#tara grinstead

Tara Faye Grinstead was an American history teacher from Georgia. She had won several beauty pageants and earned a masters degree in education.

On the evening of 22nd October 2005, Tara went to a beauty pageant to coach young students and go to a barbecue. On 24th October, Tara's colleagues became worried as she had not shown up at work. They called the police and went to Tara's home. Tara's mobile phone was inside her house and her car left outside, her purse and keys were missing. There was no sign of Tara or anything indicating forced entry or a struggle.

On 23rd February 2017, investigators announced they had received a tip-off that led to the arrest of Ryan Alexander Duke. Duke was a former pupil at the school Tara was employed at. Duke had allegedly attempted to steal from Tara's home but when she caught him he strangled her and took her body from the house. Bo Dukes, a former classmate and no relation, was charged with attempted to conceal a death, making false statements and tampering with evidence. Tara's body was never found though Bo claimed it was burnt at a nearby farm.

As a young girl, 30-year-old Tara Grinstead from Ocilla, Georgia developed a love for beauty pageants. In 1999, she won the title of "Miss Tifton." After earning a degree in education, Tara started teaching history at Irwin School in Ocilla.

On the 22nd of October, 2005, Tara attended the Georgia Sweet Potato Pageant in Fitzgerald where she assisted the contestants with their hair and makeup and enjoyed a BBQ. Later that evening, she made her way home. On Monday, she was reported missing when she didn't show up for work. Inside her home, police found her cell phone but were unable to find her keys or purse. A massive search was launched in an attempt to find Tara and a hefty reward was accumulated over the forthcoming years.

As the days, weeks, months and years passed, it seemed as though Tara would never be seen again. It also seemed that if something sinister had happened to her, that whoever was responsible would never be brought to justice. But then, in February of 2017, 33-year-old Ryan Alexander Duke was arrested and charged with her murder. Ryan had earlier been a student at the high school where Tara worked. During court, it was announced that Ryan had strangled Tara to death while robbing her house. He allegedly then burned her body in a pecan grove near Fitzgerald.

He is currently awaiting trial. Tara's body has never been recovered.

Tara Grinstead was an American beauty queen who taught history at a high school in Ocilla, Georgia. On the night of October 22, 2005, Tara visited a beauty pageant, as she partook in coaching young beauty queens, and had dinner with friends.

The following Monday, Tara failed to show up at work. Following concerns from neighbours and co-workers, police were dispatched to Tara’s house. There they discovered her car unlocked, her purse and keys missing, but her cell phone still inside the house. The only evidence left behind was a latex glove, found in Tara’s yard, from which DNA was extracted.

In 2009, videos surfaced online of a man calling himself the “Catch Me Killer” and claiming to have murdered 16 women. One of these women was thought to be Tara. The videos were traced back to a man named Andrew Haley and determined to be a hoax.

For the longest time, the disappearance of Tara Grinstead has been one of the biggest mysteries in Georgia. Tara was a high school teacher and former beauty queen who vanished on October 23rd, 2005, from Ocilla. Her last known movements were the night before: she attended a beauty pageant and then a barbecue. When she didn’t show up for work on October 24th, her co-workers reported her missing.

When they went to check Tara’s house, police found her car, unlocked, parked outside with $100 cash inside. In the house, her cell phone was charging and they also found the clothes she was last seen wearing, indicating she made it home after the barbecue. However, they couldn’t find her purse or keys. There were other little clues: a latex glove was found outside, on the front lawn, her alarm clock had fallen from the nightstand, and a lampshade was a bit crooked. The driver’s seat of her car seem to have been adjusted for a taller person than Tara.

Tara had a very active social life, so at first the number of suspects was big. These included an ex boyfriend she had recently broken up with, a student who had reportedly harassed her, a married police officer who visited her often and a man called Andrew Haley, who in 2009 uploaded some videos to the internet calling himself a serial killer and describing one of his alleged victims as someone that matched Tara. This was later determined to be a hoax.

After no evidence could be linked to any of the suspects, the case went cold. In 2016 there was a podcast that revived the interest in her case, but it still looked like this would be forever an unsolved mystery. However, on February 23rd, 2017, police surprised everyone by charging a man called Ryan Duke for the murder of Tara, even though her body still hasn’t been found. 

According to the investigators, a new witness came forward and that helped them get to Duke, who had been a student of Tara and graduated three years before she went missing, which made him 21 at the time. The arrest warrant says that Duke went inside Tara’s home to burglarize it and killed her with his bare hands, then concealed her body.

On March 3rd, 2017, a second person was arrested. Bo Dukes, a former classmate of Ryan Duke, was charged with concealing a death, hindering the apprehension of a criminal and tampering with evidence. They say he hid Tara’s body between October 23rd and October 28th of 2005 in a farm owned by one of his relatives. According to Tara’s sister, Bo Dukes’ family was close to the Grinsteads and they would have never suspected him.

Police are currently searching for Tara’s remains.

Explosive new facts are coming to light through court documents related to the October 2005 disappearance of Tara Grinstead.

Both the State and attorneys for Ryan Duke filed multiple new motions and demands this week in the case against Duke for the killing of Grinstead.

The documents were obtained from the Irwin County Superior Court through an open records request.

One document filed by the public defender's office for Duke is a plea in bar and demurrer to counts two (felony murder), three (felony murder), four (aggravated assault), five (burglary), and six (concealing death of another) of the indictment, based upon the statute of limitations.

Within that document, Duke's attorneys included three exhibits that appear to be part of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation's investigative case summary.

The first exhibit is a summary of the GBI's interview with a man named Garland Lott in February of 2017. According to the document, Lott told the GBI that back in 2005, maybe in November, he had heard both Bo Dukes and Ryan Duke tell the group they were with that they had killed Tara Grinstead and burned her body. Lott said both Dukes and Duke were intoxicated at the time.

Soon after that event, Lott said he met with Andy and Jannis Paulk, his employer, and several law enforcement officers to search an orchard. He noted that he had never been interviewed by law enforcement prior to the interview in February of 2017 with the GBI.

The second exhibit is a summary of the GBI's interview with Jannis Paulk in February 2017. Paulk told the GBI that approximately two to four weeks after Grinstead was reported missing, her employee, Garland Lott, told her about the statement he said both Bo Dukes and Ryan Duke had made regarding Grinstead's death.

Paulk said she and Lott met with Irwin County Chief Deputy Nelson Paulk and Investigator Alan Morgan near an orchard off Bowen's Mill Highway, north of Fitzgerald, during the same time frame. After a brief search of an older fire pit in the orchard, they left. Paulk said she spoke with Morgan again two to four weeks later, and Morgan told her that both Bo Dukes and Ryan Duke had been spoken to and denied killing Grinstead, claiming they had been drunk when they made the statements.

Paulk stated she gave this information to former GBI Agent Leah Lightner in 2008, but no one followed up until the GBI's interview with her in February 2017.

The third exhibit is a summary of an interview between the GBI and Nelson Paulk that occurred in February 2017. According to the GBI's summary, Nelson confirmed contact with Garland Lott and Jannis and Andy Paulk. Nelson said Lott told him what he had heard Bo Dukes and Ryan Duke say at the party a few weeks after Grinstead's disappearance.

The group showed Nelson an old burn pit in a pecan orchard north of Fitzgerald but found no evidentiary items. Nelson said he was unfamiliar with any documentation of the search and never completed or received any written statements. He believed Investigator Morgan may have completed some documentation, but Morgan no longer works with the Irwin County Sheriff's Office.

Special Agent in Charge J. T. Ricketson of the GBI’s Region 13 investigative office said he could not comment on the case as the GBI has turned over its case files to the District Attorney's office. A request for comment has also been made to the Irwin County Sheriff's Office.

The document in which these exhibits were submitted was a motion asking the court to dismiss several charges against Duke, not including the charge of malice murder, due to the statute of limitations.

That document, filed by Duke's attorneys, was submitted to the court on Wednesday, August 15, 2018, along with other motions including a motion to suppress Duke's statements and for a pretrial Jackson v. Denno hearing to determine the voluntariness of any statements and the validity of any waiver of counsel prior to interrogation.

On August 10, District Attorney Paul Bowden filed a Notice of Jackson-Denno hearing to be held at 9:30 a.m. on September 20.

Duke's attorneys also filed a special demurrer asking the court to dismiss the indictment in Duke's case. That document argues the counts on Duke's indictment are too "vague, ambiguous, and indefinite," depriving the defendant of his constitutional rights under the Fifth, Sixth, and Fourteenth Amendments.