More than a month after 29-year-old Tasia Fortune’s body was discovered hanging from a tree on the property of an abandoned Jackson, Mississippi home, her grieving family and a restless local community are still pushing for transparent information from law enforcement and state officials.
Fortune’s mother, Christy Spivey, who resides in Kentucky, told the BBC she is consumed by frustration over repeated delays and a lack of communication from investigating officers. Spivey last saw her daughter alive at a family reunion in late July, when Fortune mentioned she was considering moving back home to be closer to her family. When Spivey was finally called to identify her daughter’s remains at a funeral home ahead of burial, she was too devastated to look directly at the body, only glancing at it from the corner of her eye. She ultimately chose burial over cremation, holding out faint hope that new investigation findings could one day require an exhumation for further testing.
For weeks after the 3 August discovery of Fortune’s body, police offered no public updates on the case, and Spivey says her repeated requests for information about the investigation’s progress went completely unanswered. That changed only this Tuesday, when Jackson Police Chief RaShall Brackney confirmed for the first time that the department has treated Fortune’s death as a potential homicide from the first day of the probe, as investigators wait for formal autopsy results from the state medical examiner’s office. Brackney explained to the BBC that labeling all pending death investigations as potential homicides is standard policy to preserve critical evidence before an official cause of death is confirmed; prior to Tuesday’s announcement, the department had only described the matter as a general death investigation. The medical examiner’s office has declined to comment on the active case.
Anxiety over the case has spread rapidly across majority-Black Jackson, amplified by Mississippi’s long, brutal history of racial terror lynchings against Black Americans. Fortune’s death marks the third incident in less than a year where a body was found hanging from a tree in the state. In September 2025, two bodies — one a Black man, the other a white man — were discovered on the same day. Both were officially ruled suicides, but the mother of the Black victim, Trey Reed, continues to dispute that finding.
The prolonged lack of clarity has fueled widespread distrust in local and state authorities. Two online petitions have gained tens of thousands of signatures: one calls for an independent investigation into the office of Mississippi’s chief medical examiner Dr. Staci Turner, who has overseen the recent string of cases involving Black decedents, while the other demands the FBI launch a federal probe into Fortune’s death. The BBC has requested comment from Dr. Turner but has not yet received a response.
Local leaders have echoed the community’s calls for urgent action. Jackson City Councilman Kenneth Stokes told the BBC he has visited the neighborhood where Fortune reportedly lived multiple times and has never seen police officers conducting investigative work at the site. “All cases are important, but this one — a hanging in Mississippi — should rise to the top of the priority list,” Stokes said. He sent formal requests for assistance weeks ago to federal prosecutors at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Mississippi and to the FBI, but has yet to receive any reply from either agency. “Nothing from nobody. It’s like nobody cares,” Stokes added. The BBC has also contacted both federal offices for comment with no response as of press time.
U.S. Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett has formally requested federal intervention, sending a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice asking for a full investigation into the recent string of Mississippi deaths, including Fortune’s, labeling them potential “modern-day lynchings” and referencing the state’s well-documented history of anti-Black violent terrorism. The DOJ has not yet responded to requests for comment on the request. Notably, Mississippi is not alone: this year alone, four Black Americans have been found hanged from trees in North Carolina, three of which have been ruled suicides with an autopsy still pending for the fourth.
While Stokes stresses he has not concluded whether Fortune’s death was a racially motivated lynching, he says the only thing that matters to him and the community is getting clear, accurate answers. For young Black residents including Brandon King, president of the Jackson State University student chapter of the NAACP, the uncertainty has created a pervasive climate of fear. “This is supposed to be the state capital. This is where I’m supposed to feel the most safe,” King told the BBC. “Right now, the feeling is that you could be next. This is in your own backyard.”
For Spivey, the anger and grief remain raw. “What is the hold up?” she asked, echoing the question that has gone unanswered for more than a month for her family and thousands of others demanding accountability.