The Disappearance of Tara Calico

Tara Calico was a 19-year-old woman who disappeared on September 20, 1988, while riding her bicycle on a rural highway near Belen, New Mexico. She had been cycling a familiar nine-mile route when she vanished. Her mother, who knew the route and the timing, set out to find her when she failed to return and found only scattered pieces of her Walkman cassette tape on the road. No other physical evidence was found at the scene and no witnesses came forward at the time.

In June 1989, a Polaroid photograph was found in a parking lot in Port St. Joe, Florida, depicting a young woman and a young boy bound and gagged in the back of what appeared to be a white van. The FBI examined the photograph and concluded that the woman was consistent with Tara Calico, though they could not make a definitive identification. Similar photographs were reportedly found in other locations, though these were never publicly confirmed. The origin of the photograph and the identities of those depicted were never established.

Multiple suspects were investigated over the years, including a man whose vehicle had been seen in the area on the day Tara disappeared and who died before investigators could develop sufficient evidence. The Polaroid photograph opened the possibility that Tara had been abducted and held captive, but whether the woman depicted was actually Tara, and what happened to her subsequently, was never proven.

Tara Calico has never been found. Her mother Patty Doel devoted much of the rest of her life to searching for her daughter and keeping the case in the public eye, dying in 2006 without learning what happened. The case remains officially open. The disturbing Polaroid photograph — which exists as a physical document but whose meaning and origin remain unverified — is one of the most haunting pieces of evidence in any American missing persons case.