300 Volunteers Set to Slog Through Muddy Swamps and Peer Into Wells For Clues. Jan 20, 2006.

By Seamus McGraw

advertisement

(Crime Library ) OCILLA, GA — Months of desperate and fruitless searches by an army of volunteers have so far yielded no clues into the disappearance of high school teacher and former beauty queen Tara Grinstead, but the missing woman's friends and family are not giving up hope.

Tomorrow, under the direction of Texas EquuSearch, teams of volunteers will fan out again through the swampy lowlands in Tara's native region of Georgia. This time, the two-day search in Irwin and surrounding counties will focus on some of the many wells that dot the countryside, said Barbara Gibson, a four-year veteran of Texas EquuSearch, in a brief telephone interview today from the organization's Dickinson, Texas headquarters. Organizers are anticipating some 300 volunteers to join the search and as in the past the effort will have a decidedly neighborly feel. Some volunteers who are less adept at slogging through the marshlands, made soggier still in the past days by steady rains, have agreed, for example, to prepare meals for the searchers.

Video camera used in wells

Searchers will also deploy boats to once again scour some of the shallow swamps in the area in some cases using sophisticated electronic devices that allow them to peer into murky waters in wells and ponds searching for visual signs of the woman.

"There are some promising locations," Gibson said.

Underwater video camera output

The search effort, which will be dispatched from what has become the command center for the Find Tara effort in Ocilla, is the latest in a series of such searches that began almost immediately after the now 31-year-old school teacher vanished Oct. 22 from her home after attending the annual sweet potato festival and having dinner with friends.

Since she mysteriously vanished, authorities have kept up what they term a vigorous investigation into the case, private investigators have fished for leads, and psychics have shared their visions with authorities and family members, all without bringing the mystery any closer to a conclusion.

Officially, authorities are still treating her disappearance as a missing person's case. But they have also not ruled out foul play in a case that has garnered national attention. In the months since she vanished, authorities have tracked down scores of people who knew her, friends, co-workers, and boyfriends in the hopes that they might shed some light on her disappearance. Some of those interviewed have submitted to polygraph tests, none of which turned up significant clues.

Those interviews, along with statements from others close to her, have yielded a picture of a young woman who — though well loved by her students and respected by her co-workers and neighbors — was also deeply emotionally overwrought, most notably because of the breakup of her six-year relationship with a former Ocilla police officer and Iraq veteran. She also was under immense pressure from her graduate studies in education, those close to her say.

Tara Grinstead

In recent weeks, investigators from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and other agencies involved in the investigation have revisited some of those already interviewed. They are said to have developed some promising leads, but so far, have turned up nothing to indicate conclusively whether the young woman was abducted or whether she engineered her own disappearance.

Return to full Tara Grinstead coverage

Photo Gallery

Video Clips

Tara's Tree

New $100,000 reward added to Tara Grinstead Case

Texas EquuSearch Brings Special Technology to Grinstead Case