Episode 16

In This Episode

Payne talks true crime podcasts with Crimetown creator/host Mark Smerling. On a trip to Ocilla, he also visits Marcus Harper’s mother.

Payne Lindsey: Hey guys, if you haven't heard, me and Up and Vanished are going on tour. That's right, a live tour. Between now and the end of the year we'll be going to over 15 different cities. For more information, just go to upandvanished.com/live and check out when we're coming to a city near you. That's upandvanished.com/live.

Intro: Ten years ago today marked the last time anybody that couldn't see or couldn't hear ...

Officially, police are calling this a missing person's case.

... a latex glove found in ...

... an 80,000 dollar reward is being offered.

Where is Tara Grinstead?

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

When I first set out to make this podcast, I had no idea what I was doing or getting myself into, and since then it's been a roller coaster ride of twists and turns, and also an emotional experience unlike anything I've ever been a part of. I told you guys in episode one, that I too am a fan of other true crime podcasts and documentaries. One of which was the HBO series called The Jinx.

This series was one of my biggest inspirations in trying to solve a mystery of my own. If you haven't seen The Jinx yet, I don't want to spoil it, but my friend Matt described it the best, "It's like that Bigfoot show if they actually found Bigfoot at the end." The Jinx without a doubt has the most climactic and impactful ending of any true crime series ever.

A few months ago, the shows creator, Mark Smerling, reached out to me. He was a fan of Up and Vanished, and like me, he was also a filmmaker turned podcaster. His podcast called Crime Town is fantastic, and was also his first time taking on the medium. Over the past few months we've kept in touch, and on the day of Ryan Duke's arrest, he called me.

Mark Smerling: Alright, tell me everything.

Payne Lindsey: This morning I got a little tip that ...

I told him the story we all now know, and I asked him for advice on how to proceed with the podcast. The arrest was a huge break in this case, and the entire trajectory of my investigation had changed, but the story wasn't over.

Mark Smerling: Well, you were worried about ending. I don't think you have to worry about that anymore, and things turn into new things, and that's just how it is. We always feel that pressure right? Like you've got to do it now, you've got to do it now, but it always takes a lot longer than you think it's going to take.

Payne Lindsey: After the dust had settled a bit, I called Mark again to talk about where things would go from here.

Mark Smerling: Inevitably you become emotionally entangled in this story. It's not just about telling a great story anymore, it's about sort being part of the story, even though sometimes I don't put myself in the story. The Jinx was unique that way, but ultimately you're emotionally entangled with the people who are telling you their stories, and that's a powerful relationship, and you become an expert, right? Because you're talking to everybody, you become an expert.

I talk to people all day long about Providence, Rhode Island. It's kind of crazy, and some of these people are not in the show, or their interviews are in the past, but they're still giving me information, and these conversations are still influencing the way the show is developed, and the story we're telling. Sometimes it's just two guys talking, or a guy and a girl talking about something they really know well.

Payne Lindsey: I was driving back from Ocilla, south Georgia last night at like one in the morning, and I was like, "What am I doing? Where am I right now? What the hell am I doing? What was I doing down here?" It's like it becomes such a fog of going back and forth and have you ever had that moment like, what the hell am I doing?

Mark Smerling: I feel very much the same way. I think one thing that attracted me to your show is that the way you were treating your sources, and how you were speaking to people and how you were telling the story. It was extremely empathetic. You have a way of dealing with sources that I think opens people up rather than closing them down, and that's what I try to do as well, so I saw a sort of fellow traveler.

You go through the roller coaster of talking to people. I've had people in this story, in past stories that were crime stories that I talked to for a very long time, built a real relationship with, and was never able to get them to sit in front of the camera, or sit for an audio interview. That happens. That's part of it, and that roller coaster ride is emotional. The only thing you learn from doing it more than once is that time is your friend.

Time eventually irons out all the bumps in the road, but it's a long journey, and every time I sit down to do this, or I get together with a broadcaster or somebody, and they're like, "We want this thing delivered in six months or three months." I'm like, "That's not possible." The relationship building takes so much time, and that's where you get the good story, by building those relationships.

Payne Lindsey: You're going to learn as you go navigate through the case, you kind of become friends with some of these people and try to find a way to get these people to talk, but after a certain point, you feel like you're close to them, and the way you were looking at going into it was not the same halfway through.

