Tara Calico
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To get this episode of Forensic Tales ad-free, please visit patreon.com slash Forensic Tales. Forensic Tales discusses topics that some listeners may find disturbing. The contents of this episode may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised. In 1988, a teenage girl mysteriously disappeared while out riding her bike in New Mexico. The search for her lasted weeks, but nothing turned up until months later, a disturbing photo surfaced.

But what did the photo mean? And was it a photo of the missing teen? This is Forensic Tales, episode number 165. The unsolved disappearance of Tara Calico. ♪

Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell-Ariola.

Forensic Tales is a weekly true crime podcast covering real, spine-tingling stories with a forensic science twist. Some cases have been solved with forensic science, while others have turned cold. Every remarkable story sends us a chilling reminder that not all stories have happy endings.

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To support Forensic Tales, please visit patreon.com slash Forensic Tales or simply click the link in the show notes. You can also support this show by leaving a positive rating with a review. Now, let's get to this week's episode.

On the morning of September 20th, 1988, 19-year-old Tara Calico borrowed her mom's bike to go on a bike ride. Almost every single day, Tara rode her bike 36 miles along New Mexico State Highway 47 near her home in Berlin, New Mexico. And September 20th, 1988 was no different.

The ride would usually take Tara about two hours. She would ride 17 miles south down Route 47 to the train tracks, turn around, and return home. On most days, Tara rode her own bike. But on this particular morning, she asked her mom if she could borrow her bike because Tara's bike had a flat tire and hadn't fixed it yet. So Tara's mom, Patty, said yes, but not without a little bit of hesitation.

She knew her daughter, knew the route, and was comfortable with her bike because she did it almost every morning. And a lot of times, Patty would even go with her. But this morning was a little bit different. On one of Patty's bike rides with her daughter, she felt like someone in a car was following her. It almost felt like the motorist was stalking her.

So after that incident, Patty told Tara, hey, you should really think about carrying pepper spray with you just in case something happens out there on the highway. But like many other teenagers her age, Tara shrugged her mom off and said not to worry, she'd be fine. A little after 9.30 a.m., Tara said goodbye to her mom. She threw on one of her work t-shirts and a pair of green and white striped shorts.

She grabbed her Walkman before heading to the garage where her mom, Patty, was waiting. She was so happy her mom agreed to let her borrow her 12-speed neon pink Huffy mountain bike. But before walking out, she asked if she could come and get her if she wasn't home by noon. She had plans with her boyfriend to play tennis together that afternoon and didn't want to be late. She also had a class at the University of New Mexico at 4 o'clock p.m.

So Patty agreed and told her daughter to enjoy the bike ride and to be careful. She had no idea this would be the very last time she ever talked to Tara. And her disappearance would baffle the state of New Mexico for decades.

Born Tara Calico on February 29th, 1969 to parents David and Patty, she grew up in Berlin, New Mexico, a city in Valencia County, New Mexico, with a population today of almost 8,000 people. She grew up with her stepdad John, brother Chris, and sister Michelle. Starting at six years old, she became known by her family as Teenie Tara.

She would get herself up in the morning, make her own breakfast, and do almost everything on her own. She was almost like a mini-adult trapped in a young person's body. Throughout her childhood and teenage years, she juggled part-time work, school, art projects, exercise, sports, family and friends without missing a beat. Not only was she able to do 10 things at once, but she did all of them exceptionally well.

She was also athletic, so it was no wonder she rode her bike every day to help stay in shape. She graduated from Berlin High School, and by 1988, she was a sophomore at the University of New Mexico. Tara had always been known to be a girl who was incredibly organized and independent.

She was the kind of person who liked to make lists, scheduling out every detail of her days. She would write down what she needed to get done that day, by what time, and with who. These lists made sure that she always stayed focused and kept on track. She studied psychology at the University of New Mexico. She wanted to become a psychiatrist or a psychologist after she finished school.

Her dream was to help people work through any problems they might be experiencing. She also worked at a local bank to help pay for college. After Tara headed out on her ride, Patty continued with her morning, but she paid close attention to the clock, and by 11.45 a.m., she fully expected her daughter to come through the garage door any minute riding her bike, but she didn't.

