GA - Tara Grinstead, 29, Ocilla, 22 Oct 2005 #1 *Arrests*

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Techwriter797, I read the posts at that link. Thank you. I have some questions. And I ask because I wasn't able to find the info anywhere else.

I realize Marcus Harper has been investigated up, down, and sideways. But just for my knowledge (if anyone knows):

-what was the name of the tavern he was at on Saturday night Oct. 22, 2005?
-if he left the tavern at, say, 1:10am--would it have been possible to drive from the tavern, to Tara's, and then call the dispatcher at 1:49am to meet up with his policeman buddy? I would do the mileage and time myself on Google maps but if I dont' know the tavern, I can't complete the task.

As for Marcus Godwin:

--did anything come from anything he did way back in 2006?
--an observation: I think the threatening call was complete b.s. I mean, he's still alive, right?
--The latex glove fact gets more and more confusing with everything I read. So Godwin believes somebody came back over 24 hours!!!! later to clean up the crime scene and that's what the glove was left? I realize people who came to Tara's house on that Sunday claim they didn't see the glove, but do any of you on this thread believe somebody came back to her place like very early Monday morning and left the glove?
--The way I look at it if somebody came back early Monday: By that time, many people knew tara was missing. To venture back to her place seems incredibly bold or stupid. Granted, if somebody did come back, the person got away with it, but that's hindsight. At the time it would've been one of the riskiest choices ever.
--personally, I think Godwin is wrong about the person coming back that long after Tara disappeared and leaving the glove. Besides the above reasons, I still think the glove was planted and those people simply didn't see it on Sunday.
 
Dykes, the detective, must have missed the glove too because he left his business card on the front door. The notion about coming back, I think he was talking about Saturday night or early Sunday morning not Sunday day or Monday
 
sundrop, I think the tough part about the glove is that to my knowledge there is no explicit detail--as in distance in feet from the house, driveway or road--as to where it was in the front yard. Granted, I know Tara didn't live on a plantation but . . . Was it near the front door? Was it in the grass behind a tree? Was it in the grass but next to her driveway? "In the front yard" can mean almost anything. And if it's dark, and somebody's not actually looking, it would be easy to miss. Plus, if the glove was rolled up like they can get after someone takes it off their hand, it might only be like 25sq. inches in surface area which isn't very big compared to even the most modest of front yards.
 
The glove was about 10 feet straight in front of front door just lying on top of pine straw

Are you talking about the bar club that Marcus was at that Saturday night
 
Yes, the bar club. It's called a "tavern" in the reports I've read. What the difference is I have no idea.

10ft. in front of front door? On top of pine straw? Nope, hadn't read that. Pine straw? Like fallen pine needles? Is that what that is? Ten feet isn't very far. Most front porches are almost ten feet long. So, the glove was barely, barely in the grass? I don't know how to interpret that since I've only seen small pictures of Tara's house. Did it have a front porch?
 
The glove was on the house side of border of a flower bed. There was enough rise to the bed to block the view of the glove from the driveway. Pulling into the driveway would not necessarily have revealed the glove. One would have had to get out of a car or truck and walk to the front door to have seen the glove. Even then the glove was several feet from the walkway. Although there is a streetlight on the corner, a carport light and a front porch light the glove may have still been in the shadows based on the angle from the porch and carport and the shadows of the trees.
 
In 2005, one could drive from the Whitehorse to Tara's in under 15 minutes. One could also have driven from the BBQ to the Whitehorse in the same span of time.
 
Thank you, RememberTara.

The only problem is Mr. Harper has been a POI for a long time now and I'm sure at least one mature cop has looked into all this. Plus, no one saw Tara at the Whitehorse that night. True, Mr. Harper could've had time to go to Tara's--say he gets there at 1:25am, commit the crime, and then contact the police dispatcher at 1:49am. But wow that's tight. Did he leave her body in her house and then come back later? Because he wouldn't have had enough time to dispose of it before 1:49am, right? Once again, it's tight. And no way he leaves her body in his car or truck--no way. Like I said, I'm sure somebody's looked into this. My only question regarding this is: Did he call the dispatcher at 1:49am or did he show up at the dispatcher's building at 1:49am? That could be a big difference.

The problem I have with Tara going to the Whitehorse after the party is she left the BBQ around 11pm. Mr. Harper was seen at the Whitehorse until after 1am. What did she do? Sit in the parking lot for two hours? Maybe. I don't know. She knows her friends are there since they called her--why not go in?

sundrop, so the married cop showed up at Tara's house early Sunday morning not Monday morning? Yes, that makes more sense now. I don't remember: Did he say if her car was in the driveway or not? Btw, I am under the impression he had nothing to do with her disappearance at all--he's the guy who tried calling Tara 22 times on Sunday, right? Well, nobody who wants to remain out of the police's spotlight does that because he knows they'll check his phone records eventually since his biz card is in her door. Sure, maybe, if the married cop did it, he calls Tara like 3 times over Sunday to make it look convincing. But not 22, because that would take him in the opposite of direction that he wants to go in relation to being/not-being a POI if he's guilty.

I have other questions about the latex glove: 1. Does everyone here believe it doesn't match any of the men of interest in this case? Or, is that a smokescreen that police have been perpetrating all these years? 2. If the DNA truly doesn't match any of the men orbiting around Tara, do the police know who the DNA does match and they haven't been able to draw a connection between the DNA owner, Tara, and who the police believe committed the crime?

