This was originally posted by moondawgg number of weeks ago, but it was lost due to a database crash so I am reposting it. moondawgg if you are still out there, please re-register.

Was snooping about on the net today and came across an interesting missing persons case from the 80s that was featured on UM.

Tara Leigh Calico disappeared while riding her bike in Belen, New Mexico in 1988. Foul play was suspected.
http://www.nmco.org/gallery/ma/calico.html


In 1989 a photograph was found in the parking lot of a florida convenience
store, depicting a young woman and a boy in the back of a van, bound and
gagged. It was turned over to police and for a time there was speculation
that the girl was Tara Leigh Calico. Apparently the girl had been seen with
the van drivers at the convenience store and had been "ordered" around by
them. The boy in the photo was thought to possibly be Michael Henley, a
younger boy who was lost during a turkey hunt with his father.

From the articles i can find online, both tara's and michael's parents were
brought to florida to look at the pictures. both were sure those were their
kids. The FBI disagreed, apparently.

Tara Calico is apparently still missing, but a search for missing Michael Henley offers no positive matches, leading me to believe that he has been found and could not have been the boy in the photograph, thus making the photograph look even more like a fake. Does anyone have any information as to what happened to Michael Henley in order to have him no longer appear on
missing children websites?




http://www.tabloidbaby.com/Book/Companion/bound.html
http://doenetwork.bravepages.com/257dfnm.html
http://home.earthlink.net/~jenbird/calico.html

YOu brought up an interesting point. That is VERY odd about Michael Henley not being on the missing sites???? How can the FBI dispute that the photos are of these kids when their very own families say they are? The whole thing is so bizarre.......

http://www.tabloidbaby.com/Book/Companion/bound.html

Making it even weirder, in the photo of Tara and Michale, there is a book (visible on left) by V.C. Andrews whom Tara's mother claims is Tara's fav. author BUT why would she have had a book while on a bike ride? Did she have a backpack, purse? AGH! I hate when they leave out details. Its a shame that neither family has set up a website for these kids as some parents of missing kids do b/c they post new info, updates, etc.

I first heard of this case from the fansite and this message board. That and the Matthew Chase case are among the creepiest, scariest missing persons stories I have ever heard, and I haven't even seen the episodes! (I want to though :) ) The mystery picture being found in a mall brought back dim memories of a UM case I saw many years ago about a girl who disappeared in 1979 (I'm really good at remembering the years things happened, even when I was little) and weird letters were being found in malls. (Reading this board I found out that the guy who did it got caught - GOOD.)

I too find it odd that there's little info to be found about Michael Henley. I want to see a picture of him to compare it with the polaroid.

Hey Composite Sketch, what case are you referring to that happened in 1979 (names, etc.)????

Micki Jo West, and the only way I know that is from finding this old thread (http://www.sitcomsonline.com/boards/showthread.php?s=&threadid=34424&highlight=micki+west). I'm good with remembering dates, but not names.

this is my favourite story (ie the scariest). you suggested that michael henley, jr. has been found: this is very unlikely. although i agree its odd that he doesn't appear on any missing persons sites, i'm 99 per cent sure he's still missing.

one of the best UM cases is this one with the photo of the bound kids.

whenever i see a poloroid in a mall, in a park, in a parking lot, i always pic it up and look at it b/c of this episode. so creepy.


njf

Looking for info about this case, thats how i found this site, actually my first post was about it, i wanted to know if those children in the photo were alive and well.

It wasnt good to know that the case remains unsolved until this day, there are so many terrible questions about it: Are Tara and Michael the ones pictured? if not, who they are? are they still alive?

Thinking of them prisoners of a psycho team a la Lucas-Toole caused me nightmares since the first time i saw the story around ‘92

I searched for info about this case across the web without getting much, but when i read Moondawg saying the photo could be a hoax, i realized this could be a possiblity that i never thougth of.

Maybe Michael was found (alive i hope) so hes not among the hundreds of missing kids websites, maybe somebody discovered that the photo was a hoax and those gagged kids are just faking it, maybe Tara’s sites arent updated so still show the photo.

Maybe i just want to believe in a happy end. Maybe.

