The Secret Sits

The Mysterious Case of Tara Calico

June 30, 2022 John W. Dodson Season 2 Episode 15
The Secret Sits
The Mysterious Case of Tara Calico
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Show Notes Transcript

Tara Calico was just 19-years-old when she went out for a bike ride and never returned, her mother would spend the rest of her life searching for her missing daughter.

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[Underscore Music]

Tara Calico was just 19-years-old when she went out for a bike ride and never returned, her mother would spend the rest of her life searching for her missing daughter.

[Theme Music Start]

Welcome to The Secret Sits, I’m your host John Dodson.  Join us every Thursday as we uncover the Secrets behind the world’s most fascinating true crime cases.  You can find all episodes of The Secret Sits for free on Apple Podcast, Spotify or where ever you get your podcasts.  And if you like what you are hearing, reach out to us on Instagram and Facebook @The Secret Sits Podcast or on Twitter @SecretSitsPod. Now, on with our story.

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[Under Score Music]

Many people who knew Tara Leigh Calico have described the 19-year-old as an effervescent young woman who was strongly independent and organized.  Tara was born on February 28th,1969, her mother Patty, eventually divorced Tara’s birth father and she remarried, to a man named John Doel.  John would soon become an outstanding father to Tara, and with the formation of this new family, John brought two children of his own; a daughter named Michelle Doel and a son called Chris Doel. 

Tara had grown up a well-adjusted young woman and she was in her sophomore year at the University of New Mexico, where she was diligently studying psychology.  Tara had aspirations of becoming a psychologist after she earned her degrees. Tara also took organization and preparedness very seriously.   Tara was also described as intelligent, funny and outgoing.  Tara would step up to stop others from being picked on or made fun of.  She was a huge bookworm and she was really into physical fitness.  Tara made lists all of the time and always kept her activities scheduled.  Tara was working at a local bank while she attended college.

Tara was a lover of exercise and sports, she was an avid runner and biker, in fact, Tara rode her bike on the same arduous trek almost every day, this route took 36 miles to complete, yes, Tara rode her bike 36 miles almost every single day.  Talk about dedication.  Now, Tara’s mother Patty would ride with her ambitious daughter most days on these bike rides, this was a great bonding experience for this mother-daughter duo, but on some of their more recent bike rides, the pair had become suspicious that a vehicle had begun following them, this justifiably made Pat a bit nervous, so she came to the decision to stop participating in the bike rides.  Patty also asked her daughter to lay off the bike rides, at least for a while, but Tara was a dedicated cyclist and she decided to continue her daily rides.  Patty implored Tara to at least carry some mace with her for protection on her bike rides, but Tara thought her mother was being a bit silly and overly concerned and she declined this suggestion from her mother. 

Tara awoke on the morning of September 20th, 1988 and she began her day as always, by making a list for her day, the first thing on Tara’s list was her daily bike ride, 36 miles, which should take her right around 2 hours to complete.  Tara planned to be home from this ride by 12:00 noon, she would then leave her home on Brugg Street in Belen, New Mexico to meet her boyfriend for a game of tennis at 12:30.

On this particular day, Tara asked her mother if she could borrow her bike, Tara’s bike was being worked on, it had a flat tire and there was some slight body damage, which was also being fixed.  Patty told her daughter that, yes of course, she could use her bike for her ride.  Patty Doel’s bike was a neon pink Huffy Mountain bike with bright yellow cables and yellow side walls on the tires, it just screams, 1980’s.  Tara dressed in her typical bike riding outfit which on this day consisted of a white t-shirt with 1st National Bank of Belen written on it, this is the bank where Tara was working, she also had on a pair of white short with green stripes on the sides, white ankle socks and a pair of turquoise Avia tennis shoes.  Now this was the 80’s so Tara was also wearing some accessories, we loved accessories in the 80’s.  She had on a gold butterfly ring that had a diamond insert, a gold and amethyst ring and some half-inch gold hoop earrings.  To tie the entire outfit together, and to make this picture in your mind as 80’s as it could possibly be, Tara also had on her bright yellow walk-man, which held a tape from the band Boston.  Boston was an iconic rock band from the 70’s and 80’s, I could imagine myself riding a bike and listening to More Than a Feeling or Don’t Look Back, what a great vibe.

As I said, Tara was also extremely organized, so before she left for her bike ride, Tara had already laid out her tennis outfit, to change into when she returned from her bike ride.  She had also laid out and organized her school supplies, including her books and homework, because the third thing on Tara’s list for that day was her class, scheduled to begin at 4:00pm.  As Tara left the house, she jokingly told her mother that if she was not back from her ride by 12:00, she should come looking for her, incase she got another flat tire.  Remember, this was the 1980’s and there were no cell phones.

An eyewitness says that they saw Tara riding her bike along Highway 47 in Valencia County at approximately 11:45am, this was part of Tara’s daily route for her 36-mile trip and she was easily spot able.  Her plan was to be done with her ride around 12:00, so Tara being on Highway 47 at 11:45am, lines up perfectly in her timeline, based on her normal biking route.  As the clock struck 12:00 noon at the Doel house, Patty noticed that her daughter had still not returned from her bike ride.  Pat decided to go look along Tara’s normal route in her car, maybe Tara had, had some trouble, or maybe she was just being overly protective of her baby girl, but either way she would go look.  Pat drove down Tara’s normal route, but she did not see her daughter, so she drove the route in the other direction, still she saw nothing, there were no signs of her daughter.  Pat thought about it and decided, she did not need to be panicked, maybe she had simply missed Tara somehow and just now, Tara was back at home, in her room changing into her tennis outfit, almost ready to go and meet her boyfriend for their match.  So, Pat drove back to her house, she walked in the door, casually calling out her daughter’s name, but there was no response, so she walked down the hall to Tara’s room, nothing had been disturbed, now it began to sink in and Pat suddenly got a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. 

Pat and her husband John, decided that they should immediately begin checking with local hospitals, what if Tara had been injured on her bike ride and someone had taken her to the hospital, they begin frantically calling around to all of the local hospitals, but there was no good news at the end of any of these calls, no one had seen Tara.  After finding no new information from their calls around town, Pat and John decided to call the Valencia County Sherriff’s office to file a missing person’s report for their daughter, Tara Calico.

This would normally be the point in the story when I tell you that the police told the family that they had to wait 48 or 72 hours to file a missing persons report, or that Tara was 19-years-old so she had the right to go missing; but no, the Valencia County Sherriff’s office began a full search for Tara Calico within 5 hours of Tara having gone missing, and on top of this they also entered the case into the National Crime Information Center with a special note that foul play was suspected, this would garner the notice more attention.  The detectives in this case could tell that Tara had plans and things going on in her life that she would not just walk away from, she also had no conflicts with other humans, the police just never had any doubts that Tara was truly a missing person.

Tara’s sister Michele stated that she vividly remembers this day, Michele was 15-years-old at the time and a sophomore in high school, Michele said, “I remember one of my sister’s best friends and her boyfriend came to get me from school, they picked me up and when we got home there was a bunch of cops.”  Pat and John told Michele that Tara had gone out on her normal everyday bike ride, but she had not come home.  They described how Pat had gone out on her own looking for Tara, but had not been able to locate her, this description of events is what triggered the nerves in this 15-year-old girl, this was when Michele realized that this was serious.  Volunteer groups had already begun actively searching for Tara, Michele recalled, “I didn’t understand what was going on, I just assumed that maybe she had gone a different way and that we were going to find her, I didn’t think she was missing until later on that evening when I stated to realize how serious it was, but I just kept thinking that she was going to come back.”

The local and State Police, along with many civilian volunteers and other investigative agencies from the surrounding areas were already heavily involved in the search efforts, after talking to Michele, Pat and John left to join in on the search.  People were searching on foot, some where on horseback, they even had helicopters already, but even with this herculean effort being put forth, they were still coming up with absolutely nothing in their arduous search for this missing woman.

But you can only find nothing, until you find something and that is what happened next, a singular piece of evidence was discovered, Tara’s audio tape of Boston was located, it was just cast aside in the loose dirt piled on the side of the road, and this tape was found just 3 short miles from Tara’s own home.  Pat identified the tape as being Tara’s, and then a second something was found, approximately 19 miles away, near the John F Kennedy campgrounds, searchers located a broke piece of Tara’s yellow walk-man.  The piece which was found was that little clear window in the front side of the walk-man, you can see the tape just spinning away inside of that little window.

The discovery of this clear piece of plastic, which seems like a miracle in itself, also lead to additional evidence being discovered.  In the loose dirt there were clear bicycle tracks and something about these tracks looked suspicious, typically bike tracks are pretty straight, but these tracks looked like someone had forced this bike off of the road.  This was further substantiated by a set of vehicle track, which were also present, with the same type of movement, which confirmed the investigator’s hypothesis.  Pat, at that time believed that Tara may have possibly left this evidence on purpose, maybe as a trail, dropping bread crumbs for them, like a young Hansel and Gretel out in the woods.

Police have now begun interviewing locals who may have been in the area while Tara was out riding her neon pink Huffy Mountain bike with the bright yellow cables, and plenty of witnesses came forward with information.  Based on the information from 7 eye witnesses on the day Tara disappeared, police were able to construct a pretty clear timeline of Tara’s whereabouts up to 11:45am.  5 of these 7 witnesses also reported seeing something strange at the time they saw Tara, and each of these witnesses saw Tara along different portions of her bike route, however; each of these 5 independent witnesses said that when they saw Tara riding her bike, they also saw an older model pickup truck trailing just behind the young woman.  And you can picture this too, if you try, Tara Calico is riding her neon pink bike, her brown hair is pulled back in a ponytail, she is wearing her white t-shirt with 1st National Bank of Belen written on it, she also had on white shorts with green stripes on the sides, white ankle socks and a pair of turquoise Avia tennis shoes, she is focused on More than a feeling blasting into her ears.  And she can’t even hear the load rumbling muffler of the older model pickup riding slowly, just behind her.

Witnesses all said that the truck was a light color, possibly tan, but they could not be sure, but this truck had a camper shell on the back and several witnesses thought it was possibly a Ford, but this was the best description they could give, none of them saw who was in or driving the truck.

The day after Tara disappeared, the worst thing that can happen during a missing person’s case happened, it began to storm and rain, with hope beyond measure the searchers continued, they hoped they could find something, anything else, before the rain washed it all away.  And the searches continued and they continued, several weeks went by, searches where performed every day.  But after weeks of these continuous searches, there were still no signs of Tara, they had not even found her mom’s bicycle, she had been riding, Tara and the bike had just vanished.

Sadly, time does what it always does and it kept marching on, 9 agonizing moths crawled by while the searching continued and Pat and John felt more and more desperate to find their missing daughter.  But then, on July 15th, 1989, their first break in the case came, in the form of a phone call received by Tara’s step-father, John Doel.  This unexpected call was from a family friend who told John that they had something strange to share with him.  The person on the other end of the line told John that their family had been watching the new episode of A Current Affair, if you have never seen A Current Affair, it was kind of, everything on Entertainment Tonight with a bit of grocery store tabloids thrown in, at this time the show was hosted by Maury Povich.  During this evening’s episode the show covered a story about a disturbing polaroid photo which someone had randomly found, and John Doel’s friend thought that this strange photo, just might be of interest to John and his search for his missing daughter.

The photo in question had been found in Port St. Joe, Florida in the parking lot of a convenience store.  Port St. Joe is located directly next to St Joseph Bay in the Florida panhandle, it is directly between Panama City Beach and Tallahassee and it is also directly adjoining the vast Apalachicola National Forest.

The photo was found by a woman, she parked her car in the parking spaces just outside of the store and as she exited her vehicle and began stepping through the empty space next to her, she glanced over and saw a man sitting in a white van, just a space or so over from her vehicle.  The man had a moustache and was probably 34 maybe 35.  She thought nothing of this and proceeded into the store, going about her business, but as she exited the store, she noticed that the white van was now gone, but as she glanced over at the vacant space stained with years of oil drips, she noticed something strange laying on the ground, it caught more of her attention and she turned and walked over to the empty space.  There laying on the ground, completely out of place was a polaroid photo, or at least the back of one, so she bent down and plucked the photo from the ground and as she stood in the empty parking space, she became shocked at what she was holding in her hand.  In this photo there were two people, a young woman and an adolescent boy, both of these downtrodden looking youths appeared to be in the back of a white panel van, now that may not sound strange, however; in this photo, these two people appeared to be tied up with their hands bound behind their backs and each one also had a piece of duct tape covering their mouths.  Both of these people are staring directly at the camara, their eyes look worn and tired but the girl’s eyes are shooting daggers at whoever is taking this photo.

The reason John Doel’s friend had contacted him was because he believed that the girl in this photo looks exactly like Tara Leigh Calico.  Now I will start off by saying that there are several things in and about this photo which have caused some concerns over the years.  For one, people question whether the photo was a fake, there were questions raised about the positioning of the two people’s arms in the photo, it is clearly meant to show that both of these individual’s hands were bound behind their backs, but you can not see any of their supposed bindings in the photo.  It is also called into question whether their arms are actually close enough together behind their backs to actually be tied up.

The woman who had discovered the photo called the police to report what she had just found and the police began attempting to figure out who these two kidnaped youngsters where.  The woman said that the man who had been driving the van looked to be in his mid-thirties and had a dark moustache, but that was all she could give investigators as a description.  She described the van as a white Toyota cargo van with no windows, you know, the type of van you see and immediately get a bad feeling about.  Police began to assume that these may be two young sex trafficking victims.  Police immediately set up road blocks to question the general public, they were trying to find a witness, or anyone who recognized these two people in the photo, they came up completely empty handed.  

Port St. Joe was a small community back in the 80’s, the population of this town was around 10,000 residences at the time, but no one had any information to provide the police.  It was after all local options were exhausted that police decided to release the photo to the press, in hopes that anyone could provide them with information about the subjects in the photo.  This is where A Current Affair came in to play, they picked up this story and they began circulating the photo in an attempt to identify these two people.  

John Dole’s friend had contacted him after seeing the photo on A Current Affair, because he believed that the girl in the photo looked a lot like his missing step-daughter Tara.  A different family had also seen this photo and they believed that the young boy in the photo looked like their missing son Michael Henley, who was 9-years-old at the time he went missing from the Zuni Mountains in New Mexico, he had disappeared on April 21st, 1988, 5 months before Tara Calico had also disappeared in New Mexico.

Now I want to deviate from Tara’s story and give you some information about Michael Henley’s case.  Michael was on a camping trip with his father and a family friend in the Zuni Mountains of New Mexico.  The trio had been at their camp site for less than 20 minutes when Michael disappeared.  When the adults noticed that the young boy was missing, they searched around the camp but found no trace of him.  They quickly became concerned that the boy had wondered off into the vast wilderness.  Michael’s family, along with the police and the national guard conducted a month-long search, but they never found any trace of Michael.  After this month-long search, a fierce snow storm swept through the area and the traitorous terrain made it impossible to continue searching.  Michael had been missing ever since this day.

Police had the polaroid photo analyzed and it was determined that the photo had been taken recently.  The FBI was not confident enough to conclude that the two victims in the photo were Tara and Michael, however; a forensic artist compared the picture to photos of the missing youngsters and they concluded that they were 85% sure that the polaroid photo was of Tara and Michael.  This led investigators to speculate that both Tara Calico and Michael Henley had been kidnapped by the same individual while they were in New Mexico, and of course they assumed this person had to be the man with the moustache in the white van from the convenance store parking lot in Florida.  

Some may take what I am going to say next as a good thing or a bad thing, but not long after this, in June of 1990, Michael Henley’s remains were discovered, they were located just a few miles away from the campsite where he had last been setting up camp with his dad.  The remains were identified through dental records and the cause of death was determined to have been hypothermia; foul play was ruled out.  As it turned out, Michael, more than likely, had simply wondered away from his dad and their camp site for just a moment and he had gotten irrevocably lost.  But at least his family now knows he is not a helpless victim tied up in the back of a crazy person’s van.

It could now be definitively proven that the mysterious polaroid photo was not of Michael Henley, his mother had been wishy-washy in her belief that the boy in the photo was her missing son, but sometimes when we are desperate to believe something, it is hard for us to see past our own yearning desire. 

John and Pat had their own feelings about this photo when they saw it, they too believed that the girl in the photo was their missing daughter, Tara.  They said that the eyes and ears looked the same, she also had a distinct cowlick in her hair, which matched the one on the girl in this photo.  Another thing in the photo that made Pat 100% sure that this was her daughter was the fact that when Tara was younger, she had been in a pretty bad car accident, this resulted in her having a very distinctive scar on her leg and the girl in the photo had this exact same scar on her leg.  Another aspect of this photo that stood out to Pat Doel was the book, lying beside the girl, the book is My Sweet Audrina by author V.C. Andrews.  V.C. Andrews was Tara’s favorite author, so this was another layer in the mystery.  

After this photo had been analyzed, a phone number was discovered on the spine of the book, most of the numbers were not legible, the Charlie Project says that it could be over 300 different possible phone numbers.  The FBI had processed the photo and analyzed it as much as they could, but they had run out of new information, so they sent the photo to Scotland Yard for further analysis.  Scotland Yard analyzed the photo and they concluded that the girl in the photo was 100% Tara Leigh Calico.  This seemed to be big news, even if they could not find Tara, at least they knew she was possibly still alive.  But after this analysis, another group took a crack at the photo, and the Los Alamos National Laboratory analyzed the photo and concluded that the girl in the photo was NOT Tara Calico.  I mean, it is just mind bending, I cannot imagine how this family had to feel being ping-ponged back and forth with these competing results. 

The investigators also contacted the Polaroid company directly and Polaroid told the investigation that the type of film used in this photo was not made until May of 1989.  This means that if the girl in the photo was Tara, this photo could not have been taken until she had been missing for 8 months.  And the girl in the photo appeared, for all intents and purposes to be well cared for and healthy, what I mean by this is at least she was being fed.  Tara’s mother still believed that this was definitely her daughter. 

The case did not really progress after this photo was found, but John and Pat Doel were not the type of people to stand idly by and wait for others to solve their problems, so they began training to become auxiliary Sherriff’s deputies for the Valencia County Sherriff’s department and they passed their training and were sworn in, in 1991.  The couple did this so they could be more involved in their own daughter’s case, being officially deputized allowed them to be an official part of the investigation.  John said, “we were both deputized after Tara’s disappearance and were able to investigate the case, it allows us to do two things, to carry weapons and also to be able to contact any other law enforcement agency on behalf of the Sherriff’s Department regarding the case.  We were both commissioned as auxiliary deputies.”  

This, I will say, is one of the most involved strategies I have ever written about a family member going through to be involved in their loved one’s case.  Pat always maintained her belief that Tara was alive, but if this was not true, then she, at the very least, wanted to bring her daughter’s body home to rest.  As part of this ongoing investigation and now that Pat and John had become badass auxiliary Sherriff’s deputies, they would be sent photos of unidentified deceased young women, and the manila envelope would arrive and Pat knew that each and every one of the photos she would have to look at would be awful and grotesque, she still held herself steadfast and she looked at each and every one of those photos, to see if one of them was her missing child.

Tara’s brother Chris said, “The police would send photos of every possibility including photos of dismembered bodies and every time mom got an envelope with the newest pictures, she had to look at them, she couldn’t not, but it tore her up every time.”

In 2003 Patty and John Doel moved to Florida, the sunshine state, and when they bought a new house and moved into it, the dedicated a bedroom specifically to Tara.  As every year came and went, they bought Tara birthday presents and they bought her Christmas presents and they stored all of these beautiful gifts in the bedroom made for Tara.  Patty Doel suffered a series of strokes that left her unable to properly speak.  One of Pat’s close friends told People Magazine that “She would see a girl on a bicycle and she would point to her and write down the word Tara.”  John would have to calmly explain to his wife that, no, that was not Tara.

Just 3 years after the move to Florida, Patty Doel passed away, and after her passing Tara’s sister Michele took the baton, her mother had placed down and Michele began to run for Tara.  The Sherriff at the time was Rene Rivera and Sherriff Rene said that he did not believe that the photo was of Tara even though the two girls looked similar.  Rene Rivera said that he had worked this case since he was first on the force back in 1989 and he had dug up many different locations that were rumored to be locations of her body.

And then, seemingly out of nowhere in 2008 Sheriff Rene Rivera sates on the record that he knows for a fact, what happened to Tara Calico, he goes on to say that he also knows who perpetrated the crimes against her.  But after saying this simple but hugely complex statement, the Sheriff says that there is not enough physical evidence to convict anyone for the crimes and he attempts to stop speaking about the case.  But the public does not let this man get away with his lame statement and they demand to know more.  After some pushing, he claims that it was two teenage boys, who were known to him at the time, and they had been driving the truck described by the eye witnesses.  He went on to say that the information that he had was that the truck accidentally ended up striking Tara at which time she fell to the side of the road.  After Tara had been struck by the vehicle the boys took her in the truck.

Sheriff Rene Rivera goes on with his claim by stating that the boys then panicked and killed Tara in a desperate attempt to hide their wrongdoings.  The Sheriff also believes that Tara most likely knew the boys involved.  Finally, the Sheriff told the public that his office was working to put together a substantial case, however; they were still looking for additional evidence to help them definitively solve this case and secure a conviction, the Sheriff was still actively looking for either Pat’s bicycle that Tara had been riding, Tara’s bright yellow walk-man or Tara herself.  The Sheriff goes on in his claims that there may have been two additional male youths who were involved in the case and they may know where Tara’s body could be located.  Sheriff Rene Rivera then stated that he personally believed that Tara’s body was still located within their county.

John Doel’s response to this diatribe of information was to say, “I thought it was silly when I heard it, there is such a thing as circumstantial evidence and I know in other places and other cases, they have gotten a conviction with only circumstantial evidence.”

The following year 2009, after no further movement on the case, a couple of additional photographs appeared. This is 20 years after the Polaroid photo had been found in that parking lot in Port St Joe.  The Port St Joe, Florida Police chief, David Barnes received one of these new photos, they were postmarked June 10th and August 10th, 2009 and they had been mailed from Albuquerque, New Mexico.  One of these mysterious letters contained a photo, simply printed on standard copy paper, this photo was of a young boy with sandy brown hair.  On the printed-out photo, someone had drawn a thick black stripe over the boy’s mouth, possibly attempting to make it appear like the boy in the photo from 1989 with the duct tape stuck over his mouth.  The second of these letters contained the original image of this same boy. 

On August 12th, 2009, The Star newspaper in Port St Joe received a third cryptic letter.  This letter was also postmarked from Albuquerque, it had been sent two days earlier on August 10th and this letter contained the same type of image as the first letter received by David Barnes, a photo print out on copy paper, with the same black ink mark drawn over a boy’s mouth.  The police could not definitively prove if this was the same boy from the image sent to the police chief.  None of these letters contained a return address, shocking, and there was no information indicating the child’s identity, this led investigators to believe that these letters were possibly connected to the Tara Calico case.  These photos were sent to the FBI for further analysis but no new evidence was obtained.

There have also been two other Polaroid photo which have showed up that possibly contain an image of Tara Calico.  The first of these photos was found near a construction site in Montecito, California, this is a blurry photo of a girl’s face with tape over her mouth, and behind her in the photo you can see some blue stripped fabric, which looks somewhat similar to the fabric in the original 1989 photo.  This photo had been taken on film which was not available until after June of 1989.  The second of these photos depicts a woman who is loosely bound in gauze and her eyes are covered with more gauze and a pair of large black-framed glasses.  The woman is with a male and the pair are seated on an Amtrak train car.  The film used in this photo was not available until February of 1990.  Tara’s mother Patty saw both of these photos before her death and she said that she thought the first of these photos could have possibly been Tara, however; she felt as if the second of these photos, the one on the train, was probably just a gag.  Tara’s sister Michele said, “They had a striking, uncalming resemblance.  As for me, I will not rule them out.  But keep in mind our family has had to identify many other photographs and all but those three were ruled out.”  I personally do not believe that either of these photos are of Tara Calico, but I wanted to include this in our story just in case, you do research on this case later and think that I simply overlooked this part of this mysterious case.

In October 2013, Tara Calico’s now cold case, was officially reopened and a 6-person task force was selected which included agents from Homeland Security, the New Mexico State Police Department, the Valencia County Sheriff’s office, the Albuquerque Police Department, and the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office; police took a statement from a man named Henry Brown who had worked as a public-school teacher, this statement would be Henry Brown’s deathbed confession.  In this confession, Henry claimed that at the time Tara Calico went missing, he was in the habit of hanging out with a bad crowd, the ring leader of this group of friends was Lawrence Romero Jr, and the significates of this name was not lost on investigators, because Lawrence Romero Sr had been the Sheriff of Valencia County, where Tara had gone missing.  Brown stated that Lawrence Romero Jr was a bad kid, who did many terrible things, but he used his father’s position and power to remain out of trouble.  Brown went on to explain that he had attended a small gathering at a dilapidated trailer on the then Sheriff’s property, this was a typical hang out spot for Romero Jr and his delinquent friends.  While at this gathering, Brown noticed a tarp in the corner of the room that was obviously covering something he could not identify by its shape.  Brown then goes on to claim that the other boys at this gathering told him that they had encountered Tara Calico on the road on that fateful day and they had run her off of the road, kidnapped her and eventually killed her.

The boys said that after she was killed, they had hidden her body in some bushes, but when the search for the missing girl had intensified, they got nervous that she would be discovered, so they went back and absconded with her deceased body and took it to this trailer, where Brown now sat.  Later, after this gathering, the boys moved Tara’s body from this trailer and dumped her body in a pond.

Henry Brown said that even though he had wanted to come forward with this information earlier he had not done so because these boys had threatened to kill him if he were to ever come forward and tell the police anything.

After this confession anther member of this childhood friend group came forward and told this same story, this man’s name was Donald Dutcher and these two people were no longer in fear of coming forward because Lawrence Romero Jr had committed suicide almost 20 years earlier, I would question why they waited an additional 20 years after the threat to them had been self-neutralized.  There is a rumor of a suicide note in which Romero Jr confessed to the murder of Tara Calico, however; this note had possibly been covered up and not entered into evidence by Romero Jr’s father, the Sheriff Romero Sr.  Sheriff Romero also worked diligently to make sure his son’s cause of death was not listed as a suicide.

The now current Sheriff of Valencia County, New Mexico Rene Rivera would not divulge information about this cover-up and it is believed by many that he is now also participating in this cover up in an attempt to protect the law enforcement personnel involved, they really do protect that thin blue line, at all costs.

In 2019 the FBI posted a $20,000 reward for information that would lead to the location of Tara Calico or the arrest of those responsible for her disappearance.  They have also released an age progressed photo of Tara to show what she could possibly look like today.

Even today when people ask Tara’s sister Michele if she believes it is her sister in the photo, she said she still had to say yes.

In September of 2021, the Valencia County Sheriff’s Office along with the New Mexico State Police issued a statement that they had found a new lead in the case, and that the focus of a sealed warrant was for an unknown private residence located within Valencia County, however; no further details have been provided.

Had Tara Calico not gone missing on this seemingly benign day, she would currently be 51-years-old.  Tara’s family maintained their hope that she would someday be found alive, but now John Doel, along with his children Michele and Chris, know that it is unlikely that Tara is still out there, alive.  Patty Doel went to her death asserting that the girl in the Polaroid photo was her missing daughter Tara.  Weather she truly believed this or not, it was her last vestige of hope the someday she may possibly be reunited with her daughter.