S1E15: Older, Wiser Fool
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Get your quote today at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. Atlanta, Georgia, 1979. Are you scared? Yes, sir. One by one, kids are going missing with no explanation. A black 15-year-old male who lived in the same area where three other children had disappeared. There was a real-life monster on the loose. The city of Atlanta demanded answers.

By 1981, the FBI was involved in one of the largest manhunts in U.S. history. And eventually, they put one man behind bars. But nearly 40 years later, this case has left more questions than answers in what may be Atlanta's darkest secret. I don't know today whether he's innocent or guilty. From the producers of Up and Vanished and How Stuff Works, we present an all-new podcast, Atlanta Monster.

Subscribe to Atlanta Monster right now on Apple Podcasts and be the first to hear it on January 5th. Oh man, it's going to be weird walking in the yard. It's there right there, right? Yeah. So that's where her car was parked in the car park? I'm just going to walk up there. Where's the front door? Okay, there's a front door near the side door. Oh, this is weird. You want to buy yourself? Yeah. Yeah.

I just want to see your face. I misspoke tapioca on it.

From Tenderfoot TV in Atlanta, this is Up and Vanished, the investigation of Tara Grinstead. I'm your host, Payne Lindsay.

While I was in Osceola, I drove by Tara's house. I'd driven by before, but this time, I decided to knock on the door. I had no idea what I thought would happen, but it seemed like something I should do. At least once. I wasn't expecting that. Hey.

Inside there was an older black lady, sitting on a couch watching TV, in complete darkness. Turns out, Tara's house was being lived in again. The woman was really nice, and didn't mind me looking around for a minute.

My friend Donald was a little more hesitant. She's actually being really nice to us. And was sort of lurking in the doorway, halfway hiding. How are you? He had on the door. She said, come in. I was like, are you sure? We thanked her for her time and then went out to the front yard. All right, take care. From Osceola Police Chief Billy Hancock's description, I knew precisely where that latex glove had been found in your yard. So it may have been in Pine Straw right here.

So we analyzed the area ourselves. The glove's placement just didn't make any sense. It seemed to be heading away from where any perpetrator would have parked their car, almost going straight into the neighbor's yard. If someone dropped it in a rush or an accident, this just didn't seem to be the likely place. Yeah, how does a glove accidentally get there?

We'd been to Tara's house. Now it only seemed right to visit the second place in Osceola most closely tied to her. The Irwin County High School. Being at the high school was surreal.

We were greeted by the school's principal. Hey man. Hey, that's Richard Donald. Hey, how you doing? I'm trying to get him to the library to look at some archive yearbooks. Yeah, yearbook archives. Yeah. And we hoped to obtain some yearbooks. Of course, it had been years since Tara worked here, but it was still eerie being there. Aw man, I forgot it is Friday, man. My bad. He was a friendly guy. He hadn't known Tara personally.

because he started just after her disappearance. But he let us take some old yearbooks for investigative purposes. In our hands were pictures of Tara as a teacher, and pictures of those responsible for her death, bound into the same keepsake book. Shortly after arrests were made in Tara's case, an Osceola judge instituted a gag order, an order that states the case may not be discussed in public.

Gag orders exist to maintain integrity of an investigation and to ensure a fair trial. Ryan Duke's attorney filed a gag order, preventing law enforcement from speaking further about the case. But several media outlets filed a lawsuit opposing it. "Our lawyers have filed a motion, a lawsuit against the gag order. It should be in the court's hand midday today."

Lawyers representing 11 Alive and various other media outlets arguing Thursday in an Irwin County courtroom. Their case? That a gag order in the Tara Grinstead death investigation prevents transparency and unjustly silences details in perhaps the biggest case this county has ever seen.

The media outlets have challenged the gag order. The gag order is very broad. It covers many people who are potential witnesses. It covers people who might have known Tara, for example. And we really don't know at this point who could be a witness. So it's like a judge preemptively telling somebody, you can't use your right to free speech.

The Constitution frowns on that. Gag orders have to balance, on the one hand, the needs of the defendant to get a fair trial and an impartial jury. But it also has to protect the rights under the First Amendment of the public to discuss the case. But this order says to them before they're even on a witness list, "Hey, you can't talk about it." And the media has a First Amendment right. There's a right to a free press.

