Stuff You Should Know - The Disturbing Disappearance of Tara Calico

Episode Date: September 3, 2020

When Tara Calico mysteriously vanished in 1988, suspected to be the victim of foul play, her case may have gotten lost with the countless other missing person cases in the US, were it not for the discovery of an alarming Polaroid photo in a parking lot 1500 miles away. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey everybody, I don't know if you've heard, but we have a book coming out. Finally, finally, after all these years, it's great, it's fun, you're gonna love it, it's called Stuff You Should Know,

colon, an incomplete compendium of mostly interesting things. Yep, and it's 26 jam-packed chapters that we wrote with another guy named Nils Parker, who's amazing and is illustrated amazingly by our illustrator, Carly Monardo, and it's just an all-around joy to pick up and read. Even though we haven't physically held in our hands yet,

it's like we have, Chuck, in our dreams so far. I can't wait to actually see and hold this thing and smell it, and so should you. So pre-order now, it means a lot to us. The support is a very big deal. So pre-order anywhere books are sold. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works.

["Scoop Bryant"] Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, there's Charles W. Scoop Bryant, and this is Stuff You Should Know, one of our infrequent true crime editions. So if you don't like true crime, probably shouldn't listen to this one because it's about true crime.

That's right. And all the time that goes along with it. And big time trigger warnings on this one. If you have family members who have been sexually assaulted or kidnapped, or if you have children that you care about at all, and they're even safe in your home, this might be pretty upsetting for you,

as it was for me. Yeah, it is. It's a very sad case just in and of itself. I mean, we're talking about the disappearance of a girl who was 19 at the time. Her name was Tara Calico, and she disappeared in New Mexico from the area where she lived.

And just that, just the fact that she's never been found. Like she basically vanished almost without a trace. That's just sad enough. And the more you dig into the story, it's very sad. But it also has some like this extra couple of layers that your average like true crime missing person, probably murdered person story goes, that make this case like one of the most fascinating

recent true crime cases that I can think of. Yeah. Yeah. I know you didn't like this one at all. No, it was pretty upsetting. So you feel like you can make it through this one? I think so. It should be a laugh riot.

Right, as usual. So Chuck, let's just kind of give some background on this case for everybody who's not familiar, okay? Yeah, here's the deal. And you know, Ed helped us put this together and he takes great pains to point out quite a few times that we don't know exactly all the facts, but we know what we know from accounts from Tara's mom

and a little bit from some other family members and a little bit from the case files. Although I don't think all of those are available still, but... I don't know, I saw otherwise. Like that's the problem with true crime is like, especially in the age of the internet, stuff just gets piled on with different weird facts

that may or may not be true. And you know, down to like are the case files still intact, that kind of thing. But yeah, so I think your larger point is we're, we don't exactly know all of the details, right? Yeah, what we do know is that in 1988 and September 20th, she went for a bike ride. She was athletic and took these very long bike rides

anywhere from 15 to 30 something miles on a regular basis. She was a 19 years old, smart, smart young woman and a student at University of New Mexico and was living in a place called, I guess, Belen, New Mexico, B-E-L-E-N, took this... I think it's Belen. Belen? I think so, yeah.

I think I heard somebody say it like that. Okay. And she left at 9.30 for this bike ride and was last seen at 11.45 on Highway 47, which is kind of the standard route that she usually took, apparently. Yeah. And there were just a couple other details about Tara.

She was, you said she was an intelligent person. I believe she was a sophomore in college and she was studying psychology or psychiatry. One or two, I don't think she decided yet, but she was in the field of psychology and she was a bank teller too. And when she headed out that day, is very widely reported that she had told her mom,

if I'm not back by noon, come looking for me. I saw that mostly reported that she had said it kind of playfully, jokingly, ingest that kind of thing, not that she had set out that day knowing that she was going to meet her grim fate, but that she had a Walkman with her too and that she was playing Boston. And I can only assume because she was out for a bike ride

that she was listening to Boston's self-titled debut album, which has Don't Look Back in it, which would be excellent for riding your bike too. In 1988, maybe so, or it could have been the new one. It could have been, there's several that they released afterward. But Boston, she was listening to Boston, just remember that.

