Tara Calico // 440
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What is going on, true crime fans? I'm your host, Heath. And I'm your host, Daphne. And you're listening to Going West. Hello, everybody. Thank you so much for tuning in today. Today is a special day for Heath and I because it is our one-year wedding anniversary. Yes, it is. And we're going to go out tonight and have a lovely dinner. We're

We're going to go to Hollywood, have some drinks, have some good food. So thank you so much for being here with us today. Yes, absolutely. And big thank you to Rachel and Evan for recommending this case. This is one of those true crime cases that you guys may already know about. Yeah, it's one of those more heavily covered cases. Yeah, or if you haven't heard it, you may have heard about it like briefly or in passing or recently.

You probably have seen the famous photo that's associated with this case that you can find on our socials or really anywhere online. But it still needs a lot of attention. It's such an unnerving story, so we finally wanted to cover it. And there's also a recent development that we're going to discuss in today's episode. It has not been made public yet, but it seems like they are getting mad.

much closer to figuring out what happened here. Yes. So without further ado, let us. All right, guys, this is episode 440 of Going West. So let's get into it. So

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That's N-O-O-M dot com. In September of 1988, a 19-year-old woman went missing while riding her bike near her New Mexico home. With signs of a struggle left behind, suspicions were raised that she had been kidnapped.

The case grew even more perplexing when the following year, a Polaroid photo was found in a Florida parking lot depicting a young woman bound and gagged in the back of a van, and it was quickly connected to her case. This is the story of Tara Calico.

Tara Lee Calico was born on February 28th, 1969 to Patty and David Calico in New Mexico. But the family moved to Berlin, which is about 30 minutes south of Albuquerque at a young age after her parents divorced. Both of her parents did remarry, David to a woman named Bernice and Patty to a man named John Dole, which created this blended family that included siblings Michelle, Deb, Chris and Todd.

Even as a kid, Tara was known for how organized and responsible she was. And she was described by many as Type A, which I think are traits that also lended themselves to her in a very impressive academic career because Tara was a very gifted student. She was taking college classes before her senior year of high school. She was fluent in French and played several musical instruments. But in addition to her studies, she was known as athletic, adventurous, and kind.

A friend of hers named Bernard Nixon recalled fondly, "'She was very independent. "'She definitely has a mind of her own. "'She's extremely bright and resourceful. "'She has a very good disposition "'and a friendly manner about her. "'She has everything you'd look for in a friend.'"

After graduating from Berlin High School in 1987, Tara enrolled in the University of New Mexico Valencia, which is located just 15 minutes away from her hometown of Berlin in Los Lunas. And with this venture into college, she hoped to one day become a psychologist.

Now, as you can imagine, being in the same area that she grew up, a lot of kids that she went to school with also headed to this university, including an old classmate named Jack Cole. So reconnecting on campus, he and Tara started dating because they had a lot in common. They both loved spending time outdoors, playing sports, biking and going on hikes. And they did these things together very often.

Now, like Daphne said, Tara was very athletic. She loved to bike, and this actually played a big role in what ended up happening to her. Because in September of 1988, 19-year-old Tara had just begun her classes for her first semester of her sophomore year of college, and she was also working part-time at a bank. In addition to work and her studies, Tara exercised every day and spent as much time outdoors as she could.

As an avid biker, Tara made a point of heading out on rides almost daily, many of these trips amounting to nearly 40 miles each, or 64 kilometers. And just for anybody wondering, depending on how fast she was going, this could be as little as an hour and a half, or up to three hours for that distance, but obviously it depends on the biker. Absolutely. Now, her mother Patty would sometimes join Tara on these rides, but actually stopped doing so when she became worried about the leering eyes of cars behind them.

Patty warned Tara that she should be cautious when she was out riding and even suggested that she carry mace on her in case someone tried to do something, especially if she was out there alone. Patty remembered Tara scoffing at this, saying, quote, "'Don't be silly, Mom,' and adding, quote, "'I can't run my life worrying about what's around every corner.'"

