Tara Calico

On the morning of September 20, 1988, nineteen-year-old Tara Leigh Calico left her home in Belen, New Mexico for her regular bike ride along Highway 47, heading south toward Los Lunas. Her mother Patty Doel had told Tara she would come looking for her if she wasn't back by noon. Tara never returned.

When Patty drove the route, she found pieces of Tara's Walkman cassette player and a cassette tape scattered along the highway but no sign of Tara or her bicycle. Witnesses reported seeing Tara on her bicycle being followed by a pickup truck, but descriptions of the vehicle were inconsistent. Her bicycle was never recovered.

The case took a strange turn in June 1989 when a Polaroid photograph was found in a parking lot in Port St. Joe, Florida. It appeared to show a young woman resembling Tara and an unidentified boy, both bound with duct tape and lying in the back of a van. The FBI analyzed the photo and Scotland Yard experts believed it was likely Tara, but the identification was never confirmed with certainty. The boy in the photo was later tentatively identified as Michael Henley, a child who had gone missing in New Mexico, though Henley's remains were later found near a campsite, suggesting he died of exposure rather than abduction.

Local residents in Belen reportedly knew or suspected what happened to Tara, and her mother received anonymous phone calls providing cryptic information. Investigators focused on several local suspects, including young men who had reportedly been driving trucks on the highway that day, but no charges were ever filed. Tara Calico's disappearance remains one of New Mexico's most enduring missing person cases.