Crime Weekly - S2 Ep92: Tara Calico: The Girl on the Bike (Part 1)

Episode Date: September 23, 2022

At around 9:30 on the morning of September 20th, 1988, 19-year-old Tara Calico left her New Mexico home and set out for her daily 17-mile bike ride along highway 47. Before leaving, she playfully asked her mother, Patty Doel, to come and get her if she wasn’t back by noon, because Tara had a lot of other things to do that day, and she needed to be kept on schedule. Tara did not return by noon, in fact, Tara Calico would never come home again, leaving behind multiple eyewitnesses who had seen her that morning, and very few clues as to what had happened to her, including pieces of her walkman and suspicious-looking bike tracks. Tara’s disappearance is considered to be an enduring mystery, but reportedly for those who live in Tara’s hometown of Belen New Mexico, it’s not a mystery at all. In fact, according to Melinda Esquibel, a former classmate of Tara’s and podcast host, “What makes the town charming is the same thing that makes it kind of scary. That you will go to great lengths to protect your own." Try our coffee!! - www.CriminalCoffeeCo.com Become a Patreon member -- > https://www.patreon.com/CrimeWeekly Shop for your Crime Weekly gear here --> https://crimeweeklypodcast.com/shop Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcast Website: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com Instagram: @CrimeWeeklyPod Twitter: @CrimeWeeklyPod Facebook: @CrimeWeeklyPod Episode Ads: Download your new favorite getaway, BEST FIENDS, for FREE today on the App Store or Google Play. You’ll even get $5 worth of in-game rewards when you reach Level 5. That’s friends, without the r—Best Fiends. GO TO CEREBRAL DOT COM SLASH CRIMEWEEKLY FOR 65% OFF YOUR FIRST MONTH. THATS JUST A TOTAL OF $30 TO GET STARTED. JOIN CEREBRAL TODAY ON THEIR MISSION TO MAKE QUALITY MENTAL HEALTH CARE ACCESSIBLE AND AFFORDABLE FOR ALL. Go to HelloFresh dot com slash crimeweekly65 and use code crimeweekly65 for 65% off plus free shipping!” Download the FREE Upside App and use promo code private to get $5 or more cash back on your first purchase of $10 or more. That’s $5 or more cash back on your first purchase of $10 or more, using promo code, private. For a limited time get 83% off of a 2-year plan plus 3 extra months for free at Surfshark.deals/crimeweekly.  The special offer makes your subscription just $2.21 per month! Go to surfshark.deals/crimeweekly and use code crimeweekly to protect your online privacy today.

At around 9.30 on the morning of September 20th, 1988, 19-year-old Tara Calico left her New Mexico home and set out for her daily 17-mile bike ride along Highway 47. Before leaving, she playfully asked her mother, Patty Doyle, to come and get her if she wasn't back by noon, because Tara had a lot of other things to do that day, and she needed to be kept on schedule. Tara did not return by noon. In fact, Tara Calico would never come home again, leaving behind multiple eyewitnesses who had seen her that morning and very few clues to what had happened to her, including pieces of her Walkman and suspicious-looking bike tracks. Tara's disappearance is considered to be an enduring mystery, but reportedly,

for those who live in Tara's hometown of Belen, New Mexico, it's not a mystery at all. In fact, according to Melinda Esquivel, a former classmate of Tara's and podcast host, quote, what makes the town charming is the same thing that makes it kind of scary, that you will go to great lengths to protect your own, end quote. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Crime Weekly. I'm Stephanie Harlow. And I'm Derek Levasseur. So, you know, we're diving into a new case today. That's always exciting. And I talked to Derek about this case before I started writing it. And I said, have you ever heard of Tara Calico? And he said, no. And then I mentioned something

about the case that I'm pretty sure everybody's heard of, even if you don't attach it to Tara Calico. And he said, oh, yeah, I know what you're talking about. So I'm definitely excited to get into this with Derek. And if you've ever read any of those online lists, you know, like top 10 mysterious true crime cases or some other basic title like that, Tara Calico's name will usually appear. Her disappearance is one of New Mexico's oldest and most lingering cold cases.

It's been featured on The Oprah Show, 48 Hours, Unsolved Mysteries, and America's Most Wanted. She's known as the girl on the bike, and most of the screen time her case gets is centered around a disturbing Polaroid picture found in the parking lot of a Port St. Joe, Florida grocery store. A picture that hasn't ever been proven to be connected to Tara or her disappearance, but because of the shocking scene that it portrays, the media has latched onto it. But Tara was a real person, a young woman who had a lot going for her, a lot to look forward to. And so to set the stage, I want to talk about the people and the place because

all of the details will help us to get a better understanding of what exactly happened here. So I actually covered Tara's case over three years ago on YouTube. It was actually one of the first true crime cases I did. And I remember feeling, you know, very connected to her because I thought we shared something in common. And then I became fixated on the case because the further I got into it, the more obvious it became to me what had happened. And it feels like there's some seriously nefarious stuff going on with this case. I'll just leave it at that. And I'm really looking forward to getting your input on this one because I think there's definitely something nefarious happening.

There's definitely like a cover up happening here. And I want to see if you kind of get the same impression as we go through this. So Tara Lee Calico was born on February 28th, 1969 to her parents, Patty and David Calico. Tara's parents would later get divorced. And when Tara was six, her mother remarried a man named John Doyle, who would become a strong and close father figure to Tara. Between the two of them, Patty and John had five children from their previous relationships, and Tara was Patty's youngest. Patty already had two sons before Tara. When Patty was pregnant with her daughter, she reread Gone with the Wind, leading her to name the baby that she was carrying,

Tara Lee. Tara after the fictional plantation that the main character, Scarlett O'Hara, lived on, and Lee after Vivian Lee, who was the actress that played Scarlett O'Hara. Although her pregnancy with Tara was a difficult one, Tara ended up being a perfect child. She was well-behaved, smart, kind to animals, and she was actually really self-sufficient, a character trait that she would carry with her for the rest of her life. Her stepfather, John, remembered that even at the age of six, Tara would wake up, pull a stool around the kitchen to make a pitcher of orange juice, cook an egg, and toast some bread for her breakfast all by herself. Tara was also self-driven, motivated, and mature beyond her years. As a child, she learned to play the violin and

speak French. She sold homemade paperweights door to door, and she began playing tennis from a very early age. And when she got a little older, she always had a job, whether it was bagging groceries, serving tables, or running errands for the local bank. After a car crash in high school left Tara with pain and injuries, she became very focused on getting better through physical therapy and physical activity. And Tara was known to be incredibly organized, schedule-oriented, and constantly on the go. She was the kind of person who had a lot to do and didn't want to waste a minute of her life. Her stepfather John said, quote, she didn't have time to fool around. There was just so much she wanted to fit into a she got her bike ride in that morning because this was a normal routine for her, and it was important for her to remain active throughout

the day. But she also had a date to play tennis with her boyfriend of six weeks, Jack Cole, and she was supposed to meet him at 1 p.m. On top of all of that, Tara had a class at the University of New Mexico's Albuquerque campus at 4 p.m., where she was a sophomore majoring in psychology. When she woke up that morning, she penned a quick list of what she had to do that day and what she needed for those activities. Tennis clothes, racket, balls, school books, and purse. Tara then popped a Boston cassette tape into her Walkman and left the house for her bike ride, asking her mother to come and get her if she wasn't home by noon because she wanted to make sure she wasn't late meeting her boyfriend Jack for tennis. Now that day, Tara actually rode her mother's pink Huffy 10-speed mountain bike because her own bike had gotten a flat tire the

week prior. And Tara had walked her bike seven miles home when it had gotten a flat tire the week prior. And Tara had walked her bike seven miles home when it had gotten a flat tire. She refused several rides on the way. So she was walking her bike home seven miles and she wouldn't take a ride from anybody when her bike got a flat tire. And the following week, the weather had been cold and rainy. So Tara hadn't been able to go out and ride her bike. And on the weekend, she'd gone to Aspen, Colorado with some friends. So this morning was actually the first time Tara had been able to get out and ride for a week, and she was really looking forward to it because when weather allowed, this was what she did every single morning, 17 miles. That's impressive, 17 miles on a bike,