But a pretty big reason why her mom warned her about this was because she felt that Tara trusted everyone. But, you know, she was also a teenager who didn't want to have to stop biking just because of someone with ill intentions potentially being around her. Fair. I mean, it sucks that, you know, women and people have to worry about other people not minding their own business. But unfortunately, we do. Yeah, we just do. But yeah, like you said, she was a teenager, so she's not really thinking about...

Right, yeah, and I'm sure, you know, since she was young, she just figured that it would be fine, and she just really enjoyed these long rides, which often were along heavily trafficked roads, and she would often travel while listening to music on her portable tape player.

And this made things even more worrisome for her mom, knowing that if somebody potentially came up behind her, she wouldn't be able to hear them. Yeah, I feel like I can't go out anymore like this with two headphones in. And a lot of you guys have said the same thing, that when you're out alone on a bike ride or a walk or a run, that you just have one earbud in or something instead of both of them. Right, so you can hear if there's anybody else potentially around you. Yeah, which again is so stupid that we have to do that, but feels like the

the safest way. But again, like you're saying, Tara figured everything was going to be okay. So she often would just have the full headset on and go on her bike rides. And every day other than this one, it was fine. Yeah. I mean, the day that Tara disappeared was no different than her usual rides. And she had the same habits that day.

On Tuesday, September 20th, 1988, around 9:30 a.m., so in the light of morning, Tara set out from her home to complete her usual 36-mile or 57-kilometer ride. Well, that day her own bicycle had gotten a flat tire, so she borrowed her mom's pink Huffy brand bike and set out to complete her route, which was from Berlin to Rio Communities and then heading southwest from Rio Communities on State Route 47.

When she reached where the train tracks converged, she would turn around. This was her literal turning point that she had chosen. It was a route that she was used to and that she knew very well. Now, afterwards, she had plans to meet her boyfriend Jack for tennis at 12.30 p.m., before she needed to head to school for a college class at 3.30 p.m.,

She asked her mom to come get her if she was running behind, telling Patty that if she wasn't home by noon, she should cruise down State Route 47 and meet her wherever she wound up. 'Cause her mom of course also knew her route, and they knew that she'd be able to find her. So between 9:30 and 11:15 AM, Tara was seen by multiple witnesses riding alongside the road.

Tara made it about 17 miles or 27 kilometers before she turned around, stopping at a set of railroad tracks south of Rio Communities that intersected with State Route 47. She swung around to head northbound on 47 and was spotted at 11:30 a.m. by two local men who had worked on a ranch nearby. Then at 11:45 a.m., three more men remember seeing her.

They also later shared that someone seemed to be following her, recalling a white truck trailing closely behind. Another witness passed by Tara on her bike shortly after this and also corroborated this story that a white truck with two men inside was spotted just a few feet behind her.

In total, seven witnesses spotted her riding on the shoulder that day, and five of them saw her being followed by this white truck, again, with two men inside. And the last sighting of her was only about two miles or 3.2 kilometers from her home.

When Tara hadn't returned by noon, her mom Patty set out to fulfill her daughter's request. You know, she wasn't super worried. This was kind of anticipated that she could be running behind. So Patty said that she drove southeast down 47. And when she still wasn't seeing Tara, she circled those railroad tracks to head back toward home. And even on her entire route home, she couldn't find her daughter anywhere.

So she had essentially traveled the entire route and Tara was nowhere. She scanned up and down the highway, driving the full route twice actually, before she headed back home to alert her husband.

Patty, as you can imagine, was now really growing concerned at this point and started calling her daughter's friends, her boyfriend Jack, and even some local hospitals just hoping to track down her daughter. But when all of her efforts came up empty, she called the police. Tara was reported missing at 10 p.m. on the night of September 20th, 1988. And by the next morning, searches were in full swing.

The morning after 19-year-old Tara vanished, detectives were met with the first set of clues that confirmed their suspicion that foul play had taken place.

