Vanished

The Tara Calico Case Revealed

In July 1989, 10 months after his 19-year-old stepdaughter Tara Calico vanished near their home in New Mexico, a friend called John Doel with word of something strange: A photograph had surfaced in Florida showing a young woman and a boy who'd been bound and gagged - and the woman looked just like Calico.

The image, a color Polaroid in good condition discovered by a woman in a convenience store parking lot, made national news. Both apparent victims faced the camera, their mouths taped and arms pressed together behind their backs as though tied up.

It appeared they were in the back of a vehicle - perhaps a van - and seemed in obvious distress.

Who were they? Were they really captives? Was the photo a clue to Calico's fate?

The questions have lingered for decades, ever since Calico went missing on the morning of Sept. 20, 1988, during her regular bike ride in Valencia County.

Calico's mom, Patty Doel, believed until her death that the photo showed her daughter. As the case remained unsolved into the age of internet-enabled amateur sleuthing, the picture gathered further notoriety under ominous headlines such as "A Teen Girl was Kidnapped, and the Only Evidence They Found of Her Being Alive was a Horrifying Polaroid."

Authorities, however, were never sure the photo was connected to Calico's case.

It was analyzed at least three different times - including by the FBI - who felt strongly that it likely wasn't Calico but could not say for certain at the time. Meanwhile, Scotland Yard in the U.K. declared it was her.

The Valencia County Sheriff's Office, the lead investigating agency, did not actively pursue the image.

Instead, they and the FBI began probing local suspects in the case amid longstanding theories that Calico was taken or attacked by people in her small community. These suspicions were supported by witness reports that she was followed on her final bike ride and had been receiving "threatening" notes on her vehicle.

Still, her loved ones wondered.

"When people ask me, 'Is that her?' If I had to say yes or no definitively: Yes, that is her," said Michele Doel, Calico's stepsister.

However, Michele acknowledged, "Does it make sense? No. That's not the story that makes sense."