Mark Smerling: Yeah. Yeah, I know what you're saying. Payne, it's all about looking for the story, the answers of the obvious story, like who did what to who, and what crime was committed, and how it was committed, and all the ins and outs of the Sherlock Holmes part of the story, but there is also this underlying story that is much more important, and that's the emotional connections to the material, to the story itself. The people who were affected and the people that are continuing to be affected, that's where you get the really good stories, and that's what Serial does, that's what you're doing, that's what The Jinx did, it transcends the mere mystery of it, IDTV of it, and it tries to build a story out of the emotional connections with characters who are telling their stories. That's huge, and that only comes from building a relationship over time.

I remember someone telling me once that once you do one of these shows, you're going to be in these peoples' lives forever, and that's just part and parcel to doing what you're doing right now, and that's true. I can actually attest to that. These people are part of your life forever.

Payne Lindsey: It's just been a wild experience, honestly. In a way, I kind of knew what I was getting myself into, but at the same time, I really didn't either. Experiencing it firsthand is just extremely different than how you envision it. I get tons of email with people asking me how to get started if they want to do something similar to this, if they want to make a documentary on a cold case or anything in this genre, investigative journalism. Sometimes it's hard to give them an answer to that because I just picked up and did it, and I didn't really read anything about it.

I was a fan of shows like The Jinx, and Serial, and just kind of took what I learned from being a fan of watching the mystery unfold, and turn into the creator. Part of me just says, "Pick up and do it," but beyond that, what are the rules here? What are the guidelines? What are you looking for when you set out to do something?

Mark Smerling: You had a moment along your way where I think that regardless of whether or not you guys ended pulling the curtain back on who murdered Tara, you certainly had a huge influence on the entire story, the reality of it. That's when it gets really interesting, when your storytelling starts to affect the world outside, which happened in The Jinx, and certainly happened with Up and Vanished, and it's sort of happening in Providence too, because there's a lot of talk up in Providence about this show. It's extraordinarily popular up there, and people are really, really talking about it. It's hopefully making people think about the community they live in, but that's an interesting moment, is when it crosses over into reality.

Back from reality goes to storytelling, and then back to reality, that's when you know you've really made an impact.

Payne Lindsey: If you haven't already, you need to check out Mark's podcast called Crime Town. It's a captivating portrait of organized crime in Providence, Rhode Island. The question that's been growing in the back of my mind since the arrest, is where do we go from here? The goal is to make sure we can bring justice for Tara, and to tell the whole story, leaving no stone unturned. Tara's disappearance has affected so many lives over the past decade, not just that of her loved ones and the town of Ocilla, but also those who were accused, and through all of that, everyone was wrong.

The names of Ryan and Bo, had never even been mentioned, but now that the truth is emerging in this case, I felt like it was time to retrace some steps, and to hear firsthand from some of those that have been affected by all the rumors over the years. Tara's ex boyfriend, Marcus Harper, arguably endured a lot of scrutiny, and possibly the most, and some of Tara's last documented communication was to his mother, Nancy. In those emails sent just days before she disappeared, there were just so many unanswered questions, but today we can finally get some answers.

While in Ocilla last week, Marcus Harper's mother, Nancy Redman, invited me into her home and told me her story, about everything.

Nancy Redman: All of my memories of her are very precious, and it's really hard to sit here and say all the memories of her were precious, because they are no more. She's gone. I'll have those, but she was a beautiful person, and I enjoyed all of my times with her. We had a lot of time when it was just she and I, because my husband would working, and away, and of course my son was away, so we would do cooking and have our dinners together, and we would put in a movie and just do girl talk.

Just talking and laughing, because I don't know if some people knew this, but she's very humorous, she loved to laugh, so we'd talk about some things that was funny, or watch some comedy. I could tell she was a very organized person, and a good schoolteacher. She talked about her students, what they meant to her, and how hard she worked to teach her classes, how she went beyond, and I respected her for that. I admired her for that.

Payne Lindsey: She described to me the last time she had seen Tara, just a week before she went missing. Tara came over to her house unannounced, and what transpired that day stuck with her forever.

Nancy Redman: I looked out the window and I saw her standing out in my yard, and so I went out to see her, "Hi, Tara." You know, and she said, "I came to say goodbye, Nancy." And I said, "To say goodbye? What do you mean?" "I just need to say goodbye to you," and I said, "We'll see one another again, we live in a small town, and I'm sure we'll run into each other, and when we do, I'll say hi Tara, how are things going? We'll embrace each other. Things will always be the same there," and she just really wanted me to know that she needed to put closure to it, and maybe she did need that closure, but to me, what I heard was it was something final. It really frightened me. I had never heard her speak in this way before.