That's right. And she was on her mom's bike, her Huffy bike, and she had a white t-shirt, First National Bank of Bel An, and white shorts, green stripes, white socks, tennis shoes, a butterfly ring with a diamond insert, amethyst stone ring, and then earrings, a half inch loop earrings.

Yep. And she was last seen chuck from what I understand on her way back from her bike ride along Highway 47, about, I think like 11.45 a.m. or something like that. And then that was it. Like she was just riding along, listening to her headphones the last time she was seen. The only other detail that adds like a very cryptic twist

to that last sighting is that she was reported being followed, it looked like, by a old timey truck, like one from like the 50s. I think a Ford truck, like some weird color, like a dirty gray or something like that. Yeah, and the cops, and there'll be a few different people working on this case, as is usually the case when it's missing persons,

different agencies get involved. But in this case, Valencia County Sheriff Romero, his name was Lawrence Romero, he said that they found some bicycle tracks about four miles south of where she lived. And it looked like to them that they, the bicycle had been dragged off the side of the road and then back.

And they immediately thought that was pretty suspicious. And then when you put it together with the details of this pickup truck, then it was all of a sudden a pretty serious case to them. Right, yeah, I mean, because, you know, if you can't find a girl, she doesn't show up home. When she says she's going to, and she makes that joking cryptic thing,

of course, it's going to terrify her mom. And it did terrify her mom. Her mom's name was Patty Dole. And Patty was married to John Dole. And through John, Tara had two step siblings, Chris, her brother and her sister, step sister, Michelle. And just immediately, Patty was very, very worried when Tara didn't show up at home.

And then once the evidence started coming and she got increasingly worried, and probably the most tragic figure in this entire story is Patty. Because from the moment like she started to get worried till the day she died in 2006, she was worried. She was overwrought by this. Like it just took her over and consumed her.

But one of the things to her credit, for sure, is we'll see is that she didn't just like collapse and buckle and give in, which she would have, it would have been very understandable had she done that. She instead channeled a lot of that fright and worry and concern into action and spent like the most of the rest of her life working tirelessly trying to figure out

what happened to her daughter. Find some evidence, bring her home. I don't think she ever gave up the idea that Tara might still be out there. Or at the very least bring her killers to justice. Yeah, I'm gonna go with Tara for the most tragic figure in this story. But it was very sad what happened with her mom.

She died in 2006, never getting any answers. Her biological father died in 2002. Her stepfather, like anyone, still holds out hope. Although he readily admits this is from 1988 and the chances are almost zero that anything is ever gonna come to fruition about this. But she did have family that was looking out for her, basically the rest of their lives.

Yeah, for sure. And her sister Michelle is still carrying that on. Like after Patty died in 2006, Michelle kind of took over Patty's role of just trying to figure out what happened, trying to keep the story of the case in the press. And actually while she was alive, Patty and her husband, John,

managed to get deputized by the Valencia County Sheriff's. So they were actually allowed to carry guns. They were allowed to contact other law enforcement agencies on behalf of the Valencia County Sheriff's Department to investigate the case. That's the kind of like the level of dedication that they went to, which is pretty cool. That's how they channeled that.

You know, the sweet late 80s when you needed to be deputized to carry a gun. Right, exactly. Because when I read that I was like, it really took that back then? Yeah, it did so. New Mexico, man, they have it locked down out there. So as far as clues go, they're pretty scant.

That's one of the most frustrating things about this case. There are reports that they did find a Boston cassette tape a few miles from where she lived on that highway. And then a piece of a Walkman at a campground 19 miles away. That seems like a bit of a stretch to me. It was a long way from highway 47, but you never know. But there wasn't any like, they didn't prove necessarily that that was her tape or part of her Walkman

or anything like that. No, they didn't. But the, I saw in a couple of places, this is one of those examples of the facts getting convoluted, I saw that the Boston tape was found with the front of her Walkman at the same location. And then also I saw that it was found elsewhere. So who knows, but that is like one of,

like even that one tangible fact is still questionable. And you can't even necessarily link it directly to her like you were saying, and that was it. But that's all that was found. They didn't find either of her rings. They didn't find her shoes. They never found her bike. They never found anything except for those bike tire marks,

which seemed to be like a bike being dragged rather than ridden, and then that Boston tape and maybe or not a piece of the Walkman. And again, who knows if that was her stuff or not. And they searched, like they searched the area pretty thoroughly from what I understand. Yeah, I mean, anytime there's a missing person's like this, you have the big line of people marching through the woods.