19 years old. Every single day. Again, after it. Tara's normal route started at her home in Rio Communities, which today is a complete city of its own. But in 1988, it was a smaller planned community that would have sort of been a part of Belen, New Mexico. Belen is located about 35 miles away from Albuquerque, and it is the second most populous city in New Mexico, earning itself the nickname Hub City because of its central location in the state, with access to the railroad, the interstate highway, and Valencia County's only airport. Valencia County is larger than Rhode Island, but in 1988 it was only inhabited by 45,000 people, whereas Rhode Island is home to over a million people. That's because it's in the mountains and the desert. There's a lot of open areas, plains, all of that, and it can get very isolated. Tara would leave Rio communities

and turn left onto Highway 47, riding down to a set of railroad tracks where she would then turn around and ride back home. The entire trip would usually take her a few hours. Highway 47 is over 60 miles long, cutting through three counties, Valencia, Socorro, and Bernalillo. It's only a two-lane highway with one lane going northbound and one going southbound, and at certain times of the week or day, Highway 47 gets pretty busy because a lot of people use it to commute to Albuquerque. Certain areas of the highway are more populated with houses or businesses, but other areas are very rural, middle-of-nowhere type locations, and Tara's daily bike ride would bring her through

both the busier parts of the highway and the more isolated ones. When Tara was not home by noon, her mother, Patty Dole, got in her car and went looking for her to pick her up and bring her back home. Before leaving, Patty woke up her husband, John, who worked overnights and told him what she was doing. Both Patty and John worked for the Santa Fe Railroad. It was actually how they had met. Patty had worked as an assistant train master for 27 years, and John had been with the railroad for 34 years as a conductor. Because Patty had woken John up,

John was able to pick up the phone when it rang at 12.15, and on the phone was Tara's boyfriend, Jack Cole, calling to confirm their tennis plans. John told Jack that Patty had gone to grab Tara and he should call back. Patty Dole jumped in her car to drive Tara's normal route, thinking that by this time, Tara would be on her way home and she wouldn't be far. But when Patty had driven the whole 17 miles back and forth and didn't see Tara on the highway at all, she obviously got worried. Patty knew Tara's route very well because she often went on these morning bike rides with her daughter, but Patty had been passing on the bike rides since a

few months prior when she had felt that there was a motorist following them, and it freaked her out. This incident had prompted Patty to tell her daughter to bring pepper spray or mace along with her on the bike rides, but Tara laughed and told her mother she was overreacting. By 12.35 p.m., Patty was pulling back into Rio communities and checking the garage of her home to see if Tara had somehow slipped past her, but there was no bike in the garage. Patty was concerned because she knew her daughter very well. Tara was a heavily structured person whose schedule was like the Bible to her. She would not have strayed from her normal route, especially on a day when she knew she had to be

back by noon to make it to tennis with Jack and to make it to her classes on time. Once Patty saw Tara's bike was not in the garage, she drove around Rio Communities and then to the Manzano Expressway, but still there was no sign of Tara riding a hot pink bike with the sounds of Boston playing in her ears. Patty returned home to check the garage once more at 1 10 p.m. and then she woke up her husband John to tell him that Tara was missing. Five minutes later, Tara's boyfriend Jack Cole called back and Tara's parents tell him that Tara was missing. Five minutes later, Tara's boyfriend, Jack Cole, called back, and Tara's parents told Jack that Tara was missing. He told them he was on his way, and he hung up. Jack was at the Dole home by 1.30, at which point he called one of

Tara's closest friends, Bernard, who also had not seen or heard from her. Patty and Jack then drove to the gas station located at the corner of Highway 47 in Goodman, but the employees there hadn't seen Tara either. At 1.45 p.m., Patty and Jack were back at the house, and Bernard showed up on his bike. Patty and Jack then once again drove down Tara's normal bike route to look for her. This time they actually drove past the railroad tracks that Tara would usually turn around at, but there was still no sign of Tara or her bike. Patty and Jack turned around and began driving back towards Rio Communities, but they stopped at the south entrance of John F. Kennedy Campgrounds because they saw three young men drinking beer next to a white pickup truck with a homemade

camper shell over the truck bed. They asked the three young men if they'd seen a girl on her bike and the men said that they'd been parked in this spot since 11 a.m. and they hadn't seen Tara. But Patty did describe them as being defensive. They were drinking, they were like sitting on the truck of the bed, and it seemed like they didn't really want to answer her questions. And they seemed sort of defensive and guarded. We're going to take a quick break and continue on with the timeline when we get back. and Jack were back at the house and calling local hospitals in the Valencia County Sheriff's Office. Patty spoke to Officer Kirby, who agreed that Tara would not disappear voluntarily, and he said he would be right over to take a statement. So Patty stayed home to wait for Officer Kirby and her husband John, along with Tara's boyfriend Jack and Tara's friend Bernard. They went back out in John's vehicle to see if the

three boys and the pickup were still parked at the entrance of the campgrounds. They were, and this time John actually got out of his car and approached them to talk to them, and he said they were incredibly defensive. He said they'd been sitting on the tailgate when he approached, and they sort of physically moved their bodies in order to block the back of the truck where the license plate would be, as well as where the opening to that makeshift camper over the truck bed would be located. At this point, it was 3.30. The three young men were still by the entrance to the campgrounds, but they'd moved their truck. And when asked if they'd seen a girl riding a bike, they said they'd been there since 1130 and they hadn't seen any girl riding a bike. By 4 p.m., John, who is Tara's stepfather, Jack, who's Tara's boyfriend, and Bernard, who's Tara's friend, they were back at the house and Officer Kirby was there filling out a police report.

Officer Kirby and Patty, who is Tara's mother, then drove back down Highway 47, all the way past the railroad tracks and back, and at 4.30 when they passed the John F. Kennedy campgrounds, the three young men in their truck were still parked in that same spot. Tara Calico was then entered into the National Crime Information Center as a missing person within eight hours of her not returning home, and a search, including some law enforcement and volunteers, began for her that night. Patty, John, and many of Tara's friends were out with flashlights until two in the morning. It had been gray and overcast for much of the late morning and early afternoon on Tuesday, September 20th, but overnight the sky opened up and it poured. They did not find Tara or any sign

of her that evening. That sucks. That sucks that there was the inclement weather that came in because when you think about tire track from the bike, footprints, tire tread marks from possible suspect vehicles, all these different things that you may have in areas where they could kind of create an imprint, a lot of those things can get washed away from the weather. So this really is working against them at that point, because who knows what they would have found eventually, whether it was that night or the next morning, if it hadn't rained as heavy as it did. They actually did find some things the next morning. So an organized search began at 7 a.m. Wednesday morning, and this included the Valencia Sheriff's Department, the state police search and rescue team and other volunteers. But once again, the search efforts were hampered by heavy intermittent rains and strong winds, which was causing low visibility.