By 12.05, Patty decided she had waited long enough. She knew Tara had plans with her boyfriend at 12.30, then a class at the university. She also remembered her parting words. If I'm not back by 12, come looking for me. That's when Patty hopped in the car and started driving toward the highway she knew Tara would be on. Maybe something had happened to her bike, and she was stuck along the side of the road.

Patty knew something might have happened because someone like Tara would never be late. She stuck to her daily schedule like glue. Patty drove the exact route she knew her daughter had taken. Before every turn on the road, she expected to see Tara stranded on the side of the road. Maybe she had a flat tire. But the time she got to the end of the route and still didn't see her, she started to panic.

Patty called Tara's boyfriend and asked him if she had shown up to the tennis courts at 1230. But he said he hadn't heard from Tara and she never showed up. That's when they both instantly knew something terrible was happening. Once Patty discovered that not even her boyfriend knew where she was, she immediately picked up the phone and called the police. But they weren't as helpful as she had hoped.

At 19 years old, Tara was technically an adult, and if she didn't want to come home, she didn't have to. Plus, she had only been gone for a handful of hours. So just because someone doesn't return home exactly when they said they were going to doesn't mean that they're a missing person.

Maybe she decided to meet up with some friends or had other plans that her mom didn't know about. And as an adult, she was allowed to change her plans without telling her parents or her boyfriend. But Patty insisted that this wasn't like her daughter. She would never change her plans without telling her. She also told the officers about the last thing that she said before walking out the door that morning.

The officers agreed to look around the house and Tara's bedroom to see if they could find anything to suggest that something might be wrong. And the first thing they noticed was that her school books and purse were still there. So they knew that she would have to come back soon because she couldn't really go far without her purse or her wallet.

But by 4 o'clock p.m., Patty grew even more worried. She knew Tara had a 4 o'clock class at school and she still wasn't home. That's when the Berlin police started to believe Patty that Tara might be in trouble and they agreed to start looking for her.

Over the next 24 hours, Tara's family and the police searched for any sign of her. Wherever she was, she didn't have anything with her besides her mom's bike and her Walkman cassette player. She didn't have her purse, wallet, or anything else to suggest that she planned on going away for a while. They focused their search on the bike route, State Highway 47, but the search was exhaustive.

If Tara took an alternative route or a shortcut, she could be anywhere under the New Mexico sun. But within hours of the search, they found something huge. About 100 yards off the highway, they found pieces of her Sony Walkman. But it was broken. It almost looked like it had been dropped or someone had thrown it down to the ground.

But the broken Walkman wasn't the only evidence they found. There were also bike tracks and a car's tire tracks in the dirt next to them. They also noticed several footprints in the dirt that looked like a struggle. This led Tara's family and the investigators to wonder, did someone abduct Tara and she dropped her Walkman during a struggle?

Or did she intentionally drop the cassette player so someone would find it and come looking for her? Maybe she tried to leave behind a clue. Investigators started looking for any witnesses who might have seen Tara riding her bike along the highway the day before.

They set up several roadblocks along the highway and showed each driver a picture of Tara. They asked everyone if they had seen a girl matching this description riding her bike the day before. They were able to identify a few witnesses, but they all seemed to have a different version of things. A few people said they saw her riding her bike, but she was alone. They said they saw her riding southbound toward Highway 47 around 930.

But other witnesses provided a more chilling account about what they saw. According to a few people, they saw Tara riding her bike around 11.45 a.m., but she wasn't alone. They said a light-colored pickup truck was driving about 40 feet behind her. It almost looked like the person driving the truck was following her.

The witnesses thought Tara knew the driver of the pickup truck or they were together. Maybe the truck was following the cyclist so that she could get home safely and off the highway. That's why none of them thought anything of it. Now, when the investigators grilled the witnesses about what kind of pickup truck they saw, they weren't 100% sure what it looked like. Their best guess was that it might have been an early 1950 model Ford with a camper shell on top.

On the other hand, it could have also been a 1953, 1955, or even a 1956 Ford pickup truck. No one could agree on exactly what year or model it was.