Investigators encountered what they believed were tire tracks coming from a bike being met with a car in the dirt and mud alongside the road. And this was not far from where she had last been seen. So like just from the tracks alone, they could tell that a bike had come into contact with a car, not like meaning that she had gotten to an accident, but that a car was right next to a bike. And they felt very confident that this was her bike. Even though she was not in the car,

Even though at this point, by the way, the bike had still not been found. So also present in the dirt were significant signs that a scuffle had taken place. So now we basically know that this is an abduction and police know it too. They're looking at the tire tracks. They're seeing signs that a scuffle had taken place.

and she's nowhere to be found. So this just confirms that it was an abduction. Yeah, and it's crazy. I mean, obviously you can tell this, but it's crazy that all of this story can kind of be told just through these tracks alone, just through the footprints and the bike track and the tire tracks from a car. It's crazy. And

And speaking of footprints, also leading from the scene of the struggle were a set of footprints headed away from the highway. And when they followed those footprints, investigators found a cassette tape of the rock band Boston, which Tara's family believed was pulled from her Walkman, as well as a few shards of broken plastic that were believed to come from the small front window of her tape player.

They also recovered plastic from the broken taillight lens of a bike, though it's unknown if this was from Tara's mom's bike or not. But Patty and John, remember John is Tara's stepfather, actually believe that these may have been left behind by Tara deliberately in order to lead the search party to her.

At the scene, there were also empty cans of Milwaukee's Best beer. That's a brand, Milwaukee's Best. And they were scattered around where the discovery was made. But it's not been confirmed that any of these items were connected to her disappearance either.

God, Milwaukee's Best is like just the shittiest beer of all time. Sorry, I had to throw that in there. Hey, somebody listening likes that shit. Somebody out there that's listening right now loves Milwaukee's Best. Just so everybody knows, Heath drinks Bud Light, so I don't think he's one to talk. Yeah, sorry. Yeah, I do. So it was widely reported that the tape and the broken plastic were confirmed to have belonged to Tara. But actually, according to Lieutenant Joseph Rowland, who took over the case in 2016, he

Police leaned toward the conclusion that the items had not belonged to her, even though her parents believed that they had. Joseph explained, quote, "...there was a cassette tape found on the side of the road. It had been exposed to the sun for so long that it distorted its color and degraded the cassette tape, so not consistent with a cassette tape that somebody was listening to less than 24 hours before."

Well, the same afternoon that they came upon this scene, a storm actually blew in that obstructed the search efforts and potentially even destroyed other unfound evidence. And right away, the case began to slow a bit. The case was initially taken on by the Valencia County Sheriff's Office, but the FBI and the Air Force later joined the efforts when little movement was being made. Especially them being fairly confident that Tara had been abducted.

bolstered by hundreds of people from the community, professionals and volunteers alike set out on horseback, on ATVs, and in planes to scope out the sights from above. But unfortunately, there was just no trace of either Tara or her bike. Which means that whoever abducted her also took the bike with them. Exactly. Then, two days after Tara went missing, New Mexico State Police pulled out of the search and called in the Air Force.

The spokesman for the Department of Public Safety announced, quote, They have felt from the beginning that it was an abduction. It was suspended basically because there's no clues that she's in that area. But there are plenty of clues that she was abducted.

On September 24th, 1988, so four days after Tara was last seen, more pieces of plastic, which were believed to have come from her broken Sony Walkman, were found about 20 miles or 32 kilometers from where she disappeared. Yeah, and it's kind of surprising that such a small and potentially unconnected clue could be found from so far away, you know, and connected to this case. Like, 20 miles away, they found...

that were believed to come from a Sony Walkman and they were able to discover that and potentially connect it to the case is so strange. It's strange to me because like how are they going to determine that those little pieces of plastic actually came from her Walkman or a Walkman in general. Yeah. You know what I mean? It's so strange. But by the way, the plastic remnants were found near the entrance of the now defunct John F. Kennedy campground and

And this is like a rural mountainous area with hiking trails and woodland. Now, although these items didn't lead investigators to Tara, they were able to work with the description of the truck given to them by the witnesses who had seen her out riding that day, and being closely stalked by that white truck.

According to one witness, the driver was a white man with red hair, between the ages of 35 and 45, standing between 5 feet 9 inches and 6 feet tall, and weighing about 200 pounds.

And the truck was believed to be a white or light-colored Ford truck from between 1953 and 1955 with a camper shell over the truck bed. And the license plate began with either WBY or WBZ and then it ended with a 6.