Payne Lindsey: Did it frighten you then or now?

Nancy Redman: I didn't understand it then. It was strange. I just felt something different. It just felt strange and I didn't understand it, but now when I look back, and I think about that time, it may sound weird, but it gives me a little comfort to know that actually, she did get to say goodbye to me, even though that's not the way she meant it that day.

Payne Lindsey: Wow. Do you think she just meant trying to move on from Marcus maybe?

Nancy Redman: Probably, but you know, I really don't know. I can't explain it, but I can only tell you how I felt that day, but I did embrace her and I told her I loved her, and like I said, I didn't know what it really meant. It was just something that's always been a thought.

Payne Lindsey: One of the biggest things we've discussed over the course of this podcast were Tara's emails to Nancy, and one in particular seems sort of alarming. In an email, Tara said this to Nancy, just days before she went missing. "Just remind Marcus what I said about something happening to me, or even him. He leaves it as this, and something may happen to me." I asked Nancy about this.

What did she mean by that, do you think?

Nancy Redman: Well, I can really tell you what I know she meant.

Payne Lindsey: Okay.

Nancy Redman: She just didn't want things to stay the way it was, she just wanted one more last chance to say something nice, whatever it would be, I don't know what she would have said, but that was not in a threatening manner. That was not in a dark manner. I feel that that statement was just sometimes like we hug our family member before we leave in the morning. Some of us do that because we don't know what the day is going to hold, you don't know if you're going to see your loved one when night falls.

Payne Lindsey: Right.

Nancy Redman: I think that's sort of what she meant. Like I said, only Tara really knew what she meant, but I don't take that as a dark and a destructive, or a plan that she had, or anything of that nature.

Payne Lindsey: It just seemed as a whole, most of the emails that she had sent to you in the weeks of October just seemed to show that she really was upset. She really was emotionally distraught about the breakup and trying to get over it, and figuring out what to do, and she was really confiding in you with a lot of that stuff.

Nancy Redman: Well I didn't really have a lot of contact with her. When you read words it's not quite as vivid as when you're sitting across the table from someone, but I feel like she was hurt. Of course any of us would be, you know, but I feel like Tara was going to be okay, it was just going to take some time, like any of us. Those type of things happen all the time.

Payne Lindsey: They do.

Nancy Redman: Breakups and hurt, but you know, we get up and move on, so I thought that everything was going to be okay one day.

Payne Lindsey: The day you found out about the arrest of Ryan Duke, can you describe for me that day for you, in whatever way you can?

Nancy Redman: When I first heard the news, my knees were weak. It was just incredible news that I just did not believe what I was hearing. It was unbelievable. I went to the press conference, but I remember sitting there and hearing the words, and I thought that it is possible for a heart to feel two emotions at one time. I was rejoicing in one side of my heart, and the other was mourning. Instant mourning, because all these years I held onto hope that somewhere out there she could be just starting a new life. It's not too bizarre, and this day it was all final. That was it. There was the answer, and so something that I had never been able to do personally, was to grieve, because I held onto the hope, and then of course to hear the ones that had been accused, now is innocent, because those words, "Tara's case is solved." Unbelievable. It was a miracle.

Payne Lindsey: How did you feel when you saw Ryan Duke in the courtroom?

Nancy Redman: Well, I had so many questions. That's the first thing I thought about was oh my goodness, there he is. Why? Why did he kill her? What in the world happened? I know we're all thinking this because we can't know the answers to these questions yet.

I was disturbed. I was disturbed when I saw him. It was like a dream. I was looking at him as he was standing there, and of course I was studying all the mannerisms and everything, and I thought, there he is. There he is. That's what happened to Tara.

Payne Lindsey: Back in Nancy's home, I asked her one more important question before I left. What kind of impact has Tara's disappearance had on your family's life?

Nancy Redman: Well, I want to say I have a lot of faith, and control to be strong, but we're still human, and like I told you before, my dad passed away in 2015, and it would have been wonderful if he could have known, but the same goes for Tara's mother, of course. It would have been wonderful if her mother could have actually had answers.

