Deep Dive
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In the last two weeks, I've been flooded with emails and messages from locals in Osceola who are all very angry. In a very vague and misguided way, they're all angry because they feel like the podcast has disrespected them. Many of these direct messages to me were filled with threats of violence and legal action. But the strangest thing about it is that I've never once mentioned any of these people by name on this podcast. None of them.
But it seems that somewhere along the way here in recent weeks, through my investigation, I've hit a nerve in this case with a select group of people. As a general rule of thumb, I try my best to steer clear of wild speculation and to only follow the facts in this case. The problem is that in this case, as we've all learned, the facts are very hard to find. And there are several reasons for that.
One, the GBI has kept this case file, which is the largest in the history of the state of Georgia, a secret from the public for well over a decade. They chased down hundreds of leads and obtained DNA swabs from over 200 people in Tara's life, all of which had nothing to do at all with what actually happened to Tara.
And two, for the most part, before this podcast was around, almost all of Tara's close associates in her life had remained silent. And the GBI was never able to officially rule anybody out as a suspect in this case.
And finally, as we've all learned over the past few months, Bo and Ryan were not the only people who knew what happened to Tara. Unless everyone I've talked to is lying, we know there was a search that happened just a few weeks after Tara went missing, out there on the orchard, based on a tip that Ryan Duke told someone at a party one night that he killed Tara. And Bo Duke said himself that he too told multiple people about this over the years. But no one did anything.
So to me, the problem with this case is pretty clear. Secrecy and silence. A select group of people in Osceola have chosen to remain silent over the years and withhold valuable information that could have potentially solved this case as early as two weeks after Tara Grinstead disappeared. So the recent threats I've received, stemming from practically zero basis, only underscore this problem even more. I'm not pointing a finger at anyone. The GBI said Ryan Duke killed Tara. Not me.
The GBI and Bo Dukes himself said that he burned Tara's body in the pecan orchard. Not me. Close friends of Bo Dukes said that other people in their friend circle knew about this. Not me. Bo's girlfriend Brooke said that eight people were there at Bo and Ryan's house that night. Not me. So let this be a public service announcement to everyone out there. I follow the facts. And that's the only thing I'll ever report on.
If you think that these facts are wrong, then by all means, come tell the world what the real story is. And if you can't do that, then in my eyes, you're exactly the reason this case took 12 years to solve. You chose to sit back, hiding under a rock, while rumors and speculation ran wild. And now, a decade later, I choose to spend two years of my life dedicated to finding the truth in this case. And then you emerge from the woodworks, ready to sling mud, and try to paint me as the problem.
So here's my message to all of you. Don't be a coward. Your measly efforts at trying to stop me from finding the truth aren't working. And to all those people both locally in Osceola and all over the world who have shown me your support, I want you to know that I sincerely appreciate it. There's only two episodes left. Now we'll stop at nothing to find the truth.
More than 40 GBI agents swarmed a pecan orchard in Ben Hill County this afternoon. Not one, but two former students from that school under arrest. With the Antiantu and Deodosius bodily documents to the person of Tara Grinstead. Charging Ryan Alexander Duke with the murder of Tara Grinstead. From Tenderfoot TV at Industrious Atlanta, this is Up and Vanished, the investigation of Tara Grinstead. I'm your host, Payne Lindsey.
They're very well connected. They're very wealthy. They're also a bunch of hell raisers and did, you know, did a lot of bad things. There was one particular incident where a group of guys from Irwin County went over to Bent Hill County, went over to Fish Children, got in a fight with some guys over there. And they jumped on somebody with a baseball bat near a Kildee, hospitalized him, beat him very badly. And nothing ever came from it.
According to one of my early sources, Bo and Ryan's group of friends were part of a huge fight back in 2004 that left two men nearly beaten to death.
As the story goes, those group of friends were never charged. And instead, three men from Fitzgerald became the scapegoats. If this fight was so big, I figured there had to be a record of it somewhere. So I first went to the Osceola Star archives. And sure enough, Dusty knew what I was talking about right away. Somebody said something to somebody on the phone, and all of a sudden this big posse of people showed up. But the only people who got arrested were three guys from Fitzgerald. Really? Yeah.
