by Marilyn Bardsley
OCILLA, GA (Crime Library) —Tara Grinstead's students and friends are gathering at her home in Ocilla today with cards, and banners and maybe even a couple of prayers. It's not a celebration, though today is Tara Grinstead's 31st birthday. It's a memorial to a mystery.
No one knows why she is not home in Ocilla, GA to celebrate her birthday. All anyone knows for certain is that her disappearance has left a deep hole in the community, and a stranger, peering in that crevice where Tara used to be can see the first cracks of a deep, subterranean crevice that threatens to rip this close knit rural community apart.
The vivacious high school history teacher and former beauty queen was last seen on Sat. Oct. 22 after returning home from a dinner with some friends. Officially, Tara Grinstead is a missing person.
Since her disappearance there was an enormous community effort to locate Tara: some 50 government agencies and scores of civilian volunteers combed over 370 square miles of rural Irwin County using the most sophisticated search techniques available. A web site was created to provide news of the search and Tara's family members tirelessly provided interviews to the media. There was a palpable spirit of cohesion and cooperation that infused the small city of Ocilla.
Perhaps it was there all the time, those fault lines that divide this tiny city, but no one noticed because Ocilla and the surrounding communities have been consumed by the search efforts and the wave of media attention. But last week when the intense Irwin County grid-by-grid search was completed without any sign of Tara and the first wave of media fervor subsided, something changed.
Ocilla no longer had the excitement of the media spotlight and the feverish urgency of the searchers to talk about. Instead, its citizens became aware of a handful of people upon whom suspicion had settled, men with whom the stunningly attractive high school teacher had relationships of one sort or another. Initially, the media had focused on compelling version of the story of Tara's life, a tale of a former beauty queen had been packaged to the media and perhaps the community as a whole as a woman who had faithfully carried a torch for six years for a former Ocilla police officer (Marcus Harper) who after 9-11 fought for his country in Afghanistan and Iraq. Then, so the story went, when the boyfriend came home, he and Tara realized that they had grown apart and that marriage was not in the offing. It was a story that in many respects touched a nerve in the greater American psyche, a bittersweet microcosm of similar stories that are playing out all over America in this time of war.
Next Page
New Phase in Search for Tara Grinstead
One Aspect of the Search for Tara Grinstead Has Been Completed, But the Probe Continues
Woman's T-Shirt Reportedly Sent for Testing
Private Agent brings new leads to Tara Grinstead Probe
Beauty Queen & Teacher Tara Grinstead Goes Missing
Return to full Tara Grinstead coverage
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