Tara Grant lived in Washington Township, Michigan, with her husband Stephen and their two children, ages 4 and 6. She was employed as an operations manager for Washington Group International, an engineering, construction and management company based in Idaho with offices in Troy, Michigan. She had been with the company for over ten years.
She traveled a lot for work to San Juan, Puerto Rico and was scheduled to go back to Puerto Rico on Sunday, February 11. She normally spent Monday through Friday in Puerto Rico, returning home on week-ends.
On Friday, February 9, Stephen claims that he and Tara had an argument about the long hours and time away from home she spent for her job. He claims that she left the house at 11:15, getting into a dark sedan at the end of their driveway. He did not hear from her again and reported her missing on the 14th, five days after she was last seen.
He claimed that he thought she had traveled to the Caribbean as planned and assumed she didn't contact him because of the argument they had.
Stephen cooperated with the Macomb County Sheriff at this point, even allowing an evidence technician into the house who photographed a scratch on his nose that Stephen said he got at work at a machine shop owned by his family.
He scheduled a polygraph with the sheriff's department.
The next day, he was pulled over by the Macomb County Sheriff's Department and arrested for driving with a suspended license and outstanding parking tickets. He was booked into the jail and here is where things start to go awry.
Stephen had lawyered up at this point. His attorney claims Stephen was "interrogated" for six hours and likened it to "cowboy" tactics. The sheriff's department claims that is absurd and he was treated routinely.
An interesting side note, Stephen has had other brushes with the law, notably an arrest in October of 1989 for reckless driving and carrying a concealed weapon. These charges were reduced to careless driving and failure to get a permit for a handgun. He paid a fine and served no jail time.
Investigators now say that Stephen's cooperation has "soured" and he will only communicate through his lawyer, via fax.
The lawyer also claims that it is worth noting that Tara was scheduled to lay off 50 employees. The Washington Group has said next to nothing about the case publicly and didn't comment on this.
An ex-girlfriend of Stephen's from his college days in the early 90s recently turned over to police a series of email exchanges she had with Stephen in January. He claims in the exchange that Tara was having a physical affair with someone he referred to as "the old geezer" and claimed he had installed a program on their home computer that tracked her exchanges but since they were in code, he wasn't quite sure what they meant. He claimed she had a non physical relationship a few years back with another man. He also says some pervy things to his ex-girlfriend, who was having none of it. (Atta girl!)
Investigators have spoken to the men involved; both said those were false allegations and the investigators seem quite certain they are telling the truth.
I will refrain for my editorial comments right now, but feel free to discuss and I'll join in.
I fear we have Michigan's Laci Peterson case and I send my good thoughts and prayers to Tara's family.
Edited to add: I did have a picture of Tara Grant that I had swiped from a news site but it somehow turned into a picture of her husband, so I took it down.