They also grilled the witnesses about what the driver looked like. Most of them said that they didn't remember or they just really didn't pay attention. But one witness did. According to this witness, he thought the driver was a middle-aged white man with bright reddish-brown hair. He also said that he saw a set of pressed khaki shirts hanging in the backseat of the truck.

And according to this witness, the shirts almost look like they were the kind of shirts that law enforcement wore in that particular area of New Mexico. But that was it. No one else got a good look at what the driver looked like or caught the license plate number. And they weren't even sure if the pickup truck was following Tara. They simply stated that it appeared that they were driving really closely behind her at one point.

After that, a description of the pickup truck was released to the public, and anyone with information was asked to come forward. But nobody did. While the search for Tara and her bike continued, a separate group of investigators began interviewing those close to Tara. They needed to find out as much as possible about her to see if this was indeed an abduction or a simple case of a young teenage girl who ran away.

Investigators learned that at the time of her disappearance, Tara lived with her mom, Patty, and stepfather, John. Both said they had a close relationship with Tara and talked daily. Investigators also spoke with Tara's boyfriend, who also said that they had a great relationship, and Tara had never talked about wanting to run away or go somewhere. He also said it was completely out of character for her to not follow through on their plans.

If they had plans to play tennis together, she would have been there. For the next several days, the police spoke with everyone they could find in Tara's life. They talked to friends, classmates at the university, current and former co-workers at the bank, and friends from high school. But the interviews all ended with the same thing. Tara was happy. She was reliable and regularly communicated with her friends and family.

So for her to be completely gone and just disappear one day, that just didn't make sense. Besides the pickup truck sighting, something else made investigators fear that something terrible might have happened to Tara. Patty's concern about a few incidents she had while riding the same route with her daughter. Patty told the investigators about her strange interactions with a few motorists while on the highway.

She said during one of these incidents, motorists appeared to follow behind her and Tara while riding their bikes. They never actually spoke with the driver and the car never talked to them. But there was something about this incident that left Patty feeling uneasy.

Then there were other times when Patty said that some of the drivers would just shout weird things to them. Maybe they were just shouting catcalls or something like this. But all of these interactions made Patty feel really uneasy about that bike ride. And she had told Tara on several occasions that she should think about carrying pepper spray with her just in case something happened with one of these weird drivers. But she never did.

Over the next several months, the police, Tara's family, and hundreds of volunteers searched for her. But all of the searches came up empty. Besides finding her broken cassette player about 100 yards off the highway, they didn't find any sign of Tara. Not her or her mom's pink bike. Tara's case and story quickly dominated local and national news.

One of the biggest reasons her story became so popular was that this part of New Mexico had never seen a disappearance like this. The town that she disappeared from is tiny. Only a few thousand people live there. So it's not a place known for violent crime or abductions of teenage girls while riding their bikes. So when people across the state of New Mexico and the rest of the country heard about this case, they were immediately drawn to it.

There was just something so sinister about a young girl presumably being kidnapped while riding her bike. Especially on a route she rode almost every day. As Tara's case continued to dominate the media, her family took advantage of this. They continued to leverage the media to help encourage others to help join their efforts to find her. They figured the more people who heard about Tara's case, the more eyes would be out there looking for her.

And this went on for months. But even with all the media attention, the case seemed to have turned cold. There were no promising leads about the light-colored pickup truck seen riding behind her that day. There was no physical or forensic evidence collected from where they found the broken cassette player. And they never found her bike. It was like she simply vanished somewhere on Highway 47.

That is, until one day, almost nine months later, in June 1989. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. What are some of your self-care non-negotiables? Maybe you never skip leg day or therapy day. When your schedule is packed with kids' activities, big work projects, or podcasting like me, it's easy to let your priorities slip.

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That's betterhelp.com. On June 15th, 1989, a disturbing Polaroid photo surfaced, and many people wondered if Tara was in the photo. In June of 1989, a woman in Port St. Joe, Florida, over 1,200 miles away from New Mexico, made a routine trip to a neighborhood grocery store.

As she got out of her car, she saw a white van parked in the parking spot next to hers. The reason why the white van caught her attention was that this was a small town, a place where everyone knows each other, and most of the customers who shop there are regulars and locals to the area. But she had never seen a white van like that parked in front of the store before, so it caught her attention. But she didn't think about the van again until she came back out.