It was devastating, absolutely devastating is all I can think about. I don't know how else to say it. Every waking day, every waking hour, it was there, it was there every day, and yeah, the thoughts were where is she? What happened? Still holding onto the hope, maybe somebody will see her somewhere, maybe they will find her, maybe she's going to be okay. That was the hope, but it didn't turn out that way. It's horrible. We're grieving, we're grieving, because now we have the answer.

Payne Lindsey: How did it feel when people tossed around Marcus' name, and you knew your son was innocent?

Nancy Redman: Very hurtful. You're helpless. There is nothing you can say, there is not anything that you can do that is going to make it right for the people that want to think that way that they were thinking, to have to live every day, even to go into the small town where some business would have to be conducted, and you maybe would have heard this one saying that, this person is saying that, just try to be quiet. Just try to keep moving. Just try to keep surviving, but it hurt.

I would have people to alert me when there was going to be a show on television, and naturally, it was like anxiety begin to build. I know my heart would start racing and I would think I don't want to watch it because I know what it's going to be about. They're going to say something about my son, and most of the time I didn't watch it, sometimes I would.

Payne Lindsey: How did you keep from just yelling in the streets that my son is innocent?

Nancy Redman: Try to stay in control, just try and do what would be best, try and make a good decision, that one day, hopefully, that the faith that I had, that it would all come full circle. One day the answers would come, and I was surely hoping that they would come before I passed away. My dad is already gone. Tara's mom is gone, but hopefully the answers would come soon, but it was who would have ever imagined that we would have answers now. It's unreal. We may not have all the answers now, but we know. I trust the GBI.

Payne Lindsey: Do you think just the not knowing, everybody in this town wanting answers, and pointing on blame on Marcus or anybody else, do you think that kind of made a divide in this community at all?

Nancy Redman: Oh yes. See, I don't know who those teams are, so to speak. I don't know who those sides are. I can feel it, but I just try to keep to myself, to tell you the truth. No, I didn't lock myself in my home now, but there are other places to travel. There are other places to visit. There was a reason, like I said a lot of times I could make another choice to go the opposite direction.

It's sad to say that that's what I did. Lot's of people just wanted to talk about it. Wanted to talk about the negativity, you know, and they may not have mentioned certain names, but it was still negative. I was trying to keep myself as positive as I could. Praying, and believing, and faith, and just hope that one day this would all come full circle, but there is nothing you can do when there is people doing all that type of talking. When there's television programs that are on occasionally, and especially every fall. It would make you dread even though fall is one of my favorite seasons, but I knew what was coming, so you dreaded it.

She could have had a good life if the horrible thing had not happened. I really believed that she would have been okay one day, that she could have had a future.

Payne Lindsey: Right.

Nancy Redman: We'll never know that, and like I said, it's hard. It's hard to sit here and talk to you about this, because it's over. She is not here. She will not be with us anymore. It's all truly memories now. It was always hope, and now there isn't. That was taken away, and that's when the grief started, and that was the same day that I had the rejoicing, because those innocent, including my son, were cleared.

Payne Lindsey: How does that feel?

Nancy Redman: Oh, that feels absolutely amazing. It is equally amazing as it is in the other being devastating. It is amazing. It was just a miracle. I had imagined it happening. In my mind, I would imagine how it would happen, but I'll tell you this, one of my little thoughts I had one day was that she came to visit me, and she came inside our house, and when she did, I locked the door, because I was going to make sure that she stayed with me until I let someone know that she was here. Yeah, she's here, but like I said, I can't imagine what her dad, her step mom must be feeling.

I really feel for her dad, her step mom, but her dad. This was her daddy, that's what she called him. Her daddy. You know Payne, it would be so nice. This is just a statement coming from a mom. It would be so nice, and I know we don't live in a world like I'm about to say, but it would be so nice if people did not talk ill will against another. Especially when they're innocent. There is so much harm done there, and it's like throwing a pebble in a brook, and the ripples just continue to go, and anyone that's been guilty of this, they really don't know just how deep the hurt goes, and I really hope it stops now that we have the truth and we have answers. Now what it's about, it's only about one thing now, justice for Tara. She deserves that. She's at peace, but we all have got to have closure.

Payne Lindsey: 12 years later when there is two arrests, everyone is in shock, they can't believe it's these two.

