The Ultimate Tara Faye Grinstead “Who’s Who” Compilation

By Bobby Ray Stacy

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“It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society” — J. Krishnamurti

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“One person really can accomplish amazing things as long as they don’t care who gets the credit” — Unknown

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THE DISAPPEARANCE OF TARA FAYE GRINSTEAD

Who’s Who: A Catalog of Everyone Even Remotely Related to the Case

NOTE: Consider this piece a “work in progress” that will grow as facts and opportunity make themselves available. All data provided is as applies to the time period of Tara’s disappearance — October, 2005 — unless otherwise clearly noted. Sourced additions and corrections are heartily invited…

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Marcus T. Harper: Tara’s long-term 30 year-old ex-boyfriend (6-years) and prime suspect. Ex-Ocilla police officer (4 years service) and Army Ranger (combat veteran, Afghanistan), now working as some sort of a consultant. According to all accounts, Harper returned from Afghanistan “a changed man”, and that’s when his relationship with Tara started its downward spiral. Their official break-up occurred approximately one year before Tara’s disappearance in October of 2005, though the two displayed some pattern of continued involvement right up to the bitter end. The “grapevine” says that although it was Tara who formally ended their intimate relationship, she just couldn’t seem to “let go, get over it, and move on” emotionally. Harper seemed to fare much better in that regard, while finding comfort in the arms and charms of an unidentified local 18 year-old sweetheart. His last known officially-documented physical contact with Tara was on October 14, 2005.

Larry Harper: Marcus Harper’s father. Worked as a paralegal for the same law firm that employed Thomas Pajadas.

Thomas Pajadas: Marcus Harper’s attorney.

Heath Dykes: A captain in the Perry Police Department and married man presumably engaging in an illicit affair with Tara at the time. Possibly the person who made 20 or more calls to Tara around the time of the disappearance. It was his business card found wedged in the front door of Tara’s home. He was the last known person to be at Tara’s at 12:15 am Monday morning (10-24-2005).

Anthony Vickers: A 20 year-old former student of Tara’s and resident of Wray, Georgia, who had engaged in some form of intimate personal relationship with Tara up until about 6 months prior to her disappearance, when she called the police on him and swore out a complaint against him for becoming beligerant at her home and trying to force his way inside. He was considered a prime person of interest early-on by authorities, but after checking both him and his alibi out thoroughly they moved him to the back burner. He worked in Milledgeville, Georgia.

Faye Grinstead: Tara’s mother (now deceased).

Billy Grinstead: Tara’s father. He lives in Alabama.

Connie Grinstead: Tara’s stepmother, now married to Billy.

Anita Gattis: Tara’s sister. She believed from the very beginning that Tara had met with foul play. The first time she ran into Marcus Harper after Tara’s disappearance, she shouted, “What did you do to my sister?”

Larry Gattis: Tara’s brother-in-law, a physician and Anita’s husband.

Gabe Gattis: Tara’s nephew, son of Larry and Anita Gattis.

Maria Woods: Tara’s best friend.

Maria Hulett (or Hulet): A friend of Tara’s (Maria Woods?).

Meghan (or Megan) Evans: A contestant at the Miss Sweet Potato beauty pageant and friend of Tara’s, one of the last people to talk to Tara (via telephone).

Odja Anderson: A friend of Tara’s.

Joe Portier: Tara’s next-door neighbor.

Myrtle Portier: Tara’s next-door neighbor and Joe’s wife. The Portier’s watched out for Tara. Tara and the Portiers had a little system worked-out where Tara would turn her bedside lamp on after she got home at night so the Portiers would know she’d arrived home safely and all was well. But 11:00 pm was late by neighborhood standards and the Portiers had already gone to bed by time Tara arrived home on the night of her disappearance.

Sean Fletcher: The Ocilla PD sergeant Marcus Harper accompanied between around 2:00 am and 4:45 am on the night of Tara’s disappearance.

