the stuff i learned in her class i never would forget. and the site i didn t know we had at the school was her pageant. she loved pageantry. ever since then the pageants haven t done well i didn t think they would do it well. the school used to have they didn t do it any more. i think somebody she knew to be honest with you i feel like maybe one day the truth will come out. it will never be the same. hopefully one day tara will come back. tara s case may only be solved if new evidence surfaces or the dna or the glove points to a specific suspect or if someone in ocilla who knows something talks. tara grinstead made the beloved figures for the small georgia town. her friends and family would
there were long periods of time they didn t get to see or talk to each other. and i m sure that was hard on the relationship. tara was really ready for marriage, and marcus was not. she had told him that she felt like that she needed to move on if things were not going to work out. i think she was kind of trying to maybe put a little bit of pressure on him to commit to the marriage. she had been in love with him for six years, and even though she broke up with him she just had really a hard time letting him go. in october 2005, marcus returned from deployment and was seen diriving around town. though not a couple, tara was devastated. october 20th, thursday morning, we exchanged e-mails. i had just sent her one saying, i was thinking about you today. hope you have a good day, and i love you. and she wrote back and said, thanks, it s been rough lately with marcus. he s back in town, and he didn t
them to the event. senior homecoming representative. in the evening she went to a barbecue at this house just a few blocks from her home. about 11:00 that night tara told the people at the cookout that she was tired after working with the girls all that afternoon and going to the pageant, and she said she was going to go home and watch a video of the pageant. the next day, sunday, she had plans to meet up with her mother fay and best friend maria woods. she was supposed to come to her mother s that next sunday morning and tara didn t. so her mother and i were extremely worry and scared and i think were hoping for the best and praying she was just tired from the night before. so sunday night she was due with your mother. mother started getting frantic when she didn t call her back anytime sunday night. worried sick, tara s mother called a family friend who worked in law enforcement. who is heath dikes? he was a police detective in
out or some sort of romantic involvement recently. the investigators also looked at a former student of tara s named anthony vickers. there was a 20-year-old former student with whom tara had some sort of relationship that was very suspicious to people that knew her. most suspected there was romantic involvement. i think he was very infatuated with tara. she had spent extra time tutoring him. i think he had kind of a bad family life so he saw that as that nurturing as maybe something romantic. there was an incident where anthony came over to tara s house and was beating on the door and trying to get her to open the door. did the student actually get into the house? no, he did not. was she home at the time? she was home. neighbors actually called the police. she was just trying to talk him into leaving before the police got here. but neighbors kauld the police. this individual had been
right. they had a key. they met the chief of police. as i came on the front porch, the neighbor told me he had already been inside the house and that tara was not there. he was concerned as to her whereabouts. i, too, went inside the house and began to search for tara. inside the house looked as if she had been there earlier, was no longer there. they had a pageant the day before where girl wrz obviously getting ready inside the house. curling irons and that sort of thing were in the bathroom and jewelry and that sort of stuff laying around and clothing. the bed was unmade. phone still in the charging by the bed. we were at school so we didn t know what was going on. we didn t intentionally keep it from the kids but we didn t broadcast it. there were scary scenarios going through people s minds so we didn t want to alarm the kids if we didn t have to. when she wasn t there, we knew