3 Nov 2026 · 1h 21m · Andrea Canning, Lester Holt, Gary Rothwell · 19 quoted facts
The episode argues that Tara Grinstead's 2005 disappearance in Ocilla, Georgia, went unsolved for over a decade because of missed tips, false leads and a lack of physical evidence. It was finally broken open when a former Army buddy, a podcast and a nervous ex-girlfriend pushed Bo Dukes to talk. Even then, the legal outcome left many people without a clear answer.
The central tension is between what looked airtight and what a jury accepted. Investigators had a confession, Ryan Duke's DNA on a latex glove and details only the killer should know. The defense said the confession was false, the glove was planted and Bo Dukes was the real culprit. The jury acquitted Ryan Duke of murder but convicted him of concealing her death.
A glove found in Tara's flower bed carried DNA from Tara and an unknown man. Investigators tested more than 200 men without a match until Ryan Duke surfaced years later.
Gary Rothwell said a couple told him that Bo and Ryan were overheard at a party joking about burning her body. The tip never reached the GBI in a useful way, and Rothwell said the case could have been solved nine years earlier.
Up and Vanished drew attention in 2016, and Bo's girlfriend Brooke Sheridan said he grew anxious as he listened. She said he then told her about the killing, and she told her mother, who told law enforcement.
In his videotaped interview Ryan mentioned calling 411 and using a payphone, details the GBI had kept from the media. This persuaded investigators he knew things only the killer would know.
The defense argued the confession was false, the glove was planted and the hotel-style lock could not have been opened with a credit card. Jurors acquitted Ryan of murder but convicted him of concealing her death, and the DA said there was no evidence Bo killed Tara.
Tara Grinstead was a high school history teacher and former beauty queen in Ocilla, Georgia. She vanished after a barbecue on the night of October 22, 2005, leaving her phone behind and no sign of forced entry.
There was no body, no clear crime scene and DNA from a glove matched nobody tested. A false online confession and an overlooked party tip also wasted time, Rothwell said.
Payne Lindsey's podcast Up and Vanished began in 2016 and, according to the episode, raised pressure on the case. Bo Dukes's girlfriend said he was listening and became anxious before he told her what he knew.
Bo Dukes was convicted in 2019 on charges tied to Tara's death, including making false statements and concealing a death. He also pleaded guilty in two rape cases. Ryan Duke was acquitted of murder but found guilty of concealing her death.
His lawyers argued the confession was false, made while he was on drugs and afraid of Bo, and that the glove could have been planted. They also said Tara's door lock could not have been opened with a credit card. Jurors reportedly believed Bo was capable of the crime.
Stated by the speakers. Each quote matches the transcript, which shows what was said, not that it is true.
On Saturday, October 22, 2005, Tara Grinstead was helping student Dana Wilder prepare for the Sweet Potato Festival pageant in Ocilla, Georgia.
“Saturday, October twenty second, Dana Wilder was preparing for the festival's upcoming pageant with the help of her teacher, Tara Grinstead.”
Tara Grinstead's purse and keys were missing from her home, while her car remained unlocked in the driveway.
“But two other things were missing Tara's purse and keys. Her car, however, was still parked in the driveway, unlocked.”
DNA on the latex glove found at Tara Grinstead's home contained a profile from Tara and a profile from an unknown male.
“The DNA was of two people. One profile was of Tara, the other profile was of an unknown male.”
Police were called to Tara Grinstead's home about seven months before her disappearance after Anthony Vickers arrived while Heath Dykes was inside.
“Seven months before she disappeared, police were called to her home. Anthony Vickers was outside.”
Tara Grinstead's ex-boyfriend Marcus Harper had dated her for over five years and was a former police officer who became an Army Ranger.
“Tara and Marcus had been together for over five years. He was a former Osceola police officer and later became an Army Ranger, serving tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
Maria Woods Dollar said Tara Grinstead's mother died about a year and a half after Tara went missing.
“Her mother actually passed away about a year and a half after she went missing.”
Gary Rothwell said the Tara Grinstead investigation was the largest case in the history of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
“Yes, this is the largest GBI case, and, uh, it remains so to this day.”
Gary Rothwell said investigators processed probably over 200 DNA samples from men while trying to match the glove DNA.
“So we processed probably over 200 samples of men.”
Heath Dykes, Anthony Vickers and Marcus Harper all gave DNA samples, and none matched the glove found at Tara Grinstead's home.
“Officer Heath Dykes, Tara's former student Anthony Vickers, and her ex-boyfriend Marcus Harper all submitted DNA samples. None of them matched the glove.”
Gary Rothwell retired from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation in 2012 after nearly 31 years, seven of them spent on the Tara Grinstead case.
“Agent Rothwell was nearing thirty-one years with the GBI, seven of those devoted to Tara's case. In 2012, he retired.”
Filmmaker Payne Lindsey launched the podcast Up and Vanished in 2016, investigating Tara Grinstead's disappearance.
“By 2016, the worlds of podcasting and true crime had collided. Young filmmaker Payne Lindsey was eager to try his hand at both.”
The GBI announced an arrest warrant charging Ryan Alexander Duke with the murder of Tara Grinstead.
“Enough probable cause was discovered so we could swear out an arrest warrant charging Ryan Alexander Duke with the murder of Tara Grinstead.”
Gary Rothwell said an overlooked tip meant the Tara Grinstead case could have been solved at least nine years earlier.
“It's maddening because I consider myself a competent investigator and we could have solved this case at least nine years before it was solved”
Bo Dukes was tried in 2019 for his role in Tara Grinstead's death, and a jury convicted him on all charges in less than an hour.
“Finally, in 2019, Bo Duke stood trial for his role in Tara's death. It took a jury less than an hour to convict him on all charges in her case.”
Bo Dukes pleaded guilty to reduced charges in two rape cases and is serving a combined twenty-five-year sentence.
“Bo Dukes later pleaded guilty to reduce charges in those rape cases. He is serving a combined twenty-five-year sentence for his crimes.”
Ryan Duke's murder trial began in May 2022 in Osceola, Georgia.
“A decades-old mystery was finally coming to a head in May of 2022 as Ryan Duke's murder trial got underway in Osceola.”
A GBI forensics expert testified that the inner part of the glove matched Ryan Alexander Duke's DNA, with a chance of 1 in 300 quadrillion that another person would also match.
“The inner piece of the glove matched Ryan Alexander Duke, uh, with a probability of it also matching one in 300 quadrillion individuals in the population.”
The jury found Ryan Alexander Duke not guilty on the malice murder count and two felony murder counts.
“Find the defendant count one malice murder not guilty, count two felony murder not guilty, count three felony murder not guilty.”
After being convicted of concealing Tara Grinstead's death, Ryan Duke received the maximum sentence of ten years with time served.
“Ryan received the maximum sentence, ten years with time served. He's scheduled to be released early next year.”
Sets up Ocilla, the Sweet Potato Festival and Tara's last known evening, plus the odd clues at her home.
“Back in 2005, life in Ocilla, Georgia moved at its own easy pace.”
Investigators could not tell whether this was a crime or a voluntary disappearance, which shaped the early search.
“It could have supported either a violent crime or Tara leaving on her own.”
A police captain's affair with Tara and his urgent messages made him an early focus.
“No, he was married at the time and and was having an affair with her.”
Two other men in Tara's life were investigated, shown to be fearful or conflicted, and cleared by DNA and alibis.
“I think that he had an obsession with her, and um, I think she was afraid.”
A YouTube confession consumed investigators' time and turned out to be a hoax, adding to the cold-case frustration.
“The mysterious figure posted a series of videos on YouTube, challenging viewers and law enforcement to a chase.”
John McCullough says Bo Dukes revealed a burning-body story in 2006 and later reported it to the GBI.
“He unloads, you know, I helped him get her body, put it in the bed of the truck.”
A podcaster's questions unsettled the town and, per the episode, helped push someone to come forward.
“I feel like the podcast just put the pressure on.”
Bo's 2017 interview led the GBI to charge Ryan Duke with murder.
“Enough probable cause was discovered so we could swear out an arrest warrant”
A confession containing protected details, DNA and palm prints made prosecutors seem to have a strong case.
“No, we protected that at, you know, at all costs”
The jury rejected the murder charges despite the evidence, leaving friends and the town without full closure.
“Find the defendant count one malice murder not guilty, count two felony murder not guilty”
Tonight on Dateline
She was so proud of that crown. It's just heartbreaking to get justice for Tara. I was gonna have to tell all her secrets. I had to.
Tara had been reported missing.
