The Orchard

Tonight on "Dade Live." She was so proud of that crown. [SCREAMING] It's just heartbreaking to get justice for Tara. I was going to 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. Latex Club 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 answer. Here comes me, this millennial podcaster. Your podcast shook the trees. Someone felt pressured enough to actually come forward. He just told me what happened. A lot of wicked, wicked things. We're always told monsters don't exist, but they do. 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 20-year-old mystery with a stunning new ending? I'm Lester Holt. And this is "Dade Live." [MUSIC PLAYING] 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 backsearching for Tara Grinstead. The mystery put this small town on the national radar. What happened to Tara Grinstead? It's a case date line has covered from the beginning. A beauty queen and a teacher is missing. And one we have stayed on for 20 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 Osila, Georgia moved at its own easy pace. Did you feel like Osila was this adilic, Mayberry kind of place? Oh yeah, so you could go walking at night and have no worries anything would happen. I mean, to red light town. That's all it is. And so, of link of an eye, and you're done. And nothing brought this close knit community together, quite like the annual sweet potato festival. Saturday, October 22nd, Dana Wilder was preparing for the festival's upcoming pageant with the help of her teacher, Tara Grinstead. I actually walked her out to the car that night. And the last things that we said was we were going to talk Monday about the pageant and some things that we could improve on. A hug or a kiss or a thank you. Just a hug 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 McFarlane, heard from her a short time later. Tara said she was on her way to a friend's barbecue. Did she sound happy that night? 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 friend 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, which I thought maybe she just had a long night. But her mom was calling and she was definitely worried. Tara's mom kept calling her daughter all Sunday. Hello. If you leave her message, I'll call you back. Thank you. Tara's mom, would you please tell me that? I'm just going to get worried. I'm just going to give you some time. She's not answering the phone. We can't find her. I can't get a hold to her. On Monday, Dana got to her first class. And on the inner comments said, Ms. Grinstead, please report to your classroom. She was such a responsible person. I know, 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 O'Silla. And when she arrived at Tara's house, the police were already there. Tara, are you there? Yes. That's chilling when you pull up in their police cars. Her car's there. 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. Yeah, that was telling you she came home. She came from the barbecue, from the barbecue, and got in the bed 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. OK, so that's another indication that she went to bed. She would have never 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 O'Silla 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 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 crime scene tech about what they're seeing inside the house? The house had no forceful entry evidence. There was nothing to indicate that the locks had been broken or doors had been broken. 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 light takes 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. Absolutely. 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 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. This is dealing. 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. Be sure to be aware of what it was. It just brought fear into all of us. [MUSIC] Dana Wilder couldn't understand how her teacher, Tara Grinstead, had gone missing in their quaint town. Everything I ever felt about it was still had changed. Because this was your sanctuary, your safe place, this little sweet town, and now one of its shining stars is missing. And nobody's heard from her. In the days after Tara disappeared, a reward was offered for information about her whereabouts. And of Syla's residence 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. 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. Do you just start looking at various places in town? Well, where she would have been, where she had gone. I checked, ditches, I checked. The local park, search parties, covered miles of ground. Such a sinking. Oh, feeling so helpless. 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 Brinson. As she grew up, Tara channeled those natural gifts to become a standout and local beauty pageants. She actually won our hometown harness festival pageant. And that was it for her. She took off with a 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, Mr. Fowler. which qualified her for the Miss Georgia pageant. She must have been over the moon. She was the happiest I've ever seen her. She was so proud of that crown. She was trying to get prepared for a lot of hard work to weaken 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 we could be in. Tara was offered a job at Irwin County High School in Osula, and for seven years, she taught her favorite subject, history. She had her German Shepherd, Dolly Madison, and her cat, Herman Townmage. So she loved her history. Historical figures, yes. Did everyone want her class? Oh, yes. You definitely wanted Miss Grand Stead'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 things like that having children. And 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 that just didn't work out. So I know that she had just some inner turmoil. Investigators learned about Tara's state of mind, and just how troubled she was. She had made statements to several people that she would kill herself 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 a consideration that she had done something she might have pulled a stunt. This was right on the heels of the Jennifer Will Banks Run away by case, yes. Jennifer Will Banks 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's 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 time. And I beg them, please, 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. 