Bennie Merritt: A neighbor of Tara’s known for his erratic behavior. He became the subject of a police call shortly after 2:45 am while Harper and Fletcher were riding together the night of Tara’s disappearance, after allegedly walking into the home of a frightened couple residing on West 4th Street and refusing to leave. By the time Harper and Fletcher arrived at the scene Merritt had vanished, and they spent some time afterward searching for him. Merritt was eventually apprehended by a sheriff’s deputy after allegedly frightening the clerk at an all-night gas station and market about a mile outside Ocilla. Authorities said Merritt appeared intoxicated. Fetcher and Harper responded to this call as well, wrapping-up around 4:28 am, after which they parted company and Harper “headed home”.

Robby Connor: The principal at Irwin County High School in Ocilla where Tara taught 11th-grade history.

Suzanne Connor: Robby’s wife and a close personal friend of Tara’s.

Billy Hancock: Chief of the Ocilla Police Department.

Donnie Youghn: Sheriff of Irwin County.

Bill Barrs: A detective working the case.

Agent Gary Rothwell — 23: Georgia Bureau of Investigation Special Agent in charge of the Perry office and the lead investigator assigned to Tara’s case.

Agent Murray — 251: GBI agent dispatched to Ocilla to investigate Tara’s disappearance.

Agent Rotter — 327: GBI agent dispatched to Ocilla to investigate Tara’s disappearance.

Agent Shoudel — 156: GBI agent on duty at the time of Tara’s disappearance.

Agent Weathersby — 303: GBI agent on duty at the time of Tara’s disappearance.

Agent Dominic Turner: GBI agent involved in the case.

Dr. Gary Williams: Tara’s doctor in Hawkinsville, Georgia.

Dusty Vassey: A reporter for the Tifton Gazette.

Dr. Maurice Godwin: A famous private forensic investigator and consultant who investigated the case.

Jim Perry: Had dated Tara long before her disappearance. He now lives in Ohio.

Rhett Roberts: The son of Tara’s landlord and someone else Tara had dated.

John David Anderson: A married man (?) from another county (?) who processed Tara’s car and had a K-9 dog that couldn’t track Tara’s scent past the end of her driveway.

Michael Lankford: Former law-enforcement officer with both the Ocilla PD and the Irwin County Sheriff’s Dept. A house he was “watching” mysteriously burned up on 11-7-2005 (approximately 2 weeks after Tara’s disappearance) along with his vehicle, which was due to be voluntarily turned into a creditor.

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How to Solve Cold Homicide and Missing-Persons Cases

By Bobby Ray Stacy,

Solving Cold Cases

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“A cold case means the investigation has come to a dead end, you have no new leads, you’ve interviewed everybody, you analyzed the crime scene, and you came up cold. A case can grow cold almost instantly. And it can be solved by going back years later.” — Norman Gahn, Assistant District Attorney, Milwaukee County, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

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“A murder investigation is like putting together a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle when you only have a few pieces. Maybe a hundred, a hundred and fifty pieces. If they’re the right hundred and fifty pieces, you got it. But if they’re the wrong pieces, say they’re out around the edges, or off in one corner, you’re lost. A cold case investigation is like putting that puzzle together in a gymnasium in the dark.” — Sergeant Jim Givens (Ret.), Commander of the Cold Case Squad, Phoenix, Arizona.

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If good groundwork wasn’t laid right after the crime, it’s not going to work years later… But if there were good detectives originally — even if it was 25 years ago — and they kept the evidence, interviewed the right people, and the documentation was thorough and exacting, a lot of times you can go back and look at it, 25 years later, and there might be some piece of evidence you can test to corroborate something the original detectives found. And then it all makes sense.

The ability to solve homicides has a lot to do with the time you are able to devote to the case… Cases often go cold simply due to a lack of available manpower. Manpower equals time available to be applied to any such case. As homicides inevitably stack up in any given area — often coming in “spurts” — but the available manpower remains the same, certain cases just tend to get swept under the rug for the sake of pure convenience. Some of these cases may be looked at — however briefly — later on if and when things have managed to slow down for awhile, only to discover that crucial witnesses have since moved, died, been killed, coerced, or are otherwise no longer available, critical evidence collected at the crime scene has been lost, destroyed, or otherwise fatally contaminated, etc. Then it’s back under the rug usually for good with these, until such time as something may eventually turn up on its own, usually in the form of a fluke tip, deathbed confession or DNA match months, years or even decades down the line — if ever.