She's a teacher, she's a beauty queen.
She could have been a target. A latex glove was found just outside the front door. It suggested foul play to us.
You have these possible suspects on your list.
There was a police officer, he had a relationship with Tara. There was a former student of hers, a former boyfriend.
We want an answers.
Here comes me, this millennial podcaster.
Your podcast shook the trees.
Someone felt pressured enough to actually come forward.
And he just told me what happened. A lot of wicked, wicked things.
We're always told monsters don't exist, but they do.
And I thought that I had prepared myself. I had not prepared myself for this.
Clue after clue, twist after twist. Where was Tara Grinstead? A twenty-year-old mystery with a stunning new ending. I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline. Here's Andrea Canning with The Orchard.
In South Georgia, generations have tended to these pecan trees, which take years to produce their first harvest. Folks here are used to waiting. But when beloved teacher Tara Grinstead vanished, that patience would be tested like never before. This town would wait more than a decade for answers, unaware the land held a dark secret.
In Georgia today, authorities and volunteers are back searching for Tara Grinstead.
The mystery put this small town on the national radar.
What happened to Tara Grinstead?
It's a case Dateline has covered from the beginning.
a beauty queen and a teacher is missing.
And one we have stayed on for twenty years. A small town mystery that sparked national headlines, online conspiracy theories, even a blockbuster true crime podcast.
Somewhere in this network of people was the answer.
And when justice finally came, it would prove far more complicated than anyone imagined.
This was worse than I thought. This is worse than the worst thought I had.
Revealing a tangled web that stretched far beyond Tara's disappearance. Back in 2005, life in Ocilla, Georgia moved at its own easy pace. Did you feel like Ocilla was this idyllic Mayberry kind of place?
Oh, yes, you could go walking at night and have no worries anything would happen. I mean, it's a red light town, that's all it is. And so a blink of an eye and you're done.
And nothing brought this close-knit community together quite like the annual Sweet Potato Festival. Saturday, October twenty second, Dana Wilder was preparing for the festival's upcoming pageant with the help of her teacher, Tara Grinstead.
Actually walked her out to the car that night. And the last things that we said was we were gonna talk Monday about the pageant and some things that we could improve on.
A hug or a kiss, or thank Just a hug you.
and a thank you, and I appreciate everything that you did for me that day. And she drove off.
Tara's close friend and fellow teacher Wendy McFarland heard from her a short time later. Tara said she was on her way to a friend's barbecue.
Oh, absolutely. She seemed in a good mood and for all that we knew, she was having a great day.
After a few hours, Tara left the barbecue. She told friends she was heading home for the night. The next day, Sunday, Tara was supposed to meet up with her best friend, Maria Woods Dollar.
You don't hear from her. We don't. And we which I thought maybe she had just had a long night, you know, but her mom was calling and and she was definitely worried.
Tara's mom kept calling her daughter all Sunday. Hello, if you leave I
a message, I'll call you back. Thank you.
Thank you.
Tara's mom would you please call me back? I'm worried. Please give me a call. Thanks.
She's not answering the phone. We can't find her. I can't can't get a hold to her.
On Monday, Dana got to her first class.
And on the intercom, it said, Miss Grinstead, please report to your classroom.
She was such a responsible person, uh, no, such a good teacher. You don't just not show up for your class.
It was a breaking point for Maria. She jumped in her car and drove straight to Osilla. And when she arrived at Tara's house,
The police were already there. Yes,
that's chilling when you pull up and there are police
her car's there. cars. Police cars are there.
Still, no sign of Tara. When Maria went inside to tour the house with police, something struck her as odd right away.
Her bed was not made.
Okay, yeah, that that was telling you she came home She came home from the barbecue, from from the barbecue the barbecue.
and got in the bed. Like she like, she was going to bed for the night. Then I look, her phone's there
Where was her phone?
right next to her bed, plugged up.
Okay, so that that's another indication that Uh, she she went to would have never left bed.
left her phone.
But two other things were missing Tara's purse and keys. Her car, however, was still parked in the driveway, unlocked. The Osilla officers soon recognized this could turn into a major case, so they called in the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
We didn't get a lot of details over the phone. It wasn't until we arrived that we, uh, learned more.
At the time of Tara's disappearance, Gary Rothwell was the GBI special agent in charge. What do your agents tell you and your your crime scene tech about what they're seeing inside the house?
The house had no forcible, uh, entry evidence. There was nothing to indicate that the locks had been broken or doors had been broken in.
The officers told Agent Rothwell about another strange detail from the scene. A business card from a police officer in another county was tucked inside Tara's front door. Maria also showed investigators something she'd spotted on the front lawn.
A white latex glove just laying in the middle of her flower bed,
Why would that glove be there?
right? You know, there's no reason why a glove would be there, except for somebody trying to clean up.
It's all adding up to something is very wrong here. Rothwell didn't know what to make of the glove yet, but knew it would be an important piece of evidence. Were you able to put a rush on the glove for DNA testing?
This case was a priority for the agency, and that meant it was a priority for the GBI crime lab, and they did put a rush on that DNA to to try to process it.
There's a lot of things not making sense about this scene.
The scene was ambiguous. It could have supported either a violent crime or Tara leaving on her own. We just didn't know.
Agent Rothwell also didn't know then just how sprawling this case would become. The tiny town was about to be the center of the biggest missing person case in Georgia's history. Someone had to know where Tara was, but who?
Tara's sister asked me, What did you do with my sister?
Is this some type of a love triangle situation?
I mean, it looked like something out of a movie scene.
He showed me where everybody was. It just brought fear into all of us.
Dana Wilder couldn't understand how her teacher, Tara Grinstead, had gone missing in their quaint town.
Everything I've ever felt about Osilla had changed.
Because this was your sanctuary, your safe place, this little sweet town, and now one of its shining stars is this is all, and missing.
no, nobody's heard from her.
In the days after Tara disappeared, a reward was offered for information about her whereabouts, and Osilla's residents came together to search for Tara.
It was at that point just high school students, parents, community members, and then it became a huge deal and we had a lot of help come.
How big was this search for Tara?
It was huge. We were at the red light passing out flyers and climbing up on big rigs at the red light and giving them flyers. As the days progressed, it became bigger and bigger.
You just start looking at various places in town.
Well, where she would have been, where she'd have gone. I checked ditches, I checked the local park.
Search parties covered miles of ground.
Such a sinking feeling.
Oh, so helpless. Yeah, I'm just thinking, you know, talking to her, Where are you? What are you doing? You know, help me find you.
Since they were little girls, Maria says Tara was blessed with a sweetness and a magnetic personality.
she is contestant number two, Tara Grinstead.
As she grew up, Tara channeled those natural gifts to become a standout in local beauty pageants.
She actually won our hometown harness festival pageant, and that was it for her. She took off with the pageant.
She shined on stage.
Absolutely. Her smile, her eyes, she was made for it. She was really made for the stage.
She went on to win another title, Miss Tifton, which qualified her for the Miss Georgia pageant. She must have been over the moon.
She was. She was, uh, as the happiest I've ever seen her. She was so proud of that crown.
Just tried to get prepared for a lot of hard work the week at Miss Georgia.
She didn't take home that Miss Georgia crown, but Maria says Tara had her sights set on something even more important to her becoming a teacher.
She is the reason I became a teacher.
What was it about teaching?
She just loved it. She thought it was just the best profession that, you know, we could be in.
Tara was offered a job at Irwin County High School in Osilla, and for seven years, she taught her favorite subject, history.
She had her German Shepherd, Dolly Madison, and her cat, Herman Talmadge. So she loved her Historical It's history. historical figures, yes.
Did everyone want her class?
Oh, yes, you definitely wanted Miss Grinstead's class because she went above and beyond what teachers do.
Tara worked on the side as a pageant coach for students like Dana. What was the best piece of advice she ever gave you?
Never let anybody stop you. Just keep going. If it's your dream, you can accomplish it.
And there was one more dream Tara was chasing. Maria says Tara's parents divorced when she was young, and her friend yearned for a lasting relationship.
Many of her friends were already married and and things like that, having children. You know, she was at the point in her life where she had done the things she wanted to do and looking for a time to settle down.
Finding the one to settle down with that was complicated. Tara had recently been through a rough breakup with her longtime boyfriend, Marcus Harper.
I think she wanted to get back together with him, and um, that just didn't work out. So I know that she had, you know, just some inner to turmoil.
Investigators learned about Tara's state of mind and just how troubled she was.
She had made statements to, uh, several people that she would kill herself if if they broke up. She had a lot going on in her mind.