As news spread about Tara, tips poured in and even led to police conducting a few interviews. But no one could lead police to Tara's whereabouts. And sadly, her investigation just continued to slow.

Then in June of 1989, so the following summer, a development came that catapulted Tara's case into the national spotlight, though it has never been confirmed to concretely be connected to her disappearance. But still, it is the most famous piece to this case to date.

In Port St. Joe, which is in the panhandle of Florida, located nearly 1,500 miles or over 2,400 kilometers away from where Tara vanished, a woman recovered a strange photograph from the parking lot of a convenience store.

Now, when this woman was entering the store, she noticed a white Toyota van parked nearby. And when she exited the convenience store, the van was driving away, but in its place had left a color Polaroid photograph on the asphalt.

By her description, the driver was in his mid to late 30s and had a mustache, but that is all she could glean in that fleeting moment. She didn't know that that was going to be an important person or truck or sorry, van, not truck, or license plate to kind of take note of. She's just exiting a convenience store, minding her own business. But she did notice this Polaroid and

decided to go check it out so when she picked it up you know curious as to what it was the woman gasped at what she saw and turned it over to law enforcement immediately this polaroid photo depicts a young woman with brown hair tied in a ponytail and her arms tucked behind her back

She's lightly scowling at the camera with black duct tape over her mouth and her legs are propped up in front of her as she lays down. The young woman appears to be lying on pillows and blankets inside the back of this white van, the doors of which have been slid open to allow for the picture, like as though the photographer is standing outside the van door with the door open to showcase what's in the back.

And it's really interesting that it's made obvious that it's a white van because of that white open door and the white faux windows on the back wall. Like, it's like this person didn't care that this was shown. Yeah, which is so strange to me because...

Was that photo taken in the parking lot of that convenience store? Was it taken somewhere else? We really don't know because all we have is that view inside the van. Yeah, that's a good point, actually. Did the driver open the door, take the photo, leave it, and then drive away to have some type of weird clue? Or did they open that sliding side window?

door of the van and it just happened to fall out accidentally onto the asphalt. Right. Not meaning to be left behind. Exactly. But knowing that this woman noticed a white Toyota van in its place is why it's so crazy that this person was willing to show that they had a white van because clearly they're still driving it.

I mean, like you're saying, though, maybe it was accidental. Maybe they never wanted anybody to see this picture. It's so hard to say. But back to the photo, because eerily, the young woman isn't alone in the back of this van, because next to her on her left is a little boy whose mouth is also duct tape with black tape and also has his hands positioned behind his back. And he's kind of laying more on his side with his head on a striped pillow.

Next to the girl in the photo is a copy of the V.C. Andrews book, My Sweet Audrina. And according to Tara's mom, Patty, V.C. Andrews, who also wrote the classic gothic thriller Flowers in the Attic, was one of her daughter's

And the gothic horror novel from the photo, again, My Sweet Adrena, was published in 1982, so six years before Tara went missing, and is considered a haunting story of love and deceit, innocence and betrayal, and the power of suffocating parental love with themes like sexual abuse, rape, trauma, death, and memory loss. Yes.

That's so terrifying and creepy. I mean, just this photo, when you go look at it, I'm sure many of you guys have seen it, but when you look at this photo and the fact that that book is lying next to this tied-up girl and this tied-up little boy in the back of this white van, it just puts...

and chills... Not tingles. Not tingles. It puts chills down your fucking spine. It's really unsettling. And, you know, like I said, she's lightly scowling. So she just looks pissed. She looks...

She looks disturbed. Yeah, she looks like she doesn't want to be there. Yeah, absolutely. And the boy looks scared. Like, it is a seriously disturbing photograph. And I can't even imagine what Patty is thinking when she finally sees this photo and says, oh my God, that looks like my daughter. Because it's not just that she thinks her hair or her face does. Because Tara actually had a matching scar that she had sustained from being a car accident as a child. Right.

