Prior to the highly publicized kidnappings of Elizabeth Smart and Amanda Berry, Tara Calico’s bizarre disappearance rocked the southwestern United States. After leaving on a bicycle ride, 19-year-old Calico, from Belen, NM, disappeared on September 20, 1988. The case never reached a resolution, but it remains open and under federal investigation.
It wasn’t just the kidnapping that shook citizens – there was a photograph discovered in a Florida parking lot located roughly 1,600 miles away from where Calico had disappeared. The photo featured a boy and young woman, and many believe the woman to be Calico. The people in the photograph appear distressed, but it is unclear if this is truly the case or simply the result of a sinister prank. Many infamous crime scene photos have shocked the public, and this particular picture is also alarming because of its ambiguity: were the people shown in the picture slain victims?
The disappearance of Tara Calico and the suspicious Polaroid are both unsolved mysteries which, for more than 30 years, have left investigators, family members, and citizens questioning everything and mourning a young woman’s tragic disappearance.
An Alarming Photograph Turned Up In A Parking Lot In Florida
Photo: Vanished: The Tara Calico Investigation / via Wikimedia Commons / Fair Use
A Port St. Joe, FL, resident was preparing to go into a grocery store on June 15, 1989; she parked adjacent to a Toyota cargo van with a mustached man sitting inside it. After leaving the Junior Food Store, she spotted a Polaroid photo in the space where the Toyota van had been parked minutes earlier.
The woman walked over to the picture, picked it up, and stared at the image. It appeared the picture’s subjects – a boy and young woman on their backs with duct tape over their mouths – were in a small enclosed space, such as a windowless vehicle.
The woman promptly took the picture to the police department, giving the officers a description of the vehicle and man parked beside her. The police set up roadblocks in the area, hoping to question the man who was driving the Toyota, but there were no other reported sightings of him.
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Some Believed The Polaroid Showed Tara Calico, Who Went Missing 1,600 Miles Away
Photo: Courtesy Photo / via KRQE / Fair Use
In July 1989, the Polaroid photo appeared on an episode of A Current Affair. Some who watched the program contacted Patty Doel, whose daughter, Tara Calico, went missing in September 1988. They thought the young woman in the photograph resembled Calico, despite the photograph being found about 1,600 miles away from where she had gone missing.
Once Doel saw the picture, she, too, felt that the young lady resembled her daughter. Doel believed the woman had similar features to her daughter, noting a scar on the woman’s leg was a match to the scar on Calico’s leg from a past car accident. According to Doel, the book shown in the Polaroid next to the girl – a paperback copy of My Sweet Audrina by V.C. Andrews – was one of her daughter’s favorite books.
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Some Initially Believed The Boy In The Photo Was Michael Henley
On April 21, 1988, several months before Calico went missing, 9-year-old Michael Henley went on a hunting trip with his father and a family friend in the Zuni Mountains of New Mexico. They were preparing to hunt wild turkey, but while setting up the camp, Michael disappeared. Michael’s father immediately reported the boy missing, but a snowstorm had taken over the area, preventing a thorough search for him. Once the storm subsided, 400 people assisted in the search, but the only clue they discovered was a small footprint in the snow.
In July 1989, when A Current Affair aired an episode showing the photograph of the two people gagged in an enclosed space, Michael’s parents saw the show and thought the little boy in the photo resembled their son. In fact, his mother stated that she was nearly certain it was Michael in the picture. Cibola National Park, where Michael went missing, is roughly 45 miles from Belen, NM, where Calico vanished. It didn’t take long for investigators to see a potential connection in the disappearances.
Calico’s mother and the Henleys went to Port St. Joe, FL, to examine the Polaroid and talk to police. After the meeting, the parents determined that their children were in the picture. However, on June 22, 1990, a rancher found skeletal remains in the Zuni Mountains. Dental records confirmed it was Michael’s body, and that the boy had likely succumbed to hypothermia. Investigators did not suspect foul play and concluded Michael was not the boy in the Polaroid.