Dusty seemed to know all about this story, and he even recalled there being an article about it in the paper back in 2004. That seemed pretty surprising to me, that a local fight would make the front page news. All accounts, this was not your typical neighborhood fight. According to witnesses, the May 2nd fight apparently broke out when a group of young men from Irwin and Ben Hill counties, about 10 to 15 in number, came to the Mystic location ready to fight.
10 to 15? Oh, I heard there were like 40 or something people there. This was a huge brawl that involved dozens of people, some reportedly with pipes and baseball bats, and it left two men nearly dead, one of them an older man in his mid-60s who apparently was just trying to break up the fight. Louis Fussell III, Joseph Stone, all Fitzgerald residents. But their own residents didn't get charged. Strange, isn't it?
As I read the names of the men in Fitzgerald who were charged in this fight, one of those names rang a bell in my head. Joey Stone, Joseph Stone, is the guy that I talked to before on the podcast who told me the story about being in the truck with Ryan. It clicked. Joey was someone I had talked to before. I had never mentioned his name in the podcast, but you probably remember hearing his story. He rode out to that orchard. It was just a few people. Maybe three trucks around the fire. Two trucks.
Joey told me about a time back in 2005 that he had been out there on the pecan orchard. He remembered there being a huge fire with trucks around it and Bo Dukes being there.
Joey sat in a truck and talked to a guy that he didn't know for about an hour that night. Looking back on it, he thought that it may have been Ryan Duke he was talking to in the truck. Ironically, a black truck as he recalled. To the best of my memory, a black single cab truck.
And as I went back to re-listen to this phone call myself, I realized one more detail he had told me. About his conversation in the black truck, with whom he thinks was Ryan Duke. He mentioned the fight from 2004. According to my first source, Bo and Ryan's friend circle were the major players in this fight.
But they all got off scot-free. And according to the paper, Joey Stone and two other men from Fitzgerald were the ones charged for the crime. Before I got ahead of myself, I wanted to call Joey again. What was his side of the story? I called him back to see. A guy got pulverized in the face. I forget his name. He had to have like reconstructive face surgery. And see if you, I believe if you read back in that article, it
I mean, they're slanderous. They say that it happened. They didn't use the word allegedly or this, that, and the other. They said, I hit a guy with a pipe, which is totally false. It's all very strange. And that story, the story that they got,
It's just total fabrication. It's like totally made up stories. Still, nearly 13 years later, Joey Stone pled his innocence and claimed that he was just a scapegoat for Bo's circle of friends. Joey wasn't very close to Bo's friend circle. He only knew them through his friend, Louis, who was also charged in the fight.
Lewis was good friends with a guy named Josh Bowden, who ran in the circle of Bo Duke's friends. Josh Bowden had invited Lewis to the orchard that one night, and he brought along Joey Stone. That's when Joey sat in the truck with who he now thinks is Ryan Duke. I mean, Josh and Lewis were close, and they had always been close. And I don't, you know, Lewis knows the most silly people, but he ain't close with nobody like he is Josh Bowden.
We was all partying at Fitzgerald and then Bowden shows up at Fitzgerald like, "Y'all come on, let's go. These boys are talking junk. Let's go get them." It is a solid fact in my mind that Josh is the one who called us out there. He was the ringleader who rounded us all up and took us to the fight. He was the man. None of the Osceola people, it was just Fitzgerald people. They threw us under the bus. It ruined my life.
But it was all because of Josh Bowden. It's a lot of names to remember. Trust me, I know. But as I learned more and more about this story, I began to see why this might be so important. According to Joey, the fight was essentially started by Josh Bowden.