Nancy Redman: That's right. I've never heard of them until this. I've never heard their names. I don't know them. How I felt when I saw Ryan, I was in shock. Tara is gone because of you. He kept that secret, and others probably kept that secret. We don't know how may kept that secret maybe, and it went on for years, and years, and years, and it did not have to, and people suffered. Tara suffered the ultimate, but we have suffered.

Like I said, through my faith, and just being strong, and having hope, and it all came full circle.

Payne Lindsey: What do you want to happen now?

Nancy Redman: I want all the truth to be told about what happened. I just wish that there was more freedom to speak about whatever information has probably already been found. Of course, we can't know that right now, but that would be wonderful, but for that to happen is what I'm looking forward to. Justice for Tara, because we all know there's been an arrest made, so I'm just waiting for the whole story, for everything. We can all get closure if there is such a thing. She'll always be in our hearts, but to have closure in our minds, that would be peaceful. Too many secrets. We know she's at peace now, but there's too many secrets. She deserves that. We deserve that. Everyone that loved her deserves all the truth, you know?

I couldn't imagine if I was someone out there and I had a bit of information, and that I was holding it back, and it could help to fit that piece of the puzzle, so I hope that everything and everyone that can, would help to paint this picture and that it is complete.

Payne Lindsey: Last week, Tara Grinstead's parents released a statement to the media. It said the following: "We have waited a long time to get to this point. Our focus and out efforts have always been about getting justice for Tara. Our priority now is to protect the integrity of the investigation, for that reason, we have decided not to comment on the case at this time. We are grateful for the coverage Tara's case has had since she disappeared in 2005, and we appreciate all the support that has been shown to all of Tara's family and friends during this very difficult time. We realize the public wants more information, but we do ask for your patience and understanding at this time, as the case moves forward. We will have more to say at a later time. We do ask that you keep us in your prayers. Billy and Connie Grinstead."

News Reporter: Duke was charged with Grinstead's murder back in February, and next week, a grand jury will decide if Duke's case should go to trial. Grand juries determine if there is enough evidence to indict a criminal suspect that is based is simply on whether they think a suspect probably committed a crime. At a trial, a different jury would decide if Duke is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. If the grand jury indicts Duke, he would have to enter a plea of guilty or not guilty before the case can move forward. Also, grand jury proceedings are secret, held behind closed doors unlike a regular trial.

Payne Lindsey: On April 12th, there will be a grand jury hearing in the Grinstead case. I caught up with Colin Miller from Undisclosed to break down what we should expect.

Colin Miller: When a prosecutor charges a defendant with a crime, we don't just take the prosecutor at their word, we want to make sure the charges are based on probably cause, and the primary mechanism to determine that is the grand jury, and the prosecutor at this hearing will present the case to the grand jury, and at the end of that, either the grand jury will vote on what's known as a true bill, which means they found probably cause and the case can be bound over and taken to trial, or they could issue what is known as a no bill, and that no bill means they found like a probable cause, meaning the charges had to be dismissed.

The prosecution will be calling witnesses and presenting documentary evidence. The prosecutor is under no obligation to present exculpatory evidence. He is not bound by the rules of evidence. He is not bound by the constitution. He can present basically anything he wants to the grand jury other than perjured testimony.

The rules of evidence don't apply, so there is no rule against hearsay. There is no confrontation clause, so he could call live witnesses to have them testify directly in front of the grand jury. He could present witness statements. He could have witnesses describing statements by other people who aren't appearing before the grand jury.

Payne Lindsey: These grand jury hearings, they happen in private. Will we know what happens in there some way?

Colin Miller: You'll know the result, but you won't know how the sausage is made, so yeah grand jury proceedings are secretive and what happened before the grand jury is not something the prosecutor can explain to the public unless an exception applies, which is pretty rare.

Payne Lindsey: The people in the grand jury, these people, are they allowed to talk, or do they have to remain silent about what they've heard?

Colin Miller: They have to remain silent. So they can ask questions during the proceedings, and of course they'll deliberate and issue a verdict, but after that, they're not allowed to go on Facebook or social media, or even talk to their friends and say, "Oh, we heard from John Doe or Jane Doe, and they said X, Y, and Z." They have to take an oath that says they're not going to disclose what happened before the grand jury.

Payne Lindsey: This coming up on Wednesday, should we know something on Wednesday, or could it be dragged out even longer?

Colin Miller: It could be either. It entirely depends on how much evidence the prosecutor has and wants to present at this point in time, so some grand jury proceedings are a matter of hours. Some extend out weeks and even months, so the question here is simply how much the prosecutor has and how much he wants to present to the grand jury.

They almost always indict. I looked it up, in Georgia, it's about 90 percent, which is actually a little bit lower than nationwide, where it's closer to 95 or 99 percent, so it's exceedingly likely in this case we're going to see an indictment. Unlike at a trial, it's not a requirement of unanimous verdict, it's majority so there is going to be 23 grand jurors in the case, and as long as 12 of them find probable cause they'll issue a true bill. Again, exceedingly likely we'll have an indictment here, the question is simply when it's going to come.

Payne Lindsey: The first time I met with Maurice Godwin about this case, he reviewed with me all of his findings from inside Tara's home. The GBI seemed to think that there were no signs of a struggle inside of her house, but Maurice disagreed. Now, based off what the state is claiming, Ryan Duke did in fact kill Tara inside her home. Maybe Dr. Godwin's discoveries were actually clues to what happened that night, and were just overlooked.

I called him to go over the evidence again and give it a fresh look now.

Maurice Godwin: Originally, it was said by GBI and law enforcement that there was no signs of struggle, but when I arrived there in March of '06, I talked to family and some friends to try to get an assessment of the locations of items and stuff, so I can take that into consideration, and after I did my overview and walkthrough of the house, and a close examination of the lamp that was on the bedside table. The lamp was not just broke a little bit, the plastic base was actually broken with two hands. You would have to take it and actually break the plastic with two hands, so that just didn't happen by some cat knocking it off.

Then I found a necklace, a clasp, that had been pulled apart, but they don't get pulled apart just by no force, there was some force there. Then I knew that the chandelier earrings that she had on were missing, and then I knew about the necklace that she had made. The beads from that were scattered on the floor. This told me that some type of altercation occurred between Tara and her attacker in that bedroom, and it appears to be now that that is the case.

Another thing I found that has never really been talked about is I found a nail, a broken off fingernail, laying between the crevices in the floor, and that was turned over to the GBI.

Payne Lindsey: Where was it at?

Maurice Godwin: It was at the foot of her bed where the clasp was. Here’s the thing, the earrings were missing. Now, she didn't go to bed with the earrings on. I highly doubt that, so she had time to change her clothes, but the altercation must have occurred before she was able to remove the earrings, because unless the earrings were just stolen, then she was attacked before her earrings could be removed. She would have not slept with the earrings on. The earrings were still on her when she was attacked.

Payne Lindsey: Another thing Maurice noticed inside Tara's home was something odd about the window by her bed.

Maurice Godwin: The window latch, one screw was completely out. It was hanging off to the side. The other screw you could move it up or down in the hole, so that window latch, as far as keeping the window safe or locked, was no good. Here is a young female living on her own, that looked out of that window on a daily basis. Do you believe that she saw window latch with the screws pulled on a daily basis, and never did anything about it?

Payne Lindsey: I asked Maurice how her was feeling now about the case, going on 12 years.

Maurice Godwin: Man, it's been emotional. I'm completely exhausted from this case. Not through with it, but exhausted.

Payne Lindsey: A few days ago, one of Ryan Duke's friends who I had previously talked to on the podcast reached back out to me. He said he had remembered something, and thought that it might be important.

Male Source: I say, like I really hadn't seen anything before, and my mom said I really should do the right thing and listen, so I sat down and decided to listen to the whole thing. I got to listening to the end of the episode where I guess there's a psychiatrist trying to break down his calls that he had made to different people and things like that. I don't know what about it made me think of it, but that night he was at my house while we were drinking and hanging out, he had mentioned something about night terrors, and that he had went to a place in Thomasville to stay for a little while to maybe see, I guess to get tested, or to see what was wrong. He said he had trouble sleeping. Just he could get to sleep, but couldn't stay asleep, and wake up and freak out for a minute.

This is conversation that we had at my house while we were just hanging out, and it was me and like two other people that was in the house, but it was just him and me talking. The way he put it to me was that he's like, "I had to stay a little while in Thomasville because I was having night terrors and I couldn't sleep that well."

Payne Lindsey: Slowly but surely, we are all beginning to see what may be a different side of Ryan Duke. The Facebook message that he sent in 2015 to another former teacher, calling her sexy, and now an old friend of his revealed that just months after Tara disappeared, he told him he was having night terrors and couldn't sleep, and checked himself into some facility in Thomasville, Georgia. It seems like there may have been a side of Ryan that no one really knew.

