Ryan Duke, acquitted of murder in Tara Grinstead’s death, now faces new charges
Ryan Duke, acquitted of murder charges last month in the long-unsolved disappearance of Irwin County High School teacher Tara Grinstead, was indicted Friday on new charges in connection with her death.
Grinstead’s still-mysterious slaying generated nationwide news coverage when she vanished nearly 17 years ago and has attracted widespread attention ever since.
Duke, who confessed to the murder when he was questioned after the authorities received a tip in early 2017 about his alleged involvement in Grinstead’s death, recently testified that his confession had been false.
Grinstead went missing from her Ocilla home in October 2005. Duke went on trial there in May and, while found not guilty of killing Grinstead, he was convicted of concealing her death.
On the witness stand, he denied killing her but admitted that he helped a friend dispose of her body — which was thought to have been burned in neighboring Ben Hill County — and that the friend, Bo Dukes, no relation to him, had killed her.
On Friday, prosecutors there, in Fitzgerald, the Ben Hill county seat, presented new charges to grand jurors, who returned a six-count indictment.
The charges include concealing the death of another, hindering apprehension or punishment of a criminal, concealment of facts and tampering with evidence.
The concealing-a-death charge, according to the indictment, stems from Duke’s alleged hiding of Grinstead’s body “at a location off Bowen’s Mill Highway” north of Fitzgerald sometime after her vanishing in late October 2005.
The second count in the indictment, for hindering apprehension or punishment, appears to be based on Duke’s own testimony at his trial: That Duke “did unlawfully destroy the body of Tara Faye Grinstead ... evidence of the crime of Murder, a felony, a crime the accused knew or had reasonable grounds to believe had been committed by Bo Dukes.”
Bo Dukes himself is awaiting trial on concealment charges in Ben Hill County in the Grinstead case. He has not been charged in her murder and is not expected to be.
Friday’s indictment further accuses Ryan Duke of concealment of facts in that he “did unlawfully, knowingly, and willfully conceal and cover-up the location of the body of Tara Faye Grinstead” from police in her hometown of Ocilla, and that did the same to agents from the GBI “after having participated in burning her body.”
The evidence-tampering charge outlined in the indictment alleges that Duke destroyed “physical evidence” — that being Grinstead’s body — “with the intent to obstruct the apprehension and prosecution of Bo Dukes, another person, when (Duke) did burn” Grinstead’s body.
Another tampering charge alleges that Ryan Duke moved Grinstead’s body “from one location to a more remote location.”
This developing story will be updated.
This story was originally published June 3, 2022 at 2:39 PM.