Joey Stone was charged with a felony and says it still haunts him today. And as for Josh Bowden and the rest of Bo's friends, they were never charged. And Joey says that's not by coincidence. He just said to himself, well, my son's not going to be involved. And he didn't involve. He didn't get charged with nothing, even though he was the number one cohort of he was the guy.
who started it all josh bowden is the son of paul bowden the district attorney for the tifton judicial circuit covering irwin county two men were hospitalized and nearly beaten to death so this crime was not going unpunished and here was a guy who was convinced that the district attorney paul bowden blamed the fight on him and his two friends in order to shield his own son and his close friends from any of the charges i wasn't there so i can't tell you what happened that night
But if Joey's story had any truth to it, it definitely makes things look a little shady in the Tarek Renstead case. He was willing to put us in jail for nine years because if we went to trial and been convicted, it'd been nine years that we had to serve. He was willing to do that to us to save his son because his son was the one that done it all. So I know personally they will lie. They will lie to cover up their own, you know, to help their own people out. What I gather from it,
And it's also why I decided I wanted to talk about it and say stuff about it. Before all this Terry Grinstead stuff broke out, I see him on Facebook all the time, posting pictures, looked like he was living a good life. And then after that, try to look him up, no more.
Couldn't find him, can't be found on social media. And when I learned that, I was like, dang, that is so, so weird. Why would he disappear right at that moment when I've been seeing him for years, post stuff on Facebook, pictures, him and his girlfriends, stuff like that. And all of a sudden, Terry Grinstead breaks out again and he's nowhere to be found.
It's just small-town corruption. You know, it's probably been going on for decades. The same family, you know, but something like this could bring it all crumbling down. Is it Bowdoin just a noob? That's enough right there to want to cover it up and make it go away. How far is he willing to go? He's willing to throw three college students from Fitzgerald in prison for nine years for something his son started.
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Sure, it's a small town, but wouldn't this be a conflict of interest? I asked Dusty what he thought about Joey's story. It's probably true, but it could be that he's saying that because he's mad because the DA charged him with these charges. See, I've always heard about that fight. I mean, it was kind of famous, you know what I mean? Because it was this big fight with a lot of people involved. There's always been rumors about there being cover-ups as far as who did it.
you know and i mean you know obviously three guys from fitzgerald that's not the names you heard of being the ones who did it he was right joey would clearly have a reason to be mad about this because he was charged but the story he told me wasn't really that crazy if so many others were involved in the fight why were only three people charged i called up joey's friend lewis fussel who was friends with josh bowden and was also charged in the fight
I asked Lewis how well he knew Josh Bowden, and if he knew Bo or Ryan too.
The stories about this fight began to highlight what I've always thought was a serious issue in this case, the gag order. Yeah.
Within four days of Ryan Duke's arrest, Judge Melanie Cross signed into effect a gag order, preventing all law enforcement, suspects, and potential witnesses from speaking about the case.
Every news report I read about this claimed the gag order was requested by Ryan Duke's public defender, John Mobley. Irwin County Public Defender John Mobley, who's representing murder suspect Ryan Duke, asked for the gag order right after his client was arrested. A few weeks after the gag order was put into effect, several prominent media outlets came together to oppose it, some claiming that the extreme vagueness and all-encompassing nature of the order was completely unconstitutional.
The media lawyers urged the judge to at least revise her order, limiting who is covered and opening up records that are normally public records. I was there in the courtroom that day. On both sides of the courtroom were the two opposing parties pleading their case to the judge. Under Georgia law, gag orders...
On one side were the representatives from news outlets and their attorneys, each making their own argument about why the gag order was unjustified.
On the other side of the courtroom was Ryan Duke's defense attorney, John Mobley, because he was the one who requested the gag order in the first place. John Mobley was the only one speaking to the judge that day in favor of the gag order, but he wasn't the only one sitting at the table.
Right there beside him was Paul Bowden, the district attorney, who's prosecuting Mr. Mobley's client for felony murder. I am by no means an expert when it comes to the court process, but this, to me, appeared incredibly ironic. Why would the district attorney be there in favor of the gag order, too? Ryan Duke is not his client.
Is it normal to go out of your way to show support for something that's supposed to give the person you're prosecuting a better chance at fighting off the charges? Or is there more than one reason for this gag order? Every article I could find about the gag order said it was requested by Ryan Duke's attorney. All but one, that is. Published in a local Fitzgerald paper called The Herald-Leader on March 8th, 2017, was a different story.