It's one of the saddest things that you can see in a movie or TV show, and I can't, I've never seen one in real life. Never want to see one in real life, but it's one of the saddest things you can witness is people literally combing a field or the forest for the body of somebody. For sure.

So this, well, should we take a break? Yeah, I think it's break time. All right, let's take a break here. We'll talk a little bit about some of the things that happened after the disappearance, right after this. ["Hey Dude"] ["Hey Dude"] On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s,

called David Lashor and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends

to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair.

Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in,

as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to, Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough,

or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. This, I promise you.

Oh God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh man. And so, my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael.

And a different hot, sexy, teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Oh, just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen,

so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, so we mentioned this truck, this pickup truck. That's vehicle number one in this case that you need to sort of take note of. Vehicle number two is a white van with no windows,

which those are always a little bit scary. This was in 1989, June 15th, so less than a year after her disappearance in Port St. Joe, Florida. Wait a minute, Chuck. How would a white van in Port St. Joe, Florida a year later have anything to do with the disappearance of Tara Calico a year earlier in New Mexico? Well, it may or may not, but there was a little piece

of evidence potentially that was left behind. This woman comes out of the convenience store, the van drives away, and then she looks down and notices a Polaroid on the ground that looked like it was inside of a white van. I think they later determined it was, in fact, from inside a van. And on the inside of the van, it was taken sort of from outside

looking in through the side door probably. Were a couple of kids on some blankets and pillows, a young boy around 10, and a young woman that looked like she was probably mid to late teenager. And they were looked to be bound. Their hands were behind their back, although you couldn't see rope necessarily. But I don't see why you would assume anything else.

They had duct tape over their mouth, and they were kind of well tanned. And it's pretty disturbing, messed up picture. It's an extremely disturbing picture. It's alarming, actually. Like, when you see this, and it sinks in what you're looking at, it's a deeply alarming picture. Especially when you realize that, like, this is real.

This was really found in a junior food store parking lot in 1989 in Port St. Joe, Florida. Like, some poor lady, like, came across this picture and was, I'm sure, just terrified. And the picture is significant enough that the moment they found it, and it was reported to authorities, they started setting up roadblocks around the county, Gulf County, Florida, to try to find this white van

that the woman who found the picture had seen parked in that parking spot when she went in and was gone when she came out and found the picture. So, like, it's a very alarming picture. And a lot of people said, I think that's Tara Calico. And the reason that Tara Calico, her family found out about it is because a family friend had seen it on a current affair. Like, this photo was so alarming and so sinister

and also so inexplicable, too. It was not immediately traced to anybody. It was not, you know, when it came out immediately, it was like, oh, no, no, no, that was a hoax. We were just kidding, that kind of thing. That it ended up on TV. And very quickly, I guess Tara Calico's mom had seen the current affair episode and said, that's Tara.

And so from that moment on in 1989 until today, that photo's forever been linked to the Tara Calico case, whether that's Tara or not. Yeah, and there were a couple of other points about this picture. Clearly visible next to the young woman was the V.C. Andrews book, My Sweet Audrina. You know, V.C. Andrews wrote Flowers in the Attic

and those kind of disturbing horror slash, I guess, I mean, I don't know if they were horror, but most of those books were about bad things that happened to kids. Yeah, yeah, for sure. And those... I would say horror is apt. Yeah, horror books.

