Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Teen girl disappears during bike ride, photo surfaces of woman bound and gagged. Is it Tara Calico?

Episode Date: November 8, 2021

Tara Calico, 19, left her Belen, New Mexico, home around 9:30 a.m. She was off for a 34-mile round trip bike ride, on a route she frequently took. Calico was never heard from again, but a picture surfaces of a woman in a van, bound and gagged. Is it Tara Calico?Joining Nancy Grace Today: Bob Buehner - Former Montour County District Attorney, Past President of the PA District Attorneys Association Dr. Jorey Krawczyn - Police Psychologist, Adjunct Faculty with Saint Leo University; Research Consultant with Blue Wall Institute, Author: Operation S.O.S. - Practical Recommendations to Help “Stop Officer Suicide” bw-institute.com Dr. Tim Gallagher - Medical Examiner State of Florida www.pathcaremed.com, Lecturer: University of Florida Medical School Forensic Medicine. Founder/Host: International Forensic Medicine Death Investigation Conference Sheryl McCollum - Forensic Expert & Cold Case Investigative Research Institute Founder, ColdCaseCrimes.org Melinda Esquibel - Filmmaker, Podcaster, taracalico.com, Producer and Host: "VANISHED", melindaesquibel.com TIPLINE: Valencia County Sheriff’s Office [phone] or The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children 1-800-THE-LOST  1-800-843-5678  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. The FBI now offering $20,000 reward for a teen girl that seemingly disappears. And another question. Was there an image of her, a photo found inadvertently of her bound and gagged in the back of a vehicle? Is that Tara Calico. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. How did it all start?

Listen. My name is Michelle Dole. I am Tara Calico's sister, and I've been searching for her since September 20th, 1988. We lived in a town called Belen, New Mexico. It's a small town. You never were concerned about your neighbors or letting your kids go out and play. Tara was a very active person. She had been her entire life. From the time she was little, she was in peewee cheerleading.

She did softball. She was part of the ski club. She loved playing tennis. Tara is a sophomore at the University of New Mexico and enjoys riding her bike on the same route almost every day. She would ride 17 miles out and 17 miles back. It was a very isolated area, and it was very serene.

It was time to herself. But on the morning of September 20, 1988, something goes wrong. She told her mom that she was going to go out for her normal bike ride and that she'd be back because she was going to go play tennis with her boyfriend. But she never made it back. What happened to Tara Calico? She did not just disappear into thin air. Again, I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us. You were just hearing her sister, Michelle Dole, with our friends at ID. Let me introduce

you an all-star panel. Joining me, the former Montour County District Attorney, former president of the Pennsylvania District Attorney's Association, Bob Buehner. Dr. Jory Croson, psychologist, faculty, St. Leo University, consultant and author of SOS Stop Officer Suicide. Dr. Tim Gallagher, the medical examiner for the entire state of Florida. You can find me at path care med.com. Not only that lecturer, university of Florida medical school, forensic science and founder and host of the international forensic medicine death investigation conference, Cheryl McCollum founder and director of the Cold Case Research Institute, forensic expert, and you can find her at coldcasecrimes.org. But first, to Melinda Escobel, podcaster, filmmaker.

You can find her at taracalico.com. She's the creator of Vanished, the Tara Calico investigation. To all of you, thank you for being with us. Melinda Escobel, what do we know about Tara Calico as a person other than she would take a 17-mile bike ride and she used the same route every day, which I advise strongly against in a new book, don't be a victim. You got to change up your route, be it walking, jogging, biking. You have to.

Tell me what we know about her as a person. Well, it was more like a 34-mile bike ride. Yeah, I guess so. 17 out and 17 back. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. So she was previously in an accident and she had, you know, been in physical therapy and that was kind of the beginning of this physical fitness craze that she adopted. And, you know, she was very conscious of her body.

She was an exercise fanatic and, you know, after she would go bike riding, then she would go running, or then she would go play tennis. So she was very physically fit, very active. She worked at the bank. She went to school full time. So she was a very structured young lady. Always had her time scheduled out ahead of time. Very sweet girl, too. Very sweet. A good friend um everybody loved her everyone thought she was so beautiful and you know very popular and melinda you were

a friend of tara's correct correct yes we got to know each other when i was in junior high in marching band she was also in the marching marching band and that's how we originally knew each other and we got closer on a specific trip that we went to compete in Arizona. What instrument did she play? I played the clarinet and at that time she was a fly girl, but then she went on to play the flute and then she went into the trombone section later. So she had moved around, but when we met, she was a fly girl. So very talented. What type of accident was she in? She had gone to either, it was either

