According to the authorities, when the first responders arrived at the scene, Jessica was still able to communicate with them. The authorities initially did not reveal what Jessica had told the responders, but later on, it was revealed that one of the last things she said was, “Eric did this to me.”

After the incident, the investigators worked with the district attorney’s office to find out what Jessica had been up to within the last few hours leading up to the moment when she was found on that rural Mississippi road. They immediately set out to hunt down clues of who had killed her.