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Calico Went Missing On September 20, 1988, While On A Bike Ride
Photo: KRQE News 13 / via YouTube / Fair Use
On September 28, 1988, 19-year-old Tara Calico was getting ready to go on a bike ride when she noticed her flat tire. She borrowed her mom’s pink Huffy bicycle and told her mother to pick her up on the bike route if she didn’t return from her ride by noon. Calico wanted to get home in time for an afternoon tennis date she had planned with her boyfriend.
Calico then embarked on her 17-mile bike ride, which entailed looping around the railroad tracks and a golf course. She left her home at approximately 9:30 am, heading south.
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Witnesses Reported Seeing Calico During Her Bike Ride
Investigators interviewed at least seven individuals who reported seeing Calico on her bike ride; all of them claimed to have seen Calico riding north toward her home. Of the seven witnesses, five recalled seeing an old pickup truck following Calico along the highway.
They also reported seeing Calico wearing headphones and listening to her Walkman. The search party later discovered Calico’s bike tracks, cassette tape, and a piece of her Walkman within a three-mile radius from where the witnesses said they saw her.
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Her Mother Retraced Calico’s Bike Route By Car, But Found No Sign Of The Teen
When Calico didn’t arrive home by noon from her bike ride, Doel left home to search for her daughter. She drove her car through the 17-mile bike route that Calico took but did not see her daughter. Doel then drove the bike route again to see if she could spot Calico – but to no avail.
Worried, she called the local hospital to see if her daughter was there, then contacted the rescue unit and Valencia County Sheriff’s Department to report Calico missing.
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Police Immediately Started A Search Party For Calico
Photo: Valencia County Sheriff’s Office / via People / Public Domain
Calico entered the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) system as a missing person, and an exhaustive two-week search ensued, which involved state police, the military, local volunteers, and aircraft. Neither Calico nor her mother’s bicycle turned up. The search team did notice bike tracks veering off the road and a Boston cassette tape, which Calico was listening to on her Walkman.
In addition, they found the front view window piece of Calico’s Walkman.
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Several Labs Have Examined The Mysterious Photograph In An Attempt To Verify If Calico Is Pictured
Photo: Beige Alert / flickr / CC-BY 2.0
To figure out if Calico is the young woman in the Polaroid found in 1989, her parents had the photo analyzed by Scotland Yard in London. The lab examined the picture and determined that it was, in fact, Calico. However, the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico also analyzed the photo and concluded it was not. The FBI then conducted an independent investigation into the photograph as well, but the results were inconclusive.
Investigators remain baffled by the photo; the only clue they have determined from the image is that the photographer likely snapped it after May 1989, as the specific film used was unavailable until that date.
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A Sheriff Claimed To Know Who The Perpetrators Are, But There Isn’t Enough Evidence To Prove His Theory
September 2008 marked 20 years since Calico’s disappearance, and a local Valencia County newspaper ran a story about the missing teen. The article included an interview with a detective from Valencia County, Rene Rivera. Rivera began working with the county sheriff’s department in 1989 and jumped onto the Calico case.
In an explosive revelation, Rivera claimed that two local boys who were in a truck accidentally ran over Calico, and then two other men, possibly parents, assisted with helping the men hide Calico’s body. Despite knowing the identities of the allegedly culpable men, Rivera explained they have made no arrests because Calico’s body remains missing.
In 2017, a Reddit thread about Calico included uploaded documents from the New Mexico State Police case file on Calico’s disappearance. In the documents, a man named Henry Brown gave an interview with Deputy Frank Methola claiming he had heard some teen boys talking about hitting Calico with their truck, and then sexually assaulting and slaying her. He went on to explain the teens hid Calico’s body in the bushes, but when a search party began looking for her, they moved her into a basement before later dumping her body into a pond.
