How to reinitialize a datatable

I have a dataTable that is populated without issue when the page loads. Very slick. Love clicking the column names to sort.

The wrinkle is... the user can specify a different date range, and I'd like to repopulate the dataTable at that point. I call the same function as when the page loads and attempt to repopulate the dataTable object. I am learning it is not so easy to blow away and reload the dataTable. I am doing this in PowerChart so I don't have a public facing page that I can show you. However, I'd be glad to provide additional code or information that may be helpful.

HTML:

<TABLE id='documents'>
	<THEAD>
	  <tr>
	    <th>Event ID</th>
	    <th>Date</th>
	    <th>Subject</th>
	    <th>Result</th>
	  </tr>
	</THEAD>
	<TBODY>
	  <tr>
	    <td></td>
	    <td></td>
	    <td></td>
	    <td></td>
	  </tr>
	</TBODY>
</TABLE>

NOTE: The #documents table populates fine (on the initial load of the page) without the THEAD and TBODY tags, if that is a clue to my puzzle.

.JS FILE:

var oTable = $('#documents').dataTable({
"aoColumns": [
	{ "sTitle": "EventID", "bVisible": false },
	{ "sTitle": "Date", "sWidth": "110px", "bSortable": true },
	{ "sTitle": "Subject", "sWidth": "270px", "bSortable": true },
	{ "sTitle": "Result", "sWidth": "100px", "bSortable": true }],
  "bRetrieve": true,  
  "bProcessing": true,
  "bDestroy": true, 
  "bPaginate": false, 
  "bAutoWidth": false,
  "bFilter": false,
  "bInfo": false,  
  "aaSorting": [[1, 'desc']], 
  "bJQueryUI": false 	 
});

Currently I don't get an error but the dataTable does not repopulate.

Setting bServerSide to True put me in an endless loop ("DataTables warning: JSON data from server failed to load or be parsed. This is most likely to be caused by a JSON formatting error")

I am using jquery.dataTables.min.js version 1.8.1. I was hoping that setting bDestroy to True would put me on the right path but this is still vexing me. Thank you for any ideas.