This was basically grounding any aircrafts that were out looking for signs of Tara from above. Two teams of bloodhounds from Socorro County were brought in and deputies went out on horseback and ATVs. Valencia County Sheriff Lawrence Romero Sr. told reporters that every man at his disposal was out there searching for Tara Calico. And he said, quote, we feel this is an involuntary disappearance. We understand from talking to her parents and friends that it is totally out of character for her to turn up missing. Everyone we talk to says Tara is dependent and reliable, and that's why we have cause to pull out all they're talking to her loved ones, they're talking to friends and they realize very quick the type of person they're dealing with. Then they look into things like, was she having any issues with the parents, with her boyfriend, anything that would make her want to run away? Was there any behavior on that morning that would suggest she was preparing to go somewhere for an extended period of time? Obviously, based on what you laid out,

her going on a bike ride, not really bringing anything other than her Walkman. It's very suggestive that she wasn't having any issues where she would feel like she has to run away. Then you also go into the fact of her as a person, how punctual she was, things that she had done in the past to make sure that she was always on time for everything, keeping notes, all that good stuff. This is completely out of character. So you're in a really, really tough spot here because as we know, the first 48 hours are absolutely critical. If you're to believe that she's been kidnapped, abducted, whatever you want to call it, wherever she is, there's a small window of opportunity where you can get her back before she's gone forever or killed. and so they really have to act fast and

that's why you have to bring in all everybody you can friends family law enforcement federal agencies you have to use all the tools you have at your disposal whether that's vehicles 1989 or 1988 there's a there's a limited amount of technology available at that time there's some stuff but when we think about i don't know i shouldn't be speaking out of my mouth here, but I don't believe that thermal imaging was probably a big thing at that point where they, even if they're up in the helicopter, they can use that type of technology to maybe locate someone who's hurt or anything in the mountains. So again, right now it's kind of like horseback. That's really what you got. And you've got to go act as fast as you can.

Yeah. So they did actually use thermal imaging for her, you know, heat seeking, they called it. Cause I was looking through the papers from that time and they said heat seeking. I would assume that that's the same thing. I wonder how good it was back then. Probably not great. And also your- Yeah, the flare technology. Your main concern with this area is that it is, it's New Mexico, you know, it's the desert.

It's like, it's like it's like no man's land half the places out there so that's the concern um that maybe but it's so weird because she's on a highway that's pretty well traveled so why would she be off the highway why would she be out in the desert or on the planes it wouldn't be because she voluntarily went there it would be because somebody brought her there and that that's the fear at this point. Because like you said, she's got a list laid out for what she has to do that day. She laid her tennis clothes out. She got her tennis balls and her racket ready. They were sitting there. This isn't somebody who ran away. Why would she do all those things if she wasn't planning to come back home? No. And I'm glad you mentioned the highway

again, because I know we haven't gotten there yet. And I'm sure as soon as this went out publicly, he's doing the police departments, doing TV interviews, whatever they're doing. I would have to imagine because it's a very well-traveled highway, you're going to have a lot of eyewitnesses, a lot of people who had seen Tara before her disappearance that may be able to narrow down the scope of where whatever happened to her happened and what may have taken place, possible suspect vehicles, registration plates, all that good stuff. So I'm interested to see what this case, it's kind of, again, like Asha degree, where it was a little different because it was in the middle of the night. This one is in the middle of the day. So you would think there'd be a lot more people on the road who could and would

see someone. I don't know how common it would be. I'm assuming there was a bike path, but I don't know how common it would be to have people riding their bike along the highway. Is that something that was normal? Was there a bike path that you kind of followed along that route? There wasn't a bike path. She just rode it, you know, like on the other side of the line. You know what I mean? Sure. Yep. Yep. On the other side of the line. So I'm assuming she wasn't the only one doing it, but as I'm driving on the highway, if I saw someone on a mountain bike riding, especially a hot pink mountain bike, it may be something if you're paying attention to the road, you would remember seeing. I don't know if you mentioned this before, what color hair did she

have? She has brown hair, but she's very distinctive because she's you know she's an attractive girl she has really long legs she's in great shape and yeah yeah she's riding a hot pink mountain bike on the highway which is you know once again very flat planed area so it's like you can see this this is not necessarily out of the ordinary, but she's going to stand out. And no less than 10 people saw her that morning. Okay, that makes sense. What clothing was she wearing? Did you mention that? So that's debated.

Most likely she was wearing white shorts with a green stripe up the side, a white T-shirt. She may have been wearing a red or an orange pullover sweater and white shoes with turquoise stripes. I can't believe I remember that off the top of my head. That's good. You're good. And why is it highly, why is it debated? What's, I would think that'd be pretty straightforward. So, right.

So they said she had left the house wearing a specific t-shirt because she worked for the bank um the bank in bellen and there was a shirt she had for like a fun run for the bellen first national bank and and all of that and they thought she was wearing that which was like a white t-shirt with writing on it they thought she was wearing that when she left and some people who were driving said they saw her wearing a white t-shirt but then later they found that t-shirt in her stuff. So it wasn't that t-shirt. So it could have been another white t-shirt, but other people saw her wearing like a pullover sweatshirt that was either red or dark orange. Okay. So either way, colorful, colorful clothing, attractive woman on a hot pink mountain bike. Like you just said, very obvious to

people passing by. It wasn't in the middle of the night. So you would expect a lot of people to have seen her along that stretch of highway. So I guess we'll dive into that, right? Is that coming up soon? We start talking about eyewitness statements. Yeah. And a lot of people who saw her that morning saw her every morning because they're commuting to work. She's riding her bike. So they'd be like, yeah, I don't know her name. I don't know who she is, but I always see this girl riding her bike in the morning on highway 47. Yeah. So that's a good point because if you have people who have seen her multiple times, they would know not only from the pictures that they're going to see of her after she's missing, they're going to be able to say, not only is that the girl that I saw on the morning of her

disappearance, but I've seen this woman multiple mornings. So I know who I'm looking at and I'm not mistaking her for someone else who happened to be in that area riding a mountain bike. I know this woman. I've seen her a bunch of times. That's the woman I saw on the morning of her disappearance. I'm sure about it, which is it's important. Exactly.

And as we're going through these eyewitness statements, you know, I'll keep saying like, oh, they saw a girl on a bike. And the only reason they're saying we saw a girl on a bike is because they don't know Tara's name. But without doubt, every single one of these people was seeing Tara that morning. So many of these people mentioned that Tara had her headphones on. She was focused and in the zone and she seemed to be oblivious to anything else that was going on around her. Specifically, she seemed to not know that a light-colored truck that many people had noticed appeared to be following her. Now, we're going to go over these eyewitness statements in a moment, but some of

these people were interviewed the day Tara went missing or the day after, while some of them did not come out until days, weeks, months, or even years later. And some claim they initially did contact the police with their information, but they were never asked to give an official statement. Some of these witnesses I'm not even going to tell you about until later in the case, so just keep that in mind. Reportedly, no less than 13 people saw Tara that morning, but there's only 10 witness statements on file.

What we need to know at this moment is the last reported sighting of Tara happened on Highway 47 between mile marker 15 and mile marker 17, just a few miles away from Rio communities, so she was headed back towards home. The next morning at 9 a.m. during the search for Tara, bicycle tracks were spotted about four miles south of Rio communities. Law enforcement said the tracks looked as if a bike had been pulled off to the side of the road and then put back onto the road as if someone had swerved suddenly, and the police followed these tracks about 200 yards off the road, where they found what they called signs of a scuffle and a cassette tape buried in the mud. It was a Boston tape, Tara's favorite band, the one she'd asked her mother to rewind for her earlier that morning, and the one she had popped into her Sony Walkman before leaving for her bike ride. The strange thing was these items were found on the south side of the highway, so it would be the opposite side of the highway than Tara would have been on if she was riding home. But when she was last seen, she was riding in the direction of home, which is very confusing. After a further search, the broken top of a Sony Walkman was also located

in this area and a few old Milwaukee beer cans. A little bit further up the road, they found more beer cans, an oil slick, and more tracks that looked as if a bike had been pushed off the road. The following Saturday, the cracked view window of a Walkman was found near the south entrance of John F. Kennedy campgrounds. There was also some more old Milwaukee beer cans found in that location. Real quick, and if I'm skipping around too much to say, we'll get to that, but is there any point on this highway, Highway 47, where if you're going one direction and whether you're a vehicle or a bike and you want to change directions, is there an overpass or an underpass, something where you can get to the other side of the highway

without having to travel too far of a distance to get back on and go the opposite way? As a car, you mean? As a car or as even someone who's jogging or riding a bike. The only reason I bring that up, not to be cryptic, because you're saying it was the bike based on tracks appeared to be going in the direction back towards the campgrounds right back towards the her destination not the real communities and it's like why would she be doing that if she's was last seen heading home could she have turned back around because she saw this vehicle following

her and was trying to confirm whether or not they were following her or was just her paranoia by changing directions abruptly to see if the vehicle continued to follow her. So there's no overpass or anything like that. You'd have to just ride, you know, through the lanes. But it's only a two lane highway too. She could have done that. It's not like a really long, broad highway where there's like tons of, you know, traffic. There's traffic. It's well trafficked, but it's not like, oh, I can you know, traffic. There's traffic. It's well-trafficked, but it's not like, oh, I can't cross the road. There's so much traffic.