When she finished getting her groceries and headed back to the car, she said she saw a Polaroid photo lying face down in the parking spot where the white van was parked next to hers. She decided to pick up the photo. That's when she discovered that it was a photograph of a young teenage girl and a young boy inside a white van. Both had duct tape over their mouths and appeared to have their hands and feet bound.

They were lying on what looked like a bed and had pillows behind their heads. The teenage girl was wearing what looked like a pair of black shorts and a gray t-shirt. It also looked like she had a scar on one of her legs. The boy looked a lot younger than the girl. You can't see exactly what the boy is wearing, but it looks like he's wearing a light colored t-shirt.

But the most disturbing part of the photo is that both of them are looking directly into the camera and the person who took it. Their eyes almost say, save me or help me. The woman from Port St. Joe, Florida, immediately took the photo to the police. She knew she had recently seen a white van parked next to her, and the photo very clearly shows that two young people were being held captive.

She told the police that the driver of the van looked like he was in his 30s and had a mustache. But besides that, she couldn't provide a solid physical description of him. Investigators in Florida immediately set up roadblocks to see if they could find a similar white van. Anyone driving a similar vehicle in the area was stopped and questioned by the police.

Back in 1989, this small town in Florida was a small community with only about 10,000 people. So a roadblock was a simple and effective way to stop and talk to as many people as possible. But none of them turned out to have any connection to the Polaroid, and the driver of the white van was never identified. The photo quickly caught the attention of local media and eventually national news stations.

The photograph clearly shows two young people bound and gagged. The girl in the photo was probably only a teenager, and the boy appeared to be much younger, maybe not even a teenager yet himself. For the next several weeks, news outlets showed the Polaroid to their audiences, and everyone wanted to know who the kids were in the photograph.

Were they kidnapped and now being held against their will? And even more troubling, were they still alive? Shortly after the photograph made headline news, officials from Polaroid came forward and said that they had a little information about the photo itself. According to Polaroid officials, the photo must have been taken sometime after May 1989.

There were certain of the timeline because the particular film used in the photo wasn't created until May. So it couldn't have been taken any time sooner than about a month before it was discovered in June. But that's all Polaroid was able to say. There was no way of knowing what exact camera was used or who it belonged to.

All they knew that it was taken recently because it was done on recently available Polaroid film that was created only about a month before. Over the next few days, the photograph was circulated on several shows, including America's Most Wanted, The Oprah Show, and A Current Affair. That's the moment Tara's family became aware of it.

A family friend had seen the episode of A Current Affair in July and said that they thought the girl in the photo looked like Tara. They immediately picked up the phone and called Tara's mom, Patty, to let her know. Before that show aired in July, Tara's parents had no idea about the Polaroid.

As soon as Patty and Tara's stepfather John saw it, they knew in their guts it was Tara. Not only did they think the girl looked exactly like her, but according to Patty, she also had the same scar on her leg. Tara had gotten this scar from a car accident that she was in years earlier, and the girl in the photo had the same exact scar.

Patty also said she noticed a paperback volume of My Sweet Adrena, which was written by V.C. Andrews, Tara's favorite author. And the book was lying next to the woman in the photo. It had to be Tara. But was it? Besides Tara's family, another family came forward and said that they thought they knew who the boy in the photo was.

Family members of 9-year-old Michael Henley also saw the Occurrent Affair episode and thought the boy looked like him. Michael Henley had been missing since April 1988 while on a hunting trip with his dad in the Zuni Mountains. In an even stranger twist, Michael went missing a few months before Tara and also disappeared from New Mexico.

Both Tara and Michael's parents met with detectives in Florida. They were convinced the two people in the picture were Tara and Michael. The girl looked exactly like Tara and had the same scar on her leg. She also had one of her favorite books lying next to her. And Michael's parents were convinced the boy looked exactly like their missing nine-year-old. But the mystery only deepened from there.

Was it really Tara and Michael in the photograph? The photo was sent to three separate investigative agencies, all who conducted a forensic examination. And all three agencies reached three different conclusions, and whether they thought it was in fact Tara or Michael. One of the agencies to forensically study it was the Scotland Yard in the UK.