One of the alleged suspects named by Brown was Lawrence Romero Jr., the son of the local sheriff. It is likely Detective Rivera was referring to Romero Sr. when he mentioned in the newspaper interview that the alleged assailants got help from their family in hiding Calico’s body. Romero Jr. has since passed.
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20 Years After The Disappearance, Police Received Mysterious Letters With Additional Photos
Twenty years after the initial Polaroid photo turned up in a parking lot in Florida, the same local police department received two separate letters with pictures attached. The first letter, postmarked June 10, 2009, from Albuquerque, NM, had a printed photo of a young boy with brown hair. Someone had covered the boy’s mouth with black ink, which made it resemble the gagged child in the original 1989 Polaroid. On August 10, 2009, the police received an additional letter, also postmarked from Albuquerque, which showed the original image of the boy without ink over his mouth.
On August 12, 2009, a Port St. Joe newspaper, The Star, also received a letter postmarked from Albuquerque that contained the same marked photo of the boy initially sent to the police department. There was no return address on the envelopes or any indication of the boy’s identity in the photos.
Though police are unsure if the boy in the photographs is the same boy shown in the original 1989 picture, they consider it a notable coincidence that the image got sent on almost 20th anniversary of the original Polaroid. Albuquerque, NM, is approximately 35 miles from Calico’s home in Belen, NM.
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Police Addressed The Case With New Perspective In 2013
A 2013 news conference made by the New Mexico State Police Department revealed the Calico case was officially being reopened. While the case had never formally closed, it was considered merely a local issue, which was under the investigation of the Valencia County Sheriff’s Office. However, there is now a task force – including federal Homeland Security agents, as well as several state and local police departments – looking into Calico’s disappearance.
Bernalillo County Sheriff Dan Houston made a statement in 2013:
We have tried to make it clear to the families that are involved in our cold cases that we continued to have resolve to bring justice to their loved ones for the crimes that they’ve suffered in their families.
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At The Time Of Her Disappearance, Calico Had A Promising Future
Photo: Courtesy Photo / via Albuquerque Journal / Fair Use
Many who were familiar with Calico described her as an ambitious person. She planned out most of her days by trying to fit in as many activities as possible, often making detailed daily schedules. She excelled in high school and was a sophomore at the University of New Mexico at Valencia, where she was studying to become a psychologist.
She worked at a local bank at the time of her disappearance. Calico was also an extremely athletic young woman, who enjoyed running and cycling. Friends say she was someone most people would admire.
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Many Shows Have Featured Calico’s Disappearance
Photo: Vanished: The Tara Calico Investigation / Fair Use
Though Calico’s disappearance remains unsolved, it is not from a lack of attention to the case. In July 1989, she was the focus of an episode of A Current Affair. Following that program, Unsolved Mysteries aired a segment about Calico in September 1989. The TV show America’s Most Wanted also discussed Calico’s case, which focused on showing the Polaroid photograph to see if any viewers could identify the youths in the picture.
In addition, an episode of 48 Hours covered the teen’s disappearance, and Calico’s parents went on a taping of Oprah to talk about their daughter.
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Calico’s Sister And Best Friend Have Not Given Up Searching For Her
Video: YouTube
In 2017, Calico’s step-sister, Michele Doel, and high school friend, Melinda Esquibel, spoke to interviewers. The two told reporters they are still investigating Calico’s disappearance, despite the teen being missing for more than three decades. Esquibel, a filmmaker, decided to make a documentary about the case, but she has come across some roadblocks in the process. Esquibel claims that through her research, many have told her they do not wish to talk about the case. She also alleges that some people have threatened her life and that of her family.
Moreover, the two women stated that they have uncovered new information, and in 2017, they released a multi-part podcast titled Vanished: The Tara Calico Investigation. Podcast host Esquibel discusses different theories regarding Calico’s disappearance.
Calico’s parents passed without learned what exactly happened to their daughter. Patty Doel passed in May 2006, while Calico’s father, David, passed four years prior in November 2002.
