Up and Vanished - S1E14: The Pecan Grove

Episode Date: March 14, 2017

A new name surfaces as a second arrest is made. A Pecan Orchard becomes the focal point of the investigation.  To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone else close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor, free of charge. If it's alright, can i just talk okay so is it okay to say yeah okay so what i hear is that he's involved too. This is all just a piece of the air. It's alright, can I just

talk? Okay. So, is it okay to say the name Bo Dukes? Yeah, go for it. So, what I hear is that he's involved too. I knew Bo was crazy. I knew he was off.

Okay, this is kind of weird. There's another kid that they're looking for, same age. Not the same age, his name is ******. Steve, you're up here, let's see it, what is it? There's another kid that they're looking for, same age, no, same age, his name is Bo Dukes, with an S. The End Tara Grinstead. Officially, police are calling this a missing persons case. GBI officials say investigators are in contact with this woman. $80,000 reward is being offered. Where is Tara Grinstead?

From Tenderfoot TV in Atlanta, this is Up and Vanished, the investigation of Tara Grinstead. I'm your host, Payne Lindsey. Before we get started today, I have a very important message to share with you. I have an official statement from Marcus Harper's attorney, and he asked me to share this on the podcast. Marcus Harper's attorney says the following. My client sends his sincerest condolences to the family of Tara Grinstead, especially her father and stepmother, for their tragic loss. He also extends his appreciation to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and local law enforcement for their tireless efforts to determine the identity of parties involved in this case. He asks that the public, and especially the media, respect his privacy and that of his loved ones as they begin the process of closure. Sincerely, Cody Daniel.

A few weeks ago, just hours after Ryan Duke's arrest, I was sitting in my car in Osceola, and I gave Dr. Godwin a call. So how many more people are involved in this thing, are we thinking? Possibly Bo Dukes with an S. Ryan Duke without an S, and Bo Dukes with an S. But if I hear anything else, I'll let you know. You take care now. You too.

There's been a lot of speculation that Ryan Duke couldn't have killed Tara alone, and then gotten away with it for 11 years. People kept suggesting to me that he wasn't the brightest guy, much less a criminal mastermind. I knew the GBI was still investigating other suspects, but the pieces started to fall in place when I got a call from, believe it or not, my dad. Yeah, so this is what happened.

A good friend of Jimmy's was out in Texas yesterday and met this guy out there. It turns out this guy he met is from Osceola. The guy said, I've been contacted by the GBI because they said they found Tara Grimstead's body in my pecan grove. But anyway, Jimmy is going to give me the phone number. That's who told Jimmy this. He listens to podcasts. Yeah, he listens to podcasts.

He's not the one that you are. Okay, who? I called this person who requested to remain anonymous. The pecan grove he was talking about belonged to Randy Hudson. He also mentioned that Randy Hudson's nephew was now missing. That nephew was Bo Dukes.

My dad texted me and said, hey, they found Tara Grinset's body on this pecan grove. Was it Hudson, by chance? It was Randy Hudson. And Bo Dukes is kin to the Hudson family. And Osceola, that's probably one of the most prominent families. I mean, Hudson pecan, there's a lot of money in that family. This is going to be really interesting. Woo! As it turns out, the rumor of this pecan grove in Fitzgerald wasn't far off.

The GBI streamed into the Hudson family's pecan grove in Fitzgerald, and sirens whirred officers' search for evidence. But the sobering reality of it all was that they were searching for Tara's body. And here I was, hoping that the pecan orchard search would end with answers. But at the same time, I knew that finding Tara's body would finally make her murder a reality. Tara's body would finally make her murder a reality. More than 40 GBI agents swarmed a pecan orchard in Ben Hill County this afternoon. They were digging for clues to help solve one of the state's most notorious missing persons cases.