Is this a situation where Tara possibly could have taken her own life?
We were not sure what happened, but we had to take in consideration that she had done something. She might have pulled a stunt. Uh, this was right on the heels of the Jennifer Wilbanks runaway The Runaway Bride bride case. Yes, so
I remember that Jennifer Wilbanks caused a media storm when she fled her Georgia home just a few days before her wedding, fueling a national manhunt until she turned up safe. Police wondered if Tara used that case as inspiration. Maybe she didn't harm herself, but she wanted attention.
absolutely thought that that was a possibility that she wanted attention because she was upset about this breakup with her longtime boyfriend.
I believe that's what they were thinking. That Tara just needed Yes, and time. I begged them, please, I'm that's not what this is.
Maria believed if Tara had run away, there would be some kind of trace left behind, and if this was suicide, Tara would have left a note. Your mind has already gone to foul play.
Yes, absolutely, absolutely. Um, and I don't know if you just think the worst in a situation like that, but I just had a feeling.
If this was a case of foul play, Maria knew the list of potential suspects would be long.
I remember coming to terms with the fact that I was gonna have to just tell all her secrets.
The story of the missing beauty queen in Georgia quickly turned into headline news for the national media.
There is still no sign this morning of thirty-year-old Tara Grinstead.
Dateline was the first news magazine to cover the case.
Her students are searching fields and farmlands, looking for their teacher.
And there were others. As Osilla faced an invasion of TV personalities like Nancy Grace,
To an extent, this was catnip for the media.
Tony Thomas, an Atlanta-based reporter, covered the case from the beginning.
A high school teacher, center of a small town, beauty queen, a good looking younger woman. It had all the characteristics make people want to pay attention to that story. The white hot spotlight
is suddenly on Osilla, Georgia, small town USA.
Something you don't want, you do not want. Everyone came and it it the spotlight was on this small town for a very awful reason.
After speaking with Maria and Tara's other friends, state investigators were quick to rule out the suicide and runaway bride theories. And as time passed,
We were certain that something bad had happened to her, that she was likely murdered.
and with no signs of forced entry at Tara's house, Agent Rothwell believed she may have known her assailant. So investigators looked for intimate details that could turn into leads and mined her best friend for information.
I remember coming to terms with the fact that I was gonna have to just tell all her secrets.
By doing that, though, you're a true friend. You are seeking justice for Tara by revealing
Her secrets. her. I have to remind myself that, yes, but there's still a lot of guilt.
Maria divulged to law enforcement everything she knew about Tara's complicated love life. Tara had a hold on a few men. Agents learned that included the man who placed that business card in her door, the officer from a nearby county.
That card belonged to to, uh, Captain Heath Dykes of the, uh, Perry Police Department.
Turned out he was supposed to meet up with Tara that weekend.
He couldn't contact her, and he became concerned about her whereabouts and made multiple calls trying to find her. And then ultimately drove down to her house to see if she was there and left his business card in the door to to let her know he had been by.
What is this relationship? Why is he tracking down He had a romantic, Tara?
yeah, uh, he had a romantic relationship with her. They knew each other and had reacquainted, uh, somewhat recently, and and had basically an affair.
So you're saying an affair? He's not single.
No, he was married at the time and and was having an affair with her.
Hey, I don't know how you expect me to come see you if you're not gonna answer your phone.
When police checked Tara's answering machine, they found more than ten messages that Heath left on Sunday.
I bet the one I hadn't heard from you today, reckon you pissed off at me or something. Give me a call when you can. Love you. Hey, I don't care. Worried about you since you're not haven't called me all day. It's been at least that's all I know. She don't call.
They kinda escalated, uh, in urgency, He's becoming more more and more urgent. Yeah, urgent.
If you don't want to talk, that's fine, but just let me know you're okay. This morning, my last message, I'm leaving.
This is kinda like the plot thickens here, that now you've got a married man really trying to get ahold that was of Tara.
that was something that was very concerning.
Heath Dykes was certainly someone Agent Rothwell wanted to interview, and he wouldn't be hard to find.
When I arrived at the Osceola Police Department, Dykes was there, and I knew that
Why was he there?
that he was there because he was concerned about her. And I knew when I saw him there that this is a problem.
The agent immediately walked the officer into a room where Heath opened up about the last time he talked to Tara.
He was the last person known to have spoken to her. He spoke to her Saturday night at about ten twenty seven while she was still at the cookout. And they had basically made arrangements to to to see each other the next day.
You have to consider all angles of if he's maybe trying to stay one step ahead of you. Well, we He's law enforcement,
yes, and we had to consider, well, did she go down and meet with Heath? And then something happened and he brought her car back. And to delay discovery, brings the car back so nobody's looking for her. And then goes and puts the business card to give an excuse why somebody would have seen him there.
you know, there's a number of reasons why a married man might wanna get rid of the other woman.
Those aspects certainly informed us on how we handled Heath Dykes. He was investigated thoroughly.
And he wouldn't be the only one. There was another man competing for Tara's attention, and how he knew her would raise even more questions.
I think that he had an obsession with her.
Oh, yes, I I love it.
One of your colors?
It's one of my bright. It shows that I'm happy person.
Tara was well-liked, people knew who she was.
Which could make someone a target,
Absolutely, she could have been a target.
but whose target? Agent Rothwell was still sorting out that question in the days after Tara's disappearance. Soon, he would be armed with crucial new evidence.
We were able to get DNA from that glove. Uh, it was remarkable what that crime lab was able to do.
Anything initially that that DNA is telling you.
The DNA was of two people. One profile was of Tara, the other profile was of an unknown male. So that suggested, obviously, that the the glove had been worn by someone who had touched Tara or handled her with it.
But who was the unknown male? When Agent Rothwell questioned Heath Dykes, he'd mentioned another man, Anthony Vickers, a nineteen-year-old former student of Tara's. Maria also knew about Anthony.
She told me he had almost like a a little obsession with her.
You think Anthony was obsessed with Tara?
I do.
Based on your conversations with Tara?
Yes, I I think that he had an obsession with her, and um, I think she was afraid.
It appeared Tara was right to be fearful. Seven months before she disappeared, police were called to her home. Anthony Vickers was outside.
He came to the house and he was got very upset because, uh, Heath Dykes was in the house at the time and began beating on the door, you know, wanting to get in, and police were called.
When this incident is going on between Anthony and Heath at Tara's house, is this some type of a love triangle situation?
Well, essentially, what you have. I I don't think Anthony Vickers knew that Heath Dykes was in the house. He just knew there was a male in the house and he was upset about it. And Tara was trying to calm things down and conceal it.
Tara gave a statement to police saying Anthony appeared to be out of control and in a fit of rage.
She was very, very scared. That was actually a a one of the reasons why we were having a conversation about, you know, some of her fears about living alone and things that would ha could happen.
Maria says Tara was so scared she had an extra lock installed on her front door. As for Anthony Vickers, officers arrested him for disorderly conduct. He later apologized to Tara, and they released him with no charges filed.
You have somebody that's arrested for a domestic at the victim's house, you know, just a few months before. We gotta look at that person very closely.
Investigators were giving Anthony a close look when something unexpected happened.
One of my agents was interviewing Maria, and Maria had Tara's cell phone, and the cell phone rang. And she answered it in the interview with the agent, and it was Anthony Vickers calling.
So I pick it up and he says, This is Anthony.
What does he want?
I don't know. He he wanted to tell me basically his side of the story, but I was like, I just wanna know, did did you hurt her?
What do you say?
He said, No, he would never do that.
Interesting that he cared what you thought?
Could have been. I kinda looked at it in two different ways. Okay, is he trying to convince me, or is he just trying to clear his conscience?
Investigators brought Anthony in for questioning. He admitted he'd been intimate with Tara.
Uh, it. There were people that knew about it, but it wasn't anything that she was disclosing to anybody.
I mean, he's a former student.
Yes, she's a former student, and the age difference.
Anthony said they were no longer involved. They hadn't seen each other in two months. Tara's friend Wendy knew Anthony from the high school.
The thing that I can say about him is that he totally cooperated. He did anything that he could to help with the investigation. I know that it was very difficult for him and his family to have to be under that microscope.
Anthony gave investigators his alibi, that he was home with family and then at a job a hundred miles from Osilla. They set out to verify his account as they continued looking into the other men in Tara's life. The most obvious one in their sights was that ex-boyfriend, Marcus Harper, the one Tara had the bad breakup with shortly before she disappeared. I thought they were It was
a fabulous match. huge. He was a a very well-mannered young man, respectful.