And the other thing is that the young boy in the picture, a family immediately kind of came forward and said, hey, we think that that is our son, Michael Henley. He disappeared on a camping trip in New Mexico in 1988 as well. And I am just as the mom talking said basically, I'm just sure that's him. That was later kind of found out to not be true because about a year after that,

they found his body, death to exposure. So it became pretty clear that he got lost in the woods and died out there. Yeah, because his body was found not very far from the camping site that he disappeared from. So the chances that he had been abducted from that camping site kept in a van, taken to Port St. Joe, Florida,

and then taken back to New Mexico or even just abducted and kept in New Mexico. The chances are pretty slim. The chances are far higher that he wandered off and died of exposure. And that's what the coroner finally came up with too, ruled as Michael Henley's death. But the fact that Michael Henley disappeared in New Mexico

and that Tara Calico disappeared in New Mexico and that the two people, the young woman and the boy in this picture, resembled those two, just like I said, it's inextricably linked that photo to this case. And Tara's mom apparently said forever that she was sure that that was her daughter. There's a discoloration on the girl in the photo's leg

that Tara's mom said matched her daughter's scar from a car accident that she'd gotten in. And I believe her sister said also, she said, if you had to ask me, if I had to say yes or no, if that's Tara in the photo, I would say yes. But I also realized that this, that makes zero sense. That doesn't, it just doesn't make sense for this case. But that photo, Chuck, I feel like a lot of people

link that photo to this case, but that photo is not even guaranteed to be real. There's a lot of points that people have raised over the years that say, I don't know if this is actually a photo of what it seems to be depicting. Yeah, I'm not sure I agree with any of those points either, to be honest. Well, one of the big ones is that it's never been matched

to any missing person ever, right? There's no one's ever come forward on the one hand and said, this is just a hoax, we were just kidding. You can call off your search. But on the other hand, no one's ever said, this is that boy and this is that girl that's missing. So it seems unlikely that a family would be unaware of that picture, a family that had taken that picture

as a hoax would be unaware of it and not come forward. But it's doubly unlikely that two different families with two different kids that had been abducted would not be familiar with that picture and be like, that's our son or that's our daughter. That's a big one to me. Yeah. What else?

There was another one where someone said that her legs appear to be shaved. And I think some people might surmise that that would be unusual for an abduction victim. Yeah. I don't buy that, but that's what some people think, evidently. Okay, there's also, if you look closely,

the people in the photo's shoulders aren't distressed, right? They're not in like a distressed position. They're actually kind of relaxed. And if they were bound, because remember the bindings aren't visible in the photo, if they were bound, their shoulders will be pinned back a lot further

than they are in that photo. So it suggests that they might not actually be bound. Right, that's possible, I guess. And then the last one that I saw was the tape. It should be much redder around the tape on their faces than it is if they've been wearing that tape for any significant amount of time. Yeah, I don't get that one.

I don't know why that it's assumed that they had to be wearing the tape for a significant amount of time because they were wearing it in the picture. Well, I don't know that it's saying like, oh, well that proves that they weren't actually abducted or being held hostage. I think what they're saying is that suggests

that it had just recently been put on. Yeah, which I believe if someone was gonna open the door to the van to take a picture of two bound children that they had snatched, they would probably put tape over their mouth before they opened the door would be my guess. The thing to me, the one point of all that that just strongly suggests to me

that that picture is not actually real is that it is never, since being discovered in 1989, since being broadcast on a current affair, Oprah, America's most wanted being all over the internet, that no one has managed to link it to either the boy or the young woman in that picture to a missing person. That no one, no one besides the Tara Callico's family, besides her family has come forward and been like,

no, no, no, that's our daughter. That to me says that, I don't know, I think it might be a hoax, I guess. I hate that word these days, but I think that's what it is. Yeah, and we also didn't point out that the Tara's mom said that that book in the picture was her favorite book. So, you know, who knows? It was definitely an interesting piece of evidence

if that was her favorite book. Do you think that that was Tara Callico in the picture or do you just think that the picture was real that it wasn't necessarily her? I didn't study it and I don't wanna go on record for having an opinion on whether or not that was her. Okay, fair enough. One thing we do know, though, is that this picture,

like we said, it's alarming enough that the FBI got involved it was broadcast on national television in Polaroid. It was a Polaroid, one of those, the ones that you wave in the air to develop in just a few minutes, it was that kind of Polaroid. And Polaroid analyzed it and said this film that this was taken on this film stock wasn't available until May of 1989.

