Tara Calico disappeared without a trace. Then, nearly a year later, a Polaroid photo was found in a convenience store parking lot. The photo was of a young woman and boy, bound and gagged. It is believed that she was the woman in the photo.
Tara Calico lived in Belen, New Mexico. A second year student at the University of New Mexico, she was going places. For a while she, and occasionally her mother, Patty Doel, took daily bike rides along New Mexico State Road 47. As with anything, riding a bike along a busy road has its risks, harassment, catcalling, and more. Then Patty came to believe she was being stalked. On multiple occasions she had encountered a car driving aggressively close to her, deliberately passing her multiple times.
Patty decided to end her rides with her daughter, no longer feeling as comfortable. She didn’t tell Tara to stop riding, but did encourage her to carry mace. But Tara didn’t think that was necessary.
On Tuesday, September 20, 1988, Tara left home around 9:30am on her mother’s neon pink Huffy mountain bike with yellow control cables and sidewalls. Her own bike was damaged. She knew she couldn’t stay out too long because she had a date with her boyfriend to play tennis at 12:30. Knowing her mothers feelings about the ride, she jokingly asked her mother to come looking for her if she didn’t return by noon.
When Tara didn’t return home, Patty went looking for her. She drove along Tara’s usual bike route, but she wasn’t anywhere. She called Tara’s boyfriend, but he hadn’t seen her. She never showed up at the tennis courts. With her previous concerns of a stalker, she wasted no time going to the police.
Tara was 19-years-old, officially an adult. As such, police informed Patty that she was allowed to go missing, or “take a break.” But they agreed to take a look around Tara’s bedroom, and what they saw gave them pause. She had left behind her purse, and even her textbooks – something she would have needed for her 4pm class at the university.
When 4pm came and went, and Tara never showed up to school, police decided there was more to her disappearance. A search along the route turned up pieces of Tara’s Sony Walkman and cassette tape along the roadway. People who drove through the area were questioned and several reported having seen her riding her bike, but that was all. No one witnessed an abduction, and her bike was never found.
The only thing of note that came from the witnesses was the report of a light-colored pickup truck, thought to be a 1953 Ford, with a camper shell, which was spotted following closely behind her. The last time anyone reported seeing her was at approximately 11:45am. Tara had effectively disappeared without a trace.
But people didn’t just disappear. Police began to question Tara’s parents, her friends, her boyfriend. What was her home life like? Was she happy? Did she ever talk about traveling? Could she have run away?
According to her friends and family, there was no way she ran away. She was a good girl, happy, and had a healthy relationship with her boyfriend. “There was just so much she wanted to fit into a day. She was like a little machine. It was amazing,” said John Doel, Tara’s stepfather.
Time went on, and on, and eventually the case went cold.
On June 15, 1989, nearly nine months after Tara disappeared, something strange and unexpected happened. A polaroid photo was found in the parking lot of a convenience store in Port St. Joe, Florida. Nearly 1,500 miles from where Tara had disappeared. It wasn’t a picture you could dismiss.
In the photo, a young woman and a boy were bound and gagged with black duct tape. They were lying on sheets and a pillow. Nothing in the photo gave away obvious signs of a location. The woman who discovered the photo reported that she found it where a windowless, white Toyota cargo van had been parked. She had even seen the driver – a man with a mustache who appeared to be in his thirties.
Police roadblocks were set up to hopefully intercept the vehicle, but they never did, and no one has been able to identify who the man might be.
Analysis of the Polaroid led police to determine that the picture had to have been taken after May 1989, because the particular film used had not been available prior to then.
A picture like this was not to be ignored, so the next thing to do was bring in the public. Locals were asked about the photo, and a group of witnesses claimed they had seen the woman on the beach shortly before the Polaroid was discovered. She had been accompanied by several Caucasian men, who gave her “verbal orders”, which she didn’t protest.
The boy in the photo was not with them.
The Polaroid was broadcast on the television show, A Current Affair, in July. Friends of Patty Doel, who knew about her missing daughter, saw the photo and immediately reached out. They believed the woman in the photo was Tara.
Further, people believed they had identified the boy as well. Michael Henley, who had also lived in New Mexico, had disappeared in April 1988. Both Tara’s and Michael’s parents met with investigators to take a closer look. Patty said she was “convinced” it was her daughter. Her identification went beyond just her face – she saw a scar on the woman’s leg – identical to one Tara had gotten during a car accident.