Todd,

I read a Usenet post a number of years back that indicated the body of Michael Henley had been found not far from where he disappeared. He most likely was not the boy in the photo. I'll see if I can dig up the post on Google, and post it here.

Justin

My estimation has always been that it was bought by the captors after Tara Calico mentioned her preference for his books, not that she had the book at the time of the abduction. In other cases of extended kidnapping it 's frequently mentioned that the abductors will sometimes do minor good deeds or favors, to help brainwash the person by presenting a semblance of normalcy or at least keep them in line and discourage an escape attempt.

Originally posted by Composite Sketch
Micki Jo West, and the only way I know that is from finding this old thread (http://www.sitcomsonline.com/boards/showthread.php?s=&threadid=34424&highlight=micki+west). I'm good with remembering dates, but not names.

I remember that case. That was the girl- a nurse, I thought?- who vanished, and mysterious letters started showing up in malls (supposedly from the person responsible) claiming that he needed help, he killed Micki Jo, he wanted to go to the police, and said he might kill himself. I thought there was more than one letter. That's all I remember.

http://www.abqtrib.com/archives/news03/091903_news_tara.shtml

RIO COMMUNITIES - Perhaps Tara Leigh Calico knew how short her time was.

Perhaps that compelled her to keep detailed to-do lists, judiciously apportioning time to brush her hair, time to cram in a tennis game or a bike ride or a run between work and college, time to shop for Mom.

"She didn't have time to fool around," said her stepfather, John Doel. "There was just so much she wanted to fit into a day. She was like a little machine. It was amazing."

Tara was 19 when she made her last list 15 years ago Saturday. Her mother, Patty Doel, doesn't remember what it said, just that she never got to everything on it.

Just that Tara, like the book her name comes from, was gone with the wind.

Long before Elizabeth Smart, Laci Peterson or Chandra Levy, New Mexico lost Tara Calico, a long-legged, freckle-faced young woman from Rio Communities whose heart and resolve were as big as the sage-spiked plains that seemed to swallow her whole Sept. 20, 1988.

Fifteen years since Tara rode off on a pink bike from her family home on Brugg Street, the Doels have endured dozens of dead-end tips, what they see as law enforcement ineptitude and psychics' overzealousness, and their own pain.

They've appeared on "Oprah," "America's Most Wanted," "Unsolved Mysteries," "48 Hours" and "A Current Affair."

They were deputized 12 years ago to access their own information, mailed out 200,000 fliers and photos of Tara, contacted hundreds of law enforcement agencies across the globe, advocated for changes in state laws to prevent other parents from going through their hell.

They've lived with loss. They've lived for the day Tara rides back to Brugg Street on that pink bike.

But after 15 years, they are learning to face the likelihood that the day may never come.

They are leaving.

In a month or so, they will move almost 2,000 miles from Rio Communities, just south of Belen, to their bayside dream home in Port Charlotte, Fla.

It's a move they have thought about for years but could never bring themselves to do . . . just in case.

"Here, there's not anything I can do that doesn't remind me of Tara," said Patty Doel, a gracious, gritty woman who no doubt imbued her daughter with that trademark tenaciousness. "It will be a good change for us."

But it is not an easy one. The Doels might be moving on, but they are not giving up. Not entirely.

They have no time for that.

Gone with the wind

N.M. 47 slices through a vast horizon of high, dry desert between the small enclave of Rio Communities and a separate two-lane highway that traverses west to the Rio Grande and east to the blue-black Manzano Mountains.

New housing developments have nibbled into the southern edge of this arid expanse. Further south, the sparse Tierra Grande subdivision still seems more outpost refuge than viable community.

For the most part, it is still the same swath of emptiness Tara Calico rode through - south 17 miles to the railroad tracks and back - as she did almost daily for exercise.

Tara's only concern that Sept. 20 was to stick to her schedule and avoid another flat tire like one just two weeks before, her mother said.

"She told me, `Mom, if I'm not back by noon come get me,'" she said.

Tara had plans to play tennis with a boyfriend at 12:30 p.m. She had class at 4 p.m. at the University of New Mexico Valencia campus in Belen.

