Haunting Polaroid snaps that give chilling clues to what occurred to lacking teenager

The fate of a missing teenager whose disappearance has baffled police for 40 years could be a step closer to being solved after haunting Polaroid photos emerged. 

Tara Calico vanished on September 20, 1988, while on a bike ride she took frequently near her home in Valencia County, New Mexico. In the 37 years since she went missing, investigators have never been able to track her down.

Tara’s mother Patty Doel would usually join the 19-year-old on her 36-mile journey, but on this day she rode her mother’s bicycle, a neon pink Huffy bike, as her own was damaged.

Chillingly, Patty told police that a recent incident where she felt she had been followed by a motorist meant she was no longer comfortable joining her daughter on the bike ride. She encouraged Tara to carry mace when she went out – but the headstrong teen rejected the idea.

As Tara set off for her bike ride, she jokingly told her mother to come in search of her if she wasn’t home by noon. When she didn’t return, Patty quickly filed a missing person report.

Officers found pieces of Tara’s Walkman and cassette tape scattered along the side of the road later that day, but never found her bike.

Witnesses came forward saying they saw two young men in a van who had been following Tara but, as the months went by, police officers couldn’t find any leads. 

A year after her disappearance, a haunting Polaroid photo of a teenager bound and gagged in the back of a van was found in a shopping centre car park in Port St Joe, Florida – almost 1,500 miles from where Tara had disappeared.

An an unidentified little boy, also bound and gagged, was in the picture next to the women. 

Both were facing the camera, their mouths taped with black duct tape and arms pressed together behind their backs as though tied up. 

It seemed as though they were in the back of a vehicle, possibly a white van, and appeared in distress. 

The photo appeared on a popular TV show at the time called A Current Affair, Patty’s friends saw the program and alerted her that they believed it was Tara in the photo. 

Patty believed until her death in 2006 that it was Tara in that photo however the FBI, who analysed the snap three times, strongly believed it wasn’t Tara – though they were never able to say for certain. 

Meanwhile, Scotland Yard in the UK declared it was her, but the Valencia County Sheriff’s Office, the lead investigating agency, did not actively pursue the image.

During the investigation the FBI contacted Polaroid and found out the picture must have been taken after May 1989 because the film had not been available to purchase before that date. 

The little boy in the photograph was also a mystery for investigators, but relatives of Michael Henley, a nine-year-old who went missing from New Mexico in 1988, also saw the show and believed it was their child in the photograph. 

Michael reportedly disappeared while hunting with his father, around 75 miles from where Tara had been abducted.

Speaking to The New York Times in 1989, Michael’s mother, Marty Henley said: ‘He looks scared, real scared, but he looks healthy, and I’m grateful for that.’

However, Michael’s remains were discovered about two years later in 1990, in the Zuni Mountains, around seven miles from where he first vanished. He had died of exposure to the elements. 

Police claimed it was ‘highly unlikely’ that it was Michael in the photo, despite his mother and father being convinced the picture bore a resemblance. 

To this day, neither the boy nor the girl in the photo has ever been positively identified. 

After meeting with investigators Patty reportedly left the station convinced the young girl in the blurry photo was her daughter for two reasons. 

She noticed a scar on the girl’s leg that she said was identical to an injury Tara received in a car accident years before. 

As well as this, a book by V.C. Andrews was next to her in the photo, which was Tara’s favourite author. 

Tara’s older brother Chris said the stress of his sister’s disappearance and its persistent irresolution significantly shortened his mother’s life.

He told PEOPLE: ‘The police would send photos of every possibility, including photos of bodies, dismembered bodies, and every time mom got an envelope with the newest pictures, she had to look at them. She couldn’t not, but it tore her up every time.’

For Patty, the Polaroid was proof that her daughter had survived whatever she encountered on her bike ride in 1988 and the hope that she might still be alive was always strong.   

However in 2022, a friend of the missing teen, who has spent years investigating her disappearance, said the girl in the photo is not Tara. 

Melinda Esquibel, Tara’s former classmate, said the photo isn’t of Tara and she had her own theory as to who did it.

She believes Tara was stalked and murdered by a group of local boys before being buried within 20 miles.

Melinda started her investigative work by looking into the Sheriff at the time of Tara’s death and she carried out hundreds of interviews with local people in the community. 

She shared her findings with the FBI, deciding not to share it with the Sheriff’s office because they were not interested in having her explain her findings, they just wanted her to turn it over to them. 

Melinda told The Sun: ‘I know that the family believes it is or could be her, but the data I have gathered shows that it cannot be her. None of the data I have leads to that girl being Tara.

‘I have information that it was a possibility that this boy and his friends were going to grab her four days before the day she was actually taken on September 16, 1988,’ she said.

‘This would mean it was premeditated and thought out.’

Melinda believes the boys hit her with a van and it knocked her off her bike, when she took off running and they followed her, assaulted and then murdered her. 

Two more horrifying Polaroids were found over the years that followed which caused concern for Patty as she believed one of them to also be her daughter. 

The first appeared appeared near a construction site in Montecito, California, and featured a blurry image of a girl’s face with her mouth gagged and a striped pillow behind her head, which was similar to the pillow in the original photo.

It was taken on a Polaroid film that was not available until June 1989. 

The second showed a woman bound in gauze with an unidentified male, who showed his face in the snap, on an Amtrak train. The film was not available until February 1990.

Tara’s mother again believed that the woman in front of the striped fabric was her daughter, but thought the other one might have been a nasty prank.

On June 6, 2023, Valencia County Sheriff’s Office stated in a press release they had made ‘substantial progress’ in the joint investigation with the FBI into Tara’s disappearance, according to Valencia County News-Bulletin.

Lieutenant Joseph Rowland, the agent who investigated the Tara’s case, told The Sun: ‘Law enforcement believes they have identified the offenders associated with Tara Calico’s disappearance.

‘We are seeking to charge and arrest the offenders. New evidence was found stemming from investigative work in October 2020 to the present.’

Any suspect names and details about the evidence have remained sealed, and the detectives were still asking the public for any information. 

Tara’s mother Patty and her father John Doel have since passed away. They had both moved into a retirement home in Florida for their final years.

Before her death, Patty, who suffered several strokes, would stare out of a window and would wait each day for her daughter to ride by on her bicycle.

Even though they were living 2,000 miles away from where Tara had vanished, Patty would look through her window and wondered if the women riding by were her daughter.

John Doel told the Albuquerque Journal in 2006 when Patty had passed away: ‘I’d have to try to explain to her that it wasn’t Tara, that is was a person too old or too young, Patty was looking for Tara right to the end.’

If you have any information about Tara Calico’s disappearance, contact the Valencia County Sheriff’s Office or the FBI at 1-800-CALL-FBI or online at tips.fbi.gov.