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 going to 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 30-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 Ocila faced an invasion of TV personalities like Nancy Grace. Tara Grinstead, H-353. To an extent this was catnip for the media. Tony Thomas, an Atlanta-based reporter, covered the case from the beginning. She's a high school teacher, center of a small town, beauty queen, a good-looking younger woman. It had all the characteristics that make people want to pay attention to that story. The White Hot Spotlight is suddenly on Ocila, Georgia, a small town USA, something you don't want. You do not want. Everyone came and 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 a salient. So investigators look for intimate details that could turn into leads and mind her best friend for information. I remember coming to terms with the fact that I was going to 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. I have to remind myself that, yes, but there's still a lot of guilt. Maria divulged to law enforcement and 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 Captain Heath Dykes of the 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 let her know he had been by. What is this relationship? Why is he tracking down? He had a romantic relationship with her. They knew each other and had reacquainted somewhat recently and had basically an affair. So you're saying an affair? He's not single? No, he was married at the time and was having an affair with her. Hey, I don't know how you speak me to come see you. When police checked Tara's answering machine, they found more than 10 messages that Heath left on Sunday. But they don't know why he had heard from me this day, but I couldn't tell if he had been there. He had been calling me again. But apparently I'm kind of worried about his issue. He hadn't called me all day. That's why he sent me off by now several times. They kind of escalated in urgency. He's becoming more and more urgent. You don't want to help us by emergency. Let me know you okay. It's morning and morning. It's my last message I'm leaving. This is kind of like the plot thickens here, that now you've got a married man really trying to get a hold 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 Osele Police Department, Dykes was there, and I knew 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 1027, while she was still at the cookout. And they had basically made arrangements 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 eat 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. 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 want to 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. Yeah, Yellow, do you feel good now? Oh, yes. I love it. What are your color? It's one of my brightest shows that I'm happy first. That was well-liked. People knew who she was. Which could make someone a target. Absolutely, she could have been a target. But who's 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. 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. Oh. The other profile was of an unknown male. So that suggested, obviously, that 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 19-year-old former student of Tara's. Maria also knew about Anthony. She told me that she had a missile. - A little obsession with her. - You think Anthony was obsessed with? - Yes. - Tara, I do. - Based on your conversations with Tara. - Yes, I think that he had an obsession with her. And 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's got very upset because heat dikes was in the house at the time and began beating on the door 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 don't think Anthony Vickers knew that heat dikes 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 one of the reasons why we were having a conversation about, you know, some of her fears about living alone and things that 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 wanted to tell me basically his side of the story but I was like, I just wanna know, 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. - This was a secret relationship. - 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, he's a former student in an 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 Osila. 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 a fabulous match. He was a very well-mannered young man, respectful. Marcus was a very huge love in Tara's life. She's very dedicated to him. Tara and Marcus had been together for over five years. He was a former Osila police officer and later became an army ranger serving tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. So Marcus was someone that Tara could envision a life with. 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, her heart wasn't moving on. - And things hadn't ended well. - No. - Things did not end well. She was incomplete 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. - They'd had several volatile bites and a 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 it was so, it's so crazy because it's small town and Tara knew the dad of the girl. And so it was kind of, 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 don't, you don't know what goes around. - Yeah, she could have pushed the wrong buttons. The worst went through my mind with Marcus. - Then Maria ran into him in town and the days after Tara went missing. - And then just asked him, you know, hey, if he's seen her, what, what do you know? - Did he seem concerned? - Not really. 