Tara was in her sophomore year, maintaining a 3.9 grade-point average and studying to become a psychiatrist.

That morning, she laid out what she needed: tennis clothes, racket, balls, schoolbooks, purse. She asked her mother to rewind two cassette tapes, one by the band Boston, so she could listen to it on her yellow sports-model Sony Walkman as she rode.

She left her home at 9:30 a.m., taking her mother's 12-speed Huffy instead of her own because of a damaged derailleur. Doel's mountain bike was neon pink with yellow control cables and sidewalls, likely the most colorful bicycle in Valencia County.

Seven people reported seeing Tara on that bike heading north on the return leg of her trip about 11:45 p.m. Her headphones were on, and she was apparently oblivious to the older-model, light-colored pickup truck with camper shell behind her.

She was two miles from home.

Patty Doel struck out in search of her daughter at 12:05 p.m.

John Doel, just home from the night shift as a conductor for the Santa Fe Railway, was nearly asleep when his wife burst into the bedroom.

Searching

John Doel remembers how the 6-year-old girl everyone called "Teeny Tara" crawled onto a kitchen stool each morning to prepare a pitcher of orange juice, cook an egg and brown her toast, all on her own.

"She was so self-sufficient, even then," he said. "She did everything for herself and for everybody else as well."

The Doels had been married a few months then, five children between them from previous marriages. Tara was Patty's youngest.

Now she was gone.

Rains and wind the night she disappeared washed away obvious signs of what had happened to her.

But the next day, Patty Doel spotted the outline of a Boston cassette tape in an ooze of mud on the south shoulder of N.M. 47 - the opposite side of the highway and from one to three miles south of where she had last been seen, as if she had turned around and was once again heading away from home.

The small, cracked plastic window of the Sony Walkman was recovered 19 miles east of N.M. 47 near the remote John F. Kennedy campground.

Patty Doel believes her daughter deliberately discarded the items as a way to mark her trail.

Detectives also identified bike tracks on the north side of the shoulder of N.M. 47, near the place the cassette tape was found, where a scuffle might have taken place. John Doel said the marks looked more like skids.

For weeks, friends, family, volunteers and law enforcement agents in airplanes and in helicopters, on horseback and on foot searched for Tara. Bloodhounds sought out her scent. Heat-seeking detectors scanned the terrain. Psychics offered their gloomy visions. Newspapers ran stories on the continuing search for the girl on the bike.

Authorities provided a water witch with a strand of Tara's hair to divine whether her body was submerged in a ditch.

Patty Doel said one of the first Valencia County sheriff's detectives on the case called her nearly every day with new and gruesome scenarios of what he believed had happened to Tara.

The most awful, she said, was that she was abducted by a satanic cult who cut off her hands and planted them in an autumnal equinox fertility ritual. Tara was then tied to a post in the bosque for three days and burned at the stake, his story went.

Days later, the same detective told a reporter that Tara was likely a runaway, she said.

"He said, `We're all upset with her, but we'll give her a big hug when she comes back,'" she said. "I was so mad."

John Doel, a far calmer presence than his wife, was, too.

"There's been many people and law enforcement organizations who have been extremely helpful, and there's been an equal number who have done the opposite," he said.

The detective has not worked for the Sheriff's Department for more than five years, Valencia County Undersheriff William Martinez said.

"If a prior administration and a prior detective behaved as indicated, it was totally uncalled for and not in accordance with modern day police tactics," Martinez said.

As the weeks passed, one thing became clear: The girl who could do everything for herself couldn't save herself. And neither, they feared, could anyone else.

Girl in the photo

Ten months after Tara vanished, an eerie Polaroid was found in the parking lot of a Port St. Joe, Fla., convenience store.

In it, a long-legged young woman and a littler boy lie on a crumple of sheets and a blue-striped pillow, their mouths covered with duct tape and their hands bound behind their backs.

A tattered copy of "My Sweet Audrina" by V.C. Andrews, a plastic cup and a squirt gun are also visible in the photo.

Polaroid officials say the picture was taken with film not available until May 1989.

The Doels are convinced the woman in the photo is Tara.

