The Mysterious Disappearance of Tara Grinstead

Since his interview last week with Van Susteren, Harper has declined other requests for interviews. Perhaps he has good reason. Judging by the buzz on the Internet, the appearance seems to have done little to tamp down suspicion about Harper. In fact, the Internet remains abuzz with theories and speculation about the case, and many of those theories do not focus on Harper alone.

Name anyone who has ever been close to Tara and chances are that someone has mentioned them either by name or through carefully crafted innuendo in connection with Tara's disappearance.

Officially, authorities say they are paying little heed to the chatter. But privately, they acknowledge that they are monitoring the blogs and the message boards in the hopes however faint that they may lead them to someone they haven't yet interviewed who may have some critical information.

In the meantime, authorities say they remain open to any possible explanation for Tara's disappearance.

While they acknowledge that that it is plausible that the young woman might have been abducted, or in the worst case, even killed, there is also the possibility that she could no longer stand the stress of her life, her grueling study schedule, her demanding profession, her increasingly unsettled personal life.

Friends, among them some who knew about Tara's unhappy romance, have told Crime Library that it is possible that she might have run away in a fit of despondency. Though they are loath to say it some even some friends admit that it is not entirely out of the question that the bright, articulate and fiercely religious young woman might have taken her own life. 

Her family, however, refuses to believe that. They insist that suicide is not something that Tara would ever have considered and note that despite all the emotional hardships she had endured, the last time anyone saw her, just hours before she vanished, she seemed tired but content.

In their minds, whatever happened to Tara happened against her will.

Last week, after nearly two weeks of searching the vast rural county, authorities called off the officially sanctioned search for Tara though the missing person's investigation continues.

  But Tara's family, aided by volunteers, including some of Tara's fellow teachers, have vowed to continue the search until they have looked in every one of the 1,200 buildings and silos in the far flung reaches of the rural county that have not yet been searched

It's a lonely and difficult task, but Anita Gattis says she refused to give up hope.