homecoming or prom. I don't remember which one, but she, her date had been drinking and there was an accident and she was injured. You know, Sharon McCollum, I'm hearing, I'm really drinking from the fire hydrant right now. I'm hearing Mel I'm really drinking from the fire hydrant right now, hearing Melinda Escobel speaking because there's so much information, it's hard to take it all in at once. So this is a young girl, just 19 years old when she goes missing, who was devoted to physical activity, number one, but to her job, she had a schedule she always followed. And to a fault, when you take the same route, and this is not about victim shaming or blaming the victim. This is about predators out there that see a young, beautiful girl taking the same 34 mile bike ride every day. That's a danger, but I'm hearing she worked at a bank. She was in school there. That really widens the pool of

suspects. Oh, it definitely does. So again, the route she took, it looks like she took one because it was less traveled by automobiles and it was like a straight shot out to these railroad tracks. And that's where she would turn around and come back. So she probably took it because she thought it was safer from vehicles. But again, Cheryl McCollum, right there, right there. Railroad tracks. Now, hold on just a moment, Cheryl McCollum. I remember running in upstate New York. It wasn't at near my apartment where I lived in Manhattan and I was running and I ran and I ran and I ran. And then suddenly something came over me. I was running alongside train tracks in the middle of nowhere.

And I went, wow, this is everything I tell everybody else not to do. I just got a horrible feeling and I turned around and went back. So when you say a safer route, I don't know if hanging out down by the train tracks is really a safe area, Cheryl. Well, let me be clear. I didn't mean safer as far as somebody that might kidnap her. I meant safer in her mind from traffic where she might have an accident and get hit. Yes, that I see. I understand that. So what was her job at the bank, Melinda Escobel? She worked, they had a basement in the where they were counting me i

know that she would deliver money to the different branches i think she had like several jobs over there um but i they had you know she would get promoted or whatever um so i think she like started counts and doing some kind of counting in the basement then they moved her to delivering cash to the different branches so there was interaction with other people at like at least two or three different branches within the valencia county area so there you go right there bob buter joining me he knows his way around a courtroom former montauk county district attorney um bob she is exposed to so many different people so many different men because you know whoever took her is a man. Sorry, guys on the panel.

But that's like looking for a needle in a haystack. Well, I'm not so sure it is, Nancy, because Berlin, New Mexico, is a very small town. And it's kind of in the middle of nowhere. The last census population had it belated about 7,000 people. Oh gosh, you're totally right. You're totally and completely right. Go ahead. So this is a place where there's one high school that everybody in the community attends either as a student or a family member, and whether it's cheering the high school football team. This is a community that's pretty well isolated in New Mexico itself, which, as we know, is pretty outside of a couple cities, very sparsely populated. So the group of people that she interacts with, whether in the bank or passing her on this roadway where she rides her bike, is quite a small number.

You know, you're absolutely right. And typically, that's one of my very first questions. Tell me about the area. But you're right. That is a very low population. Even though she's traveling from bank to bank as part of her job. That's still a very minor suspect pool. Cheryl, jump in. It's a very small suspect pool.

Again, Nancy, the route she took is pretty off the beaten path, but so is her town. So this is not somewhere where people travel through from one big city to another big city. It's kind of off by itself. It's beautiful, but there's a lot of desert. There's a lot of open space, but you know, it's not like she's going to meet a whole lot of people outside that very tight-knit community. crime stories with nancy grace guys we are talking about the disappearance of tara calico a teen girl just 19 years old who goes missing uh Melinda, doesn't she go missing on the bike ride? Yeah, she does. She went missing approximately between 1130 and 1140. I've done a lot of data sets. I've ridden her. I rode her bike route on my bike to get an idea of what it was like, like several times. We have 14 witnesses along the route who saw her,

and these include people who came forward back then and made witness statements and then people who have heard my podcast and contacted me. So we have identified 14 people who saw her on the road. Guys, take a listen to our friend Colton Schoen at KOB TV4. The last photo taken of her, the day before she went missing. In these never-before-seen documents from the case file, Michelle shows us a timeline of Tara's day on September 20, 1988. At 9.30 a.m., she left for her ride.