The search for the body of murder victim Tara Grinstead led investigators to this South Georgia pecan orchard in Ben Hill County near Fitzgerald. We watched a parade of GBI trucks and other vehicles leave this pecan field. Anthropologists used specialized equipment to sort through the dirt, hoping to find skeletal remains of the missing former beauty queen. Randy Hudson, the owner of the Pecan Grove, spoke to a local news station after the GBI search broke. Well what I'd like to say is first our most sincere prayers go out to the Grimstead family. I'd also like to say that we are cooperating with the local sheriff's agency and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation in regards to this matter on our farm. Yeah, our helicopter flew over yesterday,

and they got quite a setup out there in the middle of the field. That was Tony Thomas, a reporter for WSB-TV's Channel 2 in Atlanta. They were first on the scene at the Pecan Orchard in Fitzgerald. While he was there, he was able to speak to Special Agent J.T. Ricketson from the GBI, who's in charge of the Grinstead case. Tony asked him a few questions about the investigation, and he got back some pretty interesting answers. He didn't have a lot, except I think he mentally slipped up at one point. Okay. Because he said, we are interviewing, quote, others who were involved.

And later I asked him to clarify and he wouldn't. He said, I'm not going to speculate on any more arrests. But I think that accidentally slipped out. Officially, the GBI hadn't said there was anybody else involved in Tara's murder. But J.T. Ricketson's slip-up suggests that maybe they know more than they're telling us. One of Ryan Duke's old high school buddies called to talk to me about his relationship with Ryan and how he didn't think he had it in him to do this thing alone. Like I haven't really processed it yet. Like I said to

you, Ryan and I were really tight. Just having a lot of trouble accepting it. Just feel like I know him too well to know that, you know i wouldn't i don't want to suppose anything i don't want to rule out his role in something but but he's just not alpha enough to do this um yeah he's a big coward and i just don't see this uh going down the way that it seems to be right now so i'm really really curious what more information you may have that may mention a few names that are running through my head because I just know this guy

pretty well and I just don't think he's capable of being the sort of mastermind of such an event, even if it's an accident or whatever. I just don't see it. Basically, our friendship was just hanging out on the weekends. It progressed from like drinking and staying out up late to like smoking weed. And then once I got to Athens, which that was weird for a friendship like that,

because Ryan's got no sort of aspiration. And when you like go through life with the kind of like depressed state, like he's Eeyore, man. He is Eeyore. He is like the saddest dude. And for me as an 18-year-old, I was sad and angry too. So that's like what we bonded over. You know, I had a real weird childhood. I was raised by my great-grandmother.

So it was unique. And then Ryan came from like a divorced family. And his brother got to live with his dad, which, you know, I don't know. There's got to be some kind of like equation that's always in your head. Like, am I equal to my brother? Am I, is my love for my mom equal to my love for my dad? You know, like a weird childhood.

And so he was dealing with that. So despite that we were from kind of like different sides of the tracks or had done different things at our respective high schools, I think probably the only thing in common was we had both played high school football, at least some of our time. But, like, I'm into, like, academic stuff, and he's into just kind of getting by. But we clicked over this kind of, like, funk or fear of the upcoming, you know, girls down there, they want a strong, like, tractor driving, you know, like,

tough guy like their dads or whatever and and ryan's a softy and i just i think it had a lot to do with you know his situation his parents situation um but and he didn't deal with it in healthy ways like he he drinks a lot um and again i don't know 2016 ryan but i'm just telling you based on the trajectory he was aiming at, that he's probably still drinking a lot and he's probably still smoking a lot of cigarettes and just kind of like, woe is me. After reminiscing on their high school friendship, he told me that he and Ryan kind of lost touch after he'd left for college at the University of Georgia in Athens. He then told me about one of the last times he'd interacted with Ryan.