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? (dramatic music) - Just about any man who knew Tara in Tineo Silla 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 at choosing 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 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 disappearance. So we had to work around that. - What was his demeanor like? - 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 O'Silla 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 he was set. - Marcus told us he and Tara clicked from the moment they met. - I would classify both of us as ambitious. She had goals. She was very independent, strong, world woman. - And then did you find from there that you've 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 helped that relationship grow. Marcus as they started slow, but before they knew it, they'd been together for years. - When I graduated US Army Ranger School, she penned my Ranger tab on for me. - That's a big deal? - Yeah. - 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. - Mm-hmm. - And you just weren't ready. - Oh, it was not ready. - For marriage. - It 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 the relationship ended. - Tara had a hard time with that. She also made an issue of the age of one of the girls that you dated, she was 18. - Well, which is, I did not. I was not dating someone 18 at the time. - So that's false. - I was dating someone 21 years of age. - She was in law enforcement, and I choose not to devote 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, 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? I tried to be his general with the situation as I could. - Investigators believe Tara disappeared late Saturday night into early Sunday morning. Marcus says during those hours, he caught up with friends at a couple of bars, then met up with a former coworker from the O'Silla 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 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 O'Silla, 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 experience. explosive allegation. - That's a heavy accusation. - What'd you say to her? - I was forward 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, as 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, opportunity, definitely had the training. And he's an ex-army ranger. - For Tara to had vanished without a clue, you've got to think who's capable of doing that? - Some said that 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 do. - Because a no-silla officer was part of his alibi from that night. Whisper Swirled about a small town police coverer. What did you make though of that theory, that the 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 whistle blower? Some body's gonna speak out. - But Marcus says the rumor that hurt him the most, the idea that you were verbally abusive, that it was out there floating around. - Well, I mean, obviously, as you know, I was floored. - Were you ever abusive to Tara? - No. - Did you ever hit Tara? Did you ever hurt her in any way? - No, no, I've never hit a harmed any female. The only times I've ever hit her harm someone is in defense, but no, I've never hit her harm to 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. - Why do you show me to be the person who did that? - A faceless man identifying himself as Tara's killer. - It was surreal. It's just weird. (dramatic music) - 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. - The not knowing is complete torture. - Where is she? Who did this? - Yeah. - So many unanswered questions and it's so hard because you think, why can't we have these answers? Why is it like this? Why do you have an 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. And I say all the time, she mourned herself to death. - She died of a broken heart. - Absolutely, because her life was her daughter and she could not go on without her. - With nobody and no answers, Rothwell remains stumped. - 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 it remains so to this day. - Every piece of evidence in the Tara Grinsett case came through this GBI facility. - Every piece came through this GBI, region 13 office, every single bit of it. - Including that latex glove that produced two DNA profiles, Tara's and an unknown males. - The glove was everything in this case. - The glove was the link to identifying who did this. That was 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 swapped. Your own husband, my own husband was swapped. - What are you surmising is happening? If they're swapping all these people, they have no clue. - No matter how many people we collected samples from, none of them were matching 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. - 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 unmute you because the few names of people that helped save my dad. - He made a stunning claim. He'd killed 16 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 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 an ISP address at a certain time. - Investigators connected the address to a man named Andrew Haley, a 26 year old ruffer 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. - 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 popular person amongst several people. - Agent Rothwell was nearing 31 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 terror grin state case. - It's about how to secret. - Yeah, he had a secret. - He showed me where it was and for doubt got out. - Enough probably because it was discovered so we could swear out in a restaurant. - I was absolutely shocked. (soft music) - 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 nice career and I had a lot of successes. But this, you know, this was a failure. - The 2005 disappearance and likely murder of terror grin instead. - This case became part of me. I had relationships with everybody in the office in the case agent that was assigned, kept me a pride of things. - Then in 2016. - Your team gets a bombshell call out of the blue about Tara's case. - Absolutely. - 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 and old army buddy shared with John back in 2006 while the two were in basic training. The man's name was Bode. dukes. He was from Ocila. It was Christmas, 2006, and you two come up with a plan. Yeah. That you're going to go back to Georgia with Bo. Yeah. As you're sightseeing and taking in the town, a billboard catches your attention. Yeah, it's a, you know, super bright billboard 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 it 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, remember that billboard, you know, you'd ask 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 a fast far away from this dude as possible. 