At this point, officers in Sabine County had been lead to Tillery's body by a newspaper carrier but did not have any leads in the case. The first crack in the case came when Jasper Police Officer Tracy Lawhon connected the statements of the delirious woman in the Jasper Memorial Hospital with earlier reports that a man had apparently been run over near Pineland.

Since the three suspects are black and the victim was white, it was first rumored that the incident could possibly be the result of a hate crime but officials from the FBI and others later said that they felt the incident resulted from a fight over money and possibly drugs.

Officers believe the act occurred after Tillery had traveled from his home in the Beachwood subdivision just east of Pineland to the 1000 block of South Bowie Street in Jasper to purchase crack cocaine and then talked little and others into carrying him home.

so I will get this from your story, blacks kill white in the same manner as the whites who killed the black but because of drugs it is OK.