Another New Mexico couple identified the boy as their 9-year-old son, Michael Henley of Milan, N.M., who disappeared in April 1988 on a hunting trip with his father in the Zuni Mountains south of Grants.

Extensive analysis performed by experts from Arizona to Los Alamos National Laboratory indicated that the woman's hairline and ear were consistent with Tara's, the Doels said. They are sure a wispy mark on the woman's right calf is the scar Tara received in a car crash.

The photo was taken in the windowless back of a white Toyota cargo van manufactured in the late 1980s, they said.

And, they said, a phone number, some of its digits indecipherable, is scratched on the spine of the novel.

Because some numbers are missing, Patty Doel said more than 300 listings are possible. Of those, only 57 are valid numbers, she said.

None has led to Tara.

In August 1989, the FBI concluded it was unable to say for sure that the people in the photo were Tara and Henley.

Patty Doel, whose disdain for the FBI is as obvious as the cigarettes she chain smokes, said an agent told her the woman's legs were shaved, thus she could not be a kidnapping victim.

A spokesman for the FBI in Albuquerque was unavailable for comment.

In June 1990, remains found in the Zuni Mountains were identified as those of Henley.

The Doels even have doubts about that.

Two other photos have surfaced over the years.

The first was found near a residential construction site in Montecito, Calif. The haunting Polaroid, taken on film not available until June 1989, shows the blurry image of a girl's face, her mouth again covered with tape, her hairline exhibiting that same cowlick at the right temple.

Behind her is light-blue striped fabric similar to that on the pillow in the Toyota van photo.

Patty Doel said she believes it is a photo of Tara.

She points to the eyes in the photo, how one lazy pupil is asymmetrical to the other, just like Tara's.

Another Polaroid, this one taken on film not available until February 1990, shows a woman loosely bound in gauze, her eyes covered with more gauze and large black-framed glasses. A man is sitting next to her on a passenger seat of an Amtrak train.

Patty Doel is not certain the woman is Tara or whether the photo is a gag. Still, the man's face is included with two other suspect composites.

Law enforcement agencies occasionally send her grisly photos of dead young women for her to identify. So far, none of them has been Tara.

The heart they leave behind

Boxes and tools clutter the Doels' rambling five-bedroom house on Brugg Street, but it's clear that any moving-out activity is slow in coming.

"It's really hard to move," said Patty Doel, who like her husband is retired now from the Santa Fe Railway. "If she were to come home I could not ever tell her we gave up on her."

Photo collages of the children and grandchildren remain on the dining room walls. Tara is among the smiling faces.

There is Tara as a cheerleader, Tara in Little League, Tara in the family portraits she arranged.

Handmade birthday cards and her old art projects are still within easy reach. Here's one with a smiling bee and a flower for her mother's 39th birthday. "Now remember," it admonishes, "you're starting a new wacky year with us!"

The spices in the kitchen cabinets are still unpacked, still as Tara arranged them - in alphabetical order.

"She was so organized it was disgusting," her mother joked.

Tara's room is mostly untouched, the gifts Patty Doel has bought for her each Christmas and birthday still piled on the bed.

They will be shipped to Florida along with Tara's bed and belongings.

"They will be the last things I pack," she said.

The Doels say they still get the occasional call from police agencies across the country, from psychics and from people who still wonder whatever happened to that girl on the bike.

"We really refuse to believe she's gone, but in all probability she may be," John Doel said, his voice still steady as strong. Hysterical emotions, the Doels say, are a waste of time and something Tara would not wish.

But if she is dead, Patty Doel said she hopes it came fast.

"I don't want her to have suffered at all," she said. "I don't want her to have been humiliated."


***
CAN YOU SOLVE THIS CASE?

If you have information on the unsolved disappearance of Tara Calico, please call Valencia County sheriff's Detective Rene Rivera at 866-2405. You may remain anonymous.

For information on missing children, contact the Vanished Children's Alliance at www.vca.org.

Well, that explains why Michael Henley wasn't on any missing children websites. I'm really curious as to whether they were able to determine how long Michael's body lay there in those mountains.

UM should really do another segment on this case. And not just an update, an entire new segment using old footage from the 1989 airing as well as the new evidence, including the two other Polaroid pictures.