The article reads, the gag order was placed on investigators in the Grinstead case by a TIF Circuit Superior County judge remains in place. One law enforcement official did say that the district attorney's office asked for the gag order as a means to maintain some control over the case information.
I hadn't heard that before. If this was true, it made a lot more sense why District Attorney Paul Bowden would be sitting at the table with Ryan Duke's defense attorney that day. The article was written by a man named Tim Anderson. I gave him a call to get some clarity on this. The first thing that I asked was where that request for the gag order came from. All that came from the DA's office. Every defense attorney would ask for a gag order in every trial if they could.
That wouldn't be even remotely unusual, but the DA's reasoning, as I understand it, is that they're worried about finding an impartial jury. The attorney for Georgia Press is David Hudson, and David knows more about open records than anybody in the state.
He said that the law is not written so that you always have to have a deaf, dumb, and blind juror to have a trial. That pre-knowledge does not disqualify a juror from sitting on a jury. So what's the deal? Well, it's too late, though. I mean, 11 years after the fact is not when you try to shut everybody up.
I mean, it's, you know, that, that horse has left, you know, well, I'm not, you know, I, I think, you know, Ryan probably did it. Um, but I don't, you know, and it's just like the Bo Dukes thing, you know, that he so obviously was involved in a, in a deep and serious way. Um, you know, how do we know he wasn't involved in our actual murder? You know, and we, and we don't.
You know, I think it's kind of a foregone conclusion that he helped dispose of the body, but what did he do before that? Don't we have a right to find that out first? I don't know. It's going to be interesting to see how it plays out in the courtroom. There'll be a lot of people trying to keep the truth from coming out for their personal reasons. You know, because their son or their...
nephew or their whoever had some involvement. They don't want them drawn into it. And there's a lot more cover-up in small towns than there is in the big cities because it's personal. It's going to be an interesting story as it plays out. I just want to see the truth told, whatever it is. So you keep after them.
I've been thorn in people's eyes more than once, and, you know, nobody dies. It just makes them mad. They'll get over it.
I wanted to kind of like reach out to you and to be honest kind of had like anxiety about doing it because on second thought I just kind of was like why does he give a crap what I think. One week after Ryan Duke's arrest, I got a random phone call from a young man in Osceola. He seemed overwhelmed by all the new information, as did I, but I couldn't really understand why he was calling me. My grandfather, which I rarely even hear about in this case,
My grandfather was actually the one when Ryan was in the courtroom, he was the one standing like right next to him where you could see him on camera. And matter of fact, most of the pictures that are in there, that's my grandfather that's walking him out. This whole thing's just baffling me. I'm looking at everybody's point of view and when I'm reading your podcast, you do, you have all these suspects.
but then last week the game changed it changed everything we thought we knew about this case who we thought would have been in it i've been studying this case ever since it happened i do know that i saw that mine lived in pleasure lake which is crazy because that's uh about three miles from my grandfather's house this happened in my little town of one red light man where everybody knows everything
He mentioned several times to me about his grandfather having worked closely on the case and that he was the one standing next to Ryan Duke in the courtroom that day. I learned nothing substantial in our call, but I told him to keep in touch. Four months later, just a few weeks ago, he texted me. He said, how is my grandfather related to Ryan? He sent me this text shortly after I released the last episode where I aired this phone call. I can tell you things that would make your hair stand on end.
Ryan is related to Nelson Park, who is the deputy that walked him into the courtroom for his arraignment that day. He's a deputy sheriff.
Was Nelson Polk this guy's grandfather? To refresh your memory, Nelson Polk was an officer at the Irwin County Sheriff's Department. And supposedly, it was Nelson Polk and another officer named Alan Morgan who performed that search on the pecan orchard back in 2005. Alan Morgan, both Nelson Polk and Alan Morgan were part of that first investigation just a couple of weeks after she went missing in that pecan orchard. I called the police.
