During a holiday break from the Army in 2006, John McCullough visited his friend, Bo Dukes, in South Georgia. While he was there, Dukes allegedly told his military friend he had a dark secret.
Dukes said he knew what had happened to Tara Grinstead, the Irwin County teacher and beauty queen who had been missing since October 2005, McCullough testified Tuesday. He’d helped burn her body in a pecan farm, McCullough said.
The testimony came on the second day of Dukes’ Wilcox County trial on charges connected to Grinstead’s disappearance and death.
Dukes has been charged with making a false statement, one count of hindering the apprehension of a criminal and one count of concealing the death of another.
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Grinstead vanished on Oct. 22, 2005, after attending a cookout with friends. She was reported missing two days later after failing to show up to teach history. The case gained widespread attention and billboards sprung up around the county — and beyond —seeking help finding the missing 30 year-old.
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Although no arrests were made in the case until February 2017, witnesses testified Tuesday that Dukes made remarks years earlier saying he knew what happened. A former classmate, Ryan Alexander Duke, was charged with Grinstead’s murder.
McCullough, who went to basic training with Dukes, testified that while in Georgia, he drove the same truck that Dukes allegedly used to transport Grinstead's body.
“He brought it up and said, ‘you remember that billboard you had seen?’” McCullough said.
“He was like, ‘I know what happened,’" McCullough said.
After returning to his Army base in Oklahoma, McCullough said he reported Dukes’ confession to police in Georgia. McCullough testified he called various police agencies during the next several years to tell his story, but no investigators returned his calls. He was later interviewed by the GBI, and one interview was played Tuesday in court.
McCullough cried when he was shown pictures of Grinstead.
“I’ll remember the same story for the rest of my life. And it sucks,” McCullough told the court.
But when Dukes was questioned in 2016 by the GBI, claimed he couldn’t remember McCullough’s name and didn’t remember a conversation about Grinstead, according to a recording played in court. Dukes denied any involvement with her disappearance in the July 2016 interview, GBI agent Jason Shoudel testified.
Two of Dukes’ family members also testified, including a cousin and uncle who owned the pecan farm where Grinstead’s body was allegedly burned over several days.
Wes Conner said Dukes had mentioned at a party that he knew what happened to a missing person. But he said Dukes had been highly intoxicated at the time.
“He had the tendency to be a compulsive liar and was very boastful,” Conner said.
Randy Hudson testified Tuesday afternoon that he had warned Dukes, his nephew, that there should not have been any fires on his pecan farm, particularly in the woods where pine trees could quickly ignite.
“I spoke in a way that no one should ever speak to a nephew,” Hudson said. “He was typical Bo. All his life he just didn’t listen. He could’ve done a lot of harm.”
But investigators believe the fire was a way for Dukes and Duke to get rid of any evidence of Grinstead’s death.
Duke, whose case is scheduled for trial April 1, confessed to the GBI that he killed Grinstead, but now claims it was a false confession and that he was under the influence of drugs at the time. Duke claims it was instead Dukes that killed the former beauty queen.
A retired GBI agent testified that dozens of tips — and some false confessions from people claiming to have killed Grinstead — surfaced after her disappearance. But because of the amount of investigators and various law enforcement agencies working on the case, not all of the information was given to the GBI, according to retired agent Gary Rothwell.
The trial will resume Wednesday morning.
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