Certified Crime Analysts review cases for potential solvability factors… What is the physical evidence? Could it be retested for DNA? Who is still around to be interviewed? Has anything changed in the relationships the suspect(s) have? Are there any new leads?

A lot of times solving cold cases calls for creativity: you have to be able to take a different view of the murder… Think outside of the box. Take a different route. Because the fact a case is cold to begin with implies the route the original investigators took wasn’t very productive.

Time is your best friend… Time has a way of changing the heart. Time has a way of changing people. Someone might have been a regular hell-raiser and now they’re saved; they found some type of religion and they just want to get what they did off their chest. Or someone was in an intimate relationship and now they’re not. Now they’re free to speak about the person they were terrified of. The person in question may even be deceased at this point. It depends solely on time. And it depends solely on how people change over time. Time is your best friend.

New technology gets a lot of attention. It’s flashy. It makes good news copy… But the fact of the matter is, the best thing the cold case investigator has going for him is simply the passage of time. Relationships change. Feelings between people change. Siblings or other family members, former lovers, “best friends”, and ex-spouses have often and repeatedly been the sources of eventual case-breaking information. Former lovers and spouses should be bumped straight to the front of the line.

People always want to tell the truth and they will tell someone that truth…  Say you have an unsolvable homicide. Your suspect won’t talk. The only witness is the victim, and he or she is dead, and perhaps even the remains are unaccounted for and/or irretrievable. The best thing you can learn is that your suspect and his or her “significant other” at the time are no longer together — maybe he beat her up, ripped her off, cheated on her or whatever. People always want to tell the truth and the will tell somebody. So if someone does something really wrong, they’re always going to tell their best friend or “significan other”. Always. So go back and interview the people your suspect may have talked to. It doesn’t have to be an ex-spouse or boyfriend or girlfriend, it could just be a good friend of theirs or a family member that they split up with. You can get a lot of — and potentially some case-breaking — information by going back to these people years later.

If you’re trying to be a badass, it doesn’t do any good if no one knows you’re a badass… So frequently, with gang-banger and “reputation” crimes, the perpetrator will brag about the crime to someone. And someone will eventually divulge that information to the right interviewer.

Sometimes, however, nothing succeeds like the latest and the greatest… DNA is absolute manna from heaven for the resolution of cold cases, and has been directly responsible for thawing out an ever-growing number of frigid cases that otherwise would have never — ever — been solved at all. And now DNA technology has progressed beyond simple body fluid analysis and into the realm of the most casual perpetrator contact with the advent of “Touch DNA”. With Touch DNA, a mere hand on a doorknob or steering wheel provides investigators with all the raw material needed to perform a thorough DNA analysis.

On the subject of databases… Perhaps even more significant than the advance of DNA technology itself is the advancement of the databases investigators use to draw their “hits” from. DNA is terrific. But DNA in itself isn’t enough. In fact, many cold cases still remain on the books where suspect DNA was discovered at the crime scene and properly analyzed, but to no avail. If you perform DNA testing, what leads you to believe you’ll ultimately find the perpetrator, just because you’ve got the DNA? That doesn’t make your investigation any better. What makes these investigations better — and these cold cases relevant now — is really the advancement of the DNA database. The national DNA database in operation today, CODIS (the Combined DNA Index System, containing information on millions of related crimes, suspects and known perpetrators) has breathed new life into cold cases originally investigated back when DNA may have been present and analyzed, but then run through a statewide database containing perhaps only a few thousand entries.

This applies to fingerprints as well… During the original investigation of many cold cases, latent fingerprints were discovered at the crime scene and properly lifted, processed and classified, only to be eventually run through a statewide database called the Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS), in an attempt to score a match. Now the opportunity to apply new technology to old cases exists in the national Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS), providing investigators with many more critical capabilities.

