The billboard that has hung in Ocilla, Georgia, for more than 11 years after local teacher and beauty queen Tara Grinstead disappeared. Picture: AP/Elliott Minor

Tara Grinstead’s family have never given up the fight to find their daughter who taught at Irwin County High School in the farming community of Ocilla, about 260km southeast of Atlanta, Georgia.

Grinstead, then aged 30, was last seen on October 22, 2005, when she helped contestants in a Miss Sweet Potato pageant and went to a cookout with friends. She was reported missing two days later when she failed to show up at work.

“We always believed that it would be solved,” Tara’s stepmother Connie Grinstead told FoxNews.

“We just did not know when.”

Tara Grinstead’s body or skeletal remains, have never been found since she was reported missing more than 11 years ago. Picture: SuppliedSource:Supplied

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Her disappearance has been perhaps Georgia’s, if not the Southeast’s, highest-profile missing persons case. It has been featured prominently on cable news and network television crime shows, The Telegraph reported.

Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent J.T. Ricketson announced at a news conference that a tip days ago led authorities to arrest 33-year-old Ryan Alexander Duke and charge him with murder.

Duke had been a student at Irwin County High School, where Grinstead taught, about three years before the teacher vanished, Ricketson said.

“When I heard, I just broke down in tears of relief, of anger, of sadness and frustration,” said Wendy McFarland, a fellow teacher and friend of Grinstead’s.

“Everything that had been carried for the last 11 years and four months just bubbled to the surface.”

Many questions remain as to what exactly happened to Grinstead, who in 1999 won the title Miss Tifton, named for a nearby city, and later competed in the Miss Georgia pageant.

A former student has been charged with the murder of Tara Grinstead in October 2005. Picture: SuppliedSource:Supplied

Ricketson, the lead investigator, declined to discuss Grinstead’s relationship to the suspect and left open the possibility that others were involved.

“That’s a very good question,” Ricketson said. “Again, we have several more interviews to do.”

He wouldn’t even say whether Grinstead’s body had been found.

Ricketson noted that after following hundreds of leads in the case, including interviewing numerous potential suspects, Duke had never been among them.

“This gentleman never came up on our radar through the investigation,” Ricketson said.

McFarland said she was shocked authorities were accusing Duke, saying she remembered him as a polite high school athlete who played on the tennis team.

“My recollection of him is that he was a very bright young man,” McFarland said. “He was very nice. Everything that I remember from him is that he was a good student and not anyone that would have pinged any suspicion.”

Duke was being held at the Irwin County jail. It was not immediately known if he had a lawyer.

Following Grinstead’s disappearance, the house where she lived alone in Ocilla was found locked, her car in the driveway and her cellphone inside. Her dog and cat were home. But Grinstead’s purse and keys were gone.

A latex glove — the type worn by police officers and medical workers — was found in her front yard. Ricketson said police suspected foul play from the beginning, but found little physical evidence.

Ryan Alexander Duke, a former student where Tara Grinstead taught, has been charged with her murder more than 11 years after she disappeared. Picture: Georgia Bureau of InvestigationSource:Supplied

Technically she remained classified as a missing person. Grinstead’s 2005 disappearance prompted an outpouring of support in Ocilla, a community of about 3,300 people, and surrounding Irwin County. Volunteers helped to search on foot, while a Tara Command Centre was set up with a telephone tip line and a website. Rewards of $100,000 were offered for Grinstead’s safe return or for information leading to an arrest and conviction if she was harmed.

“Right after it happened, there were people on everything from ATVs to horses looking for her over the whole entire county,” said the Reverand Joey Whitley, a Baptist minister and Irwin County’s elected chairman.

For 11 years and four months, the search for answers never stopped. As the GBI announced Duke’s arrest, a sign asking “Where’s Tara?” still hung outside the sheriff’s office.

“That’s a very good question,” Ricketson said. “Again, we have several more interviews to do.”