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 and 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, 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 and 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, man 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 and basic with me and that's it. Did you ever bring it up again with him? No. When basic training was over, John says he was finally ready to call the police a couple months later. Yes. Who do you call the Osilla 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. No. No. The Osilla 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 have heard of? Bo Dukes was not anybody that we knew. Bo was the sion, I guess, so to speak, of a prominent family in Irwin County, but we weren't aware of him. But he was easy enough to find. He was living with his mother about 40 minutes north of Osilla. The agent asked Bo to meet at a nearby police station and recorded the conversation. So you were around when Tara went missing initially? Yeah. Did you know Tara? She was my a lot of great 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? That could be. Maybe from Texas. 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. Might have, yeah, I can't remember much about him. The agent kept pressing, digging for information about Tara's disappearance. He said you made some comments that, you know, at the time he kind of dismissed us, just, you know, alcohol, talking, yeah, be out. 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 mean, now you understand why I have to talk to you, you know, it's just no other things. No, no, no. Though suddenly Bo did share this about that drunken week with his army buddy. We went to a bar one night in Tipton 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 with my truck. He admitted that Mr. McCullough had come home with him for Christmas but then accused him of stealing his car and he basically tried to cast doubt on Mr. McCullough and he, you know, denied knowing any information that was specific to Mr. McCullough's account. Still Bo seemed eager to help. We actually do have some DNA that we recovered from some evidence at her residence. I do, I do. And that's where I, do you mind if I go ahead and get a sample of your DNA? Absolutely not. And then he gave a buckle 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 tear a story. A new unlikely sleuth was re-examining 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 going to do this, I have to want to really solve this. By 2016, the world's of podcasting and true crime had collided. Young filmmaker, Payne Lindsay, was eager to try his hand at both. How did you go about finding which case he 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. My grandma was from Tifton, which is only 15 minutes or so from O'Sillah. I was like, all right, I'll call grandma. Hey grandma, do you remember this case? Tara Grinstead and missing woman, teacher. She said my friend Melba used to work with her or friends with her or something. She calls me back and says, yeah, just talked to Melba. Melba said she saw Tara. That's that already nice she went missing. My mind was just completely blown. He took it as a sign and launched his podcast up and vanished. What were the particular elements of the case that really drew you in? Her car was found in her car port. 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 Lindsay. I wanted to talk to you about the Tara Grinstead case. Many promptly hung up on him. The Tara Grinstead case. A podcast, a documentary story. You've 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 definitely, you know, turning over some rocks that people probably didn't won't turn. Was there part of you even though it was unsettling to have it out there again? Did you hope that it was maybe going to 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 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 podcasts early days. Everyone surrounding this case had their guard up. Here comes me, this millennial podcaster, trying to solve the mystery. So I realized that I was going for the big people 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 new Tara. He also decided to retrace Tara's final steps. You went to the house where the barbecue happened, where Tara was that night. Yes. 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 or hands and knees and we're looking at this 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 were these white objects that looked like it could have been bone. I couldn't tell what it was. Pain 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 Pain was hoping for. The GBI made an announcement. said that they did perform a search and that it was, in fact, animal bones. This was just the first of many wild turns in my investigation and really kind of toughened me up and getting me prepared for a roller coaster ride of red herrings and white rabbits in this case. Eventually, he set his constant calls and doorknox 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 saw each other after one or four year or two. Okay, so this relationship you had with Tara? Was it at all sexual? Oh, yeah. Vickers said he and Tara had become close after he graduated. Did you have any involvement in Tara's disappearance? No, no. Did you believe him? I did believe him. Gradually, Osila took notice of the brash young podcaster and he began netting more interviews, not that every guest was a hit. If you go to Osila and take somebody else, we'd you now. Okay. What? Well, this is a weird place. Tara's friend, Wendy McFarland, felt the podcaster was trying to make his mark at Osila'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've got kind of got a ticking time bomb in your hands. I did the best thing I needed 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 to each other on Tinder? He was handsome to me and we just, when we talked on the phone and we were taxed, he had, he was funny. His name, Bo Dukes, Brooke 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? He said, "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, you're going to tell me, you're going 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 got myself into? 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 kind of got a ticking time bomb in your hands. Yeah. Yeah. I got out of there. I told my mom. My mom told law enforcement. The law enforcement came to me. I told them everything. All right. Today's date is February the 21st, 2017, time is 9 AM. 