So that picture couldn't have been taken before May of 1989. So that's the picture and it's not necessarily connected to the Tara Callico case, although as far as the world is concerned, especially the world of online sleuths, it is in some way or another always going to be connected to the Tara Callico case from now on.

Yeah, and there were some other pictures over the years that have come out that are also not connected yet somehow connected because of the internet. And there was one that was a couple of people joking around on a train. It looks like a young woman and a guy a little bit older. And to me, it just looks like two people goofing around on a train.

For sure. I'm not sure why it's so sinister. The other one is another young woman with tape over her mouth and there's a similarity to the striped pillow is that Polaroid and it was found in California at a construction site. But you can't really identify much about her at all. And I think the only reason it's connected

is because, hey, it's another picture of a young woman with tape on her mouth. Yeah, it looks vaguely like her. And that's not it. Like if you go on to Reddit or web sleuths or any of these online forums about this case, there's at least several other photos that have been associated over time

that seem to just be like, here's an amateur BDSM photo that somebody took and I found somewhere and I think that's Tara Calico and this is evidence rather than this is just somebody's picture from a wild Saturday night or something like that. Right, for sure. The internet definitely has that effect for sure. So Chuck, before, I guess this is a pretty good place

to put an ad break, huh? Then maybe we'll come back and talk about conspiracies. Yeah, let's do it. Okay, we'll be right back everybody. Hey. Hey. Hey. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher

and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey, Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey, Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews,

co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger

and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in, as we take you back to the 90s.

Listen to, Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road.

Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God.

Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so, my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy, teen crush boy bander

each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Oh, just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen, so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. So, there are a couple of conspiracies that have emerged over the years since then, many, many years later. In 2008, the sheriff of Valencia County at the time, Rene Rivera, said that he had some information

about what happened. And he was just waiting to release this information. He wanted to build an airtight case, get all the evidence in, perhaps even locate her body. And here was the quote. The information I have is that the truck accidentally ended up hitting her. I believe the truck bumped her bike

at which time she fell to the side of the road. From there, the individuals took her. Yeah, remember the truck that he's referencing is that truck that was supposedly following her when she was last seen at like 11.45 AM. That's right. And that she was killed later on, maybe because she threatened to call the cops or something,

and that there could be a couple of extra people involved in this case. Right, so he said, but I'm not going to be arresting anybody because we don't have a body yet, and I wanna have a body. So, I'm just gonna sit here and hold press conferences instead.

And John Dole, Tara's stepfather, came out publicly. And was like, that was the dumbest thing I've heard in a very long time. Like, okay, if you want like an airtight case and you need to find Tara's body to do that, fine, but don't publicize everything else you know because to John Dole, that seemed like a bit of a warning

to the suspects that were out there. At the very least, it just seemed foolish to him or a waste of time. And the thing is, is that Sheriff Rivera, who I believe is still the Valencia County Sheriff, hasn't made any arrests since that press conference. And admittedly, Tara's body has not been found, but that just does seem like a weird thing to do.

So that was kind of like one of the first things that kind of reinvigorated this case that had managed to be kept alive over the 90s, but really started to kind of come back in the 2000s and multiple lights have been shown on it. But even beyond like, you know, somebody doing a story on it or a follow-up or an interview with her sister or brother or something,

the police investigations into it had kind of like peaks or increased interests in the 2000s as well. Yeah, so now a character enters name Melinda Esquibel and she is a blogger and a podcaster and I guess one of these salutes and had done a lot of work on this case. And apparently at one point, and this was in about 2010,

was at least said she was working on a documentary film about Tara and that she had information on the body and that she was being followed and that threats were being made. So in 2010, state police officer, Indy Mexico author Ortiz, he was brought in for a meeting about this case,

mainly because of what was going on with Esquibel and her research and what she said. Yeah, she said she was getting death threats, right? Yes. So that actually kind of reinvigorated this case. Well, it almost did. Ortiz started to kind of look into it a little more but was eventually told like,