There absolutely needs to be clarity and I think that if anything changes, it will be some clarification of what the order meant, maybe a new order that's not quite so broad. The judge now has the unenviable task of deciding a balance between the first and sixth amendment. Does the public's right to know and talk about this case jeopardize the defendant's right to a fair trial? I think a person ought to have a right to speak. This is a free country.

And I don't think any judge could have a right to sit up there and say, keep your mouth closed, you can't talk. Ryan Duke's defense attorney claimed that the extensive media coverage was posing a threat to his client's right to a fair trial. He even specifically mentioned the podcast as an example to the judge in the courtroom. There's been podcasts, there's been international, national, local coverage.

He also presented a huge printout of 79 examples of this unjust media coverage, many of which were quotes from news articles and even things that random people said on the up-and-vanish discussion board. It was like copying and pasting mean YouTube comments.

Made by anonymous people. I mean, it's 2017. You can't control what people say on the internet. All right, I appreciate everybody being here today. And I've not had a chance to look at all the exhibits. I will take some time to do that, of course. But hopefully within the next week you'll have an order.

The judge says it'll take about a week or so for her to review new evidence in this case and come to a decision. Meanwhile, the media attorneys are taking that as an optimistic sign that perhaps that gag order was filed without enough evidence in the first place. After the hearing, I hired my own attorney and submitted a formal letter to Judge Cross expressing my concerns about this gag order. People have been waiting for details in this case for over 10 years. Why the silence now?

After a full week, the judge finally made a ruling on this. And for the most part, it was in our favor. We just received word that the Irwin County judge has narrowed parts of the gag order in this case. The court will allow documents to be unsealed. It will also allow witnesses and relatives to speak to the media about the case. This also permits potential witnesses as well to talk.

Basically, I think this modified order was the right thing to do, and I really think the judge got it right. She referenced that gag orders are not necessarily disallowed, but they must be narrowly drawn. So what she did is she went back and narrowly drew this so that it only applies to the parties in the case, people that work for the lawyers' offices, current and former members of law enforcement who may have knowledge of the case.

Specifically, the judge says that the order does not apply to members of the public and does not apply to the media. So this is really a victory for all media, including the podcast. In fact, Payne Lindsay, the host of Up and Vanished, devoted 12 episodes to Grinsed's disappearance. The judge specifically references that in this order. One thing that stands out to me that's very interesting is

is that, and this didn't really have to go into the order in my opinion, she says that it's ordered among other things that the people described, like the police, etc., cannot mention the possibility of a plea of guilty to the offense charged.

That stood out at me like, wow, wonder why that's in there. Because she already said that any proceedings that may happen in the future in court would not be closed to the public. So that was a great victory. But referencing the possibility of a guilty plea to me seemed like it was maybe just a little bit too much information. I don't know. It seems that

That was just something that maybe didn't need to be in there because it could have been covered with more general language. But as I've said all along, I don't expect there will be a trial. But the thing to remember is that even though the courtroom is now not closed to the public and court documents are now not going to be sealed unless there's some specific reason in the future for sealing them, it doesn't mean that

A court hearing, such as a plea hearing or a motion hearing, has to go on to any kind of public calendar. It doesn't mean that there has to be notice sent out to the media and the public beforehand. So hypothetically, if there is some resolution that's reached to this case, it really would be a very simple thing to schedule it, get it put together very quickly, get him into court,

and enter a plea. And of course, the defense can still stipulate to a factual basis without actually going through any of the details of whatever offense may ultimately be charged should he plead to one. Of course, there's no way to hide a trial. If it does go to trial, there's really no way to hide that. And of course, the public would have the right to be there and to see what happens.

But in the event of a guilty plea, it really could be something that could be put together and scheduled very quickly and very quietly without notice to anybody. Just because it's an open court doesn't mean there's necessarily going to be people there to watch it. We schedule pleas and other routine court appearances on a moment's notice all the time. It's just simply a matter of calling the judge's office and saying, hey, can we do this tomorrow morning or this afternoon or whenever?

It's very routine, very simple. And if the parties were to want to do this secretly or mostly secretly, it would be an easy thing to accomplish. But on balance, I think the judge got it right. I think that this order is what it should be. It allows the public to talk about the case. It allows the media to talk about the case. It lets the family talk about the case.

And it doesn't stand in the way of the podcast continuing on to report what we learn about what happened to Tara. It doesn't stop the podcast from talking to people. It doesn't stop anybody from talking to anybody, except it only limits what law enforcement and the parties to the case can say about it.