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. The night 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. But Bo said a day after Ryan's admission, news of Tara's disappearance was all over town. And so you can front Ryan again? Yes. Again, he said Ryan told him what he'd done. And this time, Ryan could prove it. And he asked me to come with him out to the beginning, which I went with him. And he drove back into the back and he showed me where her body was. And I asked him exactly what it happened. He told me he'd used the credit card to get it through the front door. He'd junk on her while she was in bed and strangled her right there in her bed. Bo said Ryan asked for help getting rid of Tara's body. 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 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 probably calls 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 33 years old, had been working odd jobs and living in O'Silla 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 the students that she loved and tried to protect, you know, every day and devoted her life to and then one of them is going to be responsible for her murder. Yeah, my heart broke for her again. 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 pain, who'd been looking into the case for months, was stumped by the arrest. 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, "You all heard of these names before." The couple said that shortly after Tara disappeared, Bo and Ryan were overheard at a party. Or the ones that killed her and we burned her up in a pit, 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've considered myself a competent investigator and we could have solved this case at least nine years before it was solved 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 is out for self-preservation. That's what Voduks is all about is self-preservation." Finally, in 2019, Voduks 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 the Tara Vista family, I'm truly sorry." At sentencing, he begged Tara's family for forgiveness. "My actions are calorie, catalyst, and crude." Voduks later pleaded guilty to reduce charges in those rape cases. He is serving a combined 25-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'll scare and just seem like I may ever bad season worse." A decade's old mystery was finally coming to a head in May of 2022, as Ryan Duke's murder trial got underway in Ossilla. Tara's former student, Dana, had been waiting for this moment since she was a teenager. "It had been so long and so many of us have been involved in this situation that we want an answer. 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 not." For Maria, being in the courtroom was deeply personal. "It is very hard to look at someone that you know to the life of somebody that you love, not want to attack." In her opening statement, prosecutor J.D. Hart went straight to the state's key evidence. "You'll hear from him at 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 Chodell took the stand and walked the jury through that video. Quiet and withdrawn, Ryan told Chodell he felt relieved to finally open up about that October night. "I don't know. Well, myself, I mean, I went through the very lock of the toll. He claimed he wanted money for drugs, so he randomly picked Tara's house to rob. "I'm working with a credit card with a turn-to-lock, I've seen her purse. And, basically, I know she says something to grab you on the shoulder and I view her." Ryan described hitting Tara once, becoming frightened, then fleeing the house and going home. As the son 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 is this? It's a pipe on a dial phone. We get the number and they wouldn't I hand, sir." GBI agents had kept one critical piece of evidence from the media. The day after Tara went missing, they learned someone called 411 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 it's when she did you do something hard." "Yes, sir, as I went back to the end, 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." "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 got a truck going to half a bar with burns of trash on top of it." Once the interview ended, Ryan not only rode out of full confession. He also agreed to go with agents to the orchard. "And you haven't been back out here for months." 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 bones in this particular area?" Yes. While the bones were too badly burned to yield DNA, the expert could determine where some of them came from. "This is 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 Victor." She called a GBI forensic expert to the stand, who said the results left little doubt. "In the inner piece of the glove matched Ryan Alexander Duke 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 fingerprint 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 both 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 challenge is 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 biggest hurdles that we've gotten this case, because juries believe confession." 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 Duke's. "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." 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 or 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 really easy with a card." 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. "I'd be inconsistent with Mr. Duke being able to gain entry into that house using a credit card only on the lower floor." "Yep, yes." The defense then attacked the likelihood Ryan could have killed Tara with one punch. Nobody is so good that they're going to kill someone with their hands, and there's no evidence of a struggle, no evidence of blood, nothing like that. "I'm employed 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 cleanup evidence. There was no evidence that 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. "How are you next witness, please?" "All right, go do it." Getting bow into the courtroom was one thing, getting him to answer questions was another. "How'd you get here today?" "I'll need lots of counsel, I'll be looking my fifth member right, not to provide testimony to that." "Mr. Duke, do you intend to invoke your fifth amendment right to every question?" "I do, y'all." "Any reason to continue this?" "No, touch." "You