hey, that's the Valencia County Sheriff's case and just leave it to them. So we're gonna reassign you. And that was that. Apparently the death threats or I guess it was death threats that Melinda Esquibel said she was getting or enough to make her move to LA. And then later on she came back

and started investigating the case again with Michelle Dole, Tara's step sister. And they released a podcast called Vanish the Tara Callico story about this investigation. That was, I believe revealed some new facts and definitely pieced a lot of stuff together. Yeah, so back in 2010 when Ortiz got this information, he met with Sheriff Rivera and Rivera for his part said,

you know what, there was a thorough investigation. We identified three possible suspects. One of them is dead now. And I also got some information about where this body might be. And basically there's, who was Captain Dong, Dongus? Let's go with that. This sounds fun. And I guess worked alongside Rivera.

Is that what it was? It was kind of hard to tell. That was what I got as well. I mean, it's a quote from Ortiz and he's just kind of presuming everybody who's reading this quote understands who Captain Dongus is. Maybe it's Sheriff Rivera's imaginary friend or something. Captain, it does sound like that.

It does. There'd be one joke in here. Yeah. So Dongus advised them that there was a dig basically at this location where they thought the body was and that they didn't find anything. But they did dig for the body at this place. Right.

And then like I said, Ortiz basically gets moved off of the case because he's state police and this is Valencia County's turf. So that was kind of like a, that was 2010. And that was some new fresh blood investigation injected into the case. And then in 2013, the state police interviewed a guy

named Frank Mothola who was a former deputy with the Valencia County Sheriff's Department. He's not any longer. He apparently was kind of drummed out of the sheriff's office, possibly for stuff that was unrelated to that. I saw he was arrested while he was still a sheriff's deputy because he had failed to appear in court

for causing a crash in a neighborhood during like a high-speed chase. Interesting. Yeah. So it's possible that something like that led to his dismissal. But regardless, he came forward after he was no longer a deputy and said,

hey, while I was a deputy, I interviewed this guy named Henry Brown. And Henry Brown said he was dying and he needed to get something off of his chest. And he gave an official statement. And this statement, from what I understand, definitely exists and has been verified. This isn't just like he or say,

but that Henry Brown said, I was friends with this guy and his name was Lawrence Romero Jr. And Lawrence Romero Jr. was not a, he was a bit of a, he was not a good guy necessarily, from what I understand. But he was the sheriff's son.

Lawrence Romero Jr. at the time that all this happened that Tara Calico went missing, he was the sheriff of Valencia County. And Henry Brown said, I was friends with Jr. And one day I was hanging out at Junior's house and the subject of Tara Calico came up. And before I knew it, Lawrence Romero Jr. and another guy were admitting that they had killed her

and that her body had been right there where we were sitting not too long before, which they had moved her body after they started searching for her. And then they took her and moved her to a pond later on. And that's where she remains, but that he definitely killed her. And the reason why nothing ever came of it

because he was the sheriff's son. And that apparently was given, that statement was given and written down and taken into the record by the Valencia County Sheriff's Department. Yeah, and apparently some of these guys were involved with dealing drugs. And that may have had something to do with it. There was also a report in that statement

that it was sort of a conspiracy in that Deputy Rivera had their backs was the direct quote. And so maybe because the son was in deep trouble, the deputy got involved and made sure that that sort of stayed buried. But again, this is, I think to call this hearsay is pretty accurate, but it's also a pretty juicy deathbed story,

which these always play well in these kinds of cases. For sure. I also saw that there was another guy who gave a third hand confession or second hand confession, like that said that Lawrence Romero Jr. confessed to him as well. And Lawrence Romero Jr. died in 1991 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

And it's not clear whether he died by suicide or other people say that he was playing Russian roulette, very foolishly, and it did not go so well. But either way, he died in 1991 within a couple of years of Tara Colico's disappearance. So at the time again, his father was sheriff of Valencia County and this deputy Rivera, who supposedly had the Romero's backs became sheriff later

and is now still sheriff of Valencia County from what we understand. And what's weird though is a lot of that statement jibes with Rivera's weirdo press conference that he held in 2008 that these kids had, you know, she was being followed in a trunk. She was bumped or by a truck. She was bumped by, from behind, she was killed.

