Tara Leigh Calico disappeared near her home in Belen, New Mexico on September 20, 1988.
Her case, believed to be a kidnapping, received extensive coverage on A Current Affair, Unsolved
Mysteries, and America's Most Wanted.
It was also profiled on The Oprah Winfrey Show and 48 Hours.
Disappearance On September 20, 1988, Calico left her home
at about 9:30 in the morning to go on her customary bike ride.
She told her mother, Patty Doel, to come and get her if she was not home by noon.
Doel went searching for her daughter along her usual bike route, but could not find her
and contacted the police.
Pieces of her Sony Walkman and a cassette tape were discovered along the route and Doel
believed that Calico might have dropped them in an attempt to mark her trail.
Several people saw Calico riding her bicycle, which has never been found.
No one witnessed her presumed abduction, although several witnesses observed a 1953 or 1954
Ford pickup following her.
It is not known if this vehicle was connected to her disappearance.
All efforts to locate the pickup have failed.
The photograph
On June 15, 1989, a Polaroid photo of an unidentified young woman and a boy, both gagged and seemingly
bound, was found in the parking lot of a convenience store in Port St. Joe, Florida.
It was theorized that the woman in the photo was 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.
Despite much conjecture, the identification of the boy in the photograph as 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 Calico disappeared.
Police believe that Henley wandered off and died of exposure.
Her mother believed the woman in the photo was indeed her daughter due in part to what
appeared to be a scar on the woman's leg, similar to one Calico had received in a car
accident.
In addition, a paperback copy of V.C.
Andrews' My Sweet Audrina, said to be one of Calico's favorite books, can be seen lying
next to the woman.
Scotland Yard analysed the photo and concluded that the woman was Calico, but a second analysis
by the Los Alamos National Laboratory disagreed.
An FBI analysis of the photo was inconclusive.
Two other Polaroid photographs, possibly of Calico, have surfaced over the years, but
they have yet to be released to the public.
There were several reported sightings of her in 1988 and 1989, mostly in the southern half
of the United States, but none of these sightings could be confirmed.
Later developments Twenty years after her disappearance, Rene
Rivera, sheriff of Valencia County, announced that he knew what had happened to Calico.
According to Rivera, boys who knew her from school drove up behind her in a truck and
some form of accident followed.
Calico later died and those responsible covered up the crime.
Rivera states he knows the names of those involved, but that, without a body, he cannot
make a case.
He has not released whatever evidence has led him to this conclusion.
No arrests have been made and the case remains open.
Calico'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.
References
External links Case File 257DFNM, The Doe Network
Tara Leigh Calico, The Charley Project Vanished: The Tara Calico Story, documentary
by a friend of Calico Gutierrez Krueger, Joline.
"Patty Doel waited for Tara until the day she died".
Albuquerque Tribune.
Archived from the original on March 7, 2008.
Retrieved 12 September 2014.