One more interesting thing that this order does is it brings into the class of affected people, the people that are bound by the gag order, it brings Bo Dukes and his lawyer into the coverage of who can't talk. Now, he's not a party to this particular case where it's the state of Georgia versus Ryan Duke, but he is specifically referenced in this order.

And that is a little bit unusual, but under the circumstances of this case, not unexpected. And I think it's something that everybody, the district attorney and the defense and probably Bo Dukes, wanted in the order. It gives them some cover so that they can't answer questions or can't say things publicly. Other than that, I like it. I think it's a good order. Some interesting tidbits in it, but it's the right thing to do.

Save on Cox Internet when you add Cox Mobile and get fiber-powered internet at home and unbeatable 5G reliability on the go. So whether you're playing a game at home or attending one live,

You can do more without spending more. Learn how to save at Cox.com slash internet. Cox internet is connected to the premises via coaxial cable. Cox mobile runs on the network with unbeatable 5G reliability as measured by UCLA LLC in the US to age 2023. Results may vary, not an endorsement of the restrictions apply. One thing I've been desperately trying to figure out is what on earth Ryan Duke was doing at Tara's house that night. A burglary? I'm just not buying it.

I had talked to several of Ryan's former classmates and friends, but I still felt like I knew absolutely nothing about him. I knew that unlike his buddy Bo Dukes, Ryan did not have a criminal record. But what about any other run-ins with the law? Over the course of 12 years, did he have any at all? Well, turns out he did. On the night of February 20th, 2010, Osceola Police pulled over a vehicle on the Tifton Highway. The driver was Ryan Duke.

He was speeding and driving without a license. When the officer proceeded to talk to Duke, he noted his slurred speech and the smell of alcohol on his breath. Duke denied drinking but failed the breathalyzer test. He was subsequently charged for a DUI but was released on bond to his mother. At 2:35 AM, approximately three hours after the DUI incident, Ryan Duke's mother called the Osceola police with an unusual request.

She insisted that she wanted to come off the bond for Mr. Duke and have the police pick up her son immediately. Deputies picked up Duke and returned him to jail. The reason for Duke's mother's change of heart is unknown. The family declined to comment. Other than Tara Grinstead's murder, this is Duke's only other arrest. In the days after Ryan Duke's arrest, and for the record, before the gag order was in place, I got a call from someone on the inside.

Someone who had interactions with Ryan Duke while he was in jail. This person's identity will remain anonymous, and their voice has been disguised. He is currently on a suicide watch.

The way that we do suicide watches, stripped butt naked and they have nothing but just suicide blanket and a suicide gown that he has on. I was just kind of playing dumb and I asked him, I said, what are you in here for? What he told me was that he did something bad a long time ago.

And that was a long story. He was in our medical unit, and he's now transferred to our special housing unit. He is sitting there on a one-on-one watch. Somebody is watching him 24 hours a day. When he came in for a DUI, he was placed on suicide watch then. He had suicidal thoughts.

Ryan Duke was currently on suicide watch.

Not only in 2017, but also back in 2010, when he was arrested for his DUI. I found that really strange. Was he paranoid of getting caught the first time? Surely they fingerprinted him when he was arrested. Was he scared of a match? In an attempt to gain some more insight on Ryan, and just who he was, I spoke to another former friend of his.

Ryan, the last time I saw him was in 07. I had just moved to Tifton, started working UPS. He called me out of the blue one day. I had lost contact with him probably around March and May of 06. I kind of lost contact with him. He was one of those where he didn't want to talk to you, you wasn't going to find him kind of thing. The next time I spoke to him was around...

Probably December or January of January of 06 probably because it was just when I moved back in Statesboro. I got up with him and he was living with Bo at this time in Fitzgerald. I kind of sort of hang out with him because I was working in Fitzgerald and he was still very close proximity to my parents house.

So I would go over and hang out with him and Bo, and it was a little different. Bo was a lot more withdrawn than Ryan was, but like I said, I was more flushed to Ryan than Bo anyway. Whenever we all hung out together, it was me, Jason, Ryan, and Bo.

And then around sometime in 2004, Jason and Ryan had some type of disagreement. I'm not sure really what happened between the two of them, but they had a falling out. But Ryan never really had a whole lot of money, never really had a whole close-knit family life or anything.

