Hello Friends!
Welcome to our latest video...
Today we are going to discuss The Frightening Disappearance of Tara Calico.
Many times in this community we come across cases that are so incredibly baffling,
we struggle with our humanity in wondering how something like this could actually happen.
While we cover hundreds of cases on this channel of people who have gone missing;
some who have turned back up alive, some who have been found deceased and still
others who have never been found at all, as they say “the devil is in the details.”
It’s the smallest detail sometimes that can either make or break a case, or that can
leave us scratching our heads and being even more confused than when we first started out.
The disappearance of Tara Calico is one of those cases where you
kind of feel like you’re right on the brink of having the answers,
only to find the next bit of information bringing you right back around to the beginning again.
Right back at square one.
This sad and frightening case is one of thousands
where the person was abducted and never seen or heard from again.
However, it’s the little clues along the way which make this case stand out so much.
Tara Calico was from Belen, New Mexico
and this is where her home was when she left it on the morning of September 20th, 1988.
Tara was 19 years old and had her whole life ahead of her.
She had no idea that when she went out for her usual bike ride at 9:30 that morning,
it would turn out to be the last time she would ever see her home again.
Her mother rode with her up until very recently when she felt the two were being stalked by a
passing motorist and was too scared to continue on these morning rides with her daughter.
This would be a strange and sad coincidence and foreboding that neither mother nor daughter had
any idea would be so relevant and possibly close to the truth until it was too late.
As far as they were concerned, this day was no different than all the rest.
A perfectly ordinary Tuesday morning, or so it seemed.
Tara refused the mace her mother suggested she carry along with her
following the alleged “stalker incident” and insisted her mother was just being paranoid.
Tara had a date to play tennis with her boyfriend at 12:30 that day
and asked her mother to come and pick her up if she wasn’t home by noon.
When 11:30 hit and still no sign of Tara, Patty set out to go and pick her up as planned.
She drove the usual route but this time Tara was nowhere to be found.
This was long before the days of cell phones so Patty wasn’t able to just
call her daughter and ask her where she was or why she wasn’t where she was supposed to be.
This was immediately concerning for Patty
and she contacted the authorities pretty much right away and reported her daughter as missing.
As they investigated further and searched along the route Tara was known to have been
riding that day, they found pieces of her Sony Walkman and a cassette tape.
Though there was no way of knowing for sure that these items belonged to Tara,
the family were pretty convinced as they knew what her belongings looked like.
Tara was a creature of habit and brought along the same Walkman
cassette player and tape with her almost every single day.
Tara’s family believed that she might have purposely dropped these items to not only
mark her trail but to alert whoever came looking for her that she was in some kind of danger.
After all there would be no other reason for her
to have just left her stuff broken and lying on the side of the road.
During the investigation, several people came forward and said that they saw
Tara riding her bicycle along the route where her items were found.
Her bicycle, to this day, has never been located.
No one witnessed her presumed abduction however and there weren’t many clues
other than the people who claimed to have seen her and the broken Walkman
scattered around area where she was last seen by several passersby.
There were several witnesses who said they saw a light colored
1953 Ford pick-up truck with a camper shell following her
but the authorities were never able to locate the owner of the vehicle.
It’s unknown whether or not it is to Tara’s disappearance.
Tara’s case went cold fairly quickly and her family and loved ones were left with no answers
and the perpetual fear that Tara would be found deceased somewhere
and the perpetual hope that she would once again come walking through the front door someday.
In June of 1989 it seemed that new life was breathed back into the case when terrifying
new evidence was possibly found in the parking lot of a convenience store in Port St. Joe, Florida.
A photograph was lying on the ground between two vehicles.
The woman who found the photo said that it was
found in the parking space of where a white windowless Toyota cargo van.
Driven by a man with a mustache believed to be in his 30s was parking when she arrived at the store.
However, despite the police setting up roadblocks in an attempt to intercept the vehicle,
the man was never caught nor brought to interrogation.
The picture in question was a Polaroid which showed a little boy and a young
woman, both terrified looks on their faces. Because of the duct
tape it was hard to tell who the image was of.
It was theorized by investigators however, that the young woman in the photo was Tara Calico
and that the boy was Michael Henley, also of New Mexico, who had disappeared in April 1988.
According to investigators, the picture had to have been taken after
May 1989 because the particular film used in the photograph was not available until then.
The identification of the boy in the photograph as Michael Henley seems unlikely
because his remains were discovered in 1990 in the Zuni Mountains, about 7 miles from
his family’s campsite where he had disappeared, and 75 miles from where Tara Calico disappeared.
There was much back and forth and conjecture about this,
but in the end the standing ruling is that it was not him in the picture.
Police believed he simply wandered off and sadly died of exposure to the elements.
Tara’s mother Patty believed that the girl in the picture was in fact her daughter.
This positive identification was mainly made due to a scar the woman in the photo had on her
leg which, according to Patty, was identical to one Tara had in the same exact spot on her leg.
Tara had received this particular scar due to an injury she suffered from a car accident when
she was younger. In addition, a paperback copy of V.C. Andrews’ “My Sweet Audrina”,
said to be one of Tara Calico’s favorite books, can be seen lying next to the woman.