But if there's a sense of urgency or you're a nerd, you can do it. If there's no cars coming, you can skip across real quick. So it could be a situation where she's getting close to home. A couple of things are going on. She sees this vehicle following her, doesn't want the vehicle or the people inside the vehicle to know where she lives. So she changes direction to throw them off. Or she's like this, I've seen this vehicle for a little bit now. Maybe it's just my paranoia kicking in. I'm going to go the opposite direction, which they would have no business to do and see if they follow me. Then when we were doing narcotics, when we would follow someone, we sometimes had suspects that would do that. They'd call cleaning themselves off.

They would make an abrupt turn or do something that was completely out of the ordinary for any vehicle behind them to do, maybe doing a legal turn, something like that, just to see if law enforcement was following them, tailing them. So it could have been something she did at the last moment. And that's why maybe there's not a lot of tracks before this turn because she does it abruptly. And as soon as she does the vehicle following her realizes that she's on to them and that's when they kind of push her off the road with

the vehicle yeah it's definitely possible I mean from all the eyewitness accounts it seemed like she was very focused and she didn't know that someone was following her but she could have just been feigning that she didn't know someone was following her because she's like not sure like you said maybe she's not sure that this person's following her and she's not trying to overreact so she's going to make some weird turn to validate this person's either following me because there's no reason for them to do exactly what i just did or you know i'm overreacting and then i can move on with my day yeah i just cut across two lanes you know and it could also be something where they're following her right they're going the same direction something where they're following her, right? They're going the same direction as her.

They're behind her. She pulls a quick U-turn, cuts across the two lanes, starts going the opposite direction, and they realize, oh, she's onto us. And because there's no vehicle coming in the opposite direction, they cross right over the highway and almost come on head on at her to veer her off the highway. They're like, oh, she's onto us. Let's do it. They cross over the middle lane there and right into her lane on the side of the road. They didn't even have to turn around if they didn't want to. Yeah, that's very true. That's a good theory because we don't really know what happened to Tara that morning, even though there was so many people who saw her, they didn't

witness what happened. And we're going to talk about some of the people who saw Tara that morning when we get back from our break. So like I said, several people saw Tara that morning. First, we have two ranch hands who worked for a man named Weldon Burris. Weldon Burris owned and operated a nearby ranch. The ranch hands claimed they'd been removing some livestock out of a fenced area around 10 a.m. and after they finished with that, they headed back towards Bellin, at which point they saw Tara riding her bike north on the highway. This would have been the direction of her going back towards her house. The ranch had said they were approximately two miles away from Rio communities when they saw Tara and and it was around 11.30 a.m.

One of the ranch hands said that he knew Tara by sight because he often saw her riding her bike on the road, and this time of the morning, when he saw her, on September 20th, she was riding a pink bike, she was wearing white shorts with a green stripe, a white top. She had headphones on. The ranch hands also mentioned seeing a group of hunters on the side of the highway in a dark colored pickup truck. They had at least one deer in the back of their truck, and as the ranchers passed to the hunters, Tara could be seen approaching the location where the hunters were parked off the side of the road. On September 24, 1988, four hunters were interviewed after they saw that Tara was missing on the news and they called the police to tell them that they too had seen a girl riding a bike on the morning of September 20. The group of hunters included three adults and one child, and they told the police that they'd been hunting in Corona.

When they were finished, they put their deer in their truck and they headed back to Bellin, driving northbound on Highway 47. At the south entrance of John F. Kennedy Campground, they pulled over to discharge their rifles, and this was sometime between 1130 and noon. Now, they claimed when they arrived towards the south entrance of John F. Kennedy Campground, there was a light-colored, older model Ford truck, which was blocking the entrance of John F. Kennedy campground, there was a light-colored, older model Ford truck, which was blocking the entrance of the campground, and this truck was parked facing north. And so they had to pull a little further up the road because they couldn't pull over right there because that truck was blocking the entrance. And they said the driver of this

truck was staring at a young girl who was riding by on her bike. At first, the hunters, who had to, like I said, pull up a little to discharge their rifles, they thought that this man was someone who knew the girl on the bike, maybe her father or an older male relative who was watching her to make sure she was safe, but they became unsettled by the intent way the driver of the truck was watching the girl on the bike. After they reported this, Valencia County Sheriff Lawrence Romero Sr. took the hunters on a ride-along so they could show him the exact spot that they'd seen Tara, and two of the hunters also agreed to go under hypnosis to see if they could give a better description of the truck and

the driver. All the hunters could remember was that the truck was a light-colored Ford truck, maybe white, maybe light gray, maybe just dirty, most likely manufactured in the early 1950s. But they did say it had a custom red Ford emblem, and it also had a homemade white camper over the truck bed. And one of the hunters said he thought the man in the driver's seat may have been Hispanic, but he couldn't really remember. And I don't really understand what they mean about homemade camper over the truck bed. Do you have a better understanding? Sometimes they call it homemade. Sometimes they call it makeshift. But what is it

like? Just like a tent basically over the truck bed? Well's like a cab i'm i'm visualizing i mean we don't know exactly what it is but like a makeshift cab you sometimes see like with a pickup truck they can throw a cap on the back to create this like enclosed spot for to keep things dry things like that so i'm thinking maybe they might have made their own out of wood or some type of fiberglass or something where it wasn't necessarily some of the caps you buy for these trucks, especially now they're custom made for that truck. So they match perfectly with the paint and all that stuff. But I'm assuming you could also make one yourself out of materials, plastics, wood, whatever, to kind of fit the truck bed that you have. So it might have been a cap of some sort, but clearly something that was modified to fit that specific truck and didn't necessarily belong to it. That's my best guess.

Yeah, I agree. Just like something that you could sort of like conceal things in, you know, keep them dry, keep them away from the elements, but also conceal things in. And then there's just, you know, a lot of people kind of described it as there's a little opening at the back of the truck, at the back of the little camper shell thing where you would be able to fit things in. Oh, it's not even little opening. So the cap, if you guys are visualizing this, I think most people would know this. It's a cap that kind of goes up the side of the truck, has a roof to it. And on the backside, usually the cap itself will have like a window in the back. that that window will pop up. And then you obviously have the tailgate of the truck that goes down. So essentially anything you could fit in the truck that's not too tall with the cap off would be able to fit in this truck with the cap on.

So in this particular situation, a woman with a bike, no problem. They would fit easily and it wouldn't be hard to do. Well, when the hunters showed the sheriff exactly where they'd seen Tara riding her bike south on the highway, it turned out this area was between mile marker 13 and mile marker 14, which is exactly where the south entrance of the park is and also where the Socorro County search and rescue dogs led their handlers during the search for Tara. And just a bit further up the road, just north of mile marker 15, Tara's bike tracks were found, along with the top of her cassette player, some beer cans, and Tara's boyfriend when he was searching for her the day she went missing, Jack Hole. He also claimed he found a glass marijuana pipe sitting on a rock. So it was

just kind of sitting there like somebody had literally placed it there because it was standing upright. And then further going towards Rio communities on the west side of the road, the Boston Tape was found, an oil slick was found, more bike tracks. Also, the search and rescue dogs hit on this area between mile marker 16 and 17. And there's like this little hill and a vineyard in that area. The next person to see Tara Calico on the morning of September 20th was Ishmael De La Rosa. He was headed to the Cottonwood Dairy to pick up some calves, and he also had the body of a dead calf in a trailer that was being towed behind his truck because he had an appointment with the vet that day to have the calf autopsied.