Didn't really have anything, I guess, going his way in a sense. But he was a real good guy. Like, he's more than willing to do anything for me. Like, when I couldn't drive, he would go 30 minutes one way just so we could hang out and play tennis.

But it just struck me as odd that Ryan would have been essentially two to three blocks from where Bo's mom lived without having a car and Bo didn't know that he was there. And then all of a sudden, Ryan makes it to the fish trail and goes, "Oh, hey Bo, by the way, I need your help." That seemed really odd to me. It just didn't sit well.

The weird part to me was that how in the world does Ryan end up over at Tara's house?

I mean, I guess with Bo's mom being so close, and there was a couple other friends that lived there at the time, somewhere around in the area, there was like three girls that I know, and they were around the same age. So there's a lot of people around his age that graduated with him that, I mean, was within probably between a half mile to a mile radius of where Bo's mom lived. Where did Bo's mom live? From the courthouse? I mean, it's probably...

a five to eight minute walk. I mean, it's not far. That's like right next to Terry's house. Yeah, and that's what struck me as odd is that Ryan would be so close to Bo's mom's house without having transportation and Bo not know about it beforehand because

Because Ryan lived in Fletcher Lake. As far as I know, at the time, it was within Fletcher Lake. But he was either in Fitzgerald or with his mom at the time. He didn't have a house with all of that, without what's going on. So for him to be that close to Bo's house and Bo not know, it didn't sit well with me. That's kind of the detail that's come out about it.

And I don't know, I've never heard of Tara before this happened or didn't know anything about her except, like I said, what's been brought out in the news and speculation and rumors. I feel like, like I said, with her house being so close to Bo's house and Bo being the way that he was, like I said, he had the money to kind of finance things and wanted people to go along with the party. Yeah.

I felt like they may have been partying together. Something happened. Bo got aggressive and then freaked out. Ryan was there with him. And I don't... Ryan was the one to back away from a fight with his friends.

So for him, for it to be that he used his bare hands to kill somebody, like, I still don't process that as truth. Just, like I say, me being exposed to that, I'm still waiting for something else to come out, that something else happened or other people are involved. So my mind immediately...

I guess, subjectively puts him, or objectively puts him right into the seat of being innocent and being there to help someone because he was that friend that would, like, more or less take a bullet for you kind of thing. And I feel like

that Bo maybe had freaked out after whatever happened happened and didn't know what to do and then convinced Ryan, well, you were here. They're going to blame you just as much as me. What do we do? And then I guess they did whatever they did and it was over with. Yeah, I mean, that's what everyone pretty much said. They just are so surprised that if Ryan being charged with the murder

and Bo as an accessory after the fact. And that is just so puzzling to everybody. I'm trying to figure out if that's because there was a side of Ryan that nobody knew that was capable of doing this, or if he wasn't the person who did this. If Ryan did have or does have that vibe...

The only other person that has seen it will never be able to tell anybody. When he moved to Fitzgerald, me and him got pretty close. The whole time I was with him, I never, like, he never even got violent. We were almost in, like, a group fight because Fitzgerald and I still, like, we kind of fight with each other, but if anybody else from out of town comes in, we kind of stick together as a group.

Well, there was an incident one night where I thought we were about to get in a fight with a group of guys, and Brian, we turned around and he wasn't even there. Like, he wasn't, oh, hey, yeah, let's do it, or hey, I got your back, or, like, he just, I've never saw him in a physical application whatsoever. And when we asked him about it, you know, dude, where'd you go? Like, we thought we were about to have to throw down when we turned around and you wasn't there. He's like, oh, I went to talk to Sol, so I didn't know anything was going on. So,

For that whole thing to come out that he did it with his bare hands and was that brutal. That's on my wife. I was thinking myself that night. I don't see it happening. I can't believe it. How is Ryan with girls? A hopeless romantic? I guess he wouldn't get with a girl just to hook up with her. He wanted a girl that would want to sit at home and watch a movie on a Friday and cook and hang out and

You know, just, you know, hey, I listened to this song by whatever current band he's listening to. And, like, he would, you know, make a little mix CD for her kind of thing. Like, it was never just straight come out and be like, oh, hey, I have feelings for you. I like you. Or let's go on a date. Like, it was more of he would kind of make you feel sorry for him in a way. But, like, oh, kind of, you know, for me, like, I got a lot of things going on.

