The note John H. Chambers Jr. wrote to his mother opened with an apology.
“I have no right hurting you like this. Please understand,” the 20-year-old wrote in what was to have been a suicide note; Clayton County police found it when they rescued him.
The note also contained details of a body buried in the back yard of a house in Valdosta where he once lived. “His fate will be mine,” Chambers wrote in the note.
A few hours later and more than 200 miles away, Valdosta police found a body in a hole about a foot deep behind a rundown vacant house on Church Street. They still don't know who it was.
Police Commander Brian Childress told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Thursday it may be a few days more before they have a name because the body had decomposed so much that identification was difficult.
Childress said investigators have been given names that may go with the body “and we are looking at one specific person. We have not received a missing persons report from anybody regarding this case.”
The note also mentions Chambers’ maternal grandfather. Childress said investigators had not talked with the older man.
They also might never know the of cause of death.
In the meanwhile, Clayton County is holding Chambers on a probation violation charge.
He is charged in Valdosta with “concealing the death of another,” which is a felony.“We are looking at additional charges against him and we are also looking at other individuals,” Childress said.
“I believe we are close to filing murder charges,” Childress said, but not necessarily against Chambers.
Clayton County police were called to an apartment complex in Riverdale around 2 a.m. last Friday to investigate a report that someone was injured. A man and two women waiting outside the apartment building told the officers the resident in “4H had injured himself and was bleeding profusely,” according to the incident report.
A trail of blood started on the breezeway outside apartment 4H and ended in Chambers’ bathroom where they found him; his left inner forearm was cut and blood was everywhere, according to the police report.
Blood also had been used to write on a wall in the apartment. Police found a note in the living room that was addressed to Chambers’ mother.
“When he attempted suicide, he provided a note,” Childress said. “He indicated the presence of a body in Valdosta.”
That note led police in Valdosta a body buried in the back yard of the house where Chambers once lived.
Chambers said in a jailhouse interview he was responsible because he had allowed a close family member to be killed.
“It was cowardly that I allowed it to happen,” said Chambers.
But he declined to say who was responsible for the death.
He said he would plead not guilty to the charge of concealing a death.
Channel 2 Action News reporter Mark Winne contributed to this article.
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