ELEVEN years since a former beauty queen disappeared without a trace, missing person’s posters still hang in the town she was last seen.

“It’s astounding to me,” said the lead investigator in the case at the time.

“As many resources as we have devoted to this case, we really don’t know any more about what happened to her than we did in the first week. ... It’s just baffling.”

It was October 22, 2005. A Saturday night.

Beauty queen and high school teacher Tara Grinstead had attended the annual Miss Georgia Sweet Potato pageant at the Grand Theatre in Fitzgerald, Georgia, a 14-minute drive from her home in “the sleepy town of Ocilla,” as one TV segment put it.

She was a “country girl, a beauty queen and a high school history teacher with dreams of becoming a principal”, to those who knew her.

media_camera Tara Grinstead. Picture: Supplied

A Former “Miss Tifton” in 1999, the 30-year-old brunette with an “easy smile and a Georgia-farm-town drawl” was heavily involved the pageantry scene. Previously, she had been a contestant in the Miss Georgia pageant.

“She wore a yellowish suit as one of her outfits at the Miss Georgia contest, telling an interviewer at the time, ‘It shows I’m a happy person’,” wrote the local paper.

After the pageant in October, she attended a “cookout” with the family of a former county school superintendent before heading home at approximately 11pm. She was never seen again.

Two days later, Grinstead’s co-workers reported her missing. Since, the case about the disappearance of a small town country queen has remained a baffling mystery. Her whereabouts, unknown.

“Everybody knew that she had not just gone off for a couple of days, that something had happened, something serious had happened to Tara,” Anita Gattis, Tara’s sister, told Investigation Discovery.

“We’re at the point now where we used to pray that we wouldn’t find her, now, we’re afraid we won’t and we pray that we will.”

media_camera Tara Grinstead's home in Ocilla, Georgia. Picture: Elliott Minor

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It’s been eleven years since one of America’s “most haunting unsolved mysteries” gripped the nation. Authorities are baffled.

Her car, a white Mitsubishi, was left unlocked in the drive way, and despite police finding a number of significant clues in Ms Grinstead’s home, nothing ever came of them.

A latex glove, with a “male-profiled” DNA and a fingerprint were found in the yard near the front door, yet forensics were never able to match the DNA to anyone connected to the case. Two hundred men were tested, and not one match.

Ms Grinstead’s phone was found charging in the bedroom, begging the question, why would she leave it there?

The clothes she had worn to the cookout were found inside. But her purse and keys were missing. The only sign of a struggle was a broken bedroom lamp.

Grinstead’s disappearance sparked a national search at the time. A $25,000 reward was offered for information pertaining to the case, in a desperate bid to find out exactly what happened.

Search parties scoured surrounding areas for weeks in rough terrain; searching rural properties and draining dams in the hope to find her remains.

But the trail went cold.

“My initial thoughts were, this was easily explainable, that she had drove off with somebody and that she was going to drive up any time wondering why we were in her yard,” Ocilla Police Department Chief Billy Hancock told The Telegraph.

Grinstead’s longtime boyfriend, Marcus harper, told Fox News Grinstead had ended the relationship some time before she went missing, saying that despite feeling “a little rejected at first”, they “continued to be friends.”.

“But I picked — you know, brushed my shoulders off, went on and started dating other people.

“But I was honest with her when I said I had no intentions of marriage.”

But Ms Grinstead reportedly had a number of male interests. In a 2009 segment in current affairs show in 48 Hours, lead GBI investigator Gary Rothwell said, “”One of the things that made this case so complicated is that she did have several romantic relationships that occurred in relative proximity to one another.”

media_camera A photo of missing teacher Tara Grinstead is prominently displayed on a billboard in Ocilla. Picture: Elliott Minor

media_camera Police Chief Billy Hancock, left, and Irwin County Sheriff Donnie Youghn stand beside a banner in Ocilla in 2006, seeking information on the disappearance of Tara Grinstead. Picture: Elliott Minor

Last month, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation confirmed it was continuing its investigations into Ms Grinstead’s disappearance.

“It is still an active case,” said Bill Bodrey, assistant special agent in charge at the GBI’s Perry office, told The Valdosta Daily Times.

“We conduct interviews and follow up leads, but haven’t made any arrests.”

- Anyone with information on Grinstead’s disappearance should contact the GBI’s regional office. Find more information on Tara’s disappearance here.

Originally published as What happened to this beauty queen?