And it's hard to see in the photo, but I do see how her mom could point it out. It's like just below her knee on her kind of like her upper calf area on top of her leg. And it's again, it's hard to see in the photo a Polaroid as well because Polaroids are smaller photos. Yeah, and somewhat grainy, not very clear. Yeah, they have kind of like a blown out.

type of look to them a lot of the time. So it's hard to see, but her mom did notice that on the young woman's leg in the photo and say that is the very area that Tara has that same kind of little scar mark. Exactly. And this is what made Patty and John look

Pretty suspicious that this photo very well could have been Tara. Exactly. So Tara's parents contacted authorities hoping to match their daughter to the photograph. Terrified at what they were seeing, but hopeful that she was alive.

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Now, as this eerie Polaroid photo made its rounds, another mom of a missing person came to believe that the Polaroid contained her child. Not the young woman, but rather the boy next to her.

Michael Henley Jr. from Milan, New Mexico, which is a small town about an hour and a half away from where Tara went missing, disappeared while accompanying his dad and his dad's friend on a hunting trip in the Zuni Mountains, which for reference is about three hours outside of Berlin. According to his dad, Michael Henley Sr., they had gotten separated while hunting turkeys.

Michael was last seen on April 21st, 1988, five months before Tara went missing. Exhaustive searches combed the area immediately for Michael and consistently turned up no sign of him. Though it was possible that he had wandered off and succumbed to the elements, his family also noted that abduction was plausible.

Upon seeing the photo, Michael's mother, Marty, concluded that she was almost certain that the boy pictured in the Polaroid photograph was her son. And certain photos of him do look quite similar to the boy in the Polaroid photo, but it's also hard because for both of them,

The entire lower half of their faces can't be seen because of the black tape. And then especially for the boy, he's further back into the truck. So it's even harder to glean specific details about him. So I could see why she would think this, though, for sure.

But it became nearly impossible for the boy to be Michael when his remains were recovered in June of 1990, so a year after the photo was found, still in the Zuni Mountains, and just 7 miles or 11 kilometers from where he had last been seen by his dad.

Sadly, a brutal snowstorm had blown through the mountains in the days following Michael getting lost, and investigators believe that he had suffered from hypothermia, meaning that there was no foul play in his case. But that also doesn't really mean that...

He couldn't have been abducted and then dropped back at the place where he was abducted. I know that kind of seems far-fetched, but... It's not impossible. Right, it's not impossible. It just seems super unlikely. Yeah, it does seem unlikely for sure. But Tara's family still believed that she was the other person in that photo. Hopeful that this was a sign that she was being kept alive, as Daphne mentioned.

The picture was sent off to be analyzed by multiple expert organizations, and London Scotland Yard concluded that the young woman in the photo is Tara Calico. However, the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which is a research and development lab outside of Santa Fe, New Mexico, concluded that the photo was not Tara. And then, just to kind of even everything out here, the FBI ruled the results to be inconclusive.

And while her parents remained completely convinced, there has never been any proof that the identity of the seemingly abducted woman is Tara. And it has also never officially been confirmed that the people pictured are two victims of abduction.

So it's entirely possible that it was like a joke or a hoax that maybe got mistaken for evidence that a crime had taken place. But I will say that I don't know who's going to make some sort of weird ass joke like that. I mean, if it was a joke or a prank or whatever, like after all this time with how famous this photo has become,

why wouldn't the people in the photo or the person who took it come forward? And yeah, like you're saying, why would this be done at all? I mean, this girl and this boy could easily be like, hey, FBI, I'm in this photo and I'm not missing. And it was for a project or it was for a student film or whatever. Like,

You would imagine that somebody would have come forward by now. Yeah, that's the strangest thing to me is that the two people in that photo have never been identified. Like, nobody has been able to, like, truly analyze this to know 100% sure that these two people...

you know, were abducted or weren't abducted or whatever. Yeah. And you would imagine that more families would come forward saying that looks like my loved one. So yeah, the fact that it has not concretely linked for sure to two disappearance cases is crazy to me.

And obviously, with it being found in Florida and Tara going missing in New Mexico, this is across the country. So it could certainly make sense that someone took her out of the state, but then leaving this behind seemed so intentional. I mean, like you said, it could have fallen out. But why was this photo taken to begin with? I know some people like to keep like trophies, like sick trophies or whatever, but...

