Renewed leads in Tara Calico disappearance as investigators cite 'substantial progress' in 1988 case

Valencia County, N.M. — A missing-person case that has puzzled investigators for 37 years resurfaced in recent years as authorities said they have identified persons of interest and are pursuing charges in the Tara Calico case. The 19-year-old vanished on September 20, 1988, while on a routine bike ride near her home in Valencia County. Her mother, Patty Doel, normally rode with her but used her own neon pink bicycle on that day after Tara’s bike was out of service. Doel later told police that a recent incident in which she felt followed by a motorist had compelled her to stay behind, and she encouraged Tara to carry mace, though Tara declined. Before Tara set off, she jokingly told her mother to come find her if she wasn’t home by noon; when Tara did not return, Doel filed a missing-person report. Pieces of Tara’s Walkman and cassette tape were found along the roadside later that day, but her bike was never recovered. Witnesses said Tara had been followed by two young men in a van, but investigators initially could not develop a solid lead.

A year after Tara disappeared, a haunting Polaroid photo surfaced in a Port St. Joe, Florida shopping-center car park. The image showed a teenage girl bound and gagged in the back of a van, with a second bound and gagged child visible beside her. Both appeared to be facing the camera, mouths taped with black duct tape, arms pressed behind their backs as if tied up. Authorities said the photo appeared on the TV program A Current Affair, and Patty Doel’s friends believed the girl resembled Tara. Doel maintained for years that it was her daughter, though the FBI analyzed the image three times and ultimately concluded it could not be positively identified as Tara. Scotland Yard, however, declared it was Tara, while the Valencia County Sheriff’s Office did not actively pursue that line of inquiry.

The FBI determined that the film used to take the photo could not have been manufactured before May 1989, suggesting the image was produced after that date. Investigators also examined a second Polaroid from California featuring a blurry girl with a gagged mouth and a striped pillow behind her head, and a separate image on an Amtrak train showing a bound woman with an unidentified man nearby; the film for those pictures was not available until mid-1989 and early 1990, respectively. Patty Doel believed both photos showed Tara, but other authorities and Tara’s family members offered differing interpretations.

In 2022, Tara’s former classmate Melinda Esquibel told The Sun that the girl in the original Polaroid was not Tara. Esquibel has spent years investigating the case and has pressed investigators to consider a different scenario, including the possibility that local youths stalked and killed Tara and later disposed of her body within a relatively short distance from where she vanished. Esquibel relayed that she shared her findings with the FBI but did not present them to the Valencia County Sheriff’s Office, saying they were uninterested in her analysis and preferred her to hand over the information to authorities. The FBI conducted an age-progression depiction in 2018 of what Tara might look like at age 49 if she were still alive, but no positive identification has ever been made.

Over the years, two additional Polaroids emerged that intensified concerns for Tara’s family. One showed a girl with a gagged mouth near a striped pillow, believed by Doel to be Tara, while the other depicted a bound woman on an Amtrak train alongside an unidentified man. The film for both images did not exist until after the original photo and was not available until 1989 and 1990, respectively. Doel remained convinced that at least one of the photos depicted her daughter, though authorities cautioned against certainty.

In June 2023, Valencia County Sheriff’s Office officials told local media they had made “substantial progress” in the joint investigation with the FBI and were pursuing new leads. The department said investigators identified offenders connected to Tara Calico’s disappearance and were seeking to charge and arrest them. The agency did not release names or specific charges, citing ongoing investigations and sealed evidence.

The case also touched on another disappearance from the same era. Michael Henley, a 9-year-old who went missing from New Mexico in 1988 while hunting with his father, has his own troubling history with the photographic leads that circulated in the 1980s and early 1990s. Henley’s remains were found in 1990 in the Zuni Mountains, about seven miles from where he vanished, and investigators described the cause of death as exposure. Police have said it is highly unlikely the boy in the Polaroid match was Michael, though his family maintains belief in the resemblance. No conclusive identification of either boy or the girl in the Polaroid has ever been officially confirmed.

The story of Tara Calico’s disappearance has deeply affected her family and community. Tara’s mother, Patty, and her father, John Doel, later moved to Florida and spent their final years near relatives in a retirement setting. Doel, who endured multiple strokes in later years, would often look out a window hoping to see her daughter ride by on her bicycle. “I’d have to try to explain to her that it wasn’t Tara, that is was a person too old or too young,” John Doel recalled in a 2006 interview with the Albuquerque Journal. He described how the ongoing uncertainty forced Patty to confront the possibility that Tara might never return.

Authorities continue to urge anyone with information about Tara Calico’s disappearance to contact the Valencia County Sheriff’s Office or the FBI at 1-800-CALL-FBI or tips.fbi.gov. The case remains unsolved, and investigators emphasize that new information could be pivotal in resolving this decades-long mystery.

The case has drawn attention far beyond New Mexico, reflecting a broader concern for long-unsolved disappearances and the enduring pursuit of answers by families who refuse to give up hope. Investigators say their work is ongoing, with updates provided when new information becomes actionable and verified.