She had died and Ishmael didn't know why or how she had died, so he wanted some clarification because it was really bothering him. And he was in a rush that morning, a little stressed, as he drove towards Bellin on Highway 47. De La Rosa became even more stressed when he got stuck behind a truck that he said was driving so slowly he thought it was broken down and completely stopped when he spotted it from afar. Now, like I said, Highway 47 is a two-lane highway, and because Ishmael was towing such a large horse trailer, he couldn't get around the slow-driving truck, but this did give him the opportunity to notice a lot of things about the truck. Ishmael said it was a 1950s

Ford truck, dirty white or light gray, with a makeshift white camper over the bed. As Ishmael pulled up to the truck, which was driving very slowly, he said he saw a dark figure run from the side of the road and jump into the truck. And Ishmael said that at first he thought that the figure was a dog because it was so dark, it was moving so fast, and it was close to the truck. And Ishmael said that at first he thought that the figure was a dog because it was so dark, it was moving so fast, and it was close to the ground. But then he realized it was the figure of a person who was running while crouched close to the ground as if they didn't want to be seen. Ishmael also noticed that the truck seemed to be following a young woman riding a pink bike. And at first, like the hunters, Ishmael thought

that maybe the man driving the truck was the girl's father who was following her in case it rained or in case she got tired, and then he could put her bike in his truck and drive her home. But Ishmael remembered thinking how tough it would be to fit her bike into the small opening in the camper over the bed. But Ishmael was still in a hurry. He still had appointments to make. So as soon as traffic on the other side of the highway slowed down and there was a gap, Ishmael pulled around the truck, which gave him a good look at this driver as he pulled up alongside the truck while passing it. At this point, Ishmael De La Rosa realized that the guy in the truck was probably not the girl's father because of the

intent way the driver was staring at the girl, specifically her butt, as it bounced up and down on the bike seat. Ishmael was like, this is creepy. No father or uncle is going to be looking at his young relative in this way. This guy's definitely probably a creep. But he also wasn't completely 100% sure at this point. And Ishmael was unable to describe the person who he'd seen running from the side of the road who, you know, he thought was initially a dog, but then he realized it was a person who ran from the side of the road and jumped into the truck. But he was able to describe the driver. He said the driver had a very short, almost military-style haircut, and his hair was bright red, so red it almost looked orange in the

sun. The driver was wearing an Elmer Fudd-style hat with the flaps that go over your ears, and he had about three to four days of stubble on his face. His eyes were bloodshot, and his face was puffy as if he'd been drinking a lot. Ishmael didn't see the right side of the man's face, but he did see that there was a prominent scar on the left side of his face going all the way from his eye to his temple. Ishmael De La Rosa said that he didn't see any other passengers in the truck, but he noticed that in the camper there were about five to six khaki shirts hanging, and these shirts looked like they were fresh from the cleaners and they had just

been pressed. But the way they were hanging stood out to Ishmael. He said they were hanging side by side, overlapping a bit, so that someone from the outside would not be able to see inside the camper. Ishmael felt very unsettled by the whole scenario, the way the guy was driving so slowly, clearly following Tara, the way he was looking at her, and the fact that Tara, who was listening to music on her headphones,

seemed oblivious to the fact that anyone was around her. This is all very interesting. I definitely want to weigh in on it. Before we do, let's take a quick break. All right. So this is really fascinating stuff. And it's interesting that we're sitting here because it seems like there's a lot to this case that points to this truck. And even the parents themselves, even the boyfriend all saw individuals earlier that morning in a vehicle that matched the description with multiple suspects that appeared to possibly fit the description as well. And from everything you've

said so far, especially Ishmael's statements, incredible. It really seems like these guys were up to no good. They had bad intentions. They were setting up the vehicle in a way that if they were to grab someone, you wouldn't be able to see that person in the cab from the exterior of the vehicle in a way that if they were to grab someone, you wouldn't be able to see that person in the cab from the exterior of the vehicle. So everything is there lined up. You have someone trying to avoid being seen by passerbys as they're setting it up. And this is almost, would you say two miles, three miles from the Rio community? So whatever happened to Tara, it had to have happened almost immediately after Ishmael was out of sight. They probably didn't do it because Ishmael was there.

And as soon as he was far enough up ahead, whatever happened to Tara, that's when they did it. Well, here's the thing. It's not that simple. And remember that Tara's family didn't see those three guys in the truck until the afternoon. It was like between 1.30 and 3.30 p.m. that they see these guys. But when Patty asks the guys, did you see Tara or a girl on a bike? They say no, and we've been here since 11. And then John and Jack and Bernard go back and they say, did you see a girl on a bike?

And they say, no, we've been here since 11.30 and we didn't see anybody. So first of all, that's a difference in time. I mean, it's small, but still. And when Jack and Bernard and John went back, they said it was weird because they seemed to be blocking the back of the truck, the entrance to the camper, the license plate maybe. And they kind of were like aggressive and they didn't want anybody to get too close to them. And it was more like, yeah, we haven't seen anybody. Leave us alone kind of thing. Like they weren't being super to get too close to them and it was more like a yeah we haven't seen anybody leave us alone kind of thing like they weren't being super helpful so that's that's the thing about that truck is it the same truck it would appear to be right yeah and i mean i'm assuming that tara wasn't still in the vehicle at this point but there might have been other

things i mean if they have to get her out of the vehicle quick okay but maybe there's a bike part maybe there's something that belonged to her that and maybe there was a struggle in the back of the cab maybe some blood you don't know so there's a reason they don't want you to see the back of the vehicle I don't think it's just a registration plate it's probably other things as well that they hadn't had a chance to remove they got her out of the car if this is the vehicle by the way we're really early into this case I don't want to go too far here but it's one of those situations where the behavior they were displaying would suggest that they were hiding something this wasn't law enforcement that approached them these were just normal people looking for

their loved one I could sometimes see how people are apprehensive when law enforcement comes up to them even when they did nothing wrong this is not one of those situations so why would they why would they kind of clam up and be defensive when these family members are coming up well one explanation could be that the person that these individuals are inquiring about this young woman on a bike they had they were responsible for her disappearance that would make that would make the most sense but it could be something else we'll see how it goes again not solved today. I'm assuming they were able to track these guys down.

I know you're going to fill us in on that. And I'm really interested to see how that all plays out. Well, Ishmael's sort of like following the slow moving truck and then he decides to pass it. And then he decides like, okay, this truck's definitely following this girl on the bike, even though the truck was keeping, you know, a fair distance away from her, almost as if the driver didn't want Tara to notice that she was being followed.

As Ishmael passed the truck and then Tara, he worried, obviously, and he wondered what he should do. He's like, am I, you know, like looking at this too deep? Is this not that important? Like there's all these other people around because further up the road, he noticed there was several people. He saw two men dressed nicely in suit jackets walking on the side of the highway, but they were behind a fence. So on the other side of the highway, he saw two cars, one black and one white parked on either side of the highway.

