FITZGERALD, Ga. — An appeals court has thrown out pending criminal charges against two men previously convicted of concealing the death of Georgia teacher Tara Grinstead, whose 2005 disappearance baffled her family and investigators for more than a decade.
The Georgia Court of Appeals ruled Thursday that the statute of limitations had expired when prosecutors in rural Ben Hill County charged the men with crimes stemming from the burning of Grinstead’s body in a rural pecan orchard two decades ago.
Prior convictions in the case weren’t affected. Ryan Duke was found guilty in 2022 in Irwin County, where Grinstead lived, of concealing her death. But a jury acquitted him of murder. His friend with a similar last name, Bo Dukes, was also convicted of covering up the killing in 2019. Both are serving prison sentences.
Grinstead, a 30-year-old high school teacher and former beauty queen, vanished in October 2005 from her small hometown of Ocilla. Her face loomed large on a billboard seeking tips in her disappearance until arrests were made in February 2017.
That’s when Duke confessed to investigators that he had broken into Grinstead’s home to steal money for drugs. Duke told Georgia Bureau of Investigation agents that he became startled when Grinstead appeared behind him and that he struck and killed her.
Both Duke and Dukes told investigators that they burned Grinstead’s body after moving it to the pecan grove in Ben Hill County. But Duke recanted his confession to killing her on the witness stand at his murder trial. Instead he blamed Dukes, testifying that he lied to police because he was afraid and intoxicated. Dukes was never charged with murder.
Two weeks after the 2022 trial, a grand jury in Ben Hill County indicted Duke on additional charges related to Grinstead’s death including a new count of concealing a death, hindering apprehension of a criminal and evidence tampering. Dukes still faced similar charges filed in the same county in 2017.
Under Georgia law,, prosecutors had a four-year window to bring charges in the Ben Hill County case once they had probable cause to make arrests. Prosecutors asserted that clock started with the men’s February 2017 confessions. A lower court agreed with them.
But the Court of Appeals ruled the clock started ticking in November 2005, roughly a month after Grinstead went missing, when a man reported to a sheriff’s office that Duke and Dukes told him at a party that they had killed Grinstead and burned her body.
“We conclude that law enforcement had probable cause to arrest the two men by late November 2005,” the court’s ruling said.
Police contended they lacked sufficient evidence to make arrests in late 2005, when they searched the pecan orchard based on the man’s tip but found no sign of Grinstead.
Nevertheless, the appeals court ruled that the four-year time limit expired long before either man was charged in Ben Hill County.
Duke is serving a 10-year prison sentence for concealing Grinstead’s death in Irwin County. Dukes, who was also convicted of lying to police, was given 25 years in prison.
Grinstead’s body was never found. Duke in 2017 led investigators to the pecan grove in Ben Hill County where he said the body was burned. Investigators recovered bone fragments that experts later testified were consistent with one adult. However, DNA analysis was inconclusive.