I called him back immediately. And this time, he gave me a lot more detail about what he was trying to tell me the first time he called. He told me that even before the gag order, throughout the years, his grandfather, Nelson Polk, never told him much about this case.
Even when he asked him about it.
I remember looking him in his eye and it just looked like he had something heavy weighing on his mind, like something he had just been kept in a closet forever. The man looked dark. I asked him, how was the case going? Did anything new come up in the case? What was going on?
And he didn't say anything to me that day. And this was after, two days after they brought Ryan in for their raiment, where they're talking about when my papa brought him in. You could see him on the camera the whole time. And other than that, he won't, he hasn't said anything to me. The man knows something.
Whether or not he'd be willing to tell it to me, I don't know. He's been a part of that Sheriff's Department going on 20, 30 years. I mean, just think about how embedded he is into that community. The man knows more than what we know. This just affected me in a way that this is no longer cool with me to just sit by anymore. This is like one of the craziest murder stories I've ever seen.
And you've done a hell of a job uncovering it. It's just, this went from me following a podcast about a murder that's in my town to being involved with it. If I could get into a talk and say something, I would. I'm about to be pulling into my room right now. He was extremely bothered by this. But who wouldn't be? To have followed this case your whole life and to hear over a decade later your grandpa's name, that would be pretty alarming. Ironically, less than 10 minutes later, his grandfather called him. Hello? Yeah, I'm home. Can we talk?
Are you in a comfortable place where you can talk? Yeah. Look, I know a lot of stuff has been being said going on with this case and everything, and I've just been hearing your name thrown around a lot, and I've just really become concerned about you and want to know what's going on, because are you related to Ryan at all? I don't even know him, Dave. As far as I know, I've never met him.
Yeah.
They got all in that podcast about how you and some guy, Alan Morgan, went and did like an original search on Tara at the pecan orchard or something like that? That's exactly right. We did. There was a guy that went to another man and woman or his friends and told them that Ryan was at a party and was drunk and said he did all of this.
They called me and Allen Morgan, and we met with them. We went to the P.C. and Orson. We searched it, got a statement from him, and turned it over to the GBI. But the GBI, you know, now, which is all new agents, says, well, it's not in the file. If it's not in the file, it didn't happen.
So I went to his boss man and told him, and he came back. And, of course, he got a statement from me and got a statement from that guy and all that. Yeah, we knew about this less than two months after she disappeared, but the GBI didn't do anything. So we, you know, they was working, and we couldn't basically interfere with their investigations.
I know how it all came about and I know all about the investigation and all this stuff on podcasts and all that. He's just trying to make a name for himself. He's right on some of that and he's wrong on some of that.
I don't even watch it. I don't even pay it no attention. Okay. Well, Papa, I just want you to know that I love you and I just, I mean, I care about you. I just wanted to call and, like, ask you and if you didn't want to talk to me about it, then, you know, I wouldn't have talked to that. But I just... No, I'm not involved. I'm not involved in any way, shape, form, or fashion. That's all I want to know, Papa. I mean, it literally could have made me cry, like, hearing your name thrown around and this and that. I know how good of a man you are. So they know what happened to her, though? Oh, yeah.
Apparently there were rumors these whole 12 years. How did this like slip by for 12 years? Well, I can't really go all in on that, you know, on the gag order.
There's only two main episodes left of Up and Vantage Season 1 on Tara Grinstead. Episode 23 will come out on Monday, July 17th. And episode 24 will be a two-part season finale, with both episodes dropping at the same time on Monday, July 31st. As a reminder, there will be a Q&A episode this Thursday that will feature Maurice Godwin, Philip Holloway, and myself to answer any questions you have. Leave us a voicemail at 770-780-7000
If you have questions for Maurice, Phillip, or myself specifically, you can state that in your voicemail.
Today's episode was mixed and mastered by Resonate Recordings. If you want to improve the quality of your podcast or start a podcast of your own, go to ResonateRecordings.com and get your first episode produced for free. This episode was recorded at Industrious Atlanta, Ponce City Market. For $250 off your first month's office rent, visit IndustriousOffice.com slash vanished. Thanks, guys. I'll see you soon.
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