And based on their analysis, they concluded that the girl in the Polaroid was in fact Tara. But when the Los Alamos National Laboratory examined the photo in the States, they disagreed with Scotland Yard. Based on their forensic testing, they said the girl wasn't Tara. And if it wasn't Tara, then it had to be another girl that law enforcement wasn't aware of.

The photo was also sent to the FBI, who came up with their own conclusion. They didn't agree with either Scotland Yard or the Los Alamos National Laboratory. According to the FBI, their results were inconclusive. In other words, they couldn't say with any degree of certainty whether the girl was Tara.

The only thing that all three agencies agreed on was that the photo had been taken recently. It couldn't have been taken later than May of that year. Beyond that, no forensic testing could confirm or deny that the girl was either Tara or the boy was Michael. But only a few short months later, one of the families received devastating news, and it didn't come from any test results.

In June 1990, authorities concluded that the boy in the picture couldn't have been Michael Henley. In June 1990, Michael Henley's remains were found a few miles from the campsite where he was last seen in the Zuni Mountains. He was identified by dental remains, and based on an autopsy, foul play was ruled out.

The medical examiner concluded that Michael had died from hypothermia. Authorities theorized that nine-year-old Michael Henley had simply wandered off during the hunting trip with his family, got lost, and died of exposure. This meant that he wasn't the young boy in the photograph. After Michael Henley was officially ruled out in June 1990, the bigger question still lingered. Was the girl Tara?

Scotland Yard said yes it was. The U.S. lab said no. And the FBI said that their results were inconclusive. But that didn't stop people from speculating whether it was in fact Tara. Some people question what the photograph actually depicts. Is it really a photo of a young teenage girl and a younger boy being abducted? Well, not everyone is so sure about that.

Some people point to several key details in the photo suggesting that something else may have happened. First, some people argue the girl's hands aren't tied together tightly like you'd expect if this was a kidnapping. They say her shoulders and arms don't look like a rope or anything is tightly pulling them. Instead, they look like her arms and hands are just being gently placed behind her back.

They also argue that you can't see any redness or irritation around the tape on either of their mouths. This seems to suggest that the tape hadn't been there long and maybe it was only put there shortly before the photograph was taken. But the wild theories and speculation doesn't stop there. Some people say the girl couldn't have been kidnapped because her legs looked like they had been freshly shaven.

If she was kidnapped, why was she allowed to shave her legs? Then there was the question about whether it was Tara. She went missing about nine months before the Polaroid was found in Florida. So if it was Tara and she had been kidnapped, how do you explain the shaved legs? But again, this is purely speculation because even to this day, we don't know if the Polaroid depicts a real kidnapping or it was simply a hoax.

Two more photographs connected to Tara's disappearance surfaced over the years. The first was found near a construction site thousands of miles away in Montecito, California, a town on the central coast of California near Santa Barbara. It was a photograph of a woman with tape over her mouth in front of a blue and white pillow similar to the one seen in the first Polaroid. She also closely physically resembled Tara.

But there was one big problem with the photo being connected to Tara's case. The film used for the photo wasn't available until June 1989, almost a year after she disappeared. So it seemed highly unlikely, nearly impossible for the girl to have been Tara. The second photo showed a woman and a man on an Amtrak train.

The woman was loosely bound and wearing black framed glasses with her eyes covered in gauze. But like the other photo, the film used to take it wasn't available until after February 1990. So it couldn't have been Tara either. When the photos were sent to Tara's family, Tara's mom Patty thought that the first photo might be her daughter, but she wasn't 100% sure.

She said the girl had a, quote, striking, uncalming resemblance to Tara, but they couldn't be sure. So the family has neither ruled in nor ruled out the possibility that the first photo found in Montecito, California was her. However, they've also said that they are grateful for the photos because it's given them hope that she might still be alive. Because without the photos, they had nothing.

Patty and the rest of Tara's family continue to search for answers about what really happened to their daughter. They've remained determined to discover what happened to her on that bike ride and who took her. In 1991, Patty and John were formally deputized so that they could obtain a permit to carry a weapon, conduct their own searches, and afford access to Tara's case files. And to this day, they continue their search.

