a decade later with hindsight, the videos seemed to carry infinitely more meaning than they might have at the time.
The first day of testimony centered on what investigators say were many versions of events he gave them in the days after Hsiao’s death.
The bench trial began Monday in the courtroom of Larry Jefferson, where Assistant District Attorney Holly Jones used recorded police interviews from the time of the homicide to highlight apparent inconsistencies in Tellis’ statements.
Hsiao, a Taiwanese national living in Monroe, was found stabbed to death on Aug. 8, 2015, which was Tellis’s wedding day.
Throughout the interview recordings played in court, Tellis repeatedly insisted he was telling the truth. At several points he told investigators, “I’m not lying,” a phrase he repeated again and again during questioning.
Prosecutors introduced two sets of interviews conducted on Aug. 11 and Aug. 19, 2015. The recordings were shown as part of testimony from Duane Cookson, a Monroe police sergeant who took the stand to explain the circumstances surrounding the interviews.
Cookson testified that he and investigator Jeremy Kent conducted much of the questioning shown in the videos.
As Tellis first entered the interview room, investigators mentioned for the camera that they had told him it was about a homicide, and that he had asked, “What does homicide mean?”
During the interviews, prosecutors argued, Tellis’ account of what happened in the days surrounding Hsiao’s death seemed to shift multiple times. His first story was that he and his stepson had met Hsiao because she would ride her bike with the neighborhood children. Detectives showed skepticism that a 34-year-old woman was riding bikes with children, and then asked Tellis how he ended up in the car with her at Walmart.
She had a prescription for some lortabs, he said, so he told them he had taken her to pick it up so she could sell it to him. He said he gave her $50 for that and a television. At some point, he told investigators that she had a boyfriend, but that he didn’t know him and had never seen him.
Shortly after that, he said he had given her $50 for the lortabs and another $25 for the television, and that when he had gone to her apartment to pick it up with his 8-year-old stepson and another neighborhood child, she hadn’t been there. They had seen “a white girl” who had told them that Mandy wasn’t there, even though her bike was there, Tellis said.
Witnesses had told investigators at the time that they heard Tellis and Hsiao arguing in the parking lot, they said, and Tellis held fast that he wasn’t there and that he never argued with Hsiao, with whom he said he did not have a sexual relationship. He did admit to at least one relationship he had outside of the one he had with his new wife, Chakita Jackson, but it was not with Hsiao.
Investigators asked him how long he had known Hsiao before taking her to Walmart to pick up the prescription, and he said it had been just about a week. Again, detectives appeared skeptical, pressing him on how he met a woman who was riding bikes and suddenly was taking her to Walmart so he could buy her prescription drugs.
Tellis told the story as if he felt it wasn’t strange, and that she had just told him during the course of conversation that she had the prescription and needed money for a microwave. Another confusing rabbit trail in Tellis’ interview was when he told investigators that he took Jackson with him to look for a microwave for Hsiao even though they had one.
He had sold the lortabs to “some white guys,” Tellis told investigators.
At one point, Kent raised his voice as he questioned Tellis.
“Why is she dead?” he demanded, and Tellis said, “I don’t know. That’s something I don’t understand.”
Investigators asked if it might have been that Tellis felt like Hsiao had cheated him on the $25 for the TV she was supposed to be selling him since she allegedly wasn’t home when he went to collect it.
At that point, Tellis told detectives that Hsiao had a boyfriend. As his story wandered, investigators became more frustrated. When they asked him how it was possible that everyone was lying except him, he said, “I don’t know, but they are. I’m not lying, right hand to God.”
“God’s not here to testify,” Kent said.
The interviews were hard to hear from the spectator section of the courtroom, but at one point they turned the questioning to someone Tellis called “Jay.” They had been to the Chase bank together, Tellis said.
Jay became a central figure, and as investigators introduced evidence they had of Tellis using Hsiao’s debit card, Tellis first said he got it from Jay.
“I’ve gotta break this to you,” one of the investigators told him. “Life as you know it is about to change. I know for a fact you’ve given us some lies, and you’ve brought people into these lies.”
Tellis’ stories had implicated Jackson and her son, as well as others, detectives said, trying to push Tellis to admit that he wasn’t telling the truth. He stuck to his guns on that line of questioning, even at one point telling them, “You’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do.”
Seeing ATM photos of himself using Hsiao’s debit card in Vicksburg, Tellis insisted it wasn’t him, but possibly Jay or a Tellis doppelgänger.
“Everybody’s got a twin,” he said at one point.
As they laid out their case against Tellis and he continued to insist everyone else was lying, Kent returned, “What do you think we’ve been doing for the last few hours?”
Detectives then produced a receipt from Hsiao’s card that had been found in Tellis’ bedroom.
When investigators doubled down about the ATM card, Tellis repeated the phrase three times: “I’m not a murderer. I’m not a murderer. I’m not a murderer.”
“I don’t believe you,” Kent said. “Everything you’ve said is a lie.”
“Don’t say that,” Tellis replied. “I ain’t never killed anybody. I’m not a murderer.”
The story about the debit card then began to change, and Tellis said Hsiao’s boyfriend had given it to him. The previously unknown boyfriend was suddenly a tall black man named Kenny who had allegedly bought crack from Tellis and introduced him to Hsiao.
“So you’re going to tell me that this graduate student from Taiwan who got her masters degree has a thing for crackheads?” Cookson said. “She doesn’t want a man who’s educated and can can offer her something? She wants to stay here in the United States with a crackhead?”
Investigators pointed out that Tellis had allegedly used the debit cards even that day of the 19th, long after Hsiao was dead and he knew they were looking at him. They asked him if he knew why he had done that.
“Because you thought you got away with it,” Cookson said.
Investigators hammered out questions about Jay and Kenny, at first questioning if Jay existed. They had Tellis call him from the interview room and set up a meeting, and then they went to find him instead. It turned out that he was a local dealer who went by a different name, but they knew who he was.
In the videos, they did not ever say they had found out who Kenny was, and seemed to express a suspicion that he had been made up.
At the end of the interview tapes, Tellis is arrested on three counts of use of an access card, as well as possession of marijuana with intent to distribute.
Hsiao’s killing drew significant attention in part because of Tellis’ ties to another high-profile case. He was also the primary suspect in the 2014 burning death of Jessica Chambers in Panola County, Mississippi, though he was never convicted in that case after two mistrials.
The current proceedings are being heard as a bench trial, meaning Judge Jefferson will decide the case rather than a jury. The trial is expected to continue throughout the week as prosecutors and defense attorneys present testimony and evidence.
Additional witnesses are expected to take the stand as the state continues laying out its case against Tellis. The trial continues Tuesday at 9:30 a.m.