Marcus was, um, a very huge love in Tara's life. Um, she's very dedicated to him.
Tara and Marcus had been together for over five years. He was a former Osceola police officer and later became an Army Ranger, serving tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. So Marcus was someone that that Tara could envision a life with. Oh, she loved him, Husband and wife.
but it didn't happen. No,
Maria says Tara couldn't seem to get over him.
in her mind, or her heart wasn't moving on.
And things hadn't ended well.
No, things did not end well. She was I in complete turmoil.
When we spoke to Tara's sister in 2006, she said Marcus had a history of angry outbursts.
My mom said that she would be home some weekends, and Tara would be talking on the phone to him, and mother said it was like that that he would just explode.
Tara's sister said that temper became particularly stormy after the breakup.
Several um fights in couple weeks prior to her disappearing.
Maria knew just how messy the end of the relationship had gotten, so she told investigators they should be looking closely at Marcus.
My first instinct was, Did Marcus have anything to do with it?
After their breakup, Tara heard an upsetting rumor. Marcus was dating a woman barely out of high school. Tara had been upset because Marcus had started seeing another woman.
Yes, and there were so it's so crazy because it's small town, and Tara knew the dad of the girl, and so it was. It was kinda, um, it was just very sad for her.
Maria wondered if it led to an angry confrontation between Tara and Marcus.
You know, things happen, you know, we overreact. I didn't know if, you know, they tried to talk it out and things got physical. I mean, you you don't, you don't know what
There could be a fight.
goes around. Yeah, she coulda pushed the wrong buttons. The worst went through my mind with Marcus.
Then Maria ran into him in town in the days after Tara went missing.
And then just asked him, You know, Hey, have you seen her? What? What do you know?
Did he seem concerned? Um, not really. No, What did you kind of get, like a chilling feeling?
yes, yeah, oh yeah. I had several of those feelings with Marcus.
Maria wasn't the only one, and Marcus would have a lot to say about that to investigators and to us. Were you ever abusive to Tara? Just about any man who knew Tara in tiny Osceola was a potential suspect, but from the beginning, investigators knew they had to pay close attention to one man, her ex-boyfriend, Marcus Harper.
So there were people accusing him that he was responsible.
He is someone you need to talk to if everyone's bringing him up. Do you sit him down in a formal interview setting?
Yes, we interviewed Marcus the first day, uh, that we were involved. At one point early on, he did get representation because he had been accused publicly by so many people of being involved in the in the disappearance. So, you know, we had to to work around that.
What was his demeanor like?
He was, he was cooperative.
Cooperative with investigators and with us in an interview where no topic was off limits? What was it like to be in a small town like Osceola and have somewhat of a cloud over your head? People like to talk, and sometimes people believe what they hear. How was that for you?
Because I refused to adopt what I like to term a victim mentality. I held out the hope one day I'm gonna have my say. So, and here was that.
Marcus told us he and Tara clicked from the moment they met.
I would classify both of us, you know, as ambitious. She had goals, she was a very independent, strong-willed woman.
And then did you find from that from there that you had a lot in common?
Yes, we had the same taste in music, we had the same taste in movies, we had many things in common that, you know, helped that relationship grow.
Marcus says they started slow, but before they knew it, they'd been together for years.
When I graduated, uh, U.S. Army Ranger School, she pinned my Ranger tab on for me.
That's a big deal. So it was getting serious.
yeah, yeah, it was serious.
Maybe more serious for Tara than Marcus. After five years of dating, she gave him an ultimatum. She said, marriage or we're breaking up. And you just weren't ready
I was not ready.
for marriage.
I was not ready.
They broke up during one of Marcus's stints in the army, and when he came home months later, things with Tara were tense. I started casual dating You know, after
after the relationship had ended. the
Tara had a hard time with that. She also made a issue of the age of one of the girls that you dated, she was eighteen.
Which is, I did not. I was not dating someone eighteen at the time.
So that's false.
I was dating someone twenty-one years of age. She was in law enforcement, and I choose
to not to divulge her name.
He says the last time he saw Tara was a week before she disappeared. They talked about their breakup, but parted amicably. Just a couple days before her disappearance, uh, Tara wrote your mom an email saying she was thinking of you. She wrote, I just wish I could email him and say I thought of you today as I taught, but that is contact, and he wishes no contact with me. It's hard. I think
She said it best right there.
She was clearly struggling when she wrote that.
what am I supposed to do? You know, I tried to be as gentle with the situation as I could.
Investigators believe Tara disappeared late Saturday night into early Sunday morning. Marcus says during those hours, he'd caught up with friends at a couple of bars, then met up with a former coworker from the Osceola Police Department. So you're all just hanging out downtown, and then do you finally go home after that?
Yeah, yeah, I finally go home.
And, uh, do you remember how late it was?
Yeah, early morning hours, I'd say.
He says he found out that Tara was missing Monday morning, just like most of Osceola, and headed straight to the police department to help. When he pulled up, he saw Tara's sister.
Tara's sister came outside to the sidewalk and put her hands on her hip and asked me, What did you do with my sister?
That's an explosive allegation.
That's that's a heavy accusation.
What'd you say to her?
I I was floored, and I said, I haven't done anything with your sister. So I went to the back and there was several other people waiting, and I waited for my turn to talk to the GBI.
Did you have any idea of Tara's whereabouts?
No, I was just as clueless as anybody else at this point.
Marcus says he gave the GBI the name of the police officer friend he'd been hanging out with the night of Tara's disappearance. He also let investigators search his house. You're not being called a suspect. Do you feel like a suspect?
I felt like one. I don't want that victim mentality of, oh, the GBI did this. Listen, they had a job to do and I understood it.
Even though investigators weren't calling him a suspect, Tara's sister and others made their suspicions known in the media.
He had motive, um, opportunity, definitely had the training, and he's an ex-army ranger. For Tara to have vanished without a clue, you've gotta think, who's capable of doing that?
Some said that, you know, you knew how to handle weapons, you were familiar with evidence collection and police investigative tactics. Who else would be better at getting away with the perfect murder than you?
From the military standpoint, I mean, I was never trained to clean up anything but my barracks room in the military.
Well, I think also the fact that you were a police officer as well.
I was a patrolman for four years on a night shift. I think that they would give me a little bit more credit than was due.
Because an Osceola officer was part of his alibi from that night, whispers swirled about a small-town police coverup. What did you make, though, of of that theory, that this suspicion that everyone was covering for you?
Okay, when conspiracy theories get so big, you mean to tell me there's not gonna be one whistleblower? Somebody's gonna speak out.
But Marcus says the rumor that hurt him the most, the idea that you were verbally abusive, that it that it was out there floating around.
Well, I mean, obviously, as you know, I was floored.
Were you ever abusive to Tara? Did you ever hit Tara? Did you ever hurt her in any way?
no, no, I've never hit or harmed any female. The only times I've ever hit or harmed someone is in defense, but no, I've never hit or harmed a woman.
Still, investigators hadn't ruled out Marcus or any of the other men in Tara's life. But what if their perpetrator was someone she'd never met? A lead was about to emerge from the darkest corner of the internet.
I decided to confess.
A faceless man identifying himself as Tara's killer.
It was surreal. It was just weird.
One year had passed since the disappearance of Tara Grinstead. It's hard enough to have a loved one missing, but the torture of not knowing.
Oh, the not knowing is is complete torture.
Where is she? Who did this? So many unanswered questions.
and it's so hard because you you think, why can't we have these answers? Why is it like this? Why? Why do you have a a unsolved case for this long?
Maria says it was especially excruciating for Tara's mother.
Her mother actually passed away about a year and a half after she went missing. Um, and I, I say all the time she mourned herself to death.
She died of a broken heart.
Uh, absolutely, because her life was was her daughter, and she could not go on without her.
With no body and no answers, Rothwell remains stumped. And you're not finding Tara, and you're not finding out the person responsible for what happened to her, whatever that was.
It was very frustrating.
That's hard with all the work you're putting in and you can't nail it down.
There's a saying, the bigger the case file, the less you know.
By that measure, investigators didn't know much. You say this was the largest case in GBI history?
Yes, this is the largest GBI case, and, uh, it remains so to this day.
Every piece of evidence in the Tara Grinstead case came through this GBI facility,
Every piece came through this GBI region thirteen office, every single bit of it.
including that latex glove that produced two DNA profiles, Tara's and an unknown male. The glove was everything in this case.
The glove was the link to identifying who did this. That was, that was the the evidence.
And to find a match to that evidence, investigators went into overtime.
So we processed probably over 200 samples of men.