She was last seen by a woman named Annie between 11.15 a.m. and noon. Her Boston cassette tape was found near mile marker 16. And I just thought, you know, she was coming back. Like there was no doubt in my mind. Like we just hadn't figured out where she was yet. Determined, Michelle and Tara's high school friend Melinda Escobel are seeking justice for Tara. She was very fun loving. She liked to laugh. Conducting their own investigation, going through hundreds of uncovered documents themselves. I think we have a general understanding of what happened. I just think some of the details are missing.

Just a few of the details that we would like to learn. Back to you, Melinda Escobel. Was her bike recovered? So that's interesting. The bike has been seen in many different places. We had to do a separate link chart for the bike has been seen in many different places we had to do a separate link chart for the bike I understand that it was originally found in Mountaineer by the Torrance County Sheriff's Department it was transferred to Valencia County and went missing from evidence and then somehow it made its way back into Valencia County and then went missing

again. So this is the bike that has been everywhere and nowhere. So right now the bike is not in an evidence locker somewhere? No, it's gone missing again. Why in the world would anybody get rid of a piece of evidence that valuable? And if that is, in fact, her bike, where did you say it was first found, and how far away was that from her bike route? So it was found between Mount Neer, right outside of Mount Neer, which is a little over 60 miles from Belen. And there were also pieces of clothing found, like a bra, underwear, and a shoe. Was that taken into property?

That was taken in by Torrance County Sheriff's Department. And what I was told is that there was paperwork, and that evidence was transferred to Valencia County. But that paperwork is nowhere to be found. And neither is the evidence? Correct. The bra, panties, and shoe are missing as well. Guys, take a listen to our cut aid, our friends at ID. Tara leaves at 9.30 a.m.

Tara actually did tell my mom that morning that if I'm not back by noon, come looking for me. It was kind of just like checking in and letting you know this is what I'm doing today. See you later. I believe it was about 12.05, my mother realized that she hadn't been back yet. She jumped in her vehicle and went to go look for Tara, expected to find her walking on the side of the road with her bike.

She drove all the way out as far as the 14 miles goes to the train tracks where she would turn around and come back and didn't find her. She thought, well, maybe I just missed her. You know, there wasn't the same technology that there is nowadays. There wasn't cell phones. There wasn't even pagers. It's not like Tara to do something different than what she said she's going to do.

Panicked, Tara's mom calls Tara's boyfriend and police. This wasn't a town where there was crime. Something had to have happened. Something did happen to Tara Calico. Melinda Esquivel joining us. The creator and star of Vanish, the Tara Calico investigation. And you can find her at MelindaEscobel.com. Melinda, when she was last spotted, was she on her way back home?

Or was she still on her way away from home? She was on her way back home or was she still on her way away from home? She was on her way back home. She was about a mile and a half from the house and she was last being cresting a hill by the vineyard. And that's, that's where they saw her last, you know, the, these four hunters, um, who were riding into town that they looked, they had pulled over to the side of the road to unload their muzzleloading guns, and they had actually passed Tara on the way previously, and they had tried to pull into a place to unload the guns, but there was a truck there staring at something ahead.

They didn't know what it was, they he was kind of blocking the entrance. So they pulled out instead of stopping there, pulled out and went down further to unload their guns and they unloaded their guns. And when they pulled back out, the driver looked back and saw Tara cresting the hill. that was pulled over watching Tara? Yes. An old mid-50s truck with two men in it, and they were staring directly ahead. And when they passed Tara, the guys thought, oh, that's probably what they were staring at. Maybe that's their daughter. Were they ever identified, the people in the truck? So, yes, there was a witness who identified one of the drivers back in 1988.

And we have witness statements that put four other boys on that road. And they've been identified, correct? Yes. To Dr. Tim Gallagher, medical examiner joining us out of Florida, if the bike had been processed correctly to determine if, in fact, it was Tara's bike, what would you have expected to find on the bike? Well, certainly, you know, you would have to inspect the bike for DNA evidence. You would have to look on the handlebars because that's obviously where her hands would be. And then her DNA from her skin on her hands would transfer to the handlebars.

You could also look for other populations of DNA or someone else's DNA on the bike as well, and hopefully that can help you develop a list of suspects or at least eliminate somebody from the suspect list. Take a listen to more from our friends at ID. He said he saw somebody run from the front of the truck into the passenger side and jump in. And that's when he saw Tara on her bike and had to hear a phone call. And she wasn't even aware of the truck behind her. It didn't seem.

