Who Killed Jessica Chambers? Will We Ever Know?

The horrific report of the burning death of a Mississippi teenager on December 6 made a small splash in the media for a while, but has been overtaken by other news. Though I haven't followed it closely, I have read some of the reports, and it is both horrifying and mystifying. Who would commit such an atrocity? Why hasn't law enforcement made more progress in identifying and apprehending the murderer (or murderers)?

Some of my growing-up years were spent in small towns and rural communities in the South. They weren't the sort of places were horrifying murders happened, and I was shocked that such a crime occurred in rural Panola County, Mississippi.

Yesterday and today, I followed links on Facebook to a conservative blog titled The Last Refuge.  Among other news, they are reporting on the Chambers murder investigation day by day, and what they are reporting points out how very different our country and culture (including small towns and rural counties) are now than they were when I was growing up.

 Mississippi Burning – Day #6 – The Murder of Jessica Lane Chambers Exposes Massive Problems In Panola County Mississippi… reveals a number of shocking revelations -- that Jessica was in a shelter for battered women until a few months before her murder ... that the video footage of her at the convenience store where she stopped before she was murdered is not the raw footage, but is edited and shown on a monitor which was then recorded with another camera ...

Also learned that the convenience store is a front for drug trafficking by a gang likely imported to Panola County from Memphis ... and that the store is owned by a 19-year-old Muslim from Yemen who apparently supplies the gang with drugs.  We also learn that law enforcement in Panola County is pretty much paralyzed. And we -- or at least I -- am left with the suspicion that if this crime is to be solved, it won't be by the proper authorities ...