Residents of a rural Georgia town say a local man who is set to stand trial for the murder of former beauty queen Tara Grinstead could not have committed the crime because ‘he was always a nice kid.’
Ashleigh Merchant and her husband, John Merchant, are two lawyers based in Marietta, Georgia, who have agreed to represent accused killer Ryan Alexander Duke pro bono in a case that first made national headlines in 2005.
‘I felt drawn to the facts of the case,’ Ashleigh Merchant told Dateline NBC in an interview scheduled to air on Monday night at 10pm Eastern.
The husband-wife team of attorneys say they’ve spoken to residents of Ocilla, the seat of rural Irwin County in southern Georgia, who are in disbelief about the case.
John Merchant (left) and his wife, Ashleigh Merchant (right), two criminal defense attorneys based in Marietta, Georgia, have agreed to represent Ryan Alexander Duke pro bono
Duke is set to stand trial for murder in the 2005 disappearance of Tara Grinstead (left), a teacher and former beauty queen. Duke and a former friend, Bo Dukes, were arrested and charged in February 2017
Dukes (pictured) was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison for concealing Grinstead’s death. He and Duke are alleged to have disposed of Grinstead’s body by burning it in a pecan farm
‘When you interview these folks, to a T, all of them say there’s no way Ryan could’ve done this,’ John Merchant told Dateline.
When asked why they feel this way, John Merchant replied: ‘Well, because he was always a nice kid. He was very calm, peaceful, quiet. He wasn’t the leader sort.
‘And so, many of them believe that there’s no way he could have orchestrated this kinda crime.’
In October 2005, Grinstead, who at the time was a history teacher at Irwin County High School, failed to show up for work. She was declared missing as authorities began investigating.
No arrests were made until February 2017, when two former friends, Duke and Bo Dukes (no relation), were taken into custody.
2017 footage shown on the third day of Bo Dukes’ trial shows the defendant admitting to helping his friend, Duke, hide 30-year-old’s Tara Grinstead body.
Dukes was charged with making a false statement, hindering the apprehension of a criminal and concealing the death of another. He was convicted in March of last year and sentenced to 25 years in prison
Dukes was convicted in March of last year and sentenced to 25 years in prison for concealing Grinstead’s death.
Dukes admitted to his part in the coverup in videotaped interview with state investigators.
‘I’m tired of living like this,’ Dukes told the Georgia Bureau of Investigation in the 2017 footage.
Dukes is seen telling authorities that Duke told him the next day when he killed the woman and used his pickup truck to move the body.
He and Duke are alleged to have disposed of Grinstead’s body by burning it in a pecan farm owned by Dukes’ uncle.
In the footage, Dukes can be heard describing that it took the pair two days to burn the woman’s body.
Dukes explained that Duke told him he used a credit card to get inside the woman’s home as she slept. Dukes said his friend admitting to strangling her ‘right there.’
It is believed that the man broke into the woman’s home to steal money for drugs but Dukes never indicated a motive.
According to investigators, Duke confessed to killing Grinstead, though he now claims that he was under the influence of drugs and that his statements to police described the actions of someone else, and not his own behavior.
GBI agents have also said DNA matching both Duke and Grinstead was found on a latex glove discovered in her yard.
In February, the Georgia Supreme Court unanimously accepted Duke’s appeal asking the state to provide funds so that he can call expert witnesses to testify for the defense.
Duke’s attorneys say he has no money to pay for experts and won’t get a fair trial without them.
But the trial judge, Tift Judicial Circuit Superior Court Judge Bill Reinhardt, has ruled that Duke gave up any claim to state funding when he declined legal representation from public defenders in favor of private attorneys who took his case for free.
Grinstead was 30 in October 2005 when she disappeared from her home in Ocilla, about 185 miles south of Atlanta.
In February of this year, the George Supreme Court unanimously accepted Duke’s appeal ordering the state to provide funding for his defense so that he can call expert witnesses that will refute prosecution’s evidence on DNA and other matters
A billboard with her photo and a tip line number loomed for years in the area, and hope remained that she’d be found alive.
Her death was confirmed when Duke and Dukes were arrested in February 2017.
Duke’s attorneys want the state to pay for expert witnesses in DNA, false confessions and psychology.
The trial judge on January 3 reaffirmed his prior ruling that Duke has the right to be represented by private attorneys, but if he chooses that route, he’s not also entitled to state funding for experts and investigators.
When the Georgia Supreme Court unanimously declined to hear Duke’s first appeal last summer, Justice Charles Bethel wrote that Duke’s arguments for state funding ‘appear to present difficult, complex, and important constitutional questions for which there is no controlling legal precedent.’
A new episode of Dateline NBC airs Monday night at 10pm Eastern time.