The Mysterious Disappearance of Tara Grinstead
The Probe Begins
It was Sunday morning before the first hint of hint that something was wrong hit the small community. But even then, the people of Ocilla were not particularly alarmed. As Steve Huff wrote days after her disappearance, few eyebrows were raised when the devoutly religious 30-year-old failed to show up for church services. "Everyone has a Sunday off now and then, even the preachers," Huff wrote. "It was when Tara Grinstead wasn't greeting students with her welcoming smile on Monday morning, October 24, that co-workers and friends of the former cheerleader and Miss Tifton, GA of 1999 realized something was wrong."
By 8:50 a.m., on Monday, Oct. 24, authorities had been notified that Grinstead was gone. They searched her house, and turned up little. Her cell phone, which she never left the house without, was still inside on the charger. The clothes she had worn the night she disappeared were there. Though it took several days to find it, the necklace she wore that night was found, though the earrings, large chandelier-style earrings were not.
There were also a few puzzling details.
Her bedroom lamp, for example, was knocked askew. There was, of course, no way of telling when or how that had happened. What's more, her digital alarm clock had apparently fallen to the floor and was now six hours off, but authorities had no way of determining whether that any significance either. Perhaps the clock had simply stopped during one of the not- infrequent power outages the neighborhood had experienced. Or perhaps it meant something more. There was also the fact that the driver's seat on Tara's car had been pushed back further than the 5-foot-3 woman would have been likely to favor it. Again, the cops didn't know if it meant anything.
Finally, there was the glove, a latex glove, the kind worn by doctors, and paramedics and cops that was discovered on Tara's otherwise pristine front lawn.
As they sent the glove out to be tested for fingerprints, or other clues, the Ocilla cops realized that it was going to be a complicated missing person's case.