That is an insane amount of people
That's a lot.
to collect DNA from.
Even my husband at the time was swabbed.
Your own husband?
My own husband was swabbed. What are you surmising is happening? If they're swabbing all these people, they have no clue.
No matter how many people we we collected samples from, none of them were matching and and these leads weren't panning out.
Like the probe into Tara's love life. Officer Heath Dykes, Tara's former student Anthony Vickers, and her ex-boyfriend Marcus Harper all submitted DNA samples. None of them matched the glove. They all took polygraphs, too, and they all passed. Investigators checked out their alibis. All appeared solid. But just when it seemed like they were out of leads, a big one surfaced in 2009, straight out of a horror movie.
It was surreal. It was just weird.
I decided to confess.
He called himself the Catch Me Killer.
He would use electronic means to disguise his voice and block out his face.
The mysterious figure posted a series of videos on YouTube, challenging viewers and law enforcement to a chase.
I decided to do it on YouTube because there's a few million people that could help play my game.
He made a stunning claim. He'd killed sixteen women, including Tara. Cruel,
Crazy, just evil.
It just brought fear into all of us.
When we saw that, it was like, Well, we gotta, we gotta follow up on this.
Now he's trying to remain anonymous, he's blocking out his face. And how do you go about finding this person?
Well, you know, it took some work. You go through YouTube and then the internet service provider to find out who was using a a an ISP address at a certain time.
Investigators connected the address to a man named Andrew Haley, a twenty-six-year-old roofer who lived in Gainesville, Georgia.
We were able to actually track it down to the hospital room where his wife was, you know, being cared for while he was doing this, sitting in the hospital room. So
Oh my god, investigators determined Haley crafted the videos as some kind of game.
It is very strange and very creepy.
This guy was this was a hoax. Andrew Haley was charged with tampering with evidence and making false statements. He was convicted on both charges. All of it consuming more time and resources in the GBI's investigation. Another dead end.
another dead end.
And also shame on him.
He was not a a popular person, uh, among several people.
Agent Rothwell was nearing thirty-one years with the GBI, seven of those devoted to Tara's case. In 2012, he retired.
I have a close relationship with Tara's father and her stepmother, and they came to my retirement.
He felt he owed them an apology. On his watch, their daughter's case went unsolved. He couldn't shake it off, so Rothwell kept close tabs on the investigation. And the good news is it wasn't over. This was not over.
No, it was not over.
Not by a long shot. As two new suspects and a hit podcast were about to turn this cold case red hot. You sort of poked the hornet's nest.
Absolutely. And that was on purpose. I wanted to talk to you about the Tara Grinstead case.
Bo had a secret.
He showed me where her body was and for doubt, kind of.
Enough probable cause was discovered so we could swear out an arrest warrant.
I was absolutely shocked.
Former GBI agent Gary Rothwell, well into retirement, had long since given up chasing down leads. But there was one case he couldn't let go.
I had a a nice career and I had a lot of successes, but this, you know, this was a failure.
The 2005 disappearance and likely murder of Tara Grinstead.
This case became part of me. I had relationships with everybody in the office, and the case agent that was assigned kept me apprised of of things.
Then, in 2016, your team gets a bombshell call out of the blue about Tara's case. A man named John McCullough was on the line.
I'm finally, you know, like lifting this weight off and trying to give it to somebody else because it's killing me.
The weight was a terrible secret an old army buddy shared with John back in 2006 while the two were in basic training. The man's name was Bo Dukes. He was from Osceola. It was Christmas 2006, and you two come up with a plan that you're gonna go back to Georgia with Bo. As you're sightseeing and taking in the town, a billboard catches your attention.
yeah, it's, uh, you know, super bright billboard, um, looks like a very, you know, young woman, you know, pretty woman.
It was Tara. At that point, she had been missing a little over a year.
I had made comments like, Man, that's crazy, you know? I wonder what happened with that.
What did he say?
And he was like, Oh man, you know, just, uh, almost like blowing it off.
Did you ask Bo if he knew her?
I did ask if he had knew her.
He was like, Oh, she was a teacher at the school I went to.
But later that week, after a party, John said a drunken Bo suddenly became eager to talk about the past.
And I'm like, What's up, dude? He's like, Hey, you remember that billboard, you know, you'd asked me about? Um, I know what happened.
What did he say?
He just said his friend had told him that he accidentally killed her. He accidentally strangled her.
What are you thinking? I mean,
Part of me is I need to get out of this car and get o as far away from this dude as possible. And the other part is I need to beat this dude.
did he mention the name of his friend, who this person was?
Uh, no, he never mentioned his friend's name or anything like that. It was always just my friend.
And yet, the story wasn't over. John said Bo admitted taking part in what happened next.
He unloads, you know, I helped him get her body, put it in the bed of the truck. We took it out to the middle of my family's pecan orchard and, uh, and burned her body.
That's hard to hear.
That's super difficult to hear.
Was there a part of you that thought maybe this didn't really happen?
Yeah, because he was, uh, slurring his words, he was slobbery, you know, he was, he was kind of out of it. So it's kind of like, okay, should I take it as a grain of salt, or should I take it as the whole shaker, you know?
Well, what was your gut telling you?
My gut was literally telling me, regardless if it's BS or not, somebody should still know about it.
Freaked out. He didn't tell authorities right then and took off in Bo's truck. Where did you go?
Slept in the truck, stayed in the truck, I stayed gone.
He returned the truck to Bo's house days later and caught a bus back to base. He said Bo never mentioned the incident or Tara again.
I tried to keep my distance. The friendship basis just kind of out of the window. And more so, like, Okay, you're here in basic with me, and that's it.
Did you ever bring it up again with him? When basic training was over, John says he was finally ready to call the police. A couple months later, Who do you call?
the Osceola Police Department.
And you would think that they would jump at this information?
Yeah, you would think that they'd be like, Okay, let's, uh, let's hear this dude.
Did they? No? The Osceola Police Department told Dateline it has no record of John reaching out in 2006. John says in 2016 he tried law enforcement again. This time, the GBI got the message. Bo Dukes is that a name that you've heard of?
Bo Dukes was not anybody that we knew. Bo was the scion, I guess, so to speak, of a of a prominent family in Irwin County, uh, but we weren't aware of him.
But he was easy enough to find. He was living with his mother about forty minutes north of Osceola. The agent asked Bo to meet at a nearby police station and recorded the conversation.
So you were around when Tara went missing initially. Did you know Tara? She was my eleventh grade teacher.
Bo explained how he went into the army after high school graduation. The agent was curious, would Bo remember who joined him that Christmas leave in 2006?
Would John McCullough be about right? Could be. Maybe from Texas. It sounds about right.
Y'all rode around, you know, showed him around. I mean, obviously you didn't stay at your folks house the whole time. Y'all were out riding around stuff like that.
The agent kept pressing, digging for information about Tara's disappearance.
Said you made some comments that, you know, at the time, he kinda dismissed as just, you know, alcohol, talking, yappy yap. But I mean, he was pretty animate that, you know, you had made some comments regarding, like, burning a body, and I mean, that's I, I mean, now you understand why I have to talk to you, you know? I mean, it's just one of those things that
I mean, now you understand why I have to talk to you, you know? I mean, it's just one of those things that
Though, suddenly, Bo did share this about that drunken week with his army buddy.
we went to a bar one night in Tifton.
and he took my truck, and I didn't show. He didn't see him again for, like, till the day we left. It was like a week later. He was missing, he was missing with my my truck.
He, uh, admitted that M Mr. McCullough had come home with him for Christmas, but then accused him of stealing his car. And basically tried to cast doubt on Mr. McCullough. And, uh, he, you know, denied knowing any information, uh, s that was specific to Mr. McCullough's account.
Still, Bo seemed eager to help.
we actually do have some DNA, um, that we recovered, um, from some evidence at her residence. Um, I'd be accurate, though.
And that's where I would do. You mind if I go ahead and get a sample of your DNA?
Absolutely not.
And then he, uh, gave a buccal swab, which was compared to the DNA on the glove, and it didn't match.
It looked like another dead end for agents, but it wasn't the end to Tara's story. A new unlikely sleuth was reexamining her case. He didn't have a badge, all he had was determination and a microphone.
This is up and vanished, the investigation of Tara Grinstead.
I thought to myself, if I, if I was gonna do this, I have to wanna really solve this.
By 2016, the worlds of podcasting and true crime had collided. Young filmmaker Payne Lindsey was eager to try his hand at both.
How did you go about finding which case you would cover?
