New Details emerge in Tara Calico Case

[pacerz3000]

http://www6.lexisnexis.com/publisher...671570&start=4

MYSTERY OF TARA CALICO;
What Happened To Woman Missing 20 Years? Sheriff Says He Knows
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.

[James T]

Sounds like he has nothing & is just trying to shake the pot up to get people to come forward. If he has enough to arrest two people then why hasn't he?

If he knows who is involved in such detail, then he would know where the body is surely? Not sure how you knock somebody off their bike by accident, at an impact that means you kill them, or injure them bad enough that you then have to murder them.

[MegtheEgg86]

These alleged individuals were after her because she was attractive and desirable? Does anyone else find that totally ridiculous? If the "boys---now men" being implicated did in fact murder Tara, then how is the Polaroid to be explained, particularly the boy? (Assuming that is Tara, and I think we have a general consensus here that it is.) I don't know if I completely buy all that myself.

[Dislimb]

Originally Posted by James T

Sounds like he has nothing & is just trying to shake the pot up to get people to come forward.

You hit the nail right on the head with that one.

[LooksLikeCRicci]

I hate saying this EVERY time I post.... but.... here I go again: ()

From the perspective of a criminal defense attorney, I can understand WHY the sheriff hasn't made an arrest yet. In order to arrest someone, you need have probable cause, which is very VERY different from the beyond a reasonable doubt standard that is required for a criminal conviction.

The sheriff COULD make an arrest if he wanted to. However, then the prosecutors would have the burden of proving a murder/conspiracy case without a body... very few criminal prosecutions have been successful when there has been no body. I can only think of Thomas Capano, who was convicted of murdering his one-time lover Anne Marie Fahey. I'm sure there are other convictions that have been made without bodies, but they are incredibly hard to obtain because juries WANT to see that evidence.

As we all know, there is no statute of limitations on murder. My guess is that the sheriff/prosecutors are sitting on their suspects because they're waiting to get the smoking gun. However, after all this time, the question becomes whether or not they will ever get that piece of evidence.

[Thinman]

Vincent Doan was convicted without a body.

[vman]

Originally Posted by LooksLikeCRicci

I hate saying this EVERY time I post.... but.... here I go again: ()

From the perspective of a criminal defense attorney, I can understand WHY the sheriff hasn't made an arrest yet. In order to arrest someone, you need have probable cause, which is very VERY different from the beyond a reasonable doubt standard that is required for a criminal conviction.

The sheriff COULD make an arrest if he wanted to. However, then the prosecutors would have the burden of proving a murder/conspiracy case without a body... very few criminal prosecutions have been successful when there has been no body. I can only think of Thomas Capano, who was convicted of murdering his one-time lover Anne Marie Fahey. I'm sure there are other convictions that have been made without bodies, but they are incredibly hard to obtain because juries WANT to see that evidence.

As we all know, there is no statute of limitations on murder. My guess is that the sheriff/prosecutors are sitting on their suspects because they're waiting to get the smoking gun. However, after all this time, the question becomes whether or not they will ever get that piece of evidence.

I agree. It doesn't make any sense to arrest them if the prosecuter doesn't feel he can get a verdict.

Since your a defense attorney, I have a question. If the sheriff did arrest them and they did go to trial, but the case was thrown out for lack of evidence, what happens if they then find the body two years into the future and find damaging evidence against the guys they tried and lost years earlier. Can they put them on trial again for the same crime?




Vman

[soilentgreen]

Possibly they have information similar to Jeremy Bright's disappearance---plenty of off the record information about specific individuals being involved, but no remains, a paucity of physical evidence and none of the informants is willing to testify. I'm curious if any local individuals were ever linked to the vehicle that was seen following her on her route; she adhered to a pretty regular schedule, so it wouldn't have been difficult for someone to stalk her.

As far as the photo, I've always on the fence as far as it being a cruel prank or not.

[Cori aka ChrisSCrush]

Couldn't they offer a person with information immunity for testifying, if the person wasn't too terrified by threats?

[James T]

Even if some people have talked, I cannot see how anybody could be arrested just on hearsay. There would have to be some solid evidence in the custody of the police, such as a handwritten diary entry from one of those responsible placing themselves & others at the scene, or something she had with her that day that one of them kept as a trophy, or something with her DNA on in their posession.

It just sounds like a fishing expedition, he is probably trying to rattle some cages in the hope one of those he suspects panics at the thought of the net closing & turns the others in for a deal, or one of them does something stupid like disposing of evidence or even going to the site to dig up the body.

My thoughts have always veered more towards a lone sexual predator older than she was, physically stronger, who knew her routine & pounced at the most opportune time.

I am not sure if the girl in the photo is her & she was kept alive for a year or so in some sick game, or if the photo was either a prank, or a serial killer operating in Florida, or even a transient serial killer moving around murdering all over America who was never captured, or was captured & sent to jail for another crime.

Originally Posted by LooksLikeCRicci

I hate saying this EVERY time I post.... but.... here I go again: ()

From the perspective of a criminal defense attorney, I can understand WHY the sheriff hasn't made an arrest yet. In order to arrest someone, you need have probable cause, which is very VERY different from the beyond a reasonable doubt standard that is required for a criminal conviction.

The sheriff COULD make an arrest if he wanted to. However, then the prosecutors would have the burden of proving a murder/conspiracy case without a body... very few criminal prosecutions have been successful when there has been no body. I can only think of Thomas Capano, who was convicted of murdering his one-time lover Anne Marie Fahey. I'm sure there are other convictions that have been made without bodies, but they are incredibly hard to obtain because juries WANT to see that evidence.

As we all know, there is no statute of limitations on murder. My guess is that the sheriff/prosecutors are sitting on their suspects because they're waiting to get the smoking gun. However, after all this time, the question becomes whether or not they will ever get that piece of evidence.

[justins5256]

So maybe he is blowing smoke, but the way I look at it, who cares?

At least the case is getting some press and coverage and hasn't been forgotten.

And you never know if someone who has actual information may see this and come forward. It could happen. And if it's solved, then where's the harm?

[mphs95]

I think he's trying to light a fire under someone's butt to push them enough to come forward with info. Hopefully it will work.

[Zero]

I live in this dust bowl (New Mexico). If I ever here anything on the news, I'll post about it on here.

[LooksLikeCRicci]

Originally Posted by vman

Since your a defense attorney, I have a question. If the sheriff did arrest them and they did go to trial, but the case was thrown out for lack of evidence, what happens if they then find the body two years into the future and find damaging evidence against the guys they tried and lost years earlier. Can they put them on trial again for the same crime?


Vman

You cannot be tried twice for the same crime. You have a constitutional protection against what is known as double jeopardy.

Good movie, too... you gotta love that Ashley Judd.

[FranchiseLegend]

so glad theres new life to this case! thanks for the updated!