But that really wasn't him. Like I said, as a friend, I knew him. But his way with girls, I mean, which I guess in high school, everything is completely different. But it's so easy to be like, oh, hey, you know, poor me, nobody, you know, no girls like me and things like that. And of course that one catches on where it's like, oh, hey, well, you know, you're a cute guy. You've got a lot of things...

you know, going for you. And that's kind of how he wrote to me. And I mean, I hate to say that, but it was just like, that's what it was. And then once I started dating, then he was kind of all about them. And, you know, Hey, you know, I love you. You're like, let's,

and let's hang out and do things. From what I know of Ryan, I can't believe that he did all this and orchestrated it himself. As good a guy as he was, he's not that smart of a person to, one, commit the crime, two, cover it up, and three, convince somebody to be an accessory with him after the fact.

That doesn't fit Ryan at all. He's not manipulative. He's very, very straightforward. There's no hidden doors for Ryan. Everything's cut out. Like I say, right now if you told me it was 100%, he did it. We have everything we need to convict him. So you tell me what your take on it is.

I believe that, I mean, obviously he was there. He didn't break in because there's whatever, there was no sign of forced entry or whatever. Maybe he got a field search. She rejected his advances once they were, I'm saying they had a problem and maybe they were having sex or about to have sex and something happened and she rejected him at that point and made him snap.

He, like everyone else, didn't seem to think that Ryan was capable of this either. Did Ryan just snap? I called upon a forensic psychologist named Doug Miller, who has years of experience dealing with all types of alleged murderers.

Maybe he had some insight. So what is it about the quiet guys? Maybe it's just what I hear in the news and what you see on TV, but there's something, a stigma with that where it's the quiet guy who you never expected is always the one. Is that the case for you or is that just sort of a myth? Well, I think it may be a myth. I think the difference is like when it's some really aggressive, loud mouth, obnoxious, violent person, it's not so surprising.

But when it's a quiet, sweet person or someone who's just sort of unassuming or not really standing out, it's just more surprising. And I think maybe that accounts for it. Now, that said, if there is a kind of psychotic process or a psychopathology that pulls the person outside of society and what can make someone a loner is that they have very strange thoughts and people like.

keep their distance. They pull back. In the last episode, in a call with one of Ryan Duke's friends, he told me about a strange phone call he got from him one time where he basically confessed about hooking up with some girl. He told me it struck him as odd and I thought the same thing. So I asked Doug about it. Hearing that as a forensic psychologist, it could be relevant. It could be relevant in the sense that

It's not going to tell us much about his frame of mind at the time of the crime, though, if he's evidencing some very bizarre behavior after the crime and you can show similar types or the same type of behavior before the crime. And then really the important piece is showing it around the time of the crime.

to show that maybe he was in some kind of altered state one way or another. You don't want to put the cart before the horse, cause before effect. Now, we are assuming that Ryan did commit the crime or was at least very heavily involved.

How that affected him and his behavior afterwards, like I'm aware of the fact that he reportedly has had a drinking problem for many years. So that conversation that he had with that friend that you just brought up, you know, is it a drunk guy calling someone and just babbling about random stuff that may have bothered him a little bit? Totally could be. Or was there some guilt that this guy has been carrying and he's just trying to relieve himself?

in this kind of sort of symbolic way by talking about this other thing that he felt bad about. You know, whether that comes into play or not in the trial is unclear, but just to kind of show you the kind of thinking that can go into that kind of piece of data. What I was alluding to, or what I gave that example as representing is what you might call symbolic expiation.

It's a symbolic act that it's symbolic in the fact that it may be related to the murder. It's a brief relief of a confession. It's an expiation, a release of guilt, but it's only symbolic because it's actually about something else that maybe another person might not have carried had they not had the original, the major source of the guilt. Now you can't talk about it because you're going to get in trouble. If it wasn't just random,

Like, sure, they knew each other. But then the question is, how much did they know each other? Because you ask what... That's the magic question. What causes this kind of behavior? And, of course, most people go, well, was there something going on in terms of an intimate relationship?

And that can be an uncomfortable thing to bring up for the victim's family or just in general. You know, and people are well aware of crimes of passion and when emotion gets involved. And I've worked on other capital cases where a husband, you know, has killed a wife and the husband was actually very dependent on the wife. He had a low IQ and she took care of business and it was an emotional support.

but the passion took over and resulted in a really grisly murder. And so these are the questions, but they're only questions and I haven't heard anything yet, and I don't think you have yet, that they had any type of real personal involvement. And I just want to say I really do appreciate your sophistication and sensitivity around all the kinds of tough issues that this all brings up for everyone, you know, for some people and sometimes for everyone.