That the people's family helped them cover up the crime. He just stopped short of saying who it was. And that was, it's just very odd. If he was the one that was helping cover things up to have that press conference is a very odd thing to do if you're in on it, you know? Yeah. And the one thing we didn't mention earlier that's pretty important too, if you think back to that Polaroid,

if you're asking yourself like, surely they analyze this thing for real and it's not just up to internet people to compare photos. There were a few different organizations that looked into it and they very frustratingly one said, yes, we think that's her. One said, no, that's not. And one said, well, we can't be sure.

So that just leads to the frustration to literally have three groups looking into this and each of them have a different take on it. Kind of leads you back to nowhere. For sure. And if it's frustrating for us or for the web sleuths or whoever's listening, think of what it's like for the family, you know, to hear, you just rather hear

everybody say yes or everybody say no to have it just inconclusive like that or contradictory. It's just got to make it so much harder. Yeah, for sure. But ultimately, when you put all the pieces on the table, which one makes more sense that she was killed locally and it was covered up by some local families who had the ability to cover it up

or that she was abducted and ended up somehow in a Polaroid in Port St. Joe, Florida a year later. And I think that's what her sister was saying, where she was saying, and if I look at this photograph, I know that it's Tara, but I also realized that that explanation makes the least sense of all of the explanations that are out there. Right.

So the case is still ongoing. In 2019, the FBI apparently out of nowhere released a $20,000 reward for information on the Tara Calico case. No one apparently has any idea what prompted them to do that or why they did it, but it's out there. So if you know anything about Tara Calico's disappearance and you want to make a cool 20 grand,

get in touch with the FBI or don't even do it for the money. Do it for the humanity. How about that? Yeah. And that's it, huh? You got anything else? I got nothing else. Well, then I guess that's it for the Tara Calico case,

hopefully for now. And since I said that, it's time for Listener Mail. I'm going to call this math, math, math. Oh, I was hoping you were going to either ignore this or you hadn't seen it at all. Well, I don't even know if this person is right. This could be one of those great ones or then someone corrects the correction.

That would be great. But we'll see. Come on, somebody. Hey guys, listening to 1-800 podcast and responding to Chuck's anticipation for a correction of Josh's math. Josh, your competence and certainty in your math are charming and inspiring.

And I appreciate it when people say something with conviction. Now onto the sour part. Josh, you almost had the math right, but for some reason you stated that the last seven digits range from technically 1 million to 9,999,999. This were true, then you would be correct in your calculations. But according to what I can find, that does not seem to be the case.

The FCC website on toll-free number spells out prefixes which are available, but it does not provide a restricted range available for the last seven digits. If you enter 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, as the last seven digits to check that if a number is available, there is no information about that being an invalid option. I'm not quite sure I follow.

For example, I checked 1, 8, 3, 3, all zeros, and it said that it was available. So then that brings us the range from all zeros to all nines, which provides us with 10 million, not 9 million. Sorry, Josh, so when you multiply that by seven prefixes, you get 70 million combos. 7 times 9 million is 63 million, not 54 million. The only reason that I'm sending these emails not

to draw attention to a, well, actually, you did the math wrong. Liar. But rather because Chuck drew attention to it. So blame him, Josh. OK, all right, I'll go with that. Can I blame you both? Sure. I think that's most appropriate.

And that's from Noah in Philadelphia. We saw you guys at the bell house. My sister and I saw you for her 25th birthday. Please give a shout out to Becca if this ends up on the show. So hello, Becca. Happy, very belated birthday, Becca. Well, she's had another one since then. Happy birthdays.

I guess we do the bell house in October, so it's coming up. Yeah, in 2020, who knows? Well, thanks a lot, Noah. And thanks to you and Becca for coming to see us live. Eventually, we will be out there live again. Can't wait. Yes, it will be nice. So keep an ear out.

I don't know when, but we will eventually. And in the meantime, if you want to get in touch with us, you can do it by email. Send it off to StuffPodcast at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app.

Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation?

If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass

on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts.