Tara Calico’s disappearance is among the most well-known incidents of unsolved missing persons in the country.
The youngster vanished in New Mexico in 1988, and ever since, the police, the FBI, and locals have been troubled by her case.
Who was Tara Calico?
Tara Calico was a motivated 19-year-old University of New Mexico student.
She frequently rode her neon pink Huffy bike with yellow cables 34 miles with her mother, but on September 20, 1988, she headed out on her own.
She requested her mother to come pick her up before she left at 9.30 am so that she would be home by noon to play tennis with her boyfriend, which was scheduled for 12.30 pm.
When she didn’t return home, her mother went looking for her, but she wasn’t on their usual route.
She dialled 911, and the officers who responded located her walkman and tyre tracks from a bike and a car off to the side of the road.
Where she vanished?
Never again was Tara seen alive.
Numerous hypotheses exist regarding what might have happened to her, but ultimately, the case remained unsolved.
When a woman in Port St. Joe, Florida, discovered a polaroid of what seemed to be Tara gagged and bound in the back of a white cargo van on June 15, 1989, a woman in the case’s twist led investigators 1200 miles away from the location of Tara’s disappearance.
When she returned to her car and discovered the polaroid on the ground, the white van that had been parked in the space next to hers had vanished.
Investigators at the time thought the little kid in the polaroid was Michael Henley, who had vanished while camping with his father about 75 miles from where Tara vanished.
The story blew up in the national media, and analysis of the image revealed that it was taken just a short while ago.
Although the FBI’s assessment of the image was unsure, the composite artists Scotland Yard employed certified with 85% accuracy that it was likely her.
But after that, nothing more was heard about the matter.
Finding Michael’s dead body
In 1998, a judge certified Tara dead and reported her homicide.
Then, in 2007, law enforcement changed its tune on its earlier claims. and stated that they no longer thought Tara was in the picture.
The sheriff of the county where Tara went missing revealed in 2008 that he knew something about Tara’s passing.
He claimed to have facts to back up the theory that Tara had been fatally struck by two teenage males who had panicked after accidently hitting her.
The prospective culprits were never publicly identified, and no arrests were ever made.