I appreciate that. So there's the relationship thing, and that's kind of an easy one, right? If that's simple, we got it, okay, this is what happened. That makes more sense. Okay, yes, but you can't assume that. Let me just take another angle on it. And again, this is total conjecture, but most of us have had a crush on a teacher at some point in our schooling. And it's conceivable that Ryan may have...

held some kind of feelings that he never communicated to Tara and carried that with him. And then, you know, if drugs were involved,

In the movement of a man's mind and a man's heart, while under drugs, that thing could have become even bigger or grown over time. And he may have gone to her in some passionate state as like a person that actually had a relationship with someone had. And...

She responded negatively or confusedly, at least, if this is the scenario. Sure. And maybe in his, you know, if he was in a deranged state,

That's how the whole thing went down. And that's a possibility. And again, you know, maybe the psychologists that evaluate him, I'm pretty sure this will be a case that gets evaluated by a psychologist. I'm sure. Yeah. Yeah. And may find out that, you know, or something else. The other thing is he went to her house.

Was it during a burglary? Was it merely for self-gain and money and then it turned bad and it turned into a murder? Those are all kind of aggravating circumstances. Another thing is afterwards, the kind of plantedness, the way that they systematically covered things up.

could be an aggravating thing in that while it was kind of cold-blooded, it was planned out, they were in their right minds, this was not a random violent act of an impassioned person. This was a methodical crime. So all that may come into play as painting this negative picture of the defendant. One thing that the defense is going to consider is an insanity defense, if there's a possibility of that.

It has to be considered. It's sort of responsible practice to take a look at that. And there's just things that seem out of whack about this whole, the whole crime and who did it and who the victim was, right? Something doesn't seem right. Not that any murders were right. What I mean is that this just seems something strange happened here. Yes.

And everyone's shocked that this guy has been fingered at this point. Insanity, it's not guilty by reason of insanity, NGRI. And there are two standards for that in Georgia. And that's operating under a delusional compulsion. And that would be something like, you know, the devil came in and told me he was going to kill everyone in Osceola.

if I didn't kill Tara. And so I was doing it to save everyone and really believing that. That's a delusion. It's psychotic. It's a complete lack of attachment to actual reality. The second standard is the inability to distinguish right from wrong.

It's and or the inability to distinguish right from wrong, because if you're operating under delusional compulsion, then you assuming right is doing what these auditory hallucinations told you.

and the belief that the devil is going to kill everyone else. Right. But the inability to distinguish right from wrong can emerge from a number of factors, including like intellectual deficits, momentary states of confusion, other kinds of false beliefs that maybe don't reach delusional levels. There's a whole range of ideas that things that can disconnect someone from their ability to distinguish right from wrong. It's rare. I mean, our society depends on that ability.

that we all act in a way that is right and not wrong. And sure, people take little privileges here and there with it, but murder is quite a substantial one. Now, both of those standards, it's a very, very high legal standard. In other words, there has to be some serious, heavy evidence to support either one of those or both. A lot of what Doug and I talked about was just speculation.

But the idea that Ryan may have developed some sort of unhealthy obsession with teachers or just Tara specifically seemed to fit better with the way he's been described to me. The burglary theory just wasn't cutting it. While I was in Osceola last week, I paid a visit to Dusty Vassie over at the Osceola Star just to catch up and talk about everything.

I feel like I was woken up by this whole thing, to be honest. Right. I mean, I obviously was not expecting anything to happen like it's happened. Yeah. Think about where we started. I mean, seriously, try to picture. We're right here. Yeah, we were like, picture the first time I ever came here. What the hell did you think was going to happen? Be honest with me. I thought you'd do like 10 episodes and then it would be, you know. Remember that time that there was that podcast about the Harry Grinstead case? Right. Yeah. And that was, that would be it.

After Ryan got arrested, there was a lot of speculation going around about who else might get arrested. And I'm sure a lot of people got all of a sudden wrapped up into that, oh my goodness, somebody I care about is getting talked about. And of course, one person did get arrested too, Bo Dukes. But that press conference, when it sunk into me that she's really dead, I felt like lightheaded.

