The UNSOLVED Disappearance of TARA CALICO

The UNSOLVED Disappearance of TARA CALICO

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, friends, welcome to our latest video. Today we're going
to be discussing the frightening disappearance of Taraklico. Now, many
times in this community we come across cases that are
so incredibly baffling we struggle with our humanity and wondering
how something like this could actually happen. While we cover

(00:24):
hundreds of cases on this channel of people who have
gone missing, some who have been found unfortunately deceased, and
still others who know trace at all has ever been found.
As they say, the devil is in the details. It's
the smallest detail. Sometimes they can either make or break
a case, or that can leave us scratching our heads

(00:45):
and being even more confused than when we first started out.
The disappearance of Tara Calico is one of those cases
where you kind of feel like you're right on the
brink of having the answers, only to find the next
bit of information bringing you back around to the beginning,
right back at square one. This sad and frightening case

(01:07):
is one of thousands where the person was abducted and
never seen or heard from again. However, it's the little
clues along the way which makes this case stand out
so much Sarah Calico was from Bilin, New Mexico, and
this is where her home was when she left it
on the morning of September thirtieth, nineteen eighty eight. Tara

(01:29):
was nineteen years old at the time and had her
whole life ahead of her. She had no idea that
when she went out for a usual bike ride at
nine thirty that morning, it would turn out to be
the last time she would ever see her home again.
Her mother rode with her in the morning's up until
very recently, but she felt that two were being stalked
by passing motorists and was too scared to continue on

(01:50):
these morning rides with their daughter. This would be a
strange and sad coincidence and foreboding that neither mother nor
daughter had any idea would be so relevant and possibly
close to the truth until it was too late. As
far as they were concerned, this day was no different
than all the rest, a perfectly ordinary Tuesday morning, or

(02:12):
so it seemed. Tarah refused the mace her mother suggested
she carry along with her following the alleged stalker incident,
and insisted her mother was just being paranoid. Sarah had
a date to play tennis with her boyfriend at twelve
thirty that afternoon and asked her mother to come and
pick her up if she wasn't home by noon. When

(02:32):
eleven thirty hit and still no sign of Tara, her mother, Patty,
set out to go and pick her up. As plan,
she drove the usual route, but this time Tara was
nowhere to be found. This was long before the days
of cell phones, so Patty wasn't able to just call
her daughter and ask where she was or why she
wasn't where she was supposed to be. However, this was

(02:54):
immediately concerning for Patty, and she contacted the authorities pretty
much right away and report that her daughter is missing.
As they investigated further and searched along the route Tera
was known to have been riding that day, they found
pieces of her sony walkmen, and a cassette tape. Though
there was no way of knowing for sure that these
items belonged to Tara, the family were pretty convinced as

(03:17):
they knew what her belongings looked like. Tara was a
creature of habit and brought along the same walkman, cassette player,
and tape with her almost every single day. Terah's family
believed that she might have purposely dropped these items to
not only mark her trail, but to alert whoever came
looking for that she was in some kind of danger.
After all, there would be no other reason for her

(03:39):
to have just left her stuff broken and lying on
the side of the road. During the investigation, several people
came forward and said that they had indeed seen Terra
that morning riding her bicycle along the route where her
items were later found. Her bicycle, to this day, has
never been located. No one witnessed her person debduction, however,

(04:01):
and there weren't many clues other than the people who
claimed to have seen her and the broken walkman scattered
around the area where she was last seen by several
passers by. There were several witnesses who said they saw
a light colored nineteen fifty three Ford pickup truck with
a camper shell following her, but the authorities were never
able to locate the owner of the vehicle. It's unknown

(04:22):
whether or not its connected to Terr's disappearance. Terre's case
went cold fairly quickly, and her family and loved ones
were left with no answers, and the perpetual fear that
terror would be found to cease somewhere, along with the
perpetual hope that she would once again come walking through
the front door someday. That brings us to June of
nineteen eighty nine, when it seemed that new life was

(04:45):
breathed back into the case when terrifying new evidence was
possibly found in the parking lot of a convenience store
in Fort Saint Joe, Florida. A photograph was lying on
the ground between two vehicles. The woman who found on
the photos said that it was found in the parking
space of where a white, windowless Toyota cargo van driven

(05:05):
by a man with a mustache believed to be in
his thirties, was parked when she arrived at the store. However,
despite the police setting up roadblocks in an attempt to
intercept the vehicle, the man was never caught nor brought
to interrogation. The picture in question was a polaroid which
shows a little boy and a young woman, both bound
and gagged and with terrified looks on their faces. Because

(05:29):
of the duct tape and the gags in their mouth,
it was hard to tell who the image was of.
It was theorized by investigators, however, that the young woman
in the photo was Tera Kalico, and that the boy
was Michael Henley, also of New Mexico, who disappeared in
April of nineteen eighty eight. According to investigators, the picture
had to have been taken after May nineteen eighty nine

(05:52):
because the particular film used in the photograph was not
available until then. The identification of the boy in the photographs,
Michael Henley, seems unlikely because his remains were discovered in
nineteen ninety in the Zuni Mountains, about seven miles from
his family's campsite where he had originally disappeared, and seventy
five miles from where Tara Callico disappeared. There was much

(06:15):
back and forth and conjecture about this polaroid, but in
the end, the standing ruling is that it was not
him in the picture. Please believe he simply wandered off
and sadly died of exposure to the elements. Tara's mother, Patty,
believed that the girl of the picture was in fact
her daughter, though this positive identification was mainly made due

(06:36):
to a scar the woman in the photo had on
her leg, which, according to Patty, was identical to one
Tara had in the same exact spot on her leg.
Tara had received this particular scar due to an injury
she suffered from a car accident when she was younger.
In addition, a paperback copy of V. C. Andrews's novel
My Sweet Adrina, said to be one of Tara Kalico's

(06:59):
favorite books, can be seen lying next to the woman.
Scotland Yard analyzed the photo and concluded that the woman
was Tara, but a second analysis by the Loss Almost
National Laboratory disagreed. An FBI analysis of the photo was inconclusive.
This is where the case seems to take an even
more bizarre turn. Twenty years after the discovery of the photograph,

(07:22):
which was of course widely shared by media at the time,
pictures of a little boy were sent to the Port
Saint Joe Police Chief David Barnes. He received two letters
posts marked June tenth and August tenth, two thousand and nine,
from Albuquerque, New Mexico. One letter contained a photo printed
on copy paper of a young boy with sandy brown hair.

(07:45):
Someone had drawn a black band in ink on the
photo over the boy's mouth, as if it were covered
in tape, like in the nineteen eighty nine polaroid. It
seems whoever since the photos was alluding to the fact
that the boy in the original photograph found all those
years ago was Michael Henley. After all, this has never
been officially confirmed. However, the second letter contains an original

(08:08):
image of the boy. On August twelfth, the Star newspaper
in Fort Saint Joe received a third letter, also postmarked
in Albuquerque on August tenth, and depicting the same image
of a boy. It was black marker drawn over his mouth.
None of the letters contained a return address or a
note indicating the child's identity, making the officials there believe

(08:30):
it may have something to do with the disappearance of
Tara Calico. The letters were sent in around the same
time a self proclaimed psychic called the detective about Tara,
saying she had met a runaway in California with whom
she worked in a strip club with who eventually wound
up murdered. The caller said she had dreams suggesting the
runaway may have been Tara Calico and that she may

(08:53):
be buried somewhere in California, though it was a long
shot and there was no real location given. Publicly as
to where this alleged psychic said the girl could possibly
be buried. The police must have had some additional information,
as they did conduct searches and reported that the searches
led to nothing and no bodies at all were found,
not of Tara Calico or anyone else. Additionally, these photos

(09:17):
were given to the FBI for further investigation in hope
of finding fingerprints or possible DNA evidence. Twenty years after
she disappeared that faithful day, in September of nineteen eighty eight,
the sheriff of Valencia County, California at the time, Renee Rivera,
reported that he had received what he believed to be
credible information that finally explained what had happened to Tara.

(09:40):
This information alleged that some boys who knew her drove
up behind her in a truck and some form of
car accident followed. Tara later died, and those responsible covered
up the crime. Rivera states he knows the names of
those involved, but that without a body he can't make
a case. He hasn't released whatever evidence has led him

(10:01):
to this conclusion. No rest have been made and the
case remains open. Tara's stepfather, John Dole has disputed these claims,
saying that the sheriff should not have made these comments,
that he was not willing to rest anyone, and that
strong circumstantial evidence should be enough for conviction. Two other
polaroid photographs, possibly of Tara, have surfaced over the years.

(10:26):
The first was found near a construction site in Monticito, California,
and in a blurry photo of a girl's face with
tape covering her mouth and light blue striped fabric behind her,
similar to that on the pillow in the Toyota van photo.
It was taken on film that was not available until
June nineteen eighty nine. The second photo shows a woman
loosely bound in gauze, her eyes covered with more gauze

(10:49):
and large black framed glasses, with a male passenger beside
her on an Amtrak train. For this photo, the film
used was not available until February nineteen ninety. Tara's mother
believed the first one was Tara, who thought that the
second may have been some kind of sick joke. Her
sister stated they had a striking, uncalming resemblance. As for me,

(11:13):
I will not rule them out. We keep in mind
our families had to identify many other photographs, and all
but those three were ruled out. In October twenty thirteen,
a six person task force was established to reinvestigate the disappearance.
As of twenty seventeen, no arrest had been made and
the case remained open. On October first, twenty nineteen, the

(11:37):
FBI announced that they are offering a reward of up
to twenty thousand dollars for precise details leading to the
identification or location of Tara Lee Calico and information leading
to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for her disappearance.
In September twenty twenty one, the Lindsay County Sheriff's Office
and the New Mexico State Police issued a statement that

(11:59):
they have a new lead in the case and that
the focus of a sealed warrant for an unknown private
residence located within Valencia County has been issued. However, no
further details were provided, and there have been no additional
updates since that time. So what happened to Tarah Calico?
Is it possible some boys she knew, possibly from her

(12:21):
neighborhood or school, decided to try and scare her, but
took it too far and accidentally ran her over and
killed her, leading them to then having to cover it
up and get rid of her body and bicycle. As
Sheriff Bravera believes, if this is the case, then why
wasn't the witness or witnesses who allegedly came forward to
him with this information then called in to testify. As

(12:44):
Tara's stepfather stated, the circumstantial evidence should have been enough
for conviction. Is it possible that her mother was right
and perhaps someone had been stalking the two of them
and saw Tara alone deciding to take the opportunity to
abduct her right there on the side of the road,
or any of the bizarre photographs handed in actually of Tara.

(13:06):
What was the new lead in the case back in
twenty nineteen, and why has nothing ever come of this
alleged search warrant on the private residence. These are questions
we hope one day will be answered, if for nothing else,
then that Tara's family could at least begin to heal.
Maybe one day justice will be served and the facts
of what happened to young Tara Calico all those years

(13:29):
ago when she was simply going for a bike ride
and listening to some of her favorite music in her
walkman will come to light and someone will be held account.
As always, will bring you any updates to come to
light as soon as we receive them. Well, there you
have it, folks. What do you think of this bizarre disappearance.

(13:55):
I look forward to reading your comments, but please keep
it friendly and respec In the meantime, be good to
yourselves and each other, and I'll see you just a
little farther on down the trail. I'm Steve Stockton and
I'll talk to you next time.