In the last episode, I mentioned being in Tara's yard, and thinking to myself, the placement of the gloves seemed off. There is still so much we don't know about this glove. Was it planted? Did someone drop it? Did it belong to Ryan Duke? Is it his DNA on the glove?

Maurice Godwin: If you go by where the glove was dropped at, or placed at, or whatever, and the person that had to be walking right directly out of the house, right straight over that partial bed, beside the tree, it must have been towards the ditch, but it seems like based on the glove, they didn't go anywhere toward the driveway. I mean there's been no report on if there's a match or not, but in regards to the glove and whether he dropped it or not, it's important in some ways, but I'm more interested in what he was doing with it in the first place.

The wearing of the gloves may indicate one of two things. The crime was pre planned, or they returned back to the scene. The reason why I say that is because if the crime is pre planned, you would want to carry gloves with you because you won't want to leave fingerprints, or forensic evidence behind, so you would have the gloves with you ahead of time, right? Or they went back to the crime, they went back to the scene so they already knew ahead of time the crime has been committed and they didn't want to leave evidence, so they prepared themselves not to leave any prints or anything after the crime was committed.

I just don't see why, by himself, with no suggestion from anyone, get the box of latex, and put them on, and go over there and doing that. I think the gloves may have been suggested to him. The fact that the person thought about using the gloves in the first place is very important, because it goes to intent. Legally, it goes to intent, in my opinion, because she didn't have gloves in the house and they didn't find the gloves, they didn't look up under the sink or something like that and say oh here, here are some gloves, let's go ahead and use these. They didn't do that. Sure, you can buy latex gloves in a lot of places. Probably Arby's or pharmacies, but still, that shows planning, right?

The GPI claimed he was off the radar, so there must have not been any kind of phone forensics, phone records from a phone call, unless he was just randomly riding around, to know that she was home, he must have watched her somehow, so either they randomly saw her, or they were watching as she arrived home.

I guess you could have your gloves with you, latex gloves with you, and randomly just ride around the block, keep riding around, riding around until the car pulls in. Technically you could do that, but it's a little risky sorta, but the whole thing was risky, and especially risky that only one person did this. That would be a big task. The glove is interesting, but unless there's something I don't know, the glove places him outside of the house, but I don't know anything that places him inside.

Payne Lindsey: Throughout this podcast, the latex glove has quite possibly been the most perplexing element in this case. From the discrepancy of the color, to who found it first, and why just one glove. Nothing ever quite added up to me, and to make things even more confusing, I recently received a call from a woman that had a brand new story about this glove.

Female Source: I could see where Tara's house is. There's a house on the corner one block up, just the next block up, and a guy by the name of Norman [REDACTED] but he's deceased now. His daughter in law had a flower shop. I was in the flower shop one day and Mr. Norman came in there, and he had a little dog, a little chihuahua or something and then he would walk that dog every day around the same time.

Well he was in that flower shop that day and he told me, he said, "There was another glove," and I said, "What are you talking about?" He said, "I walked my dog the same day when they found out that she was missing." He would walk that block around from his house, around in front of her house, and back around his, and he said he found another latex glove. He didn't see what color that glove was, but he said it was another latex glove and he said he gave it to the cop. Somewhere from his house, around one block, and back to his house. I'm not sure exactly where it was at, but he stood there in that flower shop and he told me this, and he said he gave it to the cops.

Payne Lindsey: Maybe this is something the GBI had all along, a second latex glove. If Ryan Duke's DNA is not a match on either of those gloves, then something seems very off here. One glove in the yard seems like it could be a plant, but two gloves in different places, that sounds like it belongs to the perpetrator.

Female Source 2: You can put a word on there. You can type a message and it will go away in like ten seconds or two days or whatever you set it to go to. I think probably the first time he messaged me, and then he wouldn't message me back. I had to keep messaging him. It was basically like a whole question and answer thing all night long, and I got tons of information.

Payne Lindsey: This is someone from the Up and Vanished discussion board, who recently had a private conversation with someone claiming to be Bo Dukes. It was the same profile as last time, AAA in all caps. After some chatting, he invited her to private message him on an app called Wickr, which used encryption, and it automatically deletes the messages after a certain amount of time.

