by Seamus McGraw

OCILLA, GA (Crime Library) —

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Update: Nov. 19:

Beginning shortly, Texas Equusearch, the internationally known non-profit search and recovery team that recently wrapped up its search for Natalee Holloway in  Aruba , will begin combing Ocilla and its surroundings. Team members who began arriving in Ocilla Friday, volunteered to join the search for Tara, a company spokesman said Friday.

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They're far from giving up hope, they say.

But as the friends and family of Tara Grinstead conclude the third week of their so far fruitless search for the missing high school teacher and beauty queen, they are slowly coming to the realization that the ultimate answer to the mystery of her disappearance may lay far outside the boundaries of the rural Georgia county she called home.

Tara Grinstead

A source familiar with the law enforcement efforts and the family's private endeavors to find her told Crime Library that while everyone involved in the search remains committed to seeing it through to the end, they are becoming less optimistic that the missing woman will be found alive.

But they do plan to broaden their search, not just for Tara or physical evidence that might shed light on her fate, but also to identify people with whom she might have come in contact during her regular travels to and from her graduate studies and elsewhere in the region.

Tara, who would have turned 31 this week her birthday was marked by a subdued gathering of friends, students and co-workers at her home vanished Oct. 22, the night of the annual Sweet Potato Festival and beauty pageant that Grinstead had attended. According to authorities, Grinstead left the pageant and went to have dinner at the home of the former local school superintendent and his family. She was last seen around 11 p.m.

She was reported missing Monday morning when she failed to turn up at school. Police responded to her home and found little out of place. Her car was parked in the driveway, though the driver's seat seemed to have been pushed farther back than the diminutive Grinstead would have preferred. The clothes she wore that night were found in the home, buried under a pile of other clothing. Her cellular phone was also recovered at her home, though sources familiar with her habits, say it was highly unusual that she left it behind.

In the days immediately following her disappearance, the local authorities together with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation launched a massive manhunt, sending platoons of cops and volunteers out to scour the roughly 400,000 acres of Irwin County. Two weeks later, after every quadrant of the county had been searched, the official search was called off, though Tara 's family and volunteers have continued to run their own search.

Next Page

Disappearance of Tara Grinstead Divides City

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

Beauty Queen & Teacher Tara Grinstead Goes Missing

Return to full Tara Grinstead coverage

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