I wish Lametime would show this one, but I guess that's unlikely since they only showed this on the midnight editions, which aren't shown anymore. :( That picture is scary! I kind of feel dirty going to the site and seeing that, because it looks very sadistic and just plain sad.

Thanks for posting that article. It was informative and heartwarming and heartbreaking too. Strangely, if the photo WAS of the little boy then why in the world were his remains found in the same place (Zuni Mountains) where he vanished? :confused:

Hello,

I am Tara's mom and I would like to respond to questions that Crushed Velvet posed. Tara did not have any book with her when she disappeared. We can only guess that the abductor either gave the book to Tara because V.C. Andrews was one of many authors that Tara read. Another other possibility is that the book was placed in the photo because the ultimate subject of that book was brainwashing.

As to why no website has been established, I only recently had adequate funds to purchase a decent computer and go online. In past years the majority of my time was spent working, taking care of the kids still at home and lobbying the NM legislature to shorten the waiting time for filing missing persons reports. In addition, trying to establish a clearing house in NM for missing persons, children and adults. At the time Tara was taken, NM was one of two states that did not have a clearing house. Also, if at the time of a persons disappearance they are over 18 YOA the National Center for Missing and Explotited Children does not get involved. One of the major things in the mind of any parent of a missing kid is to try to spare any other person from the stumbling blocks that you encounter in your own case.

In June of 1997 I literally lost what was left of my mind and have been recovering from acute depression, panic attacks, etc. since that time.

I would like to express our deep appreciation for any and all assistance anyone can lend in finding Tara. She was the light of my life and has left a terrible void in our hearts since she has been gone.

My heart goes out to the family of those two kids in the picture. I hope for everyone's sake that soon the mystery of what happened to them is solved. My heart broke when I read the post from Tara's mom Patty I have a 3 year old and i wouldn't know what to do if anything happened to him. Ill keep the family and friends in my prayers.

On a after thought has this case been on AMW if not can't we try to get it profiled on there I Know someone out there knows what happened here.

Teresa

so michael henley's remains were found. theoretically he still could be the boy in the photo though i doubt it. theres still an agonising lack of info on this case. could they tell how he died? how long had he been dead? i recall UM saying a white van was seen in the vicinity just b4 he vanished: is this true? it sounds like one of those details "added on" to give the story more impact. i just don't know.

Is Patty Doel still alive?

Is Patty Doel still alive?

No, sadly she passed away in 2006. So sad to hear how bad it was the last few years of her life.

http://www.abqtrib.com/news/2006/jun/08/joline-gutierrez-krueger-patty-doel-waited-for/

Joline Gutierrez Krueger: Patty Doel waited for Tara until the day she died
By Joline Gutierrez Krueger
Thursday, June 8, 2006

Every girl, every woman, everyone who rode past on a bike was always Tara Calico.

Nearly 18 years since the freckle-faced 19-year-old failed to return from a bike ride near her Rio Communities home, and still it was always Tara.

Her mother, Patty Doel, imagined it was Tara, anyway. She always believed Tara would return on that neon pink bike, would have survived whatever snatched her up that warm September 1988 morning.

"Tara was always coming back," said her stepfather, John Doel. "Patty was looking for Tara right to the end."

The end came May 11. Patty Doel, 64, died of complications from a series of strokes in Port Charlotte, Fla.

They moved there nearly three years ago to a home John built on the water just for Patty. It was her dream home. It was a new start, but it had been agonizing to leave.

There was always the chance Tara would come back to the family home on Brugg Street, southeast of Belen, two miles from where bike tracks and remnants of the cassette tape she was listening to that day were found.

"If she were to come home, I could not ever tell her we gave up on her," Patty told me then.

Tara, then a very organized and active University of New Mexico sophomore, had gone off the morning of Sept. 20, 1988, like she always did for a 17-mile bike ride along an empty stretch of N.M. 47.

She worried about another flat tire delaying her plans for a tennis match with a boyfriend at 12:30 p.m.

"If I'm not back at noon, come get me," she told her mother.

Patty Doel left the house at 12:05 p.m. to look for her.

She looked for nearly 18 years.

The Doels organized search parties, sought media attention from local newspapers and national shows including "Oprah," "America's Most Wanted" and "48 Hours."

They were deputized so that they could conduct their own investigations, mailed out 200,000 fliers and photos of Tara, contacted law enforcement agencies around the world, prayed.

The case of Tara Calico became one of the most infamous missing persons cases in the nation, long before Elizabeth Smart, Chandra Levy or Robbie Romero.

And Patty Doel became a force of nature, hurling all her grit and passion into a heartbreaking search that her husband said eventually contributed to her failing health.

"She wanted, she needed to make a change, to put all this behind," he said in a phone call from Port Charlotte. "So we moved here."

For two years, they made a go of letting go in Port Charlotte. But neighbor Linda Killinger said Patty could never completely do that.

"She never gave up hope that Tara would return," she said.

A year or two after the move, the strokes came, each one taking another piece of Patty Doel. Her legs, her speech, her swallowing. She communicated by a message board until her loss of cognitive abilities made that impossible, too.

"We spent our golden years going to the doctors and the hospitals," John said.

Patty, a once-hardy woman now whittled down to 94 pounds, spent her last days looking out onto the waterway near their home. Each time a bike rider would pass, her disintegrating mind thought: Tara.

"I'd have to try to explain to her that it wasn't Tara, that it was a person too old or too young," John said.

Two months ago, FBI agents came around to take another blood sample from Patty. The sample will be analyzed for its mitochondrial DNA sequencing then stored in the National Missing Persons DNA Database should Tara ever be located, dead or alive.

Patty had always refused to get rid of all Tara's Christmas and birthday gifts that accumulated in the years since the disappearance. Back in New Mexico, the gifts were kept atop Tara's bed.

The gifts are still waiting in Florida.

Tara would be 37 now. She is still missing. And now, so is her mother

Mrs Doel, no longer with us... oh dear.

Something that has always nagged me about this though is the 47 mile daily bike ride... 47 miles.... that'll be about 75kms. Now who would let their 17 yo daughter out on such an enormous push bike ride? I know techincally she is almost an adult but come on, 47 miles? Certainly not the wisest thing to do.

Mrs Doel, no longer with us... oh dear.

Something that has always nagged me about this though is the 47 mile daily bike ride... 47 miles.... that'll be about 75kms. Now who would let their 17 yo daughter out on such an enormous push bike ride? I know techincally she is almost an adult but come on, 47 miles? Certainly not the wisest thing to do.

Well, it was a 36-mile bike ride on Hwy. 47. Still, 36 miles is a long way. But to an experienced and dedicated athlete, maybe not so bad. I don't know. My dad was a runner, and occasionally he would train for marathons and run many, many miles to do so.

Regardless, questioning how wise a decision like that was after the fact doesn't really seem to help. Your post almost seems as if you are blaming the victim. It seems like whenever a woman is victimized, someone always ends up saying, "Well, she shouldn't have been doing/going/wearing..." etc.

Obviously he wasn't implying she was responsible for being abducted. I understand what your saying NA4ster. I think it was probably one of those cases when back when she went missing people didn't feel they had to be as careful and suspicious of strangers as we have to now. I wouldn't be surprised if looking back Patty Doel had wished many times Tara wouldn't have gone bike riding alone that day but since she had done it so many times before without incident Tara no doubt felt nothing bad would happen to her. Unfortunately she was wrong.

I thought it was especially heartbreaking in that article that says towards the end when Patty's mental capacity was diminished that every bike rider she saw she would think was Tara. :(

Thanks for the update

I don't think I've ever mentioned this before, but what do you's think about the picture in terms of it being planted there?

One has to wonder how that picture got out of the van and onto the ground. Did the adbuctors plant it there?

Also, why did they take the picture in the first place? Were they going to use it to try and get ransom money?

I'm baffled that the boy still hasn't been identified. I never thought it looked anything like Michael Henley or Antreas Cantrell.