Over the next five days, a vast search started happening throughout day and night. We took a search of horseback on foot, with dogs. dogs to boats out on the Rio Grande River which is nearby we contacted Albuquerque resources and got ROTC students out there to help us search on foot in the days following her disappearance the Sheriff's Department releases a sketch of the driver but it generates no leads Tara's family is desperate Tara became like a myth, like don't go out there or, you know, same thing will happen to you that happened to Tara Calico. And also take a listen to our cut 10 from The Missing at ID. Two and a half miles south of

Rio communities are some tire tracks that look spun out on the side of the road. It looked like there was a scuffle, but you could clearly see the bike marks and the tire marks from the vehicle. There's a broken piece of a yellow walk bin, which she was reported to have had a walk bin when she went on her bike ride. To find the exact cassette player that she had, it was bright yellow.

It was very distinctive. It felt like Tara was smart enough to leave a trail of things. The search also turns up a cassette tape. The tape itself was also found along Highway 47 within three miles of Rio communities. Har's mom stated that it belonged to her daughter. Multiple witnesses come forward,

all describing a similar scene. They'd seen a girl riding her bike and a Ford pickup truck trailing behind. If there's a car running half on the road, half off, 10 miles an hour in a 55 mile an hour zone in a remote location, and it's being reported sometimes it's 20 feet directly behind, it certainly shows an indication that whoever was operating that Ford pickup truck was intent on the young lady riding that bicycle. And it really had to be someone with a truck or a van to get the bike in it quickly and efficiently

before they're spotted right there on the road. Cheryl McCollum, there are tire tracks, there are bike tracks, there are bits of broken yellow plastic that match her recording device, her tape player. That's the crime scene no question and this is a young woman again that would ride 34 miles on a bike but you know then go play tennis so she would have been able to fight her assailant nancy i would want to know was there any injury to that bike in other words did they bump her off the road? Is that how they got her stopped? To you, Melinda Escobel, do you feel confident that the bike that was found

is in fact Tara's? I do. And I'm going to tell you to answer her question. A bike after, you know, like a couple of years later was found on a property. There was this guy who lived on a large property and a guy came to his house asking if he had any scrap metal and he said, well, go into the yard and if you find anything, you can have it. So this guy goes into the yard and he finds a pink bike buried on the property and he asked the guy if he could dig it up and take it. And the guy says, yeah, go ahead. They dig it up. It was a pink bike and it looked like it had been hit. And so the guy took it. This guy hadn't been in Valencia County for a while, so he had no idea about Tara. He called his brother who was the property owner and said, hey, you know, this is

what happened. And they found a pink bike on the property that looked like he'd been in an accident. And his brother said, a pink bike, that's what the Calico girl was riding. And so they immediately went to the police to report it, but they could no longer find where the guy, so the bike kind of disappeared. I thought you told me it was taken into police property, then transferred, then lost. Right. It was lost, and then it was found on a property in Vigipa, the Vigipa area, and then picked up and taken out, and I guess somewhere over the years it was found again and brought into custody and disappeared from custody again. To Dr. Jory Cross, I don't know, you can't unravel the mystery surrounding the pink bike. But let me talk to you, Dr. Jory, about when people are exercising,

especially with earbuds or a headset on, or they're listening to music, they're really in a zone. They're not really aware of what's going on around them. I just confronted this with Karina Vetrano, a gorgeous and brilliant young woman who was jogging with earbuds in in Long Island. Her father, Phil, former firefighter, confirms that she did have earbuds in the day that she was attacked and murdered. So you're in a zone. You're not thinking that any harm can befall you. You know, that's part of the enjoyment runners have is getting in that zone, especially long

distant runners, you know, in a 17 mile bike ride out and 17 mile back, you're definitely going to develop a, you know, getting in that zone. You're just going to get into the flow of things, it's called. And you're going to be oblivious to anything going on. Plus, with the ear pods, that's, you know, that cuts down a lot of the auditorial coming in, especially a car coming up behind you or somebody, you know, hollering at you or talking to you, trying to get your attention.

And what does it tell us about the perp that was so brazen they would actually kidnap her off a public road? You know, one of the things I noticed was, and this goes for predators and stalkers, you know, they really like routine because, you know, they can stalk, they can hunt, they can predict, you know, the behavior, and then they can, you know, look for the vulnerabilities of when to attack. And that's all part of their psychic buildup. And knowing that she's on that ride out in that distance, you know, the vulnerability is just, you know, it's right there for them. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Guys, we were talking about the disappearance of Tara Calico.

Jump in, Cheryl McCollum. I think a significant thing is that the assailant took the bike with him. In other words, she was the target. She's what he wanted. He took that bike to ensure they wouldn't know a place to start looking for her. He wasn't counting on the tire tracks. But again, he didn't want them to know that it was a hit and run right here. So he did everything that would benefit him, and he took the extra time to do that.

