DISAPPEARED: Tara Calico

Taking a routine bike ride is a perfect way to exercise but sometimes those trips end with disaster.

19-year-old Tara Calico was one of those people that loved to go on a daily bike ride on the New Mexico State Road 47. She would follow the same path, occasionally she would be joined by her mother, Patty Doel.

Patty decided to stop going with her daughter on the bike rides after a car began driving aggressively at them, aiming mostly at her. She has said the situation made her feel stalked. After the incident, Patty told Tara that if she continued to go on the bike rides that she should at the very least carry mace. Tara refused and continued to go on trips.

On September 20th 1988, Tara went on her bike ride leaving at 9:30 in the morning. She had told her mother that she needed to be back home by noon as she was going to play tennis with her boyfriend at 12:30. Tara asked Patty to fetch her if she didn’t make it back by noon.

As her daughter requested, Patty went out on her usual biking trail when Tara didn’t show up at noon. When she didn’t find her on the path, Patty went to contact the police, telling them that her daughter was missing. It was later found that pieces of Tara’s Walkman and the tape were left. Patty believes that her daughter was trying to mark her path.

The police would later find that several people had seen Tara out riding her bike. Not one saw the abduction, however. Witnesses also saw a light-coloured pickup with a camper shell, possibly a 1953 Ford, following closely behind Tara. Her bike wasn’t ever found.

Almost a year later on June 15th, a Polaroid was found by a woman in Port St Joe, Florida. She was in a convenience store parking lot when she spotted the image in an empty parking spot. She had previously seen a windowless Toyota cargo van parked on the spot, driven by a man with a moustache possibly in his 30s. She contacted the police about the image due to the contents. In the image a young woman and a boy were seen laying in the back of a van with bedding and pillows, their arms seemingly tied behind their backs with black tape covering their mouths.

Police set up roadblocks almost immediately but they never caught the man. They later found that the Polaroid was taken at some point after May of 1989 since that was when the film was created. The two people in the image are still unidentified but there are possible theories as to who they may be.

In July of that year, the picture made its way to Tara’s case after it was aired on an episode of A Current Affair and Patty’s friends thought the woman seemed similar to Tara. After telling the mother, she went to the police and along with a family that potentially was the boy’s, they sat down to examine the photo. Patty was convinced that the woman was Tara noting the scar on her leg was identical to the one Tara got in a car accident. She also spotted a book beside the woman, recognising it as one of Tara’s favourites.

Three agencies examined the photo professionally but all three came back with different answers. Scotland Yard said that it was Tara in the image whilst Los Alamos National Laboratory said that it wasn’t her. The FBI came back with it being inconclusive as to being Tara or not.

There’s another big jump in the timeline of the case moving to 2008. Rene Rivera the sheriff of Valencia County reported he had information about 2 boys who had accidentally hit Tara with a truck killing her. Rivera claimed that Tara and the boys knew each other and that the boys in the truck were following behind her closely. Somehow there was an accident and despite trying to help her, Tara died from the accident. The boys covered up the crime scene. Rivera claimed to know the boys’ names but he wouldn’t release them nor would he release his evidence.

John Doel, Tara’s stepfather, said that the sheriff shouldn’t have said anything if he was unwilling to arrest and that strong circumstantial evidence should have been enough.

Another year went by and more pictures came. These pictures were of a boy sent to Port St Joe police chief David Barnos. He received 2 letters with post stamps marked June 10th and August 10th coming from Albuquerque, New Mexico.

The first letter contained an image printed on photocopy paper, it was of a young boy with sandy brown hair, black ink scribbled over the image to mimic the image taped mouths from the 1999 Polaroid. The second letter was the original image of the boy.

On August 12th a third letter was postmarked August 10th from Albuquerque. A similar image of a young boy was inside, on photocopy paper with ink scribbled over his mouth to mimic tape. It isn’t confirmed if the two images are of the same boy or two separate people.

None of the three letters had a return address or a note inside but officials strongly believed that the letters are connected to Tara’s disappearance. The letters were sent to the FBI but they were unable to gather any evidence from the pages.

Over the years, two more Polaroids have been found that are potentially Tara. The first was found near a construction site in Montecito, California it was of a blurry woman’s face with her mouth taped. There was a striped light blue fabric behind her that closely resembled the pillow from the 1999 Toyota van photo. It was taken at some point after June 1989 determined by the creation of the film.

The second shows a woman bound by gauze, her eyes covered by more gauze and a pair of large black framed glasses. There was a male passenger beside her on what seemed to be the Amtrak train. The photo was from after February 1990 once again determined by the creation of the film.

Patty believes that the first image is of Tara but that the second is just a sick gag.

Not much else happened with the case until October of 2013 when a six-person task force was put together to re-investigate the case. The case continued with the FBI putting out a message on October 1st of 2019. They were “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 of her disappearance.”

September of 2021 Valencia County Sheriff’s Office and New Mexico State Police sent out a statement that they had a new lead and had a sealed warrant to search an unknown property. As of now, there have been no arrests but the case is still open and actively being worked on. For now, we can just hope and pray that someone finds Tara or the people that were involved with her disappearance.

(originally posted on medium.com/@natasha.leigh)