By Seamus McGraw

Tara Grinstead

advertisement

For weeks now, the national media has been circling the tiny town of Ocilla , Georgia, waiting to swoop down on any glistening snippet of information that might add some dimension, some clue, some tantalizing new headline to the tragic and mysterious disappearance of Tara Grinstead.

Not every night, to be sure, but with striking regularity, cable news anchors, among them Greta Van Sustern, Rita Cosby, Nancy Grace and this website too, have devoted much time and space to the story. We have all offered images of the winsome, 30-year-old beauty queen and high school teacher to an audience that at times seems almost obsessed with her. We've run touching and heartfelt pleas from those closest to her for her safe return, and have reported on the speculation, much of it little more than rumor, about her possible fate.

Officially, the case remains a mystery. Authorities still insist that they have no idea what happened to Tara , and perhaps, in part, because of that very uncertainty, we remain transfixed by her. There is no question that almost everyone, the media as well as the audience, sincerely hopes for her safe return, though with each passing day, that possibility seems to fade.

Natalee Holloway

But perhaps there is also something else at work in the near obsession with Tara Grinstead. When she vanished on Oct. 22, Tara Grinstead became part of a grim sorority, a sisterhood of missing women whose cases have attracted and sustained the interest not just of a vast swath of the nation but of the media as well. The names of those in the sisterhood are practically household words. There's Natalee Holloway, the 18-year-old Alabama high school student who vanished in Aruba last spring. Her case has become an international cause célèbre, and almost a regular feature on every cable talk show, so much so that last week, in part as a result of the media attention over what it sees as the Aruban government's recalcitrance in investigating the case, the governor of Alabama called for a boycott of Aruba.

Next Page