Pageant News Bureau - Tara mystery

On Oct. 22, 2007, loved ones and authorities mark the second anniversary of the disappearance of former beauty queen Tara Grinstead, who was last seen at a beauty pageant.

Ms. Grinstead, a schoolteacher who once competed as Miss Tifton in the Miss Georgia Pageant, was listed as missing on Monday Oct. 24, 2005, when she failed to report for work. But a search of her home near the small town of Ocilla indicated that she may not have spent the night there after returning home two days earlier. Her car was still there, suggesting to law enforcement that she had been taken away by someone else against her will.

Teams of law enforcement officers and volunteers searched the mostly rural area in South Georgia, but found no trace of her. They also interviewed many of her relatives, friends and associates, but were unable to identify a suspect in her disappearance.

Ms. Grinstead, who was a few weeks shy of her 31st birthday when she vanished, was last seen visiting and helping out at a pageant in the town of Fitzgerald. It apparently had nothing to do with her vanishing, but it was a sad twist, because of her longtime involvement in the industry.

She was not the first beauty queen to disappear, but her case has been called the most mysterious. Interest in her case remains high in pageant circles.

The Tara Grinstead enigma