One more thing: Is anyone bothered by Tara's cellphone being at home on the charger? Think of it this way: With the broken lamp, the clock under the bed, and a few other things in disarray, the average person would think a fight had taken place. Like, a burglar broke in, there was a confrontation in the bedroom, and the burglar won. But I'm thinking this: If there's a fight in the bedroom, how doesn't Tara reach for her phone? I mean, a lot of other things got pushed out of place. But the cellphone sits there connected to its very delicate wire as if nothing happened in that room. We all know of stories of women who've heard a break-in and the first thing they do is? Reach for the cellphone. Even more so, we know of several stories where a woman has been surprised at home and managed to get to her phone and dial 911 as she is being chased in her own home. But Tara's phone was close to her bed in the room where an alleged fight took place and it doesn't seem like she reached for it at all.

I don't know. Maybe it's nothing. But it does feed into my paranoia that every single thing inside and outside Tara's house was planted and setup to make it look like something happened there when nothing really did.
 
I watched the 48 Hours video. It's hard to tell exactly where the glove was in relation to the front door and the car using the videos of the exterior of the house in that show. In addition, the show shows the married cop stopped by on Sunday night not Sunday morning. On the other hand, the show makes no mention of the broken lamp, the clock under the bed, etc. It drives you nuts when shows are incomplete like that.

Was the glove found in a place where it would be a direct path from Tara's car to a parked vehicle on the street? Or the front door to the street? That's what I was trying to figure out.
 
Okay, I got it now. The glove was directly out in front of the front door but on the back side of the little "v" tree. Got it. And it's so close to that tree--almost kind of odd. Maybe the perpetrator took cover behind the tree as a car passed by that night and dropped the glove as he hunkered down. But I'm not so sure.

The glove is the biggest piece of evidence in the case. It has both DNA and a fingerprint on it. I mean, that's a pretty big deal. So, I've tried to imagine the crime if the glove didn't exist. If it didn't exist we would all think: One of the men in Tara's life caused her to disappear (yes, I know--that could still be the case, but hang with me on this for a moment). Since we wouldn't have any solid evidence excluding Mr. Harper, the ex-student, the married cop, etc. we'd believe one of them did it, with good reason.

However, we have this glove. Seemingly a break-through, on the surface it would seem like the big break--it'll link itself to one of those men. But it's not. Not only does it exclude one of those men, it excludes ALL of them. In fact, in the show the cop says it excludes 100 people who knew Tara. That glove has to be the best worst piece of evidence I've ever seen in a case. And the kicker: Not one person in the entire CODIS system has been linked to that glove since 2005. Not one, as far as we the public knows.

So, if we're to believe it--according to the latex glove: Tara was disappeared by a man who probably had no criminal record before 2005 since his DNA and fingerprints weren't in any database before then, who didn't know Tara because the police would've sampled his DNA and fingerprints already, who is unfamiliar to the 100 people who knew her best because surely one of them--since they all tested innocent--would've been helpful in any way to point any forgotten men out, and hasn't committed a major violent crime since then in which he got his DNA sampled because there hasn't been a hit on the DNA since it was inputted into the database in 2005.

Golly, that's one unique criminal.

This is all the very reason I'm sticking to my belief the glove was planted by some man in Tara's life. Someone who has access to latex gloves of other people--people who have a very low potential of ever being involved in a crime where DNA would be sampled--nurses, people who work at places like LabCorp and Quest Diagnostics, morticians. Keep in mind, I'm not saying latex gloves weren't used--I'm taking for granted they were since other strange fingerprints weren't found on the car's steering wheel and elsewhere. But that latex glove wasn't worn by the criminal.

It's like: All of these great POI's orbiting around Tara in those weeks before her disappearance and 1 single piece of convenient evidence excludes all of them. Mr. Harper, the married cop, the ex-student, and all of those other men have to be the luckiest guys in the world that glove popped up.
 
ok, this may be a totally stupid question, but is it possible the latex glove isn't even related to this crime? Could it have been trash that blew into her yard? Latex glove doesn't necessarily = a crime.....I use them all the time for protecting my hands from cleaning products/scooping the litter box etc.

Also, it seems like a REALLY dumb criminal to leave a glove behind.
 
Of course if the perpetrator has years of forensic training this could make a difference
 
Kristin83, totally, totally possible the glove is nothing but trash blown onto the lawn from a truck or somebody else's yard. Possible? Yes, but that would have to be one of the biggest coincidences in history of crime. But possible? Yes, I won't argue with you on that.
 
Agent Rothwell did a telephone interview with Greta Van Susteren shortly after the 48 Hours broadcast. In the interview he maintained that the glove was connected to Tara's case. He would not say how the glove was connected only that it was. Greta tried to get more details from him but he only insisted that the glove was tied to the case. At one time there was a transcript of this interview on the internet but recently I have been unable to find it.
 
Sure it is possible that the glove was planted but it would certainly take a forensic expert to pull it off. One would have to collect DNA from someone outside of any DNA data base, then somehow insert the DNA into the glove without contaminating the glove, next plant a partial fingerprint into the glove that is not part of a database. And finally do something to the glove tieing it to Tara and her disappearance. Remember this would have to be done within the 32 hours from when she was last seen to when the glove was discovered.
 
Hum, who was close to Tara and actually did crime scene investigation, not detective
 
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