Female Source 2: I'll just read you what I have real quick. I said "There is a lot of names that need to be cleared, huh?" He says, "Yes." I asked him, "Do you just get on this discussion board to see what all the theories are?" and then he sent this long paragraph, which I said, "Was she really strangled?" He said, "That's what Ryan told me." He said that his other roommate and a brother were there whenever all the talk about her being killed that night.

I asked him did he know the tipster, he said, "Yes." I said, "Was it something you all had planned to tell?" He said, "Fuck no." I said, "Did you lose your job?" He said, "No I was in school and I had to withdraw when I realized it would be a circus." I said, "Did it happen at her house?" He said, "Yes," so he told me. I said, "Was Ryan in love with her or did he know her?" He said, "I don't think so, I don't think he really knew her before that night." I said, "Have you continued to talk to Ryan in the last years?" He says, "No, we haven't spoken in many years. I hate Ryan." I said, "Will the truth ever come out for everyone else to know?" He says, "Yes," and I asked him has Tara's body been on his family's land ever since then, and he said, "Yes."

He said, "Let me spell it out for you hypothetically. Imagine your roommate takes your truck out. You wake up to them telling you they killed her for reasons unknown. Tell the other roommate and brother she's on your land. You ask again later, and you get a blank stare from them, and two days later on Wednesday they show you the body."

Payne Lindsey: Before airing this call, I did my own research, and to the best of my knowledge, it was most certainly Bo Dukes she was talking to. This is not the first, nor the second time Bo Dukes has done this. It's his third time. For some reason, after not talking at all for 12 years, he suddenly has the urge, and he's doing it with a sense of pride that is incomprehensible. What's wrong with this guy? He just can't seem to stay out of the spotlight. For some reason, he seems to think that the gag order doesn't apply to him, and he takes advantage of every opportunity he can find to tell his story to an Up and Vanished listener, but that would be in direct violation of the gag order Judge Cross put in place.

I will be posting this entire conversation on the Up and Vanished discussion board for you guys to see. I talked with Colin Miller again to see what typically happens when someone violates a gag order.

Colin Miller: If someone violates the gag order, they can be found in contempt of court, and they can fined or possibly even imprisoned. The judge could then initiate a contempt proceeding, and at that contempt proceeding it could be as minor as just giving a warning to the individual and telling them to refrain from discussing these matters in the public eye, and it could be as extreme as finding contempt and possible having criminal sanctions.

Payne Lindsey: Over the past month, we've slowly learned more about Ryan Duke, and Bo Dukes. We've learned that unlike Ryan, Bo is a former criminal, not an alleged criminal, but an actual criminal, who stole nearly 150,000 dollars from the US government. For that stunt, he served time in federal prison, and was also ordered to pay back the money, and he still owes them well over 100 grand, which coincidentally, is the same amount as Tara Grinstead's reward money. 100,000 dollars for information leading to an arrest, so just who was the tipster?

Well, there's definitely been a fair share of speculation, so far, the names of two women keep coming up. Bo's girlfriend, and his girlfriend's mom, and just a few days ago, I had a very enlightening call with someone who used to work with Bo's girlfriend's mom.

Female Source 3: I think if the tip did come from her mom, she tried to lawyer up first, and then submitted a tip, and I think that if a tip did come from her, she's known information for a long time before she said anything. When we got rid of an employee one time, she made a comment to me, "Oh, I'll use a person as long as I need to, and then I get rid of them with no problem."

Brooke completely strikes me as the kind of person that she's known about this for a while, and the few times that her and Bo broke up, it's like oh, you know, if he don't come back to me, I'll tell this, this, and this, because they thought that he had the con money, and he doesn't. When they broke up one time I said, better off single, and she said, "No, I need her to be married to him. I want her to be married to that money."

The story Kim gave, she said, "Yeah, I went to get her mail and there were all these GBI cards in the driveway," and he said that he called her, and she said, "Yeah, now is not a good time, come back later." He went back later to check on her mail, she said, "I'm about to show you something you cannot tell anyone, not even your wife," and Colin said, "Okay," and she said that Brooke's boyfriend was involved in the Tara Grinstead case, and helped conceal her body.

Tell them that the other guy did, and then he called Bo for help, and Bo helped him, and then it took him a few days to get rid of the body. I think the plan was to turn him in, let the other guy take the fall for all of it. Bo would admit to his part in it and take a plea, so he doesn't serve any time, and then they would have the reward money.