Finding the right case is the biggest step. I wanted to find a mystery that would keep me guessing and really draw me in and make me feel like I should be trying to figure out what happened.
After a Google search of unsolved cases, he stumbled on Tara's disappearance and a personal connection.
I got family in South Georgia. Uh, my grandma's from Tifton, which is only fifteen minutes or so from Osceola. I was like, All right, I'll I'll call grandma. Hey, grandma, do you remember this case? Uh, Tara Grinstead and missing woman teacher. And she said, My friend Melba used to work with her or friends with her or something. So she calls me back and says, Yeah, I just talked to Melba. Melba said she saw Tara that Saturday night she went missing.
And I my mind was just completely blown.
He took it as a sign and launched his podcast Up and Vanished.
This is up and vanished, the investigation of Tara Grinstead.
What were the particular elements of the case that really drew you in?
Her car was found in her carport, the front door was locked shut. There was no explanation.
He started by calling people central to the investigation back in 2005.
My name is Payne Lindsey. I wanted to talk to you about the Tara Grinstead case,
Many promptly hung up on him.
the Tara Grinstead case, a podcast Documentaries series. You don't mind Questions about Sorry about that. Tara, the case, and they were You you don't interviewing the podcast.
pick the podcast.
To talk to you about Tara Grinstead.
You never covered the case before, and here you are marching into town. I mean, I would imagine that you're ruffling some feathers. Definitely. After all, a decade had passed since Tara's disappearance.
it was, uh, definitely, you know, turning over some rocks that people probably didn't want turned.
Was there a part of you, even though it was unsettling, to have it out there again? Did you hope that it was maybe gonna move things forward?
That was the only thing I could think of good out of this is that maybe this will change the course and get it get back out there and people will start talking again.
And yet, even Maria and Tara's closest friends were reluctant to engage, at least in the podcast's early days.
everyone surrounding this case had their guard up. And here comes me, this millennial podcaster, trying to solve the mystery.
So I realized that I was going for the big people, uh, a little too soon. So I decided to go to the outside ring. People who were, you know, not as close to Tara, but still knew Tara.
He also decided to retrace Tara's final steps. You went to the house, uh, where the barbecue happened, where Tara was that night. What did you learn at that house?
I got a tip from an air conditioning guy who was underneath this house and said he saw something really weird, and he wanted us to go check it out. Next thing you know, we're crawling under this crawl space, our hands and knees, and we're looking at this m weird mound of dirt. And I kid you not, it just looked like a body was buried there.
Are you thinking it's Tara?
I'm thinking that it could be Tara, but it was just so unbelievable to me. It was pretty spooky. So there there were these white objects that looked like it could have been bone. I couldn't tell what it was.
Payne said someone must have alerted the GBI because agents promptly came to the site and collected their own samples for testing. But the results were not what Payne was hoping for.
The GBI made an announcement said that they did said that they did perform a search perform a search and that it was in fact animal bones.
and that it was in fact animal bones. This was just the first of many wild turns in my investigation and really kinda toughing me up and getting me prepared for a rollercoaster ride of red herrings and white rabbits. In this case,
Eventually, he said, his constant calls and door knocks yielded a result. That former student of Tara's, who had talked to police early in the investigation, agreed to go public with his story.
You interviewed Anthony Vickers.
I did. Tell me about your relationship with Tara.
oh yeah, I mean, we we, uh, we. We saw each other after, uh, after that night stood, it went on there for a year or two.
Okay, so this relationship you had with Tara, was it at all sexual?
Vickers said he and Tara had become close after he graduated.
Did you have any involvement in Tara's disappearance? I did believe him.
Gradually, Osceola took notice of the brash young podcaster, and he began netting more interviews. Not that every guest was a hit.
If you go to Osceola and take uh, somebody else with you now, okay, why the well, this is is a weird place.
Tara's friend Wendy McFarland felt the podcaster was trying to make his mark at Osceola's expense.
I understand that he has a job to do and he's selling a product, but I don't appreciate our community being portrayed in that light.
Flattering or not, Up and Vanished was getting people's attention.
I feel like the podcast just put the pressure on. Every week, the audience grew, the attention grew,
Pressure, pressure, pressure.
pressure grew.
For investigators to find a new lead or piece of evidence, or for the right person to come forward. You got kinda got a ticking time bomb in your hands.
I did the best thing I knew to do.
In the summer of 2015, Brooke Sheridan found herself surfing online for love. One of her matches seemed to have real potential. What was it, do you think, that attracted you two to each other on Tinder?
He was handsome to me, and we just when we talked on the phone and we would text, he had he was funny.
His name Bo Dukes. Brooks said they fell in love and she quickly moved to South Georgia to be with him. But by the next year, the happy man she'd fallen for had become anxious, irritable.
It was to the point where it prompted me to say, Okay, what's going on? What did he say? Um, he says, I can't say anything, I can't tell you, I can't tell you.
Brooke knew Bo had been listening to that podcast on Tara and wondered if it was the reason for his change. It seemed to be rattling a lot of nerves in South Georgia in the fall of 2016.
I was the type of person that you're gonna tell me, you know, you're gonna, you're gonna tell me. You need to tell me what's going on. Bo had a secret, Yeah, he had a secret.
and it was dark. She said Bo told her that a friend from high school killed Tara and moved her body to a pecan orchard owned by Bo's family.
He said that she was naked and had strangulation marks around her neck.
That wasn't all, she said. Bo helped his friend cover up the crime. Take us to your mindset when he's telling you this massive secret that is about a murder.
Probably would say that I was shocked. I'm like, what have I gotten myself into? I'm like, Um, why didn't you call the cops? Call the police, You know, and
Yeah, if you didn't do this,
yeah, why didn't you call the cops?
because Bo said the friend threatened to call the police first. After all, Tara's body was now on land owned by Bo's family. If you say something, you'll be implicated in this, too. You got kinda got a ticking time bomb in your hands.
Yeah, yeah, I did the best thing I knew to do. I got out of there. I told my mom, my mom told law enforcement, law enforcement came to me. I told them everything.
All right. Today's date is February twenty-first, 2017. Time is nine a.m. I think it was
Less than a year after first speaking to the GBI, Bo was back in an interview room with his lawyer by his side. He agreed to tell the agent what really happened the night Tara disappeared.
That Saturday night, uh, I was at our house, Ryan was there, a few people came over, we were drinking, and I passed out, went to sleep.
Ryan was Ryan Duke, Bo's roommate at the time. The young men grew up together and shared similar last names. That's them in the 2002 Irwin County high school yearbook. Now Bo was telling agents an explosive story about his friend,
Ryan woke me up, told me that he had killed Terry Reinstedt, and I thought he was, I didn't believe him. I thought he was gonna,
but Bo said a day after Ryan's admission, news of Tara's disappearance was all over town.
And so you confront Ryan again,
Again, he said Ryan told him what he'd done, and this time, Ryan could prove it.
and uh, he asked me to come with him out to the to the pecan orchard, and I went with him. And he, we drove back into the back, and he showed me where a body was, and freaked out. Got. I asked him, exactly what had happened. He told me he used a credit card to get in through her front door. He jumped on her while he was, she was in bed, and and strangled her right there in her bed.
Bo said Ryan asked for help getting rid of Tara's body.
And we used my truck and moved her body into the wooded area, was a bunch of wood and and and burned it.
The story mirrored what John McCullough told investigators months earlier about Bo, so he's fully confessing now to law enforcement that he aided in disposing of Tara's body.
Yes, in 2016, he lied and denied it, in 2017, he admitted his involvement and and gave further details.
With that, the agent told Bo he was free to go for the time being. Days later, Tara's father and stepmother were at a press conference listening as the GBI made this announcement about Ryan Duke.
Enough probable cause was discovered so we could swear out an arrest warrant charging Ryan Alexander Duke with the murder of Tara Grinstead.
Investigators gave few details surrounding the arrest. Ryan, now thirty-three years old, had been working odd jobs and living in Osceola when police charged him. The fact that he'd once been a student at the high school where Tara taught was especially painful to her friends. Had you heard that name before?
I had not. These are students that she loved and and tried to protect, you know, every day, and devoted her life to, and and then one of them is gonna be responsible for her murder. Yeah, my my heart broke for her again. I immediately
Wendy did recall Ryan, if only distantly.
I was absolutely shocked. Everything that I remember about Ryan was that he was just a good, sweet kid.
Even Payne, who'd been looking into the case for months, was stumped by the arrest.
Had you heard that name before?
No, Ryan Duke never heard of him,
But everyone knew the name of the next man the GBI arrested, Bo Duke's son of a prominent local family, Wendy's family.