Scotland Yard analyzed the photo and concluded that the woman was Tara, but a second analysis
by the Los Alamos National Laboratory disagreed. An FBI analysis of the photo was inconclusive.
This is where the case seems to take an even more bizarre turn.
Twenty years after the discovery of the photograph which was of course widely shared by the media
at the time, pictures of a little boy were sent to the Port St. Joe police chief, David Barnes.
He received two letters, postmarked June 10th and August 10th, 2009, from Albuquerque, New Mexico.
One letter contained a photo, printed on copy paper, of a young boy with sandy brown hair.
Someone had drawn a black band in ink on the photo, over the boy’s mouth,
as if it were covered in tape as in the 1989 picture.
It seemed whoever sent the photos was alluding to the fact that the boy in the original photograph,
found all of those years ago, was Michael Henley after all.
This has never been officially confirmed though.
The second letter contained an original image of the boy. On August 12th, The Star newspaper in
Port St. Joe received a third letter, also postmarked in Albuquerque on August 10th
and depicting the same image, of a boy with black marker drawn over his mouth.
None of the letters contained a return address or a note indicating the child’s identity, making the
officials there believe it may have something to do with the disappearance of Tara Calico.
The letters were sent in around the same time a self-proclaimed psychic
called the detective about Tara, saying she had met a runaway in California with
whom she worked in a strip club who eventually wound up murdered.
The caller said she had dreams suggesting the runaway
may have been Tara Calico and that she may be buried somewhere in California.
Though it was a long shot and there was no real location given publicly
as to where this alleged psychic said the girl could possibly be buried,
the police must have had some additional information as they did conduct searches
and reported that these searches led to nothing and no bodies at all had been found.
Not of Tara Calico or anyone else. Additionally, these photos were given
to the FBI for further investigation in hope of finding fingerprints or possible DNA evidence.
Twenty years after she had disappeared that fateful day in September of 1988, sheriff of
Valencia County, California at the time, named Rene Rivera, reported that he had received what
he believed to be credible information that finally explained what had happened to Tara.
This information alleged that some boys who knew her drove up behind her in a truck
and some form of car accident followed. Tara later died and those responsible covered up the crime.
Rivera states he knows the names of those involved, but that, without a body,
he couldn’t make a case. He hasn’t released whatever evidence has led him to this conclusion.
No arrests have been made and the case remains open. Tara’s stepfather, John Doel, has disputed
these claims, saying that the sheriff should not have made these comments if he was not willing to
arrest anyone and that strong circumstantial evidence should be enough for a conviction.
Two other Polaroid photographs, possibly of Tara, have surfaced over the years.
The first was found near a construction site in Montecito, California,
and is a blurry photo of a girl's face with tape covering her mouth and
light blue striped fabric behind her, "similar to that on the pillow in the Toyota van photo".
It was taken on film that was not available until June 1989.
The second shows "a woman loosely bound in gauze, her eyes covered with more gauze and
large black-framed glasses", with a male passenger beside her on an Amtrak train.
The film used was not available until February 1990.
Tara’s mother believed the first one was Tara,
but thought that the second may have been some kind of sick joke.
Her sister stated, "They had a striking, uncalming resemblance. As for me, I will not rule them out.
But keep in mind our family has had to identify many other photographs
and all but those three were ruled out."
In October 2013, a six-person task force was established to re-investigate the disappearance.
As of 2017, no arrests have been made and the case remains open.
On October 1st, 2019, the FBI announced that they are "offering a reward of up to $20,000
for precise details leading to the identification or location of Tara Leigh Calico and information
leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for her disappearance."
In September 2021, the Valencia County Sheriff's Office and the New Mexico State Police
issued a statement that they have a new lead in the case, and that the focus of a
sealed warrant for an unknown private residence located within Valencia County has been issued;
however, no further details were provided.
There have been no additional updates since this time.
What happened to Tara Calico?
Is it possible some boys she knew, possibly from her neighborhood or school decided to
try and scare her but took it too far and accidentally ran her over and killed her?
Leading to them then having to cover it up and get
rid of her body and bicycle as Sheriff Rivera believes?
If this is the case then why wasn’t the witness or witnesses
who allegedly came forward to him with this information called in to testify?
As Tara's stepfather stated, the circumstantial evidence should have been enough for a conviction.
Is it possible that her mother was right and perhaps someone had been
stalking the two of them and saw Tara alone
and decided to take the opportunity to abduct her right there on the side of the road?
Were any of the photographs handed in actually of Tara?
What was the new lead in the case back in 2019
and why had nothing ever come of this alleged search warrant on the private residence?
These are questions we hope one day will be answered.
If for nothing else then that Tara’s family could at least begin to heal.
Maybe one day justice will be served and the facts of what happened to Tara Calico
all those years ago when she was simply going for a bike ride and listening to some of her
favorite music in her Walkman will come to light and someone will be held accountable.
As always, we will bring any updates that come to light to you as soon as we receive them.
Well there you have it folks.
What do you think of this bizarre disappearance?
I look forward to reading your comments, but please, keep it friendly respectful!
In the meantime, take care of yourselves and each other
and I will see you just a little further on down the trail.
I'm Steve Stockton and I'll talk to you later!