A girl named Tara Grinstead had been missing for over 10 years now, and they had no suspects, and they had no leads. The first one I saw was a missing person's case.
I eventually ended up on the website for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, and they have a top 10 list of unsolved crimes in Georgia. I'm from Atlanta, so I wanted to find a case that was local that I could actually investigate.
Like a lot of people, I had been pretty obsessed with the podcast Serial, and the Netflix series Making a Murderer, and I thought to myself, "What if I made one of those?" So I literally just went to Google and started searching.
We all want an answer, an explanation for the unexplained. And this universal satisfaction when we catch the bad guy. I think there's something about an unsolved case that intrigues everyone, this urge to solve the puzzle and reveal the truth. I'm actually a filmmaker, and I was kind of digging around for a cool idea for a documentary film. I was looking for cold cases and other unsolved mysteries. I'm your host, Payne Lindsey.Īround six months ago I was surfing the web.
Payne Lindsey: From Tenderfoot TV in Atlanta, this is Up and Vanished, the investigation of Tara Grinstead. Īn $80,000 reward is being offered for information. Officially, police are calling this a missing person's case. Intro: Ten years ago today marked the last time anybody reported seeing or talking with Tara Grinstead. If you have any information about the disappearance of Tara Grinstead, please contact the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. To this day, there has never been a confirmed sighting of Tara Grinstead. Police forced their way inside and searched the house entirely. Detectives knocked on her door repeatedly, but got no response. Upon arrival, investigators found her car parked in the driveway, unlocked, and the front door to her house was locked shut. At around 8:45 a.m., Ocilla PD was dispatched to Tara's house. Concerned students and teachers called the local police.
On Monday morning October 24th, Tara didn't show up for work at the school. Around 11 p.m., Tara left the barbecue and went home to her house. and hung out at a friend's barbecue just eight blocks away from her home. After the pageant was over, Tara left around 8 p.m. On Saturday, October 22, 2005, Tara went to a local beauty pageant during the day. She was a gorgeous brunette with a striking smile, and someone her students and peers looked up to. Rob: Tara Grinstead was a 30-year-old former beauty queen, and local high school teacher living in the small town of Ocilla, Georgia.