by Seamus McGraw

Tara Grinstead

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OCILLA, GA (Crime Library)  —It may come as a shock to many in the rumor-ravaged community of Ocilla, not to mention some in the vast and anonymous cyber world of amateur sleuths, but Dr. Larry Gattis was in his office this morning, checking medical charts and visiting with patients who wanted to discuss a variety of ailments.

He wasn't shackled, or under guard. He certainly wasn't locked away in some dismal interrogation room getting the third-degree from a band of frustrated cops probing the now three months old disappearance of Gattis' missing sister-in-law, former beauty queen and high school teacher Tara Grinstead.

"I'm here. I'm not in jail," Gattis told Crime Library in a telephone interview this morning, after a weekend of wild rumors ripped through the small Georgia town and the blogosphere suggesting, among other things that the small town physician had been arrested. "They had me dragged out of my house in shackles, and some of them had the GBI...surrounding my house."

Like much in the lingering mystery of Tara Grinstead's disappearance, the rumors of Gattis' arrest that reached a boiling point this weekend were pure fantasy. Authorities have consistently maintained that they still have not conclusively determined what happened the to the now-31-year-old high school teacher who vanished Oct. 22 after the annual sweet potato festival and dinner with friends. They have no suspects, authorities have said publicly, though they are said to be pursuing some promising leads. And privately, they have noted that even if they did, it is doubtful that Gattis would be among them.

That is not to say that the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, among other investigators, have not closely vetted Gattis, who is married to Anita Gattis, Grinstead's elder sister who has, in many respects, become the public face for Find Tara movement that has sprung up since her disappearance.

In fact, both Gattis and authorities acknowledge that investigators have aggressively quizzed the doctor, in much the same way as they have quizzed others who were close to the missing schoolteacher.  Those interrogations at some points even became heated, Gattis said. "The last one was kind of the straw that broke the camel's back," Gattis told Crime Library

The way Gattis sees it, the GBI, which has endured some measure of public criticism for the pace of the investigation and what some pundits have decried as a lack of progress, was punishing him for some of his public statements about the case. What's more, he believes, investigators were trying to curtail his personal investigation into the young woman's disappearance. Gattis has on his own identified a number of potential witnesses and traveled throughout the region to interview them.

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