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Hey everyone, welcome back to the Into The Dark Podcast. I'm your host, Peyton Morland, and I'm so happy you are here. Again, please give this video a thumbs up if you are watching on YouTube. Please subscribe, turn on notifications, leave a comment. I remember last time I asked you to leave an animal emoji. Well, I think that was like two weeks ago now. So this time let's do food. Drop a food emoji in the comments. I loved seeing all the animal ones and it was so fun. So thank you. Thank you guys so much.
If you are listening on Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen and can leave a review, that would be great. Please turn on automatic downloads. Okay, you guys, I'm done with that. Let's get into my 10 seconds. All right, so I just wanted to talk a little bit about the kind messages I have been receiving lately because as you guys know, I took a leap of faith on Into the Dark about, I don't know, I think a year into starting. If you don't know this,
Into the Dark was originally a show called Binged and I just didn't love the direction that it went to. So I decided halfway through, hey, this does not feel authentic to me. I want to be proud of the work I'm putting out. And so I changed it to Into the Dark, branched out into tinfoil tells and hauntings and ghost stories and everything in between. And everyone was so kind and supportive. And I don't know if you guys can tell, but like I have just been getting more and more comfortable every single episode. I feel like
Like it's just really starting to come together with the community. I feel like we're all kind of finding a groove. And so thank you for supporting me. Like it's really turning into something that I'm loving. I feel like every episode is just becoming more and more what I'm wanting and hopefully what you guys are wanting. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Times a million. And I guess this would be a good time to say that.
I actually hit 100,000 subscribers on YouTube for Into the Dark, which was like insane. I never even thought that that would happen for my solo show. And when I found out, I was just like, no, no freaking way. So thank you for being here and thank you for supporting this solo endeavor. I know a lot of you love Murder With My Husband.
And I love that for us. I love that for us, but thank you for being here too. And with that, let's get into today's episode. Okay, the story that I'm sharing today is heartbreaking and also one of those cases that has a way of just really getting under your skin. You see, typically when someone disappears, you don't see any sign of them again until they're discovered, right?
But today, I'm telling you about a young woman who was reported missing and then apparently resurfaced again 10 months later in a mysterious Polaroid picture.
Now, in 1988, Tara Calico was 19 years old, and she also had a reputation for being a kind, sweet person. People just gravitated towards her, and it helped that Tara was very outgoing herself.
She was basically the person you think of when you picture a beautiful, popular girl, except she defied stereotypes by also being very genuine. She actually went out of her way to befriend the underclassmen and make sure that they all felt like they could fit in. Tara was part of the marching band. And overall, she just seemed like a hard worker, a smart person who got good grades, a
decent, good person overall. She wasn't just nice on the surface either. Her friend, Melinda Esquibel, gave this quote about her. It says a lot about a person's character when they do the right thing when nobody's looking. And that was Tara.
After she graduated from high school, Tara actually stayed close to home. She enrolled at the University of New Mexico, Valencia. She got a good job at the local bank and was hoping to eventually study psychology. Tara still lived with her parents in a New Mexico town called Belen. And on September 30th, 1988, she had plans to go on a 36-mile bike ride.
It was actually something she did regularly. It was a way to get some exercise and fresh air at the start of the day. And afterward, she wanted to meet her boyfriend to play tennis that afternoon. So she left on the bike ride at 9:30 AM, which should have been plenty of time for her to finish the route and get home and get ready before her date with her boyfriend.
And since her bike had a flat tire, that day Tara actually borrowed her mom's. Now, before she left, she told her mom, Patty Doyle, that she planned to be back by noon at the latest. She added if she wasn't home by 12, her mom should come looking for her. Now, Tara was crazy.
clearly joking when she said this. There's no reason to believe she actually thought anything bad was going to happen to her during her bike ride. And her mother sort of laughed off that comment and went back about her day. But then at around noon, Tara still hadn't come back. And those words started ringing in Patty's ears that she should go looking. So that's exactly what she did. Her mom headed out the door to search for her daughter.
And she drove the full 36 mile route that she knew Tara took every day. And the whole way, Patty didn't see any sign of her daughter. So when she got back home without spotting any trace of Tara, she turned around and went up and down the entire route again. This trip wasn't any more productive than the first. And that's when Patty really, really started to worry. Now, when I said that Tara was on a 36 mile bike ride, I want to be clear about something.