He's actually related to you. Yes,
He is your, he is my cousin. When they announced that Bo had been involved, I realized there were some emotions that I had not experienced. Anger, betrayal. There are no words that can put that moment in any kind of perspective.
after trying for years to solve the mystery of Tara's disappearance, Gary Rothwell welcomed the arrests. But then a couple who'd run a website to help find Tara told him this.
They got ahold of me that night and they said, y'all have heard of these names before.
The couple said that shortly after Tara disappeared, Bo and Ryan were overheard at a party.
We're the ones that killed her and we burned her up in a pit. It was they were like they were joking, trying to get attention.
At the time, the tip was reported to law enforcement but didn't make its way immediately to the GBI. Even when it did, the information was somehow overlooked. This case could have been solved years earlier,
It could have. It's maddening because I consider myself a competent investigator and we could have solved this case at least nine years before it was solved and and that didn't happen.
right after his arrest, Bo posted bond and was free. A grand jury later indicted him on two counts of making false statements, one count of hindering the apprehension of a criminal, and one count of concealing a death. And trouble kept finding him. He was later charged with rape stemming from two separate cases.
I have no doubt he's out for self-preservation. That's what Bo Duke's is all about is self-preservation.
Finally, in 2019, Bo Duke stood trial for his role in Tara's death. It took a jury less than an hour to convict him on all charges in her case.
To tear her family.
I'm truly sorry.
I'm truly sorry.
At sentencing, he begged Tara's family for forgiveness.
My actions were cowardly, callous, and cruel.
Bo Dukes later pleaded guilty to reduce charges in those rape cases. He is serving a combined twenty-five-year sentence for his crimes. Prosecutors then turned their attention to Ryan Duke. They were about to reveal exactly what evidence they had against him for Tara's murder. All the jury had to do was watch and listen.
I was scared and just seemed like I made ever bad situation worse.
A decades-old mystery was finally coming to a head in May of 2022 as Ryan Duke's murder trial got underway in Osceola. Tara's former student, Dana, had been waiting for this moment since she was a teenager.
So long, and so many of us have been involved in this situation that we wanted answers.
Hey, good morning, ladies and gentlemen.
Those answers were about to come. Former reporter Tony Thomas
Just before the trial begins for Ryan Duke, we start hearing there's a confession, and for the prosecution, that doesn't get any better.
Despite that, Ryan had pleaded not guilty, leaving people on the edge of their seats. Now clean-shaven and in a suit, he faced six charges, including felony murder and robbery. Did you feel like this is the first step in justice for Tara?
Absolutely, I I feel that way.
For Maria, being in the courtroom was deeply personal.
It is very hard to look at someone that you know took the life of somebody that you love and not want to attack. Can't we get
In her opening statement, prosecutor J. D. Hart went straight to the state's key evidence.
you'll hear from him out of his own words confessing to her murder? You'll see him on video confessing to her murder.
He actually made the motion.
Lead GBI investigator Jason Shodell took the stand and walked the jury through that video. Quiet and withdrawn, Ryan told Shodell he felt relieved to finally open up about that October night.
I am not well myself. I mean, I went through the whole like of it all.
He claimed he wanted money for drugs, so he randomly picked Tara's house to rob.
I broke in with a credit card, uh, with the turn, the lock, I seen her purse, and next thing I knew, she said something was rubbing on the shoulder, and I viewed her.
Ryan described hitting Tara once, becoming frightened, then fleeing the house and going home. As the sun began to rise the next day, he said he called Tara's house to see if she was okay, and that's when he said something that immediately caught the investigator's attention.
What kind of phone did you use? Was it a payphone? I dialed four, one, one to get the number, and they wouldn't answer.
GBI agents had kept one critical piece of evidence from the media. The day after Tara went missing, they learned someone called four one one to get her number, then called her house from a supermarket payphone. Is this information that he could have known about this payphone?
No, we protected that at, you know, at all costs, so very few people even knew about it or understood it.
And then he gives it up in this interview.
And he gave it up in the interview.
You were hoping that she would answer the phone, and when she did, you knew something was wrong. Yes, sir,
So I went back to the end, and she was still laying on the floor.
Ryan said he didn't know if his punch was what killed Tara, but knew he had to get rid of the body. So he loaded it onto a truck and drove it to that pecan orchard owned by Bo's uncle.
Back searching for Tara Grinstead, missing now for nearly two weeks.
After the story broke, Ryan said he got worried and enlisted Bo to go back to the orchard with him to help burn the body.
We could, uh, light a truck on, a half a barrel with it, burn some trash on top of it.
Once the interview ended, Ryan not only wrote out a full confession, he also agreed to go with agents to the orchard.
And you haven't been back out here since.
Ryan said this was the area where, over a couple of days, he and Bo burned Tara's body.
You don't remember seeing any bones or anything left after y'all got done burning,
Any material that comes out of the ground during an excavation is put through a screen.
The state then called a forensic anthropologist who had helped search and excavate the area.
And were you able to find what you determined to be human bone in this particular area?
While the bones were too badly burned to yield DNA, the expert could determine where some of them came from.
a fragment of a human finger bone, so it would be one of these first little bones in each of your fingers.
Then the prosecutor pointed to another cornerstone of the state's case, that glove found at the crime scene.
The primary contributor to the glove of DNA is Ryan Duke. When you took
She called a GBI forensics expert to the stand, who said the results left little doubt.
The inner piece of the glove matched Ryan Alexander Duke, uh, with a probability of it also matching one in 300 quadrillion individuals in the population.
Another GBI expert testified that she found something else on the glove, two palm prints.
I identified them to the finger and palm print cards bearing the name Ryan Alexander Duke.
By the time the prosecution rested, many felt its case was airtight, but the defense was up next. Both Bo and Ryan were about to take the stand, raising a whole new round of questions about who really killed Tara. You think that this is a game changer at this point in the trial?
It changed the entire future of this trial. I think the entire temperature changed in that courtroom.
The challenges facing Ryan Duke's defense team were hard to overstate. The big elephant in the room is the fact that Ryan has confessed to this crime already.
Right, and that's one of the the biggest hurdles that we've got in this case, because juries believe confessions.
Ashley Merchant led the team and represented Ryan pro bono.
I thought that he was the underdog and that he needed someone to fight for him, and I believed him. I believed his story.
Defense attorneys made clear Ryan was changing his story. They argued he had given a false confession and that the real killer was his former friend, Bo Dukes.
This case is about power and influence. Ryan Duke has neither. He didn't have power, and he didn't have influence. Bo Duke's has both.
There was room enough.
Ryan's attorneys immediately set out to show jurors why they believed his so-called confession didn't make sense. One example Tara routinely secured her front door with multiple locks, including a unique hotel-style latch like this one.
One of the really big issues for me was her lock. It's actually the lock that you can flip a across. We had testimony that she always always
Flipped that switch, flipped that lock.
In Ryan's police interview, he said he used a credit card to break into her house.
Like I said, you can pop it real easy with a cord.
Real easy with a cord.
A GBI inspector testified that if the hotel-style lock was engaged, it didn't seem possible to open it with just a credit card.
That'd be inconsistent with, uh, Mr. Duke being able to gain entry into that house using a credit card only on the lower level.
The defense then attacked the likelihood Ryan could have killed Tara with one punch. The defense then attacked the likelihood Ryan could have killed Tara with one punch.
nobody is so good that they're going to to kill someone with their hands, and there's no evidence of a struggle, no evidence of blood, nothing like that.
I'm employed, uh, with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
Ryan's attorney pressed a GBI crime scene tech on how the murder could have happened without leaving any forensic evidence inside Tara's house.
you noted in your report that there was no other suspicious blood in the house, correct? That's correct, And there was no clean up evidence, there was no evidence that this this scene had been cleaned up.
that's correct.
And then, in one of the more dramatic moments of the trial, defense attorneys called to the stand the man they'd built their case around.
Call your next witness, please. All right, Bo Duke.
Getting Bo into the courtroom was one thing, getting him to answer questions was another.
How'd you get here today?
on the advice of counsel, I'll be invoking my fifth amendment right not to provide testimony today.
Mr. Duke, do you intend to invoke your fifth amendment right to every question?
I do, your honor.
Any reason to continue this? You beat excuse me. Podcaster Payne Lindsey
I think that whole scene painted a picture for the jury. This guy doesn't look like he's a good guy, and he is refusing to talk about this,
when you plead the fifth, generally, jurors are wondering what you're hiding.
you swear that the testimony you're gonna give today will be the truth.