Man, he really did. He must have disabled her completely when she was hit and bumped off the road because she couldn't run for it. The bike, which suffered damage, was taken away at the same time. And then a very unexpected twist in the case. Take a listen to our cut five from I.D. On June 15, 1989, a Polaroid was found placed down in a convenience store at Port St. Joe, Florida. A lady coming out of the store who was doing business there, she noticed it, picked it up out of curiosity. Current Affairs airs a photograph of a lady and a young man tied up,

mouths are duct taped in the back of a van. I have pictures that look identical. If I had to say yes or no, I would say yes. Right now, we're just trying to disseminate this picture in hopes that somebody can identify these two children. FBI comes down and then becomes the lead investigative agency for this and a large-scale media frenzy. America's Most Wanted, Oprah Winfrey Show, and we get flooded with a ton of tips, a ton of information from all over the United States. That's right. All the way across the country at Port St. Joe, Florida, a lady is coming out of a store and notices a photo

on the ground, picks it up. Is there a horrifying image of Tara Calico bound and her mouth duct taped in the back of a van? Melinda Escobel joining me, the creator of Vanish, the Tara Calico investigation. What does the photo depict? The photo depicts a young teenage girl and young boy bounding gag in the back of a Toyota cargo van. You've looked at it, I'm sure. She's wearing a gray T-shirt and black running shorts. The little boy has on a white t-shirt. Do you remember Tara having anything like that outfit? No, I don't. And to be frank with you, I don't believe it's her. Is this photo Tara Calico? And if so, who's the

little boy also pictured bound and duct taped at the mouth in the back of the van? I mean, Bob Buhner, this is a type of photo that's very incriminating. And how did it get all the way to Port St. Joe, Florida, if this is her? If it's her, then you've got some person who is abducting people across the country, and it incredibly widens the list of suspects to thousands and thousands of men, frankly. in uh faculty st leo university dr jory this adds another layer to the psychopathy of the perp because you now have a guy that's not just grabbing her to rape her there's also obviously a murder but he's taking photos of her i remember when that photo was found because port st joe's like 20 miles from where i live and uh yeah yeah, that was really scary because then you're starting to think, well, who's the boy now? You know, was he, I remember looking locally, you know, all the law enforcement were involved trying to find the boy.

Where was he missing from? So, yeah, it widens the whole birth of your investigation. So is this photo, this very disturbing photo of a girl who resembles Tara and a young boy bound and gagged in the back of a van, is this really Tara? Take a listen to Nancy Laughlin, KOAT7. At one point a year after her disappearance, a photo of a little boy and a young woman who looked like Tara, both bound and duct taped, was found in the parking lot of a store in Florida. We examined it and scientifically looked at it. We felt pretty confident saying that we don't think that's Tara Calico. In recent years, huge rewards were offered for information about Tara's case. Cold case detectives from multiple agencies have even taken bulldozers and cadaver dogs out to areas where they believe Tara might have been buried.

They go out and check an area out and see if there's any kind of hit with the dog, and we have not had any results. Thirty years later, she is not forgotten, her case still generating national attention. In June, an article about Tara's disappearance was featured in People magazine. Every little piece can make a difference. woman out of Alaska who found a SIM card at a store, outside a store on the sidewalk, as I recall. She picked up the SIM card to figure out who it belonged to to return it. She plugged it in, and it was of a woman being assaulted and murdered. And she texted to the cops and they manage, believe it or not, to identify what happened based on the background in the hotel room where the woman was attacked.

I've also had a case like that built around a little girl who was assaulted horribly. And she was ultimately identified based on the background and the bedspread and the wallpaper in a hotel room. So how much can we learn from this van photo? You can learn a ton. Looking at the sheets and the comforter, somebody might recognize that combination. It's really unusual. You can see the female victim's legs really well. So you can see that there are no tattoos. There's no bruising. There's no cuts. She's not bound by her ankles. And in the little boy's face, he's also on the bed laying down, but he almost looks like he's in more fear, whereas the

female, to me, looks like she has an understanding of what's happening, if that makes sense. Now, it's my understanding that Tara's mother believes that is Tara, based on a scar on her leg, similar to one of Tara's. Correct. She does. And it does look like her a lot. I don't think you could see that photograph and not want to at least somehow, you know, determine for sure that's her. And I know the FBI, as well as Scotland Yard, has worked on the photograph. And what do they think, Cheryl? The FBI says it's not her, and Scotland Yard believes that it is. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Dr. Tim Gallagher, if you can identify a body based on bones and teeth alone,