Sep 17, 2008:

According to this past Sunday's paper (front page) in regards to the Tara Calico case; police know how Tara went missing and seem to have persons of interest but are waiting for witnessess to come forwardand; that people involved are starting to open up because keeping it inside all of these years has made them sick. I want to urge all persons to come forward, it's been 20 long years & no mater how long it takes THE TRUTH WILL COME OUT! Nothing stays hidden forever! If it was an accident like the paper said then that will be taken into consideration. What if this were your sister, mother or friend wouldn't you want this to end already? Come forward already & take responsibility!

http://www.topix.com/forum/topstories/TCNSNT2N9C3J47T6H

Here is the article referenced above, from the September 14th Albuquerque Journal, by Leslie Linthicum:

A girl rides a bike on a lonely stretch of road. Then, poof,

she's gone.

The mystery of Tara Calico 's disappearance began to unfurl a little after noon on Sept. 20, 1988, when Tara's mother drove south on N.M. 47 from Rio Communities, expecting to find her daughter with a flat tire. Instead, all she found in the dirt on the side of the road was a tire track from the bike Tara was riding.

Tara never came home, and so began a family's chain of sorrow. And a puzzle that fed the television crime shows. And a police case that has now stretched out to fill two banker's boxes and 20 years.

Gone without a trace.

At least that has been the storyline.

But to Valencia County Sheriff Rene Rivera, the case isn't much of a whodunit.

He says he knows what happened, and has for years.

Twenty years into the Tara Calico mystery, Rivera would like to let everyone in on what happened to 19-year-old Tara out on N.M. 47 on that September day:

"The individuals who did the harm to Tara, knew who she was," Rivera told me. "They knew who she was, and they're all local individuals. And I believe that the parents (of the attackers) were some of the people that helped the individuals with hiding the truth or hiding the body or trying to escape prosecution."

Tara was 19 and starting her second year in college. Her attackers were boys she had gone to high school with, although they were behind her in school and younger, Rivera says.

"She was a real pretty girl. She was very athletic and a lot of guys wanted to talk to her, they wanted to meet her, they wanted to go out with her. And while she was riding the bike, they went up to try to talk to her, try to grab her, whatever, while she was on the bike."

The truck they were driving accidentally hit Tara, Rivera says, and bad turned worse.

Rivera has been working on the case since he started as a deputy in 1989, since he was promoted to detective in 1996 and since he was elected sheriff in 2006. For all of those years, the walls of Valencia County have been talking, naming names of the boys who were in the truck, names of the boys who helped bury Tara's body after they killed her, names of the parents and other relatives who helped clean up and cover up the mess.

Rivera says he has had enough information to get arrest warrants for the two boys — now men — whom he has identified as the killers. Two others have been identified as accomplices.

Then why, 20 years later, are we marking another milestone anniversary of a missing person's case?

Because Tara Calico is still missing.

"It's kind of hard to make a case," Rivera says, "without a body."

Rivera and Detective James Purdy are still talking to people about Tara Calico , and they're hoping that time will wear away some of the resistance to answering that one lingering question: What did they do with her?

"You know it's very frustrating, being that there's a lot of people that know what happened," Rivera said. "They know the whereabouts of the body or the remains.

"A lot of the information that we are getting is because people are starting to open up a little more. When this first happened, people were scared. People were threatened not to speak out because what happened to Tara could happen to them."

One of the most riveting aspects of the Calico case was a Polaroid photo found outside a convenience store in Florida a little less than a year after Calico went missing. It showed a bound young woman who looked strikingly similar to Tara, in the back of a van, staring at the camera. A boy, also bound, was lying next to her.

Tara's parents had the photo analyzed by Scotland Yard and said it was determined to be Tara. An investigator for the Valencia County District Attorney had a Los Alamos National Laboratory analysis that determined it wasn't.

Maybe the photo was of Tara, Rivera says. But all of his informants tell him Tara never left home.

"I believe the body's nearby," he says. And he believes her bike will be with it.

Tara's father died in 2002. Her mother died in 2006. Living family members, kids when Tara was a kid, are grown. Tara would be 39 later this month.

"I want to be able to give them closure, to be able to say, you know, I got the individuals who did whatever they did to her. I was able to recover the remains and give them to them to give her a proper burial."