How could you so carelessly let it fall into the parking lot then if you didn't mean to? And if you meant to, why did you mean to? Yeah, definitely. And, you know, what's the one word that comes to mind when you look at that photo? When you think about two kids being duct taped in the back of a van, what word comes to your mind?

right? I mean, so if this was, you know, obviously this was found in Florida. So if they were being trafficked over state lines, it's definitely possible, you know, that they were being moved all the way to Florida and then wherever from there. I don't know. Yeah, no, it's so true. And yeah, we definitely suggest you guys go look at this photograph. There have been

So many comparisons done online of the women's noses and their eyebrows and their eyes and their legs to try to see if Tara's features match hers. But it's also hard because people can look so different from one photo to the next, depending on the angle or the lighting or the facial expression, etc. So it's really hard to say.

I completely agree with you there. Well, sadly, two decades passed with no movement in Tara's case and no movement with the photograph. The case was shuffled around and though her family fought to keep Tara's case in the public eye, the community was forced to try and move on without answers.

In 2008, Sheriff Rene Rivera revealed to the media that he believed he knew who had killed her, but that there was not enough evidence to make a conviction.

Rene announced that he had, quote, received information over the years that two men who were teenagers at the time of Tara's disappearance found her riding her bike on the rural road that day and had help after disposing of her body. Now, remember, somebody had said that it looked like the guys, the two men in the truck, were in their 30s or 40s. He's saying they were teenagers or the sheriff believed they were teenagers or got information that they were teenagers. So, yeah.

I think somebody easily could think somebody looks older or somebody looks younger than they are. Sure, especially, you know, passing by. You're driving past somebody, so you're not getting that stationary look at them. Yeah. And depending on what these teenagers look like, if they were a little rough around the edges, they could very much look like maybe they were in their 30s. Who knows? Yeah, and especially when you don't know that you're looking at a young woman that's about to go missing and that...

the men in the truck behind her could be involved, you're not really looking, you're not really analyzing the situation. Well, also, I think that our minds would, you know, typically go towards...

If you saw, you know, a younger girl on a bike and a truck following that bike, your mind would automatically go to probably an older man, right? You're not necessarily thinking that there's a teenager in that car following that girl, you know, so closely stalking her. So it's great that witnesses came forward and gave information. But yeah, I mean, how accurate is it? We can't just assume that exactly what they're saying is true.

So the sheriff explained that his officers were still hard at work on the case. Again, this is in 2008, but that it would hinge on someone coming forward with information that could either locate her body or convict her killers.

Renee explained, quote, we do have a case put together, but we want to make sure that this case is a concrete case to where we'll be able to effectively do our jobs. We're just waiting to get a little more evidence. Her bicycle, her clothing, or Tara herself. I think we've said concrete about a hundred times in this episode. It works in this podcast really well. I guess it does. But yeah, I mean, by this time, you know, they still haven't found her bike or any of her clothes or any...

that she is deceased or alive. Again, I'm going to say it concretely. So of course, this development frustrated those closest to Tara because it seemed like her killer or killers were known to many in the community and were simply able to evade recognition.

About five years later in 2013, the biggest and most convincing development in the case so far came in the form of a deathbed confession. A local man named Henry Brown came forward to the Valencia County Sheriff's Office and announced that he had pertinent information to the case that he wanted to get off his chest because his health was rapidly declining.

Henry explained that he had been over to the home of Lawrence Romero Jr., who was actually the son of the sheriff at the time of Tara's disappearance, on an evening shortly after she vanished.

Lawrence Romero Jr. was living in a trailer that functioned as a rental property and was actually owned by his father. And in what Henry called a, quote, makeshift basement, Lawrence and his friends would often drink, smoke weed, and hang out there together. Henry says that he worked at Berlin High School, where both Lawrence and Tara attended, so he was familiar with Lawrence and his group of friends. Well, on that particular night...

Henry, Lawrence, and three more men, one named Dave Silva, another named Leroy Chavez, and another who was described by Henry as a, quote, "...tall, red-haired man," were frequent attendees of these gatherings.

According to Henry, the men spent the evening drinking margaritas and making fajitas, and he even claims to have seen Tara's body, exhumed from its original burial place, hastily wrapped in a blue tarp and awaiting burial somewhere more concealed. When he asked them hesitantly what it was, the men spilled what they had done without hesitation. Lawrence knew Tara from school, and through her ex-boyfriend, Jeff.

Jeff and Lawrence were also apparently both involved in the local drug trade. And when Tara and Jeff broke up, Lawrence made a pass at her, but she turned him down. And then on the day of her abduction, he and a friend happened to be out driving on 47 at the same time as Tara's bike ride. Taking advantage of the opportunity, they drove up behind her, knocked her off her bike, and drove away with her in their car.

Tara was then raped by the men, but by Lawrence's account, got quote "Ballsy" and told them that they would be going to jail for what they had done to her. The two men then panicked and consulted two more friends to help murder her, so she wouldn't go to the police.

According to Henry, the three men described holding her down while Lawrence stabbed her before hiding her body in a bush nearby. But when the searches were in full swing, they removed her body from the bush, wrapped her in a blue tarp, and moved her to the basement of the trailer until they could find a better resting place. The men continuously spoke about a pond near the redheaded man's property that was adjacent to the mountains, and Henry believed that they eventually moved her body there.

Her bike was allegedly dropped at a junkyard in Berlin, but has never been found to this day. Lawrence apparently blamed the whole thing on a discrepancy in the drug trade with her ex-boyfriend Jeff, but didn't elaborate on the details here. Just a few months after Henry Brown made his confession, if we can believe it, he passed away due to his declining health.

Eventually, the position of sheriff was handed over to Rene Rivera, who later made the announcement that he knew who was responsible for the murder and that he wanted them to do the right thing and come forward. And these are the guys that the sheriff was talking about. So at the time of the murder, Lawrence Jr. told Henry that Rene Rivera, who was just a deputy then, quote, had his back.

Another local man named Donald Dutcher later came forward and he actually corroborated some of Henry's story while also adding a few more key details of his own. Donald claimed that he was not involved in the murder, of course, but was friends with the people who were and said that he also knew Tara.

Unlike Henry, Donald implicated a man named Charles Houghton, and instead of the pawn story, he claimed that a family member of one of the men involved had been keeping Tara's body in the freezer for years after her murder. Donald added that one of the men admitted, quote,

Frustratingly, most of the men involved in the murder and its aftermath have since died, including Lawrence Romero Jr., who actually died suddenly and at a young age. And Sheriff Lawrence Romero has also since passed away. And as the sheriff at the time that Tara went missing, Lawrence Romero Sr. spoke of the case often in the media.

And after his son Lawrence Jr.'s death, he conducted an interview with the Albuquerque Journal where he spoke about the death of his son as it compared to Tara's disappearance. He said, quote, I feel the Dole's pain. Remember, the Dole's are Patty and John Dole. I really do. At least I got to bury my child.

Officially, Lawrence Jr's death was ruled a suicide, but there were rumors that it occurred under suspicious circumstances during an ill-fated game of Russian roulette. Though there were rumors that he left behind a suicide note, but this has not been confirmed. In the first few years of Tara's disappearance alone, over 80,000 missing persons posters were distributed from coast to coast, as far north as Canada and as far south as Mexico.

Posters were also distributed to Border Patrol, Interpol, and the Coast Guard in case it was possible, like Heath said, that Tara was either trafficked out of the country or that Tara's abductors attempted to leave the country with her for a different reason.

Well, like we discussed in the beginning of this episode, there has luckily been small developments since 2013 because on June 24th, 2023, the Valencia County Sheriff's Office gave a press conference announcing, quote, "...significant advancements made in Tara's case," informing the public that they had their first official suspect.

However, they also announced that the details of this new investigative finding and suspect were sealed by the district court, so it couldn't yet be shared with the public.

According to the public information officer making the announcement, quote, questions will be limited to the historical investigation due to this court seal. Sheriff Denise Vigil explained that the identity of the person of interest in the case will remain until a grand jury can make an indictment, which hopefully will be soon. Though over a year later, when we're recording this in September of 2024, it still has not yet happened.