I hadn't really felt like that in my whole life. Sounds like I'm being dramatic, but I'm really not. I was with you and I know exactly how you feel. I was just overwhelmed. I was nervous. I was scared. I was excited. I was in disbelief. It's like, yeah, this is a story to me. Yes, this is a podcast, but I feel like I'm a part of this. Not just because of the podcast. I personally feel like I'm part of this. Well, you are. I think you are.

i mean that's that's what's different about it it's not what it started out to be no i was just trying to tell a story in the beginning but now i'm trying to seek justice beyond just finding out what happened to tara and that's for personal reasons yeah and that's what's crazy about this whole story i always thought that somebody did murder tara but we didn't know oh yeah me too i didn't know that i couldn't come out and say

with 100% confidence, but I always thought it. Oh, yeah. I think most people did. But when somebody else, when the GBI tells everybody publicly that this is who murdered Tara, and there's a face to the person, and I can see him, and he looks at me, and we're looking at each other.

When I found out that she was really dead, and I don't know, that's the only, that's what the difference was. And that's the thing, too, is that, okay. Because there was always, you know, there was a possibility she was still somewhere. There was that small chance that she's out there. And I think that's even part of it, because I drove, when I was driving to work that day, I was really like, the idea had crossed my mind that she might, they might be announcing that she's alive.

Because, you know, I heard it was good news. So I'm thinking, good news. Maybe they found her alive. And so when, you know, and then by the time the press conference had come around, I'd already heard all these rumors about Ryan Dinkley being arrested. We already knew that that's not what they were announcing today. Yeah. So I was pretty certain that wasn't going to be it. But when they announced that he was charged with murder, there was a part of me that just, I mean, became really sad. And that sadness, at times, has turned into anger. Because, yeah. Yeah.

What I can say is just in the last few days, we have started conducting some interviews and that led us to Ryan Duke. Had his name ever come up before this investigation? It had not. It had not. This gentleman never came up on our radar screen. She sent me the name, you know, Ryan Duke. I said, yeah, that's him. Then she calls me and she says, this is the Pecan Orchard story.

Since the day of Ryan Duke's arrest, I have heard from more than one credible source that in some capacity, law enforcement knew about this.

12 years ago. I followed up with Dusty again, and this is what he told me. An hour or two before the press conference started, I got a call from somebody. This specific call said that there was a party back in 2005, and I believe Ryan was talking and had said something about killing Terry Grinstead. So somebody came forward and reported it in 2005 and gave someone in law enforcement Ryan Duke's name.

I've since learned that it was investigated and that they didn't find anything. Investigated as in went to the pecan orchard. I've heard this from multiple sources, more than one person that makes me believe it's true. So if that's true, then why did the GBI say that Ryan Duke was never on their radar? Or did someone from a local agency somehow neglect to tell them about this?

They just now known to the GBI that some urban county or either still a law enforcement official knew about this location just a few weeks after Terry went missing and kept her from the GBI the whole time.

...to the spot and didn't do anything and didn't tell the GBI.

Maybe they thought there was really nothing to it, and just disregarded it. Either way, that would be a huge mistake, sending the entire town of Osilla, and the GBI themselves, on a wild 12-year goose chase. I have been treading very softly in this area, and I've been hesitant to share anything until I felt like the information I was getting was indeed the truth. There is clearly more to the story, and I'm avidly investigating it right now.

Who else was at this party? Who told the local law enforcement about this? And what was actually done? I hope that the podcast, like it's done in the past, will help bring those who know something forward. At first, Up and Vanish was about figuring out what happened to Tara. And it's safe to say now that we're much closer to getting that answer. But beyond just solving the mystery, this is also about justice and seeking the truth, all of the truth, no matter how ugly it may be.

So with that being said, I'll continue digging. And I would like to encourage anyone else who knows something to come forward and share that information. We've all heard by now the many stories from former friends and classmates of Ryan and Bo that Ryan just doesn't fit the bill. If we believe what the state is saying, that Ryan Duke killed Tara by himself with his bare hands, then what are we missing here? What do they know that we don't?

And trust me, I've thought a lot about that. And up until this point, I have found nothing at all about Ryan that suggests any sort of plausible motive for her murder. But the other day, I found something that really got my gears turning. What I'm about to read you is a Facebook message sent by Ryan Duke to another former teacher of his on April 27th, 2015 at 622 a.m. The message reads, How are you?

Thanks for listening, guys.

Thanks, guys. I'll see you soon.

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