It was kind of a weird situation. A time that Ryan called him out of the blue, a few years after he moved away from Osceola. And I remember he called a couple times and I was like in the building. So I stepped outside and I answered and it was just like the same old, you know, hey, buddy, that morose tone that, okay, things aren't going well in his life, you know, laying on me and he really just wanted to tell me that he had like hooked up with a girl i dated and i don't even know when i don't think it was like while we were dating it was like but regardless it was way in the past and he was like just doing one of these like conscious

cleanses so that's another thing that's troubling me is like whyke keeping this secret for what is 11 plus years like it just it's it doesn't fit with the person i knew and you heard me i only knew it for like two two and a half years but i felt like i really saw you know most sides of him and and i don't see this i don't see this i'm like trembling thinking about it like i just don't see. But I know somehow I grew from being like friends with Ryan Duke. You know, I somehow got motivated to be whatever it is I am now. So I don't know. It's rough. It's rough.

And I mean, you could just see it coming, you know. You knew you were probably going to get stuck with him, you know, if he stuck around, if he stayed closer. I could see it coming to like a desperate point where, desperate point where he just feels like he has no other option than to steal from someone, but I can't understand the violent part because I just didn't see any glimpse of it. Actually, the friend who texted me is saying, like, hey, have you seen the Albany News yet?

They had a press conference. That friend was like, why are you hanging out with these guys? I knew that they were kind of a riffraff crowd and not really a press conference, that friend was like, why are you hanging out with these guys? I knew that they were kind of a riffraff crowd and not really a vicious crowd, the type that can bring you down. When you say they, who were the other friends? I do say they.

So I met him and Bo Dukes at the same time. I was closer with Ryan, but to be honest, they were pretty much a package duo. On Bo, though, what was he like? I think Bo always tried really hard to be eccentric and have these really random, insightful thoughts. But then combined with that was just this real laziness. I know that he's stolen from people.

I didn't click with him because I just couldn't relate to him. He didn't come from struggle since Grandpa was a senator or state senator or whatever. And so like he just kind of could have whatever he would just like fuck up opportunities. I could see him just like doing a line of coke and then saying something stupid like let's do this dumb idea. Like that I'd buy so much quicker. And that's not fair. I'm just, I just completely threw a theory out there that's complete supposition. But it's just like, he was way more unhinged.

Not that I ever saw anything of violence or anything like that, but he would care more about himself, less about other people. And I think that's probably what I'm getting at when I'm saying, I didn't see that side of Ryan. I saw a bit of care in Ryan. Ryan would have conversations with my grandma, but would walk past my grandma. So if I just have the two suspects in front of me, like there was a bit of a selfishness and a soullessness that existed in

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pursuant to any operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Ever since Ryan Duke's arrest, all I was hearing was his connection to Bo Dukes. How they were kind of a package deal. And of the two, Bo was actually the more volatile one. While I was still in Osceola, I drove by Bo Dukes' house to see if he was home. Yeah, there's an altar, right? Yeah, keep going and it should be the next road to the right.

It's on Apple Street. I'm trying to wonder if he is gone. But he wasn't there. There's definitely nobody home. But he wasn't there. I was really conflicted about what to do. I was 99% sure that Bo was involved, but I felt like it was too early for me to mention his name in the podcast.

I think it's true. I think he's involved somehow, but I don't know if they're going to be charged again. I don't know. Since I've heard be charged again. I don't know. Since I've heard Ryan Duke, I've heard Bo Dukes with an S. I don't know. I mean, I feel like it's true. We've heard it from too many people.

In keeping with journalistic ethics, I decided to just censor his name, giving him the benefit of the doubt. But now, the cat is out of the bag. A second suspect is now facing charges in the disappearance of Tara Grinstead, Bo Dukes. Not one, but two former students from that school under arrest. Bo Dukes is charged with tampering with evidence, concealing a death, and hindering the apprehension of a criminal. A classmate of Ryan Duke, Bo Dukes, whose family is well known in the community. Investigators say they believe Bo Dukes helped destroy Grinstead's body and hide it in the Pecan Grove in Fitzgerald. The confirmation I've been waiting for.

