The Disappearance Of Tara Calico

9 min readJun 24, 2021

The disappearance of Tara Calico

It was September 20, 1988, a beautiful sunny day in Belen, New Mexico. Tara Calico, 19, decided to go out for her daily bike ride at approximately 9:30 a.m. that morning.

Victim

Name: TARA LEIGH CALICO

DOB: February 28, 1969

Age:19

Disappeared: 20 September 1988

Last Seen: Highway 47 in Valencia County

Scars and Marks: Calico has a large scar on the back of her right shoulder, and a dime-sized brown-colored birthmark on the back of one of her legs.

On the morning of September 20, 1988, 19-year-old Tara Calico left her home in Valencia County, New Mexico, to go for her daily bike ride. She rode that route almost every morning and was sometimes accompanied by her mother, Patty Doel. However, Doel stopped riding with Calico after she felt that she had been stalked by a motorist. She advised her daughter to think about carrying mace, but Calico rejected the idea. On the morning of Calico’s disappearance, she had told Doel to come and get her if she was not home by noon, as she had plans to play tennis with her boyfriend at 12:30. When her daughter did not return, Doel went searching for her along Calico’s usual bike route but could not find her; she then contacted the police. Pieces of Calico’s Sony Walkman and a cassette tape were later discovered along the road. Doel believed that she might have dropped them in an attempt to mark her trail. Several people saw Calico riding her bicycle, which has never been found. No one witnessed her presumed abduction, although several witnesses observed a light-colored pickup truck (possibly a 1953 Ford) with a camper shell following closely behind her.

Investigation

Lawrence Romero, who had been sheriff since 1976, immediately suspected foul play. “We feel this is an involuntary disappearance,” he said. “We understand from talking to her parents and friends that this is totally out of character for her to turn up missing.”

While investigating Police found a set of bike tracks on the next day that suddenly turned to the side of the road onto a soft shoulder and led to a spot 100 yards away, where they discovered some tire tracks and a fresh oil slick.

Police also found Tara Calico ‘s cassette tape and the front plastic window of her Walkman. The rest of the broken Walkman was found 20 miles away, near the entrance of remote John F. Kennedy campground on September 24th.

Patty believed that the cassettes and Walkman were broken and dropped deliberately, as a part of her daughter’s effort to leave a trial.

The family denied the theory that the 19-year-old had run away from home, as Tara was a responsible, kind, organized and independent cheerful teenager.

Meanwhile, detectives kept looking for leads and interviewed people up and down New Mexico’s State road 47. They gathered 7 witnesses who saw her, five of whom also saw the suspicious pickup.

On October 25th, Sheriff Romero announced that they believed at least two men were involved in Calico’s abduction, based on a witness who came forward to say he saw two people in the pickup at 11:45 A.M.

Witness

A witness described the driver as a 35- to -45-year-old white male with reddish-brown hair, with height around 5’9” and 6’0”, and weighed 190–210 pounds. The car was a white or off-white mid-50s-to-early-60s Ford pickup with a camper shell, chrome wheels, oversize tires, and a Ford emblem with crushed red glass letters. It bore New Mexico plates that began with “WBY” or “WBZ” and ended with the number 6. The sketch generated over 100 phone tips and four interviews, but no one was arrested.

Polaroid Photograph of Tara Calico

On June 15, 1989, nearly nine months later and 1,500 miles from Valencia Country, a woman leaving a convenience store in Port St. Joe, Florida discovered a Polaroid lying on the ground in the parking lot.

A white Toyota Cargo van was parked in the spot when she entered the store, but the car was gone and there was a Polaroid in its place when she left.

The photograph showed a teenage girl and a young boy gagged with duct tape, wrists bound behind their backs, lying in the back of a van. Police put on roadblocks to intercept the vehicle, but the attempt to locate the van or the driver proved unsuccessful.

Some of Tara’s relatives were watching the tabloid TV show A Current Affair when the Polaroid was released, relatives realized that the girl resembles Tara and they called Patty to inform them about the photo. When Patty first saw the photo, she wasn’t certain about the girl is her daughter but the more she looked, the more confident she became.

The girl in the picture had a discolored streak on her thigh, a scar similar to Tara, which happened when she was involved in a car accident at a younger age. There was the dog-eared paperback next to her: V. C. Andrews was one of Tara’s favorite authors.

Two additional photos surfaced in the following years; one was found in June 1989 in Montecito, California. The girl in the image had a cowlick and a lazy eye, which Tara also had, the girl is also laying on a blue striped pillowcase, which is similar to the one from the first polaroid. Patty was conceived as her daughter in the image, despite it being blurry. The other image was found in February 1990. Police determined this photo to be a prank and Patty has said she is not certain if this is her daughter.