Even more intriguing was the book in the photo, a paperback copy of My Sweet Audrina by V.C. Andrews. That book just happened to be one of Tara’s favorites. Also noted was what appeared to be a phone number on the side of the book. While investigators tried to make out the numbers, they were only able to make out a few, which led to 300 possible phone number combinations, of which 57 were registered. This led them nowhere.
Experts at the Los Alamos National Laboratory analyzed the photo, and came back with their doubts. Even the FBI said they were unable to conclusively say that Tara Calico was the woman in the photo. But then Scotland Yard in the U.K. decided to take a look, and they were convinced that the woman in the photo was indeed Tara.
As for Michael Henley, while his mother said she was “almost certain” it was him in the photo, there was absolutely no way he was. His remains were found in 1990 in the Zuni Mountains, just seven miles from the campsite where he had disappeared. He had died of exposure, long before the photo had been taken.
Once again, the case went cold, and in 2003, The Doel’s packed up and moved from New Mexico to Florida. Though they had hoped that there would be a break in the case, or news of their daughter, there just wasn’t. They appeared on Oprah, Unsolved Mysteries, 48 Hours, and A Current Affair, all to no avail.
In 1998, ten years after her disappearance, Tara Calico was officially declared dead. A judge ruled her death a homicide.
Patty Doel died in 2006, and the case of Tara Calico remains a mystery.
In 2008, Valencia County sheriff, Rene Rivera, reported that he had received information about Tara and her death. He claimed that two teenage boys, who knew her, had driven up behind her that day. But they got too close and hit her. When they got out of the truck, they panicked and killed her before placing her body and bike in the back of their truck.
They allegedly drove out to an unknown location in Valencia County and disposed of her bike and buried her body. Rivera believed the boys’ parents helped in the cover up, and he even knew the boys’ names. But without a body, he could not arrest them or reveal their identities.
Rivera’s claims sparked a response of disbelief and anger. If Tara had been killed that day in 1988, how did that account for the Polaroid? Or, if he knew who had killed her, he should have enough circumstantial evidence to arrest and convict – even without a body.
Regardless, no arrests were made, and Rene Rivera left office in 2011. Interestingly, in 2017, he was arrested and charged with domestic violence.
But then there was a confession – a deathbed confession.
In 2013, a man named Henry Brown reached out to investigators. He was terminally ill, and wanted to get something off his chest. He claimed he knew what happened to Tara Calico, and who was responsible.
According to Brown, shortly after Tara’s disappearance, he had been in the basement of Lawrence Romero Jr. There, he saw what appeared to be the body of a young woman, wrapped in a blue tarp, and buried in a makeshift grave. Brown claimed that Romero, a man named Dave Silva, and another man described as only “having red hair”, told him that the body was Tara Calico.
The men said that they had been driving along with another man named Leroy Chavez. They knew Tara from school and when they spotted her riding her bike they tried to get her attention, but accidentally hit her, knocking her off her bike. Then they made the decision to abduct her.
They took her to a gravel pit where they each took a turn sexually assaulting her. Afterwards, Tara told them she was going to go to the police, and they would all “go to jail” for what they had done. Enraged, Romero retrieved a knife from the truck and ordered the rest to hold her down. He proceeded to stab her to death.
They hid her body in a nearby bush and discarded her bike in a junkyard. But when the search for Tara began, they returned and moved her body to Romero’s basement.
While Henry had not taken part in the abduction or murder of Tara, he was guilty of maintaining the secret. After all, the men had told him that if he went to the police, they would kill him.
Also, according to Henry, Romero’s father, Lawrence Romero Sr., was the Sheriff at the time, and had known about the crime. In fact, not only did he know, but he, along with the other men’s parents, helped to cover up the crime.
On his deathbed, Henry confessed that he believed the men had placed Tara’s body in a pond near one of their houses. Then, another man came forward, claiming one of the suspects had confessed to him as well.
In 1991, Romero committed suicide.
Tara’s body has not yet been recovered.
In 2018, the FBI and Valencia County Sheriff’s department issued a joint statement that they had evidence to suggest that Tara had been attacked and ultimately killed by two teen boys in a pickup truck – just as former Sheriff Rivera had claimed. Still no suspects were named, nor arrests made.
On October 1, 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.”
Another break was reported in September 2021, when the Valencia County Sheriff’s office and the New Mexico State Police issued a statement that they have a new lead in the case. A search warrant, that remains sealed, was executed at a home in Valencia County.
At this time, there have been no new updates.
Was Tara the woman in the Polaroid? Are the confessions made true? Will we ever know?
Looking for another, just as puzzling, mystery? Check out the story of Amy Lynn Bradley.
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