And there was a man in a white t-shirt who was leaning up against one of the cars. And a little further up, Ishmael noticed a car that had its hood open as if it was broken down with five people standing around it. Now, Ishmael became suspicious of this situation as well because he said there was four guys and one girl, but one of the guys was really tall and skinny and he was bouncing around as if he might be on drugs. Also, even though the car was pulled over on the side of the road and the hood was open, the people standing around it, they didn't appear to be concerned. They weren't like looking into the hood or messing with the engine or trying to fix the car. They were just hanging out on the side of the road,

talking and bouncing around like they were on drugs apparently. So Ishmael worried that this group of guys might start messing with Tara as she drove by on her bike. But then he saw that there was three older women who were playing golf on the golf course right by where this car was pulled over because there's like a golf course on the side of this road. Because as you get closer to Rio communities, there's like a vineyard and like a ranch and there's like a golf course as you're getting closer to Rio community. So it's a it's actually like pretty populous area as far as businesses go. So we saw these three older women

playing golf on the golf course and Ishmael figured if the guy started bothering Tara the three women would step in. Now the place where Ishmael and the ranchers saw Tara was between mile marker 16 and mile marker 17. And on the other side of that little hill I mentioned earlier where the golf course is, that's where the Boston tape was found. Ishmael De La Rosa did not immediately report what he saw that morning because he wasn't from the area. And when he heard about Tara's disappearance on the radio later, the report made it sound like Tara had been in the mountains when she went missing. But a few days later, Ishmael was having coffee with a friend, and he mentioned how odd it was that a young girl would be riding her bike in the mountain area,

which was very isolated and very dangerous. And his friend corrected him, saying, no, Tara had gone missing on Highway 47, not in the mountains. And Ishmael felt very guilty when he heard this. So he immediately called the Valencia County Sheriff's Department. Wow. This is terrible, huh? To think like this man saw her, had these gut feelings. And for whatever reason, for the reasons you laid out as far as seeing people up ahead, the women playing golf, he decided not to act on it and to find out later that that same girl you saw was was the one

who is now currently missing that's a that's a tough burden to to carry i wonder is he still around do we know i'm assuming he's been interviewed and spoken a ton since then but do we know if he's still alive he's's been interviewed. He's been spoken to. He's made his opinion on what happened here very clear. He's made his guilt and what happened here very clear. And he drove around looking for that truck with the camper on it for the rest of his life until he died because he felt sober. There's a lot of people in this case who saw her that morning who went through the same kind of thing. You know, they saw the truck following her and they said, this person's got to be with her.

And we don't want to be the sketchy ones pulling over and scaring her or making like her father in the truck think we're trying to like mess with her. This is New Mexico. This guy could pull out a gun. This could become like a thing, you know, so we're not trying to get involved unless we have to. And she doesn't appear to be like in crisis. She doesn't appear to be worried. But every single person said the same thing. Like they thought that this dude was her dad or a relative until they saw the way he was staring at her, which was very like intently, you know, sometimes with like a creepy smile and stuff like that. But then they kept going back and forth, you know, it's very bystander effecty. Like we, we feel something's wrong here, but there's other people around and other people will probably do something. Like, I don't want to be the one to kind of cause drama if there

doesn't need to be. Yeah. This is one of those cases I can already tell where there's some lessons to be learned for sure going forward. And from our listeners, everyone out there who may run across a similar situation, although I do feel like now people are a lot more proactive with things like this because of all the horrific stories like Tara's that we hear about. And changes you forever even if it wasn't didn't directly involve you hearing Ishmael story and hearing the guilt that he carried after this incident even though he had no direct connection to Tara never met her before good people this will be something that could weigh on you and you're always better off acting on any type of intuition you may have gut feeling feeling, because worst case scenario,

you act on it, you're wrong, you move on with your day, but at least you know that whoever you're concerned about is safe. But if you don't, things like this can happen. Not saying that it's anybody's fault, but that old saying, when you see something, say something. And these are those opportunities where that one phone call it may be not even being interacting directly with it but just enough to scare whatever offender is considering doing something off because they realize this other person who's watching us they're on to us they're cautious about it even if it just means you staying with that vehicle until it's out until the woman who's on the bike is out of sight it could be as simple as that you

don't even have to interact with them directly So little things that can be learned from this you don't have to be a hero But you can impede someone from doing something that you feel may be nefarious just by being present sometimes Yeah, and we're gonna talk about what happened when? Ishmael de la Rosa called the sheriff's office We're gonna talk about that next episode actually because it's a whole dramatic thing and there's more people that saw her that day but it's it's it's interesting that he didn't really put two and two together at first then he's talking to his friend and his friends

like no this girl on the bike was on highway 47 so that lets me know kind of right off the bat the way it was being reported also wasn't super accurate which may have also caused some other eyewitnesses to come forward a little late because talking 1988 you've got newspapers obviously which is where I got most of my information from newspapers but then you're talking about it on the radio too so the newspaper seemed pretty consistent with their information. They were saying where she went missing, but it looks like whoever was delivering this information on the radio was a little bit more vague, which may have also caused some motorists who did see Tara that

morning to not come forward. Maybe people who were passing through who don't read local newspapers, but who do listen to the radio as they go through like truckers and things like that. So you have that issue. And I'll just say that when Ishmael went to the police, it seems he's got a pretty good description. And I will say he seems to have the best description of the truck and the person. I mean, he had everything down to like seeing those khaki shirts hanging in the back of the camper, almost slightly overlapping. And you might say, how would he notice a thing like that? It's like he's making it up, you know. But Ishmael said before he, you know, was a farmer

and had calves and stuff, he worked in clothing. And so clothing was always something he paid attention to. He could look at a person and tell you what size shirt you were and what size pants you were. So he noticed these khaki shirts because he was like, oh, they're they're like perfectly pressed as if they've just come back from the cleaners. But it's weird. Why would somebody take five khaki shirts and hang them up side by side like that, almost overlapping instead of just like slow moving truck. These are the things he's noticing. And then he gets in. He notices the driver who I think the most important thing we got from that was that he had very red hair, which is pretty rare to see somebody with like flaming red hair these days. Also, he's one of the only people who noticed that there was another passenger because the

person driving with the red hair is not the same person as the dark figure who's running from the side of the road and jumping into the truck as it's moving slowly so we've got two people now whereas most other people saw just one person watching tara which makes me think that the other guys because there's no way that this person is alone in the truck the other guys were hiding in the camper, maybe getting ready to jump out and grab somebody. Jump out, yeah. 100%. No, this is interesting.

There's got to be, I'm still struggling with the idea that there's all this positive information, this witness testimony, and yet I don't know if we find these people. Are they ever interviewed? That's the thing, right? All these people come forward. All these people interviewed? So that's the thing, right? Like all these people come forward. All these people say this, see the same thing. This truck. Okay.

This truck, even for the eighties is very distinctive because it's a 1950s Ford truck with the custom red Ford emblem and that like makeshift camper over it. So this is a pretty distinctive truck. You would think everybody in that area is going to be like, we know who drives that truck, right? And that's pretty much what happened. You know, people came like, like I said at the beginning, you know, it's a small town and, and people protect their own. So it kind of seemed like right off the bat and then you're going to, it's just crazy just crazy like i wish i could go forward but we're still so early on in the case but it's crazy when you when you figure out who the suspect is and

then you figure out who the suspect's father is and you're like okay this makes sense all of a sudden because yeah people were interviewed and then stuff just went missing from the police file you know when they went to look at it years later, it's like, well, where's this interview? This folder has this person's name on it, but there's nothing in it. Yeah. This case is going to piss me off. I can already tell. All right. Let's take our last break before we finish this episode, because I can tell now that I'm going to be aggravated by the end of it. So quick break. We'll be right back. So although there were some pieces of evidence found, even though, I mean, not much, you know, enough to know that the pieces of the Walkman and the tape were from Tara, I would suppose,

you know, like, you know, that's the tape she left listening to, so you know that this is connected to her. And although multiple people saw Tara that morning, there was never another sign of her found. Tara's body was never found. The bike she was riding was never found. Neither was the clothing she was wearing, her blue bike pouch, the rest of her Sony Walkman, or her yellow headphones. And it really wasn't for lack of trying on behalf of the search and rescue efforts, at least. On behalf of Patty and John Dole, who believed for years that Tara was still alive, waiting for them to come and save her. In fact, Tara's mother, Patty, believed that Tara had been abducted and that she had purposely discarded the tape and pieces of her