Who was the Boy in the Polaroid with Tara?

A few missing kids’ names were circulated as potential matches to the kid, but the most likely match seemed to be of 10-year-old Michael Henley. Henley had vanished in New Mexico in April 1988 when he went on a hunting trip with his father. Both the families agreed that the photograph might have been taken recently. The Polaroid had to be taken after May 1989 because the particular film used in the photograph was not available until then.

Michael Henley’s remains were discovered in June 1990, in the Zuni Mountains, about 7 miles away from his family campsite.

Further Investigation

Tara Calico’s case went cold again until June 2009, when new information was released on the case. Valencia County Sheriff Rene Rivera told the public he had information that he believed could solve the case. Witnesses had come forward saying two teenage boys had seen Tara on highway 47 during her bike ride and started harassing her. The boys had accidentally hit her and didn’t know what to do so they took her from the scene, Tara had then threatened them about telling the police which made them panic and murder her. They then buried her in the general area she was riding her bike in but they have never located her body and no suspects were ever identified to the public.

In 2009, Port St. Joe Police Chief David Barnes received two envelopes, postmarked June and August 9, 2009, from Albuquerque, New Mexico. One letter contained a photograph printed on copy paper, of a young boy. Someone had drawn a black band in black ink over the boy’s mouth, seemingly depicting the gag in the 1989 photograph. The second letter contained the original image of the boy with no gag. On August 12, the Star newspaper in Port St. Joe received a third letter posted from Albuquerque with the same image of the boy with a black marker gag over his mouth. None of the letters had a return address or note that would indicate the child’s identity. Authorities in Port St. Joe believes the young boy’s photograph has something to do with Tara’s abduction, but it remains a mystery.

In October 2013, a task force was set up to look into the disappearance of Tara Calico. No new leads or information has not been disclosed to the public.

The Reports and Suspects

There were 22 pages of police reports that were released through public records. The first report is dated 18th April 1997, which listed three suspects: Lawrence Romeo jr, Dave Silva, and Leroy Chavez, this report also listed a possible gravesite of a missing female, however, no charges were ever made in the disappearance of Tara Calico.

The second report is dated April 15th, 2010, which mentioned a documentary filmmaker who reportedly went to school with Tara, and was trying to film a documentary on the case. While researching the case, she said she was followed and felt like she was in danger and reported it to the police. In a meeting about this report, police mention the same three suspects as they had mentioned in the previous report, but one of them was deceased. The report also listed a possible location of Tara’s body but there was no evidence found in the area.

There was another report made on the 6th November 2013, which mentions an interview with the Valencia County former Sheriff’s deputy Frank Methola. Frank states that in his time with the Sheriff’s department he followed up on multiple leads in regards to Tara’s disappearance, including an interview with a man named Henry Brown who was on his deathbed and wanted to confess. Henry stated that shortly after Tara’s disappearance, he was in the basement of a man named Lawrence Romero jr and noticed a body of a young woman who was wrapped in a blue tarp and was buried in a makeshift grave. He added that Romero along with the two other boys, mentioned in the first report, Dave Silva and Leroy Charez were also there in the basement and participated in the murder of this young girl.

Henry then went on to say that they explained how they knew Tara rode along Highway 47, as they hit her with their car and put her in the back then went on to sodomize and rape her before murdering her. Tara had told them she was going to tell the police and send them all to jail, which made them panic and murder her. This report was very similar to the first report, just without the extra details. They first hid her body in a bush but then moved her after all the searches began into the basement. Henry added that the three men threatened to kill him if he told anyone, and the reason why they got away with this for so long was that Romero was the son of a sheriff who hired Rene Rivera to cover up the whole thing.

He also mentioned Tara’s bike and how they took it to a dump shortly after the murder. Another witness named Donald Dutch also came forward to police in 2013 and presented them with the same story as Henry Brown had told police.

The last report was dated August 6th, 2014, which said the task force was coming to an end due to the lack of evidence, and the case was closed. The case has never been officially solved.

Over 32 Years Gone

Tara’s mother and stepfather stayed and lived in the same house for 15 years, just in case Tara ever came back but eventually moved to Florida. Sadly, in 2006 Patty passed away, Tara’s biological father also passed away in 2002.

In 2019 October, the FBI announced a reward of up to $20,000 for anyone who had information that would lead to the location of Tara Calico or the arrest of those responsible for her disappearance.

The FBI released age progression photos showing what Tara would currently look like.

If you have any information regarding the disappearance of Tara Leigh Calico please contact Valencia County Sheriff’s Department at 505–865–9604. You can also contact the Federal Bureau of Investigation New Mexico at 505–224–2000.