Bo Dukes was involved. I called Maurice to see how he was taking all of this. So much had happened in this case in a matter of days. And I wanted to hear his reaction. After working a case for almost 12 years, what did it feel like to finally have some answers? I'm just in shock over it. I think there's an investigation still going on. Yeah, it's just a very odd situation, and there's more to it. It's somebody that did not

have a criminal record, no learned experience of breaking people's house. No learned experience of criminality. Did not do this as a random thing. They just didn't. I just can't figure out why Ryan was at her house that night. That's the thing. He didn't walk around or ride around

and say, yep, I'm going to choose that. Because in the past, I mean, unless he got by with a lot of stealing and burglary in the past, he didn't have a criminal record. Now, I doubt he got by with it. And he just didn't do that one, choose that one night to do this one thing. He went there with a purpose for somebody or he went there with a purpose himself and it got mad and something turned nasty.

Why did he choose her? I think he had more help from Bo than what is being said. Here's the thing. Bo's not charged with anything in Irwin County, and Ryan's not charged with anything in Ben Hill County. See, Ryan is not charged with anything that Bo is charged with. He could be, but he's not.

So, if Ryan was out in Ben Hill at that pecan orchard, why just not throw those charges in there? So, he just passes a body off to somebody, his friend, and lets him handle it. And his friend just says,

okay, no problem. That's right. In my opinion, both of them were in this thing equally together. One just saw a way out with lesser time. And that happens a lot in a lot of cases. The person who actually did the crime

make it seem like the other person did it, and the person did the seriousness of the crime make it seem like that the other person did it and the person did the seriousness of the crime uh turns state's evidence and uh gets lesser time because they're the ones that caught the flea first yeah that happens all the time yeah it's it's an odd situation i don't think it's over with by any means is any part of you relieved? I'm elated. I'm thrilled that arrests have been made and stuff like that, but I feel a whole sadness, and then I feel emptiness. If I run in 200 miles an hour, it hits the brick wall and nowhere to go.

Even with all the recent developments in this case, it still struck Marisa strange. The fact that Ryan randomly picked Tara's house to burglarize that night with no previous criminal record. And the fact that he apparently pawned Tara's body off to Bo, who willingly helped him dispose of it, with no regard to his own criminal involvement. It all just seemed too unbelievable. Who were Ryan Duke and Bo Dukes really?

I felt it was time to dive into their past a bit more. Like Maurice said, Ryan has no criminal history. But as for Bo, it's a different story. In April of 2013, Beau Dukes and his wife Emily pleaded guilty to stealing more than $150,000 from the United States Army. Dukes, as a unit supply specialist for the U.S. Army, ordered televisions, cameras, power tools, copper wires, and other property, and then fraudulently billed the merchandise to the Army through the General Services Administration.

Savannah, Georgia. Dukes and his wife would pawn them off for personal financial gain. Dukes was sentenced to 27 months in federal prison, three years supervised release, and was ordered to repay more than $134,000 to the federal government. Will you rise with the sun to help change mental health care forever? Join the Sunrise Challenge to raise funds for CAMH, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, to support life-saving progress in mental health care. From May 27th to 31st, people across Canada will rise together and show those living with mental illness and addiction that they're not alone.

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Bo Dukes has been arrested. But before he was arrested, just a few weeks ago actually, he was showing some very interesting behavior. The two men charged in connection to Tara Grinson's 2005 murder, Bo Dukes and Ryan Duke, are no strangers to each other. After Ryan Duke's arrest, podcast presenter Payne Lindsey says people started opening up to him, so he started trying to verify their statements. Then noticed something eerie on his podcast site.

Bo Dukes has been trolling the Up and Vantage discussion board. Bo Dukes has been trolling the Up and Vantage discussion boards. We looked to see if we could find the comments left by Dukes, but because users remain anonymous, we couldn't see what exactly he said. But luckily, that's what screenshots are for. Yep, right before he was arrested, Bo Dukes, who's now facing three charges in connection with disposing Tara Grinstead's body, held his very own little Q&A session right here on the discussion board of the Up and Vanish website. On the Up and Vanish discussion board, Bo Dukes used the name AAA in all caps.