Wires and wiretaps are also staple tricks of the trade… Once you have something like a result from DNA or bloodwork or from trace evidence, or maybe there’s an old boyfriend or girlfriend who’s finally ready to spill the beans, you can have someone wear a wire or install a wiretap to get things confirmed. A lot of old child-molestation cases are solved this way. You have someone who was molested as a child wear a wire and confront the suspect and see if they’ll admit it. Or you have someone stimulate the suspect and/or his associates and find out what they start saying to each other immediately after somebody gets arrested, or something gets out in the press about the case. Verify appropriate legalities involved with these methods prior to utilization: they vary from state to state. Depending on the location, law-enforcement participation and/or a court order might be necessary.

Then came ground-penetrating radar… The operator pulls a sled-mounted radar unit back and forth across potential burial sites. All the unit can tell you is if the underlying earth has been disturbed: it’s not in its original state. Eventually it’ll show you the outline of a grave if there is one — a soil disturbance — even if it’s located beneath a concrete slab. Cold cases have been solved in this manner long after all else failed.

When you investigate cold cases, psychology is a critical factor… Being a good listener and a good observer is crucial…  Some good training to pick up would be for polygraph examination and forensic psychophysiology. A psychophysiologist is trained to tell whether or not someone is being truthful or deceptive during the course of either a formal interview or ordinary conversation, through observation and analysis of non-verbal behaviors displayed by the subject. Human beings are like leaky faucets, often communicating information non-verbally they don’t even know they are providing.

The best detectives are the best interviewers… The most successful investigators can talk one-on-one with doctors, lawyers, and stock brokers just as easily as they can street-corner prostitutes, crack addicts and homeless people.

Many cold cases have been solved in jails and penitentiaries… Many inmates locked up in jails and penitentiaries have given up solid confessions when visited and interviewed by enterprising investigators. Interviewing skills in this endeavor are paramount. Alternately, so-called “jailhouse snitches” — often during the course of their “pre-trial detainee” status — have provided case-breaking information, usually in an attempt to shave time off their sentences, acquire immunity from prosecution, or for various other perks or privileges. These types of situations have even involved long-term death-row inmates.

Go back to the crime scene… This can help even years later. There’s just something about being there you can’t get from pictures or reports. Maybe you’ll pick up a sense of what happened. Maybe you’ll pick up on something new, sort of on the periphery. You never know.

There are more murderers living among us than most people will ever realize… Statistically only around half of the homicides committed in this country are ever sucessfully solved. That means about 50% of these murderers are still running around “on the loose”, minus the percentage who are now either deceased for whatever reason or are currently imprisoned for other crimes. There are a number of cold cases where the suspect may have only been convicted of some fairly “lightweight” crime, but an eventual DNA match exposes they have committed rapes and/or murders. In other cases when they walk away scot-free, maybe they they were looking to steal something and someone surprised them during the commission of a home burglary, and they get away with it. Or maybe it’s a situation where they wind up in a fight with somebody, and they don’t expect to kill the person — didn’t plan on it — but they do. Or there’s just one person that they really, really want to kill, and once that’s over, they don’t feel the need to ever kill again. And they get away with it — nobody ever knows who killed this person.

When cold case perpetrators are finally caught, they always seem relieved… Even when they’ve gotten away with murder for decades, truth is they’ve spent the whole time waiting for that “knock on the door”. So an eventual forthcoming confession is never out of the question. Veteran homicide detectives often bolster this probability by telling prime suspects flat-out something like: “There are 365 days in a year. One of those days, you’re going to screw up. And I’m going to be right there, or some other detective is going to be right there, to prove you screwed up. And we’re going to get you.”

Justice might be blind, but karma has the vision of a hawk… There really does seem to be — for all practical intents and purposes — some intangible physical law of the universe which dictates that “what goes around comes around”, or simply: “you reap what you sow”. This could also be classified as “fate”. It’s also been put that crimes on the order of magnitude some of these under discussion aspire to create an imbalance in the universe the universe then seeks to reconcile. However you slice it, this spiritual principle could provide the tenacious cold-case investigator with at least some small unseen advantage — a cosmic guiding hand, as it were.

(Adapted from Chapter 8: Cold Cases, of Every Contact Leaves A Trace, by Connie Fletcher, St. Martin’s Press, 2006)

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