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February 25, 2017

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Ex-student arrested 12 years after teacher’s death

TEACHER and former beauty queen Tara Grinstead vanished from her south Georgia home in 2005, leaving a mystery that had stumped investigators for nearly 12 years — until a tip led to an unexpected arrest.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation announced on Thursday that a former student at Irwin County High School, where Grinstead taught history, has been charged with her murder.

The suspect, 33-year-old Ryan Alexander Duke, was being held at the Irwin County jail in Ocilla, about 266 kilometers southeast of Atlanta.

“We always believed that it would be solved,” Connie Grinstead, the missing woman’s stepmother, told reporters at a courthouse news conference on Thursday in which the GBI announced the arrest. “We just did not know when.”

The arrest provides some answers for a small farming community that has long grappled with Grinstead’s strange disappearance.

“When I heard, I just broke down in tears of relief, of anger, of sadness and frustration,” said Wendy McFarland, a fellow teacher and friend of Grinstead’s. “Everything that had been carried for the last 11 years and four months just bubbled to the surface.”

Duke burglarized the teacher’s home, and used his hands to kill her inside the residence, according to warrants that were read at a late Thursday court hearing, local news outlets reported. He then removed her body from the home with the intent of concealing her death, the warrants state.

Many questions remain about why she was killed.

GBI agent JT Ricketson, the lead investigator, declined to discuss Grinstead’s relationship to the suspect and left open the possibility that others were involved. He wouldn’t even say whether Grinstead’s body had been found.

Ricketson told reporters a tip days ago led investigators to make the arrest. He did not elaborate.




 

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