made cheating." "Podcaster, Payne Lindsay." "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." Right. You swear to the testimony you're going to get today to be the truth. There was only one person the defense believed could convince the jury Ryan himself Ryan gave his news story about what happened that Saturday night when Tara disappeared He said he was parting with his brother a friend and bow 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 bow woke him around 8 a.m Ryan was hung over and still in the bathroom after getting sick. He thought bow looked like he'd been up all night How would you describe this is overall demeanor when he woke you up? He was upset shaking almost just You know, so you tell something was wrong. What did bow do 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 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 Greensteads Ryan said he wanted to return the purse to Tara and make sure she was okay So we got in his car and drove to that pay phone you stop at the swanis with the store and Did you use the pay phone? Yes, sir? I did and did you try to call miss Greenstead? No, sir. I didn't have the number. I called 4-1-1 To get the phone number He admitted calling 4-1-1 and getting her phone information, but said Tara never answered He returned home. He said unconvinced that bow had actually killed Tara. I still think he screw him with me You know, I think this is a joke He realized it wasn't when he said bow 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 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 It's had bruises on her home to me I said I wouldn't recognize Did he touch the body or anything before he did what did he do? He He pushes up her shirt Starts following them there Did he look at you when he did that it was like I wasn't there, you know, I remember telling him to stop and I remember how he looked at me You know it's like I'd never seen him before After that, he told the jury that he and bow took wood from a barn. I figure out what he you know, he's taking a burn What happens next what's your what's your reaction at this point? Yeah, I bomb it Drive in a crime There's both say anything he starts to laugh at the name He and bow moved Tara's body to the edge of the orchard Ryan said where bow then said it on fire How did your experience involving this green said's body impact you? Like 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, yeah, and on the day he made that videotaped police statement Ryan said he was under the influence. I took a morphing field Took a percussette Probably a couple biking and smoke some pot You know up all night. I was shook up. Why did you take the pills? I took I Know I wasn't coming home, you know, so I just took what I had why didn't tell anybody what happened I didn't think anybody would believe me. Were you afraid above? Yes, sir I said he Killed somebody and the reason enough to be scared of somebody Why did you decide that you were gonna take the the blame for miss green sets down? Because I don't think both or tell the truth The defense left those jurors with one final message Did you break into miss green sets house on October 22nd or 23rd 2005? No, sir. I did not did you ever strike tear green said? No, sir. Did you murder tear green said? 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 kind of 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 trials 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 JD Hart was ready to dismantle it piece by piece on cross-examination Starting with Ryan's claim that he discovered Tara's person license in his house and the identification that you thought 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 411 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 their address So you're not saying 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 agents should help 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 the 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. I 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 Dicks, right? I lied and confessed because 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 Terry's yard Possibility he argued even the GBI couldn't rule out it considered there it had been planted and that I'm telling you that that's where our Theories is that Bo did did Bo did this on purpose and ended with this Bo Dukes should be sitting in that chair not Ryan Bo Dukes should be on trial for the murder of Terry Grinstead not Ryan As for the prosecution Brad Riggby delivered a passionate closing argument Insisting the right man was on trial Ryan Dukes The man in that chair Confessed to the murder of Terry Grinstead He confessed with the words of his own mouth the word expressed from his own thoughts he can mix 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 We find a 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 Was devastated Ryan Duke is acquitted of murder we never thought a million years he'd be acquitted You know we had DNA evidence from the crime scene. We had his confession Ryan was found guilty on one count concealing Terry's death Ryan's reaction with the verdict we had this whole David and Glyeth belief his whole life and he's the little guy 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 the bow was capable of doing this and they thought that the police had got it wrong 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 scheduled to be released early next year Bodukes meanwhile could remain behind bars until 2044 unless he's granted parole earlier The DA at the time said there was no evidence bow killed Tara In an email to date line bow wrote in my 2017 interview with the GBI. I gave a comprehend of 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 kind of 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 going to age. If anything comes out of it in a positive thing, she's always going to be that beautiful person that she was. And nothing's ever going to change that. That's all for this edition of Date Line. And don't forget to check out our talking date line podcast, in which we'll go behind the scenes of tonight's episode, available Wednesday in the Date Line feed, wherever you get your podcasts. We'll see you again next Friday at 9/8 Central. I'm Lester Holt, for all of us at NBC News. Good night.