She wasn't riding on some remote trail in the woods or anything like that. Her route actually went through some areas with pretty heavy traffic. In fact, she rode alongside two different highways: Highway 47 and Highway 60. And this meant that there were a lot of people driving by her in cars, vans, and trucks, and people who would have seen Tara riding that day.
and Patty managed to track down some witnesses who'd spotted her. She learned that Tara had been riding near the highway just 15 to 20 minutes before Patty decided to go looking for her. So that would have been at around 11:45 a.m. or so. And people are saying, "No, we spotted Tara on her bike. She seemed fine." However, those witnesses also told Patty that there was a light-colored Ford pickup truck on the road at the same time, and it was hauling a camper.
And it actually looked to them like it was following Tara. But nobody saw what happened next. If Tara somehow got snatched and pulled into the truck, if she got away from it, people don't know. Either way, now there's no trace of her. It was like Tara had somehow vanished into thin air in less than half an hour.
Now the good news was she hadn't been missing for very long. Patty really had gone looking for her basically as soon as she possibly could. So she was hopeful that if she reported the disappearance to the police, they'd be able to find Tara pretty quickly. Sure enough, Patty made her report and the officers jumped into the investigation right away. Now unfortunately, they did not find Tara. They also couldn't find any indication of where she'd gone or why.
There were skid marks on the ground that looked like they could have come from a bike. Like before she went missing, Tara was in some kind of fight where she tried and then failed to ride away. The detectives also found something that seemed like a key clue. It was a cassette tape and a few pieces of broken plastic.
Now, right away, the investigators thought the plastic might have come from a broken Walkman. And this was a big discovery because Tara owned a Walkman. In fact, she was wearing one during her bike ride. And those same drivers who saw her being followed by the Ford truck also explained that she did have her headphones at the time that they saw her.
Now, not only that, but she owned the exact same cassette tape that the police found on the road. So Tara's parents actually saw this discovery as good news 'cause it was definitely a clue in the case.
They even thought, you know, if something had happened to Tara, like if she was abducted, she at least apparently had the presence of mind to break her Walkman and leave a trail for the police to follow. Kind of like Hansel and Gretel with their breadcrumbs. So even though her family still had no idea where she was, they were hopeful. The odds seemed good that Tara would come home safe and sound to them. However, days went on and then weeks. By the next summer, 10 months later,
they still hadn't found Tara. And those hopes were waning. Patty and her husband, John, didn't hear about any other breaks in the case until July of 1989. It had been 10 months by this point since Tara had vanished.
But one day that summer, the phone rang and John picked up and it was a friend of his who had a tip. They had seen a news story about a mysterious clue that had been found all the way on the other side of the country in Port St. Joe, Florida.
Basically, one day a woman was running errands at a convenience store. She was walking through the parking lot when she saw a parked van and when she left the store later, the van was gone. But there was something very alarming and disturbing in that same parking spot. It was a Polaroid picture. It showed a teenager or a young woman lying on her back with her arms behind herself as though she was tied up.
But you can't actually see her hands or her wrists, so it's hard to say like what kind of bindings are being used. And the woman also had duct tape over her mouth. And behind her, the photo also showed a much younger boy lying on his side. And he too had duct tape over his mouth and his arms behind his back.
They were both lying on a pile of blankets or pillows. It's hard to say kind of much about the setting in the picture. And when the woman turned the Polaroid over to police, a lot of experts thought it looked like these two were being held hostage in the back of a van or a truck.
And they were able to confirm that the photo had been taken very recently. The Polaroid company actually changed the kind of film that they used in their cameras in May of 1989. So they know for sure that the photo was taken at least two months before the photo was found. Now, when the police first saw the picture, they had no idea who the young woman and the boy were. And you have to understand, like in the 80s, to find a picture like this in a parking lot under a van, of
of course people were gonna be like,
This is scary. Like this is eerie. We have to get this to the police. And the police were like, who are these people? That's one of the reasons they even released this picture to the news. They hoped someone might recognize the apparent hostages and help identify them so that they could figure out how to save them. Several people who knew Tara thought the girl in the picture looked just like her, which is why a bunch of friends started calling John and Patty, sharing the news that, hey, there's a Polaroid picture online
on the news and it looks just like Tara she might have been found or at least a photo of her may have been now as soon as Patty saw the picture for herself she just knew the girl in the picture was Tara it had to be and Patty wasn't just basing this on the fact that the girl had a similar face build and hair color she also had a distinctive scar on her leg that matched the one Tara had
Patty also noticed a book lying on the blankets in the background of the photo, and it was Tara's favorite book, My Sweet Audrina by V.C. Andrews. And again, this gave Patty hope that Tara was still alive out there somewhere. So she felt oddly optimistic as she called the police to let them know, hey, I know who the woman in that picture is, and it's my daughter, Tara. She's been missing for 10 months.