The Sheriff's Office also announced cryptically that "all public findings had been debunked" but did not elaborate on what they meant by this, whether they meant that this was the Polaroid photo, the deathbed confession, etc. or maybe all of the above.

Many have speculated that because the sheriff's office remains so tight-lipped on this topic, it means that there is still a living suspect in Tara's case, and that they're not looking at the previously discussed deceased potentials.

So that is very interesting. Now back in 2002, Tara's father, David Calico, sadly passed away without ever finding out what happened to his daughter. And this is a really, really tragic situation. So what happened was David was leaving a bar in Albuquerque when he was attacked by two muggers who not only took his wallet and some jewelry, but also the nitroglycerin pills that he took for his heart.

His wife Bernice, who was dealing with health problems of her own actually, claimed that David was complaining of chest pains after this happened.

but that he was tired from being attacked and he just wanted to go to sleep. And also the reason that he didn't call an ambulance was because they were already in so much medical debt that he just fell asleep and he actually never woke up because his heart stopped working without the aid of his pills that had just been stolen from him. Like I've never heard anything like that. That is so, so sad. And

And then the following year, Bernice, who again was his wife and Tara's stepmother, also died from her own medical issues. Tara's mom, Patty, who championed her case for two decades, died just a few years later in 2006 when Tara would have been 37 years old.

Before she passed away, she and her husband, Tara's stepfather, John, moved to Port Charlotte, Florida, in an attempt for a fresh start in idyllic surroundings. And by the way, for anybody wondering, this is not the same area as Port St. Joe, where the Polaroid was found, but seven hours south.

John remembered, quote, she wanted, she needed to make a change to put all this behind. So we moved here. But Patty never gave up the search for her daughter despite her change of scenery.

Shortly after they relocated, Patty suffered a stroke and eventually passed because she was not able to recover from this. But before she passed, any time that she and John would drive in the car together or she would see a young woman on a bike, Patty would point them out in case they were Tara.

A friend and former classmate of Tara's named Melinda Escobel has attempted to keep her name in the media despite the passing of her parents. You know, she's kind of taken over the torch. And Melissa has a podcast. It's called Vanish, the Tara Calico investigation. And this explores many possible theories and suspects just in case anybody wants to hear an even deeper dive from someone close to the case.

This year again, 2024, marks 36 years since Tara went missing. Tara Calico has brown hair and brown eyes, stands at about 5 feet 6 inches tall, and weighs around 120 pounds. At the time of her disappearance, she was wearing white shorts with green stripes, a white t-shirt from the First National Bank of Berlin, white socks, and a white shirt.

and turquoise Avia brand tennis shoes. She was also wearing a few items of jewelry, including gold hoops, a gold ring with an amethyst in it, and a gold butterfly with a diamond on it. If you have any information about the disappearance of Tara Calico, please call the Valencia County Sheriff's Office at 505-865-2039.

Thank you so much, everybody, for listening to this episode of Going West. Yes, thank you guys so much for listening to this episode. As we mentioned, there seems to be some sort of developments happening in this case. So hopefully this year we'll get more information from the police department about, you know, these developments

these new things that they're finding in Tara's case. Yeah, I mean, we are nearing a year and a half since that most recent development. So yeah, hopefully there will be answers soon and then we can do an update episode and hopefully discuss what actually happened to her. Absolutely.

Absolutely. And if you guys are interested in seeing photos of Tara and the photos connected to this case, like that Polaroid photo, head over to our socials. We're on Instagram at Going West Podcast. We're on Facebook. We have a regular True Crime Facebook and we also have a Discussion Facebook page.

Yeah, go check it out. Would definitely love to talk more about the photograph if you guys are interested. I mean, so many people, like I said, have already been picking this apart. And I think it's important to do that because...

It would really be good to know if this woman is Tara, if somebody out there knows that it's not Tara and that it's actually somebody else. Like this could absolutely help point police in the right direction. So check it out. Thank you guys so much for tuning in. Big thank you again to Evan and to Rachel for recommending this case. And we will see you on Friday. All right, guys. So for everybody out there in the world, don't be a stranger. ♪♪♪

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