Warning: This story contains distressing details

The mother of a woman found hanging in a tree in Mississippi has spoken of her shock after authorities said they believed her daughter was dead before her body was placed at the allegedly “staged” crime scene.

Tasia Fortune, a 29-year-old mother of four, was found hanging from a tree at an abandoned home in Jackson in August.

The discovery sparked widespread fears in the majority-black city because of the state’s deep history of racial violence and lynchings. But on Friday, police said that Fortune had been dead before her body was hanged from the tree.

“I have more questions now than what I did before,” her mother Christy Spivey told the BBC.

The Jackson Police Department said that the medical examiner who conducted Fortune’s post-mortem examination had determined that her death was a homicide and that “the scene and the hanging were staged“.

Officials have not disclosed the exact cause of death or shared any potential motive behind the allegedly staged hanging.

Three people have been arrested in the case, all of whom are black.

“I was hoping to be more relieved,” Spivey said, adding that the police had not specified how the three suspects were connected to her daughter – or why her death was allegedly staged in this way.

“Still no cause of death, no date of death – nothing,” she said. “What actually killed her?”

Fortune’s death left the local community on edge and lawmakers demanding federal probes. But the latest developments have created more confusion.