Walkman in an attempt to leave some sort of breadcrumb trail. Other people think that maybe all those pieces of the Walkman and the tape were in one place. And then the storm and the wind came and kind of scattered it about. So we don't really know where they initially were because the Boston tape was found like kind of stuck in the mud, in the wet mud. So maybe, you know, something happened with that where these things got like thrown around in the storm and the rain. And maybe that's not where they ended up after all. But it's a little confusing to think with the rain and stuff like that, that tracks were even seen, right? That's always gotten me to the point where like, why would you still see bike tracks the next day yeah that is that is something because i mentioned it and then you said oh no you could still see tracks so i was surprised by that but

i do think the people who have assumed that maybe the water the rain had you know wind whatever it might be had washed certain things away moved their location or maybe even buried things you said that the boston tape was somewhat protruding that's how they were able to find it but if it were covered in that large square footage of area it's very easy to miss it um i wish it were the case that that tara had left things to try to leave a breadcrumb trail but i think whatever happened happened quick it was. And during the struggle of abducting her, the Walkman was clearly broken. It could have been falling off of her. Somebody steps on it and shatters. I do think there's a possibility that at the time there might have been a Walkman broken into 100 pieces there. But with the storm, it did get blown around. Or you could have two assailants. One of them's grabbing her. the other one's picking up any loose items to try to avoid you know having that evidence be found at a later date so it could be them grabbing the bigger pieces throwing them in the back of the truck as quick as they can and then going and they missed a couple pieces right they missed the tape they missed the walkman viewfinder whatever it was they just in the rush they forgot to grab those items or didn't see them. I think that's more likely. Yeah, I agree. I think that it definitely got broken.

Maybe when she slid off the road, it fell on the road, shattered pieces of it went off and they didn't realize that it was broken because these were just small pieces. So they kind of grabbed it. Who knows what happened? But I think she was definitely snatched there and then brought to another location. But Tara's mother, she really held on hope that Tara was alive until she died, until Patty died. And there's a lot of reasons. And she really hung on to that Polaroid that was found in Florida about a year after Tara went missing and kind of thought that maybe somebody had Tara and was keeping her alive and Tara was going to find a way to get some message out to Patty. So it's honestly very, very sad. When you mentioned the case, that's what

became somewhat familiar to me. The name, the case I was like, when you started talking about in New Mexico, didn't sound too familiar, but then you mentioned the name. I'm like, where have I heard that name before? And then you mentioned the Polaroid. And who doesn't know that Polaroid? Who hasn't seen that Polaroid a million times? Because not only is it connected to Tara, but it's been connected to a few other missing children that people believe that could be their son or daughter in that picture. I believe there's a woman who resembles Tara,

but there's also, wasn't there a little boy in the picture as well? That's like got something on their face. So there's multiple children. And I can only imagine if you're a parent or a loved one who's lost a child and you see this picture and it slightly resembles your child.

I mean, game over for me. I'm passing out, I might never wake up again. And the thing is, nobody's ever come forward and said, oh, that's me in the picture, or this was a hoax, or we actually know what this is for. That's the horrible thing. If somebody did this stupid picture as a hoax and has never come forward and admitted to that, and like you said, you've got parents out there of missing children who see their child in one of those people in the pictures and they're like you know obviously now traumatized because whoever's got your kid is tying them up and putting duct tape over their mouth in the back

of a van if somebody made that picture as a hoax which some police police departments believe it it's a hoax and it was just kind of created to cause chaos. And they haven't come forward and like owned that yet. It's really, really bad. But even and I'm sure you can talk about the Polaroid at length as we go through the different parts of this case is a big part of it. But I can't help but saying it's like even if it was a hoax, you can almost. Well, I guess the tape over their mouth does throw it off. But you would think one of their friends or family members would see the picture and go, oh, that's Kimberly.

I know that's Kimberly. I know those, cause there's, there's other things in the photo. I don't have it in front of me, but. There's a book. Yeah. The book was in there. So you would think someone in the world, cause that photo has been seen by almost everybody would be able to go, oh no, that's, that's my niece or something like that. But yeah, that's a big mystery for sure. Whoever solves that one, because I hope it is solved at some point, that's going to be a big event because so many experts, so many highly qualified

people have dissected that photo and yet here we are 2022, still don't know who it is. Yeah, that photo in general has been a case of its own. And it was really that photo that had popped up on, I think it was a current affair, when it was first found, which actually led one of Tara's stepfather's friends, who saw it, to call Tara's stepfather, John, because she was missing at this point, and say, wow, this girl really looks like Tara. And that's how the Polaroid got attached to Tara, because it was pretty much like she was the first girl that people thought it might be her in that picture. So yeah, we're going to talk about it at length next episode. But for this search, they did pull

out all the stops. They brought in helicopters, sent dogs, Air Force enlistees, National Guard troops, search and rescue teams from surrounding areas, airplanes. There was people on foot, people on horseback, all train vehicles. They used heat-seeking detectors to scan the vast and empty plains that surrounded the highway. And there was an area in Belen called the West Mesa. And today, I believe it looked like they started putting housing developments there in 2021. But in 1988, it was just a barren, flat-topped hill with steep escarpments on all sides located just a few blocks from where Tara Calico lived with her mother and stepfather. And this was actually a place where bodies would often turn up.

In fact, the same year Tara went missing, skull fragments with two bullet holes were found on the mesa, and down by the river, there was a femur bone found. So, they took the search for Tara to the mesa, using backhoes and dogs to look for her, but nothing was found. An anonymous tipster called the sheriff's department and told them to look in a field south of Bellin, and when the deputy told the tipster they'd sheriff's department and told them to look in a field south of Bellin, and when the deputy told the tipster they'd already searched that area and dug there, the tipster said, quote, dig deeper, end quote. The sheriff's department even hired a water witch, who they paid $150 and put up in a local hotel. The witcher told the police that Tara was in the river,

and when the police said they'd already dragged the river, the witch told them to drag it again. One detective called Tara's parents with the theory that Tara had been abducted by a satanic cult who had cut off her hands and planted them in an autumnal equinox fertility ritual, after which they had tied her to a post for three days before burning her alive. In 1996, a psychic claimed that Tara was trapped in a barn in Roswell, New Mexico, on Johnson Road, and the barn was surrounded by a chain-link fence and guarded by a dog inside the fence. So Patty and John Dole, they'd actually become authorized deputies in 1991, so they were licensed to carry firearms. And they were also allowed to pursue their own leads in Tara's case while using the sheriff's department letterhead. So they went with Valencia County Police to Johnson Road in Roswell.

And they were chilled to the bone when they found a barn surrounded by a chain link fence guarded by a Rottweiler. But Tara was not inside the barn. There was no evidence she ever had been. By 1996, Tara's parents had invested over $200,000 into finding their daughter, and it had taken a toll on Patty mentally and physically. Everyone could tell that Patty looked older than her age. She had to take a stress leave from work. She started taking antidepressants after having a panic attack on the side of the road where her blood pressure was 180 over 130. Patty had kept Tara's room exactly the same. And year after year on Christmas, she added presents to a pile that was growing on Tara's bed.

Friends told Patty that at some point she needed to move on. She needed to let go. But Patty refused to give up hope that her daughter was alive out there somewhere saying quote i feel like it would be a betrayal to give up end quote and for years if you called the dole home the answering machine message started with the words operator we will accept a collect call from tara end quote now a big reason that patty and john believed tara was was still alive was that Polaroid we were just talking about, but it was actually a series of photographs that had been found in various locations. They believed that it was Tara pictured in these photographs.