How do I know it was him? Well, he proved it himself. He posted a selfie on Twitter, facing the mirror with his hand sticking out. Then, in a separate close-up picture, you could see the date written in pen on his palm. Among other things, Bo Dukes graciously declared that I didn't owe him an apology, but he did accuse me of being biased and, quote, downright false in my interviews. But the highlight of his stint on the discussion board had to be this. He wrote, I think the GBI has done a great job. Justice is a finicky thing and subjective. Yep, it sure is.

If you listened to last week's case evidence, you know that the judge in this case has issued a gag order. But since then, several prominent media outlets here in Georgia have filed a motion opposing this gag order. And this Thursday, there's a court hearing about it. I called up Philip Holloway, the defense attorney in last week's case evidence, to see if he could explain this whole situation a little better. Well, the defendant apparently requested a gag order and it was granted by the judge. The problem with the gag order is that it is extremely broad, and the news media has intervened asking the judge to narrow the scope of it because, for example, it's being interpreted by the court so that the court is saying that they can't even provide information to the media, information that's normally public record, and that's why it's probably unconstitutionally overbroad. They filed motions to intervene. It's a little bit unusual for a third party to intervene in a criminal case, which is

the state versus a certain defendant. In high-profile cases, the media has a limited right to intervene when First Amendment principles are involved. The First Amendment guarantees the right to a free press, and it also guarantees individuals' rights to free speech. This particular order, for example, can be interpreted by friends of Tara Grinstead from even talking to the media about what she was like. This Thursday, the judge has set a hearing where lawyers for the various media outlets who have an interest in covering this case are going to ask the judge to clarify and probably ask her to narrow the scope of the order. Because the way it is right now, it affects people who don't even

know that they may be affected by it. The judge could literally rule from the bench, and she could say, you know what, you're right. This is too broad. I will clarify it, and I will draft a more narrow order. She could take it under advisement. She could deny it from the bench, and she could ask the various media outlets to send her what they would propose in some type of an amended order, and then she could take all of that under advisement before she makes up her mind. This coming Thursday, we'll be releasing a bonus episode covering this court hearing. And Philip Holloway will be here to do a Q&A with you guys. If you have any specific legal questions you want to ask Philip, then leave us a voicemail at 770-545-6411. And Phillip will answer it this Thursday in the coverage of our court hearing.

For a while now, I've been hearing rumors about parties that happened on the same pecan orchard 11 years ago. We rode out of that orchard. And yet it was not nine. It was just a few people. Maybe three trucks around the fire. Fire was on the north side of the field, and the trucks were south side of the fire. I didn't really know them, but I knew one dude out there, and that was Bo Duke.

You know, this Bo Duke, I'd always kind of heard about him and known about him through high school. I didn't know hardly any of them people out there. The only person I could remember is Bo. And I sat in his truck and I caught this guy for probably an hour. We were talking about the fight that me and my friend that was there with me got into the previous year, 2004. Me and this guy kind of had a good little long conversation. And then something happened. Other dudes got upset.

I don't know if he was upset that we were out there or what, but we got kind of a funny vibe. We just saw him get upset. We saw kind of a commotion inside the truck. He took his shirt off. I told Lewis, let's go, let's go, let's get out of here.

We're in bad trouble, let's get out of here. And now that I see the pictures of this Ryan Duke guy, and I see where the pictures of where they're searching that portrait. And I've been going over it for the last couple of days

in my mind over and over again. And it seems to me like the guy I was talking to was Ryan Duke. What kind of truck did he drive? To the best of my memory, a black single cab truck. Thanks for listening, guys. As a reminder, there will be a bonus episode this Thursday.

If you have any legal questions about the Grinstead case for our attorney friend, and see you soon. you