Tara Calico 's disappearance is one of New Mexico's oldest, most lingering cold cases.

"Actually, it's a mystery that's getting hotter every day," Rivera told me. "Some people have this information, and they've had it for so long that they've gotten sick by hiding the information they have, and now they're coming forward to try to relieve themselves.

"Some of these people that were witnesses to the crime have been scared to come forward. They think that, being that they were there, that they're going to get prosecuted for the death. At this point, what I want to let people to know is that, if there were witnesses there, I'm willing to work with them. I need to have their information. I need to be able to recover this body."

You can reach Leslie at 823-3914 or llinthicum@abqjournal.com. Read all of her columns at www.abqjournal. com/upfront. Online

Listen to Leslie interview with Sheriff Rene Rivera at ABQjournal. com. To contact the sheriff with information, call 505-866-2400.
Caption: JOURNAL FILE ABOVE: Tara Calico 's parents walk near the spot she went missing on an earlier anniversary of her disappearance. Both parents have since died. LEFT: Investigators have debated whether this Polaroid photo, found in a parking lot in Florida, is of Tara Calico .

I always wondered if the photo was part of a fetish fantasy or possibly a still for a pedophile collection or a snuff mag.

I just cannot believe the girl in that photo is 19. Also, I read Tara Calico is an athlete. 37 mile bike rides? The young girl in the photograph has such tiny legs. She is not an athlete. The girl in the photo is a child.

If Tara Calico goes on such long bike rides then she had muscle on her legs. The girl in the photo has tiny legs, and no glutes.

does anyone else agree with this?

Has anyone gone all the way back and read this whole thread.

One of the local investigators on the case used to call Tara's mom every day and describe a new goulish method of death that he thought Tara could have suffered!

In one of them, he said that a satanic cult had cut off both of Tara's hands, buried them in a ceremony, kept her alive for three days, then burned at the stake, alive.

The freak was describing crap like this to a mom whose teenage daughter had just been abducted and he's one of the cops who's supposed to be searching for her! WTF?

I just cannot believe the girl in that photo is 19. Also, I read Tara Calico is an athlete. 37 mile bike rides? The young girl in the photograph has such tiny legs. She is not an athlete. The girl in the photo is a child.

If Tara Calico goes on such long bike rides then she had muscle on her legs. The girl in the photo has tiny legs, and no glutes.

does anyone else agree with this?

Yeah, that's a very good observation. Anyone that bicycles that much would have very muscular legs with a lot of definition. And probably a tan too by being outdoors so much.

My estimation has always been that it was bought by the captors after Tara Calico mentioned her preference for his books, not that she had the book at the time of the abduction. In other cases of extended kidnapping it 's frequently mentioned that the abductors will sometimes do minor good deeds or favors, to help brainwash the person by presenting a semblance of normalcy or at least keep them in line and discourage an escape attempt.

That's what I thought, too.

20 years later and you have to wonder who they boy is in that photo. I don't think it looks a thing like Michael Henley or Antreas Cantrell.

Yeah, that's a very good observation. Anyone that bicycles that much would have very muscular legs with a lot of definition. And probably a tan too by being outdoors so much.

Keep in mind that if that picture was taken at a date more than a few months from her disappearance, she was most likely not allowed to train athletically anymore, probably the muscles got softer as she ate and didn't exercise, and of course she could lose that tan.

I need to see a better source for the photo, the one i've been looking at is very blurry, but I think it looks like both kids in the photo have very similar eyebrows.

Their eyebrows are a bit straight without much of an arch. It made me think that the kids could be brother and sister.

Can somebody with a better source for pics of each of the abducted kids, and the polaroid do a comparison and see what you think?

20 years later and you have to wonder who they boy is in that photo. I don't think it looks a thing like Michael Henley or Antreas Cantrell.

That's always really bothered me. I never thought he looked anything like those two boys, either.

I was actually on the Doe Network a few days ago looking through some of the unidentified victims, and I almost jumped from my seat when I saw this page:

http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/96umfl.html

Turns out it was the boy from the photo with the bottom half of his face reconstructed. It's eerie that there isn't a clue as to who he might be.