That's actually where we're going to pick up next week. But before we go, I do want to tell you how frustrated Valencia Sheriff Lawrence Romero Sr. was after several months of leading an investigation into a missing girl that led nowhere and uncovered nothing. He said, quote, I don't think I left a stone unturned in 29 years of law enforcement. I haven't seen anything more frustrating, end quote. But from what we will discover in the next episodes on Tara Calico it looks like Sheriff Romero may have left one stone unturned or he may have saw everyone pointing at that stone and so he buried that stone as deep as he could so that no one would ever talk about that stone again and uh yeah that's what we're going to pick up. But for me, I think my most important takeaway just from this

is men don't understand how much it sucks being a woman and just wanting to ride your bike out in the open. Okay. Like I used to love riding my bike and I can't do it anymore because there used to be this great canal path and it's just always so sketchy and it's kind of isolated. And there's always like weird guys hanging out there like in the bushes and they come out and step out of the bushes and they like start talking to you and stuff. And you're just scared. You're scared. And it sucks that you can't just climb on your bike as a woman and just ride out because somebody is going to like try to mess with you. No, I agree.

It's unfortunate that we live in the world we live in. Same thing goes for kids. You can't let your kids walk down the road i live in a pretty nice area but i would never let my children walk down the street to the park because i know what's out there and there's no community in this country that's off limits to it in fact it's the communities where you least expect it where it usually happens because offenders know that the parents are a little bit less on guard and they can get away with it a little easier. So it's unfortunate that we live in these times and it's always going to be this way. So you have to, and I've said this to you guys a million times, you have to

kind of approach your daily events considering the fact that someone right next to you could be a monster. And it sucks to feel that way. Like you can still be approachable. You can still be friendly, but you never want to assume that this person's a good person and they're not going to do anything because on a dime, they can change directions and become your biggest nightmare in this particular case. And as we learn more things, this may change, but I kind of just echo what I said earlier, as far as if you see something and it seems off to you, you're always better to act on it in some way, shape or form, even if it's just making a phone call, because if you do nothing,

you may be allowing something to take place that maybe the offender at the time when you noticed them is on the fence and you could spook them off. And as far as what you said about women being able to ride their bikes, go for jogs, walk alone, I have two daughters that are going to grow up in the same situation. And I hate the fact that they have to live like that. But I would say in these times, and I've said it to you guys before on social media, whenever you're out in your surroundings, and I've said it to you guys before on social media, whenever you're out in your surroundings, and this goes for guys too, to be honest, as much as it's enjoyable to do it, you really want to try to avoid killing your senses as far as

your ability to see things, whether that's the type of eyewear you have on or headphones. You want to see as much as you can. If you got to wear sunglasses, I get it. But if you can avoid it where you have more peripheral vision, all that stuff, try to do that. And then headphones. I know they're great. I know they're convenient.

I know today I'm guilty of it. We were actually talking about the new AirPods before we started recording. I live with my AirPods in and I shouldn't. And I know a lot of the times when I see men and women, specifically women coming out of the gym at 830, 9 o'clock at night, the parking lot's half empty, and they're looking at their phone and they have their headphones in. Now, I don't know if the headphones are on, but in many cases, I can see their head bopping a little bit, so I know they're listening. And I'm only four or five feet behind

them, and I could easily run up to them without them even turning around. There's no doubt about it. So you want to be aware of your surroundings. You want to try to limit the distractions you have. I'm not saying that's right. I'm not saying Tara did anything wrong. I'm just acknowledging what we're faced with on a daily basis. And if we can do things, even though it sucks that we have to inconvenience ourselves to be more safe, you have to do it.

You have to be careful. And based on what you've told me so far, Stephanie, I don't know if not wearing headphones would have made a difference. If she didn't have headphones on, I think the way they got her to stop was by veering her off the road with their vehicle or whatever they did. Cause I don't think she stopped organically for them. I think she would have known I'm not stopping for these people. I don't think she stopped organically for them. I think she would have known, I'm not stopping for these people. I don't trust them. It seems like something's up. They had to physically force her to stop some way. So whether she had headphones on or not, I don't know if it would have made a difference. But for the general situation, it's something we should all consider when we're out there by ourselves. You just got to be prepared.

Yeah, I agree. And I know there's people right now, because there's a part of me that's screaming it too. There's people right now out there who are like, well, we shouldn't have to do that. And that sucks. And like, that's not fair. And I agree. Like nobody disagrees with you. But until we live in a world where, you know, we can be safe, just doing what, which will never be right. That's never, that's never going to happen. But until we can live in that world, we need to take precautions to protect ourselves because we can't trust the people around us to have our best interests at heart. And I mean, I've always operated that way with people I know, with strangers, like at the

end of the day, it's me. I'm responsible for keeping myself safe, whether it be from somebody I've known for 30 years or somebody I've just met. It's always you that you have to depend on and you have to make the right decisions for yourself. And unfortunately, we do have to make certain changes and sacrifices as women. And I know Derek earlier said, you know, men, too. But like, let's be honest, it's not men. Men aren't going out and jogging and getting attacked randomly for no reason it's just not happening because the kind of it's a lot less not happening if they are they're getting mugged you know no i mean think about it there are there

are that's what i'm saying there are men who if you're distracted you're on your phone whatever and you're in a tough part of the you know the city and you're dressed nice. And a group of individuals who are looking to take advantage of someone see you, man, woman, they think you got money. They come up to you. They get the jump on you. They get the drop on you. They're able to get close enough.

You can get robbed. I'm not saying it's not. Yeah, but like, that's fine. I'll get robbed all day. If somebody wants to come up and mug me, that's fine. But more than likely, if somebody's grabbing me when I'm on my bike, it's not money they want, right? So- No, that's true. I'm not saying that the intentions are the same. I'm just saying everyone, we need to be more cognizant of our surrounding. Technology is a great thing, but I think we all, and I'm guilty of it, like so enthralled with our, with our phones, with our music,

with our, I've seen people literally watching YouTube videos on a car mount in their vehicle while they're driving. Like we're just a society that's very distracted by technology now. And it does limit our, our surroundings. And as far as our understanding of what's going on, how many people do you see out there where literally you're driving right next to them and they're veering into your lane? And as you're beeping at them, they literally don't even look at you because their music blaring and they're paying attention to something completely not in front of them. It happens to me every single day.

Rhode Island drivers are the worst. They're one of the worst. My sister got hit in a parking lot like not her car her body somebody just backed up into her so and then my sister like hit her car and was like what are you doing and walked around and she said the lady put her hand up and like looked away like don't look at me which is even worse like you hit me i'm fine i'm walking say you're sorry but to be like oh don't look at me and then speed away. It's, we become completely like detached as a society from each other that we don't even,

and most of the time, that's why people got their headphones in, right? Because they don't want anybody to talk to them. That's what I do. It's so true. No, I mean, it's, it's terrible. It is what it is. But as far as bringing this all back to the case, I know it's unsolved, but maybe we say something today that jogs someone's memory, that brings something up that hasn't been brought up before. I know everybody has covered this case, but at minimum, we keep it in the headlines. We keep people talking about it. We know we have an eclectic demographic of people who watch and listen to the show. And many of you may have never heard of this case like myself. So it's one of those things where it's always good to keep it coming back so that we don't allow Tara's case to be forgotten about. And I'm really fascinated to hear what you say going forward, because at this point, it sounds very obvious where we're going. You've hinted to

it, but I always like to be that person that's like, okay, but what if it's not that? What if it's not the obvious answer? What if we're all looking over here and the real bad guy is over here laughing at all of us so i always try to be that dissenting opinion so even though this may sound like we're going to a certain destination and there's no detours well if it was that simple we wouldn't be talking about this case as an unsolved case Maybe there's something we're missing and maybe collectively we're able to Move the ball forward who knows but i'm looking forward to the rest of it for you. Derek. We're recording the next part tomorrow That's right. That's right. That's two parts tonight. You guys don't know this because we changed our clothes But you we just recorded

Uh part three of connie debate for you. We changed our clothes clothes we just recorded part one of this we're gonna record part two tomorrow and when we record tomorrow we will have an announcement about the criminal coffee fund so definitely looking forward to part two definitely looking forward to filling you in on some some news about the criminal coffee fund that we're extremely excited about and as always we appreciate you guys being here with us please keep like comment, spread the message about this case, spread the message about what we're doing here. And as always, especially after this case, be safe out there and we will see you next week. Bye guys.