and here we've got a photo of a girl and Scotland Yard disagrees with the FBI. Well, right. So the identification via the photograph is not an exact science as determined by two places disagree. You know, so it depends on the education and the experience of the person analyzing the photographs. You know, but there are parts of this case that could use further investigation. For instance, when the bicycle was discovered and it was damaged, you know, where was the damage? Was the damage on the back part of the bike indicating it was struck from behind? Or is the damage on the back part of the bike uh indicating it was struck from behind or is the damage on the front part of the bike indicating it may have been run off the road and hit a tree you know so um uh could evidence from the bike for instance paint chips uh from the bike that can go under forensic analysis and you can actually determine the make and model of the vehicle that struck that bicycle based just on the paint chips.

So, you know, that loss of evidence is very detrimental in this case, obviously, but more so than we would initially have thought. And Bob Buhner, former Montauk County District Attorney, it happens all the time. I remember prosecuting in inner-city Atlanta all felonies. The district attorney called me down to his office, and I didn't know what it was about. He wanted me to retry a case that had been tried when I was a first-year law student. And I, of course, took it. It had gone all the way up to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals and been sent back down. You know why?

Because there were interlocking statements by two co-defendants, and they brought the statements in. So, which is a big, big no-no. It is. Long story short, I went to the evidence locker. Guess what I had? I had one x-ray and I had a hat that said, kiss my bass. That's all the evidence that was left. Nobody had tampered with it. Nobody stole anything. The evidence, the property room had moved a couple of times since this case was tried the first time and it got lost and it was never found. I had to completely rebuild the case. So we're coming down and yes, it's wrong. Of course it's wrong. But property's lost every day.

The issue is, was it properly processed before it was lost? And were photographs taken of the bicycle when it was first found and delivered to police custody? What detail of the photographs are available and can be analyzed. Yes. And, you know, Nancy, when you go to court, you present the evidence, it gets turned over to the court reporter. Hopefully she doesn't lose it and give it back to the police or it ends up in the prosecutor's office and they forget to send it back to the evidence room in the police department. There's a whole lot of chain of custody that can get and does get interrupted. To Melinda Escobel joining us, the creator of Vanish,

the Tara Calico investigation, what about the guys in the truck? Okay. So several of the guys were young guys that we all knew from school. One of them was in love with her and had asked her out on a date. And she had declined that invitation. And from what I understand, was emotional about it and, you know, was not okay with it and wanted to teach her a lesson. He was one of the people in the truck. And so they were following her and taunting her throughout her ride.

They were taunting her on the way out and they waited for her to come back around and they were taunting her on the way back. And from an ex-girlfriend that came forward, what we were told is that they had, they were catcalling her at one point inviting her to a party you know just tormenting her and she did have the music in here but I do believe that she could have heard them because there are different witnesses that say they saw her face stressed on the way going out not necessarily way back but on the way going out, not necessarily on the way back, but on the way going out, her face looked already stressed. And, um, and then they, you know, she was last seen on the

hill and we believe she was hit after that. And she took off running to the left because there was a fence on the right. And that is where they, um, they got her that, you know, she ran, they caught up with her too, uh, were in she ran. They caught up with her, too. Were in the truck following to catch up with her. One on foot. They caught her. And then two other boys showed up, and that's where they raped her. And made a comment, something to the effect of, if you don't want to be with him, you can be with all of us.

And she got up, and she was fighting for her life and said that she was going to tell the police. And that's when they took her back down and one of the boys stabbed her pretty much to death. And then that's when other people got involved, when they started moving her in the body. Melinda, if you know all of this, then what is the district attorney waiting on? Exactly. That's a great question. What I can tell you is the investigation has been really busy since last fall. They've been aggressively questioning people because I've been contacted by those people and asked if they should talk to the FBI or the sheriff's office. And so I and then they call me to tell me what happened after.

So I know they're aggressively interviewing people. They've threatened one of my sources. And to be honest, it feels like it's not going in a direction it should be. But I guess we'll just have to wait and see. If you have any information on the disappearance of Tara Calico, let me remind you there is a $20,000 reward. $20,000 for information on her disappearance. Please dial this number 1-800-843-5678. 1-800-THE-LOST. 1-800-843-5678.

We pray that justice unfolds. Nancy Grace Crime Story signing off. Goodbye, friend. This is an iHeart Podcast.