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Use code DARK. All right, let's get back to the episode. Sometimes after a particularly long day, I love to play games on my phone to get my mind off things. And one game I have been loving is June's Journey. June's Journey is a hidden object mystery mobile game that puts your detective skills to the test. You play as June Parker and investigate beautifully detailed scenes of the 1920s while uncovering the mystery of her sister's mother.
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Now, Patty wasn't the only person who was calling the police about that Polaroid, because you'll remember the teen girl or young girl wasn't the only person in it. There was also a young boy and another worried family in New Mexico saw the same photo and thought that they recognize the boy as their missing son.
Michael Henley. Now, just over a year ago in April of 1988, the nine-year-old had gone missing under pretty baffling circumstances. It was a lot like Tara's disappearance in that he was there one second and then he was gone the next.
In Michael's case, he went on a hunting trip with his father and a friend of the family. They were camping in the remote Zuni Mountains of New Mexico, and less than a half hour after they'd arrived and set up their tents, his father and the friend realized that they hadn't seen Michael in a little bit. They walked around the campsite, then ranged further, calling his name and looking for any sign of him, but he just vanished, and the searches turned up nothing.
Now, Michael and Tara went missing roughly five months apart from one another, and their cases really don't have a whole lot in common. Tara was a young woman. Michael was a little boy. She presumably got abducted off her bike in a busy area near a highway while he vanished from a campsite in the middle of nowhere.
There was nothing really to link their cases whatsoever except for that Polaroid. That's assuming, of course, that the boy and the girl in the picture really were Tara and Michael. You see, Michael's family were as certain as Tara's family was. They say the moment that they saw the Polaroid, the boy in it, they knew it had to be their son.
The problem was the police weren't so sure if that was the case, and they tried to verify the Polaroid's authenticity. And they sent it to multiple law enforcement agencies so analysts and experts could compare the woman and the boy in the photo to Tara and Michael. The FBI's analysts had to examine the photo three different times because their initial reviews were inconclusive. And finally, they made their ruling.
They thought the girl was not Tara. It was someone who resembled her, who honestly kind of looked exactly like her.
but they claim it was not her. And on the other hand, Scotland Yards investigators thought it was her. And the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which does cutting edge research on technology related to national security, well, they examined the photo as well. And they agreed with the FBI's conclusion. They thought the picture was of a different girl, not the missing Tara. Now, of course, the question wasn't just about who the woman in the picture was. It was also about whether or not the photo was even real.
which was also pretty controversial for the experts. See, I mentioned before that the woman and the boy both had duct tape over their mouths, but the skin near the duct tape didn't look red or irritated. If these two hostages had duct tape over their mouths for any time at all, it would have left marks on their skin, except there's nothing that's visible. So instead, the experts thought that whoever took the pictures may have put the tape on right before they got out the camera. They believe it looks like the photos were staged.
Those same experts thought the girl's posture wasn't totally consistent with what you'd expect if her arms really were tied behind her back. It looked like her shoulders were a little relaxed, more like she just stuck her hands behind her back to make it look like they were tied. And it was hard to reconcile those details with a real abduction, which raised a new set of questions. The main one being, who would fake something like this? Was it a cruel hoax just to hurt Michael and Tara's family? Or maybe some practical joke that got out of hand?
The most frustrating detail was that nobody could say for sure if this picture was staged or not. After all, it was also possible for an abductor to kidnap Tara and Michael or some other young woman and little boy and to fail to tie them up well or use duct tape consistently before they snapped the photo. They could have easily been like doing it for a reason, quickly put the duct tape on, said put your hands behind your back, and they are still hostage and kidnapped. You know what I mean?
So the police couldn't dismiss the evidence entirely, but they also didn't trust it either. To make matters more complicated, that Polaroid ended up not being the only possible picture of Tara to surface after her disappearance.
Two more were found in random places, including a construction site in California. And thanks to changes in the way Polaroid made their film, the police knew one picture was from June of 1989 or later, and the other was from February of 1990 or later. Meaning if these pictures really were of Tara, then she was still alive at least a year and a half after her abduction.
Now, neither photo showed Michael. It was just Tara or someone who looked like her. And the first was very blurry. It was very difficult to tell who was in it, but she seemed to be gagged. And the last picture was eventually dismissed as a hoax, which is unfortunate because it showed a woman tied up and gagged in a van or a bus.
And if it was real, it may have led the police straight to the abductor because there was also a man in the photo. But even if we accept that the last one was a hoax, there was still a lot of questions swirling around about these first two photos. I mean, why are they even surfacing? Where are they coming from? Now, some of those questions were settled very definitively on June 22nd, 1990. And sadly, the answers weren't good for Michael or his family.
A rancher was riding horseback through the Zuni Mountains when he spotted what looked like a badly decomposed body in the brush. The remains had clearly been out there for a while, and a medical examiner had to pull dental records to identify the deceased, and it didn't take long for them to realize it was Michael's body. Now let me set the scene for you. He was found in the Zuni Mountains, just seven miles away from the campsite that he had disappeared from.
Obviously, that is a very long distance for a young nine-year-old boy to walk alone. But there was no reason to think that he'd been kidnapped in New Mexico, transported to Florida to appear in a Polaroid picture, and then dropped off back in the mountains seven miles away from where he went missing and killed. Seemed a lot more likely that he might have just wandered away from the campsite on his own, got lost, and somehow died in a tragic accident.
In fact, not long after Michael was reported missing back in April of 1988, a late springtime snowstorm had hit the region. It would have been very easy for that young boy who was lost, hungry, and scared to run off in the wrong direction. He had no shelter or heavy coat to help him keep warm when that snow started falling, and he very well may have succumbed to the cold a few miles away from his campsite.
While his remains were badly deteriorated, there was enough for the medical examiner to determine that he died of hypothermia. So he died of being in the cold. In addition, there was no sign of any kind of foul play, which meant Michael almost certainly was probably not the boy in the photo. Now, it was still possible that the picture was real. Maybe it just showed some other boy who hadn't been identified yet.
This also meant there was still a chance that the girl in the photo was Tara. Her family still believed that after all this time, she was alive but just being held somewhere. The problem was they seemed to be the only people who still thought that. The police departments, by and large, were now mostly acting like the girl had to be someone else. And I'll admit, it's hard to know who to listen to here. Of course, the FBI and the Los Alamos National Laboratory all had well-trained experts.
If they said the girl wasn't Tara, they probably mean it. But on the other hand, Scotland Yard's employees were also knowledgeable and well-trained experts, and they think it is Tara. Plus, you have to wonder why nobody was listening to Tara's own mother. Of course, Patty would know what her daughter looked like. If she said the girl in the picture is her, like, it has to be her, right?
Well, the sad truth is, is that her family was desperate for any and all updates about Tara's case, especially any shred of good news that indicated that she might still be alive. They were so anxious for that evidence, in fact, that it might have made them act a little bit gullible. Or put another way, maybe they saw the evidence they wanted to see whether it was credible or not.
At one point, they actually moved to Florida where the photo had been found. Maybe they hoped that they'd get closer to solving Tara's case if they could be physically closer to where they last think she was.
in their new home they set up a bedroom for tara like she would come back and move in with them they also bought her christmas gifts every single year a friend of the family actually gave an interview to people magazine and he said that while they were living in florida john and patty liked to go on walks around the neighborhood and time after time a girl or a young woman would ride by on a bicycle and patty would perk up and get excited
And after a stroke left her unable to communicate verbally, she'd write on a pad of paper that she thought she had spotted Tara somewhere after all these years. Now, of course, Tara's family are not the only people who want answers. And also, the true crime community wants answers. Her case is pretty well known.
but there's one other person who also wants answers tara had left behind a good friend named melinda she's the friend i quoted earlier who said tara was a good person even behind closed doors when no one was looking now melinda was a few years younger than tara they went to high school together and that's where they had become friends melinda was also very young when tara went missing she hadn't even graduated yet but she also couldn't move past her friend's disappearance afterward
Once Tara's parents both eventually died of old age without ever learning what happened to their daughter, Melinda began to lead the charge in the case. She wanted to solve the case and bring justice to her friend Tara. Now, unlike Tara's parents who chased that Polaroid lead to Florida, Melinda did her own investigation closer to home back in New Mexico. She also struck up a good relationship with the local police department.
They gave her permission to go through all of their records, make copies of all the information they had, and share them with a team of private investigators. She also chased down leads on her own, talking to witnesses, people who knew Tara before she went missing. Now, Melinda hasn't publicly disclosed everything that she's found out while digging around. Apparently, she's worried about spooking her sources or disclosing something that might hurt the official police investigation, which is smart, but...
But she did share a theory with the press, something she concluded after doing all of this research. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Do you have a point of sale system you can trust or is it a real POS? You need Shopify for retail. From accepting payments to managing inventory, Shopify POS has everything you need to sell in person.
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According to Melinda, there was a boy from Tara's school who had a crush on her. Melinda didn't publicly name the boy, but she does know who he is. Melinda also believed that the boy asked Tara out and she rejected him, which then made him want to get revenge. So the theory goes that this guy grew to be obsessed with Melinda. He was stalking her and would show up at parties and other places she'd be, just doing what he could to make her feel unsafe.
And on the day of her disappearance, Melinda believes the boy and some friends somehow knocked Tara off her bike. She tried to run away, but they caught up to her and took her prisoner. They sexually assaulted her, killed her, and hid her body. Now, there was a lot of debate and controversy over whether that theory was true or not. Over the years, lots of other people have presented their own ideas.
The local sheriff told the press he believed Tara died in a tragic traffic accident. Maybe someone hit her bike with their vehicle. Then when they realized that they'd killed her, they just panicked and hit her body. There were also allegations that Tara was killed by the local sheriff's son. To be clear, this wasn't the same sheriff who said it was an accident. That person didn't join the force until 2008. But this theory is about the person who was sheriff at the time of Tara's disappearance in 1988.
His name was Sheriff Lawrence Romero Sr., and his son was named Lawrence Romero Jr. And Lawrence Jr. had a pretty bad reputation around town. He dabbled in drugs, and according to gossip, he ran with some rough friends who would do anything he asked, even if it meant breaking the law, and even though his dad was the sheriff.
Apparently, Lawrence Jr. told a friend years after the disappearance that he and some pals had actually murdered Tara. And that friend kept Lawrence's secret for years until he gave a confession on his deathbed. He also said that he thought Lawrence or someone he knew had a grave in his basement that Tara was buried in. It seemed like as good of tip as any, so the police searched the basement. They didn't find any remains.
That could mean that these allegations were false. There were also rumors that the detectives did find something but chose to look the other way because of who Lawrence's father was. Basically, they didn't want to make the former sheriff look so bad, so allegedly they covered everything up. There are also accusations that the cover-up, if it really did happen, didn't begin with that search. Sheriff Romero may have known about his son's possible involvement all the way back in 1988, and since he was leading the investigation, he was in the perfect position to just
throw his officers off of his son's trail. You can wait for yourself whether you think any of these allegations are true. So as you can probably guess by now, as of this recording, Tara's disappearance is still unsolved. That could change literally any day. In 2023, the local police announced that they believed they had solved the case. They'd identified a suspect and they'd also uncovered strong evidence linking that person to Tara's disappearance.
Now, when they made the announcement, they did not disclose the suspect's name. So I don't know who it was. They also didn't say whether they believe Tara was alive or dead. But they did explain that they were sharing all of their findings with the district attorney and that the district attorney would then decide if there is enough for an arrest or to press charges. Now, that was a year ago and nobody involved with the case has released any updates since then.
So maybe the DA felt like this wasn't enough information to act on, or maybe they're still just working on it. I know I'm keeping my eyes on the news, hoping for an update soon.
Now, usually I don't like to end an episode with everything so up in the air, but this is a unique case. Even though it's decades old, the police seem to be on the cusp of solving it, or at least they believe they are. So maybe we'll even know the culprit's name by the time this episode comes out. I will say, though, it's tragic that Tara's parents both passed away without seeing any kind of resolution in Tara's case. And wherever the truth lies, all of the different theories that are circulating can't all be true.
Tara wasn't killed in New Mexico and also kidnapped and taken to Florida. So it's frustrating that justice may have been delayed to her because the police wasted time and resources following false leads. It's too late for John and Patty to get any kind of answers.
But hopefully it's not too late for Tara's case to be solved. And that is the case of Tara Calico. Okay, you guys, let me know in the comments if you know about this case, what you think now that I've told you about it. And I will see you next time as we dive further into the dark together. Goodbye.