Dorothy Newell

You're going to have great days.

You're going to have rock bottom days.

Ms.

Melvin, you have not shed a tear.

So Tara was a 23-year-old first-year law student at the University of Georgia.

On January 19, 2001, at about 11.20 a.m., firefighters responded to a fire at Tara's home.

She lived off campus.

And when they entered, they found Tara's body.

She'd been raped, strangled, stabbed, and left for dead.

And her bedroom was on fire.

Yeah, that's exactly right.

Well, first of all, Athens is like the quintessential college town.

There's tons of kids here.

They're working, they're playing, they're planning for their futures.

And just like Tara was doing when she was killed.

Well, there were certainly indications that this didn't feel like a random attack.

There were no signs of forced entry.

Nothing was taken except her laptop, and she was still wearing her diamond earrings.

Investigators looked at various people, a classmate, a lawyer from the law firm where she worked, and Tara's boyfriend, Chris Milton.

But police said his alibi checked out, and no one else rose to the level of arrest.