Tara Calico may have been alive in 1994

[justins5256]

I did a Usenet newsgroups search on Tara's name on Google Groups, and this came up:

(Sorry for the bad formatting)

From: damondsw@aol.com (DamondSW)
Newsgroups: alt.missing-kids
Subject: Tara C. Update
Date: 22 Dec 1994 13:58:59 -0500
Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364)
Lines: 66
Sender: root@newsbf02.news.aol.com
Message-ID: <3dci9j$in@newsbf02.news.aol.com>
Reply-To: damondsw@aol.com (DamondSW)


On Tuesday, Sept. 20, 1988, Tara Leigh Calico, then 19, from Belen, NM
went out for her routine morning bike ride . She never came home. Her
family and the entire community spent the next month searching the brush
for signs of her but nothing was ever found. For the next ten months this
family and town worried and wondered about the girl. This was not the kind
of a person to do something so bizarre as run off or do anything to get
herself into any trouble. Then on Sat. 15 July, l989 , a woman in Port St.
Joe, FL got out of her car at a drive in grocery and noticed a white
Toyota Mini-van parked next to her. As she was getting back into her car
she noticed a polaroid photo laying by her door. She picked it up and was
shocked at the sight of a young woman and a little boy laying in the back
of the same kind of minivan with their hands tied behind them and their
mouths taped. The photo was taken to the police and eventually it went
national and Tara was identified as the girl in the picture. Her family
was on one hand horrified but at the same time relieved she was at least
still alive. The little boy was misidentified as a child missing from
Grants, NM, in April of l988. After close examination it was found not to
be him. The boy's identity is still a mystery.


Finding Tara's picture was the first bit of hope the family had that she
was still alive. Then within days another was found in California and
later more were discovered around the country. The kidnappers were playing
a bizarre and cruel game with her family. Despite a long investigation by
the FBI nothing much concrete was learned about Tara or the boy until
recently when truckers started making reports that she was indeed still
alive and being kept hostage and being used by the kidnappers as a table
dancer and a prostitute. They were using the threat of hurting the boy as
leverage against her. It is characteristic of Tara to be defensive of a
child and they must have discovered this and use it against her. She has
been able to communicate indirectly with people and we do know that she is
alive and has not given up. They control her but they have not broken her
spirit and so her family has faith that she will be free. They picked on
the wrong kid to abduct.

There is now an all out nationwide effort to spread Tara's name and face
and her story to try to find anyone who may have encountered her or may
have information on people who have misused young women in this manner. If
you have any information concerning victims who have escaped or missing
girls/women who disappeared under simular circumstances please call the
FBI or your state police and ask them to compare the cases. There may be
some organized effort to target women and girls who are like Tara.


Tara Leigh is an incredibly intelligent and motivated young woman. She is
from a big Brady Bunch type family and I cannot find a person who has
anything derrogatory to say about her or her family. This is no case of a
runaway or a kid in trouble due to her own mistakes. At age 19 she already
was in her third year of college classes , working at a bank part time and
was far too busy to even date. I have become friends with her mom Patty
Doel, and feel absolute sympathy and respect for her. If there is anyone
out there listening who would like to get out flyers, keep watch for Tara
and the shread of human debris who has her, they may call 1-800-VANISHED
and ask for flyers or contact me at the E-Mail address below. I guess
investigators should not get personally and emotionally envolved but this
time I cannot keep from it. Folks, this is one of the worst and most
inhumane acts anyone can do to another and your help in bringing this girl
home would be appreciated more than you can imagine.


To local officials who may be reading this, please review any cases of
stranger abductions of women/girls between ages of l6 and 25, who are of
simular character and description to Tara Calico, please consult with the
FBI, New Mexico State Police, Valencia County Sheriff's Dept., Los
Lunas,NM or this address. Thank you all for listening. Keep these kids in
your prayers and do anything you can to help.

[nohwheregirl]

Hmmmm...the notion that Tara had ever communicated "indirectly" (with the exception possible clues from the photos) with her family or authorities after her abduction is news to me, and goes contrary to anything i've ever read from her parents in the press.

[justins5256]

Originally posted by nohwheregirl
Hmmmm...the notion that Tara had ever communicated "indirectly" (with the exception possible clues from the photos) with her family or authorities after her abduction is news to me, and goes contrary to anything i've ever read from her parents in the press.

I took it to mean that she has communicated indirectly with people whom she has met on the road since it was mentioned in the same paragraph that discusses the sightings by truckers.

Justin

[Fletch]

I don't think the girl in the photo was ever positvely ID'd as Tara Calico. IIRC, her family was convinced it was her but the police were not.

Just by looking at pictures of Tara and the picture of the girl in the van, I don't see much of a resemblance.