by Seamus McGraw

(Continued)

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Cops Confronted Gattis With Unfounded Rumors of Affair

Officially, authorities have refused to discuss their conversations with the men in Tara 's life. Privately, however, they have insisted in recent interviews with Crime Library that their approach to the interviews with Gattis were both professional and measured. They have used the same techniques in other interviews.

All the same, Gattis said he was rankled by what he viewed as an unnecessarily aggressive and perhaps accusatory tone to the interviews. Among other things, investigators repeated rumors that Gattis had been involved romantically with Grinstead, an allegation he has repeatedly denied, saying, "she was just like a sister to me."

"What they had been told is that Anita had caught Tara and I twice and the last time a week before she disappeared," Gattis said. "But they never bothered to bring Anita in or to ask her did she really see that."

The way Gattis sees it: the very fact that he was alive and able to be asked about his alleged affair is proof that the rumor is baseless. "I wouldn't be alive right now," he said. "If you know my wife, I'd be pushing up daisies somewhere."

Frustrated by the scrutiny and what he believed to be heavy-handed treatment by the investigators, Gattis said he underwent a polygraph test  — he says he demanded it, law enforcement sources strongly dispute that, which sources have said he passed — and also decided to speak publicly about the treatment he received at the hands of investigators. And his decision to speak out, he said, has tempered the treatment he has received from investigators. "They've been a little nicer," Gattis said, adding that he received a telephone call late last week from the GBI brass informing him that he was no longer in the investigators' cross hairs. Law enforcement sources also dispute that, saying they have ruled no one in or out as a result of the investigation thus far.

But as details of Gattis' dealings with the agency began to trickle out over the past several days, often in a highly distorted way, the rumor mill in Ocilla kicked into high gear. "In a little bitty town like this, it doesn't take much," Gattis said.

And it wasn't just in the real world that Gattis was tarred. On the Internet, which can at time be as cosmopolitan as any world-class city and at other times can be as gossipy as any small town neighborhood, discussion boards lit up with unsubstantiated reports that, among other things, Gattis had been arrested. There were also posts suggesting that authorities were dragging a local pond for Grinstead's remains. The rumors continued to gather steam even after the official Find Tara website posted a statement disputing them. A spokeswoman for the Irwin County Sheriff's department said this morning that both rumors were unfounded.

"No arrests have been made," she said.

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