In 1998, 10 years after she vanished, her parents had her legally declared dead, and the court overseeing the case officially ruled her death as a homicide.

Although her body has never been discovered and there's little forensic evidence in the case, the judge agreed with her family that she didn't simply voluntarily walk away from her life that September 1988 morning. And the only logical explanation is that she had become a victim of foul play on her bike ride. And now that it's been over three decades, the chances of Tara still being alive are very, very low.

But what exactly happened to her on State Highway 47 remains a haunting mystery for not only her family, but for everyone who has come across her story. In 2003, Tara's mom and stepfather moved from New Mexico to Florida to be closer to the case.

They still believe the girl seen in the Polaroid that was found in Florida was Tara. And if that was her, they thought there was still a chance she was in Florida. Or the people responsible for kidnapping her lived there. But no one living in Florida has ever been identified as a suspect or person of interest. Three years later, in 2006, Tara's mom, Patty, died. And her biological father died a few years earlier in 2002.

But many of Tara's surviving family members have never given up hope that they'll learn more about what really happened to her. By 2008, there was an unexpected development in the case. Renee Rivera, who had worked Tara's case since 1996 and was the sheriff of Valencia County in New Mexico, came forward and said that he received new information.

He claimed he knew exactly what happened to Tara, but those involved in her disappearance were too well-connected in the community, and that's why they had never been arrested or charged with anything. According to Renee Rivera, two local teenagers from New Mexico who knew Tara accidentally hit her with their car while she was riding her bike that morning.

The two teenagers panicked after they realized what they did, and instead of calling for help, they put Tara in the back of the car. They then drove with her, sexually assaulted her, then killed her. After she was dead, the teens got rid of her bike by throwing it away in a New Mexico junkyard. According to Rivera, besides the two teens that hit and killed Tara, two other men were involved.

These two men reportedly helped their friends dispose of Tara's body. The most likely theory was that they threw her body in a pond, but according to Rivera, he wasn't sure what they did with her body.

In 2008, Rivera said that he knew the names of the teenagers involved, but without knowing exactly where Tara's body was, he said he couldn't publicly say who they were. All he would say was that the teenagers belonged to well-connected families in the community and that there would be a lot of controversy if he publicly released their names.

Now, this led many people to speculate if the teens maybe belonged to either a law enforcement family or some other public official.

But when Rivera was scrutinized about his claims about this entire story, he couldn't produce much evidence. In fact, he never really said what evidence led him to come to this conclusion. There was no forensic evidence suggesting that Tara was hit by a car or that local teenagers were involved in her kidnapping.

Besides, to this very day in 2023, her body has never been found in that city of New Mexico or anywhere else. So all that can be definitively said about this announcement in 2008 is that it was a personal opinion from the Valencia County Sheriff. That's all. The search for Tara continues to live on at the time of this recording.

In 2019, the FBI announced a $20,000 reward for any information leading to the person or people responsible for her disappearance. And in 2021, the Valencia County Sheriff's Department and the New Mexico State Police announced they recently received a promising new lead in the case. But what exactly that lead is remains unknown. And today, no one has been arrested.

Tara has been missing for over 34 years. She was only 19 when she vanished while riding her bike in September 1988. She was a sophomore in college with her entire life ahead of her. But all of that was taken away from her for reasons unknown and by people who remain at large. And to this day, there remains so many agonizing questions. What happened to her on that bike ride?

Was she accidentally struck by a car like the sheriff believes? Or was her death intentional? Is that Tara in the Polaroid next to the young boy discovered in Florida? Is it her in any of the other photos that have surfaced over the years? Unfortunately, not even forensic evidence can help answer any of those questions.

Anyone with information about Tara's case is asked to contact your local FBI office. All tips can be submitted anonymously. To share your thoughts on her story, be sure to follow the show on Instagram and Facebook. To find out what I think about the case, sign up to become a patron at patreon.com slash forensic tales.

After each episode, I release a bonus episode where I share my personal thoughts and opinions about the case. You'll want to listen to this one because I'm going to share what I think happened to Tara. Don't forget to subscribe to Forensic Tales so you don't miss an episode. We release a new episode every Monday. If you love the show, consider leaving us a positive review or tell friends and family about us. You can also help support the show through Patreon.

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