There was only one person the defense believed could convince the jury Ryan himself.
Okay, Mr.
Ryan gave his news story about what happened that Saturday night when Tara disappeared. He said he was partying with his brother, a friend, and Bo at their house, drinking and smoking pot.
How'd you handle the tequila and the beer that night? I got see, did you throw up? Yes, sir.
According to Ryan, Bo woke him around eight a. m. Ryan was hung over and still in the bathroom after getting sick. He thought Bo looked like he'd been up all night.
How would you describe just his overall demeanor when he woke you up? He was upset, uh, shaking, almost, just, you know, tell something was wrong. What did Bo Duke say to you when he woke you up that morning? He said he killed Tara.
He told jurors he later saw a purse sitting on a table.
And do you remember anything specifically about the purse or the wallet?
Yes, sir, I remember I could see the driver's license through the sleeve of the wallet.
And whose driver's license did that appear to be? It was Miss Grinstead's.
Ryan said he wanted to return the purse to Tara and make sure she was okay, so he got in his car and drove to that payphone.
You stop at the Suwannee Swifty store, and did you use the payphone? Yes, sir, I did.
And did you try to call Miss Grinstead?
No, sir, I didn't have the number. I called four one one to get the phone number.
He admitted calling four one one and getting her phone information, but said Tara never answered. He returned home, he said, unconvinced that Bo had actually killed Tara.
I still think he's screwing with me, you know, I think this is a joke.
He realized it wasn't when he said Bo took him to his uncle's pecan orchard and showed him a body in a clearing.
He grabs her arm and just flips her over. Does he look at you?
yes, sir. He he looks at me and says, I told you
That's when Ryan said he got a look at Tara's body.
She was beat up, she had bruises on her arms and legs. I said I wouldn't have recognized You
He did.
Did he touch the body or anything before?
he did.
What did he do?
He, he pushes up her shirt, starts fondling her.
Did he look at you when he did that?
it was like I wasn't there, you know, I. I remember telling him to stop, and I remember how he looked at me, you know, it was like I'd never seen him before.
After that, he told the jury that he and Bo took wood from a barn.
I figure out what he, you know, he's thinking of burning.
Figure out what he, you know, he's thinking of burning.
What happens next? What's your, what's your reaction at this point?
Yeah, a vomit, that's what I'm driving. I'm crying.
Does Bo say anything?
He starts laughing at me.
He and Bo moved Tara's body to the edge of the orchard, Ryan said, where Bo then set it on fire.
How did your experience involving Miss Grinstead's body impact you?
Think it ruined me.
Ryan testified he attempted suicide as his life had spiraled out of control. His drug use got so bad he ended up on kidney dialysis.
Yeah, I know, yeah, I was sick.
And on the day he made that videotaped police statement, Ryan said he was under the influence.
I took a a morphine pill, uh, took a percocet, uh, probably a couple vicodin, uh, smoked some pot. You know, I was up all night, I was shook up.
Why did you take the pills that you took?
I knew I wasn't coming home, you know, so I just took what I had.
Why didn't you tell anybody what happened?
I didn't think anybody would believe me.
Were you afraid of Bo? Yes, sir,
I'm gonna say he had killed somebody, and there's a reason enough to be scared of somebody.
Why did you decide that you were gonna take the the blame for Miss Grinstead's death?
Cause I don't think Bo will ever tell the truth.
The defense left those jurors with one final message.
Did you break into Miss Grinstead's house on October twenty second or twenty third of 2005? No, sir, I did not. Did you ever strike Tara Grinstead?
did you ever strike Tara Grinstead?
No, sir, did you murder Tara Grinstead?
No, sir, I did not.
He was firm in what he was saying, he seemed emotional about it, seemed broken up about it. And as I looked over at the jury, you could kinda begin to wonder, is the jury actually believing this?
But Ryan may not have been ready for what was coming next,
You're willing to lie when the stakes are high, correct?
No, ma'am.
and the trial's most stunning moment was still ahead. it was Not at all, What you wanted,
not at all. I cried for days. I was devastated.
if the defense thought it made some headway with Ryan Duke's testimony,
Is that you're willing to lie when the stakes are high, correct?
No, ma'am.
prosecutor J. D. Hart was ready to dismantle it piece by piece on cross-examination. Starting with Ryan's claim that he discovered Tara's purse and license in his house.
And the identification that you saw was her Georgia driver's license, Yes, ma'am, and right under the name was her address, correct?
yes, ma'am.
So why, the prosecutor asked, did Ryan need to call four one one to get Tara's address to return the purse?
You didn't use the address that was on her driver's license to find out where she lived?
I didn't think to look at the address.
The prosecutor further challenged Ryan's claim that he was concerned about Tara.
But you didn't go to the police for them to check to see if she was okay, correct?
No, ma'am, I didn't. You told
And questioned why he was now saying he had lied to police.
You told Agent Chidell that you hit her, correct?
Yes, ma'am, I told him that.
And you're now saying that was a lie, Yes, ma'am, and you've already told this jury that you're claiming you don't know how she died, correct?
I don't.
So you came up with an idea of how you think she may have died.
Yes, ma'am.
She pressed a final point. Why would Ryan take the fall for such a serious crime?
you want the jury to believe that you lied and confessed to a murder you didn't commit because you were scared of Bo Dukes, right?
I lied and confessed, cause I did not think Bo would ever tell the truth about what happened, about what he did to her.
With that, it was time for closing arguments.
You may make your closing to the jury.
The defense focused on perhaps the most damning piece of evidence against Ryan, the glove with his DNA.
There's only one explanation for that glove.
Ryan's attorney, John Merchant, told the jury someone deliberately placed it in Tara's yard, a possibility he argued even the GBI couldn't rule out.
They considered that it had been planted. And that I'm telling you that that's what our theory is, is that Bo did, did Bo did this on purpose.
And ended with this.
Bo Duke's should be sitting in that chair, not Ryan. Bo Duke's should be on trial for the murder of Tara Grinstead, not Ryan.
As for the prosecution, Brad Rigby delivered a passionate closing argument, insisting the right man was on trial.
Ryan Duke, the man in
that chair confessed to the murder of
He confessed with the words of his own mouth, the words expressed from his own thoughts.
Yes, ma'am.
He convicts himself by his own words.
It was now in the jury's hands, and after eight hours of deliberation,
The state of Georgia versus Ryan Alexander Duke.
a verdict.
Find the defendant count one malice murder not guilty, count two felony murder not guilty, count three felony murder not guilty.
It was not at all what you wanted,
Not at all.
your emotions when that not guilty is read, not guilty of murder.
I cried for days. I was devastated.
Ryan Duke is acquitted of murder.
We never thought in a million years he'd be acquitted. You know, we had DNA evidence from the crime scene, we had his confession. not guilty,
Ryan was found guilty on one count concealing Tara's death.
Ryan's reaction with the verdict. He had this whole David and Goliath belief his whole life, and he's the little guy, And and the little guy won.
His attorney later spoke with the jurors.
they did not believe that Ryan was capable of doing this. They fully believed that Bo was capable of doing this, and they thought that the police had got it wrong. Um, and that they really had had blinders on to what really happened the entire time.
Ryan received the maximum sentence, ten years with time served. He's scheduled to be released early next year. Bo Dukes, meanwhile, could remain behind bars until twenty forty-four unless he's granted parole earlier. The DA. at the time said there was no evidence Bo killed Tara. In an email to Dateline, Bo wrote, In my 2017 interview with the GBI, I gave a comprehensive account of my actions. I recognize that my past actions give people reason to question my credibility, but I have not changed my account and stand by it today.
And in the years since this story first aired, Tara's fellow teacher, Wendy McFarland, passed away. As for Tara's family and friends, they've been left with more questions than closure.
It changed me, it made me a different person than what I could have been.
Many of them, including Dana, still wonder about Ryan's role in Tara's murder.
I do think it's very crazy that he could make a confession. His DNA was found on the glove, and yet he's still kinda getting away with it.
As painful as it was to hear that verdict, Maria says she'll always remember Tara as she was, the beautiful small-town teacher who touched so many lives.
She's never gonna age. If anything comes out of it in a in a positive thing, she's always gonna be that beautiful person that she was, and nothing's ever gonna change that.
That's all for this edition of Dateline, and don't forget to check out our Talking Dateline podcast, in which we'll go behind the scenes of tonight's episode. Available Wednesday in the Dateline feed, wherever you get your podcasts. We'll see you again next Friday at nine eight central. I'm Lester Holt for all of us at NBC News. Good night.