Tara Calico Went for a Bike Ride in 1988 and Never Came Home. Inside the Cold Case — and the Ominous Warning She Gave Her Mom By Emily Blackwood

It’s been over 30 years since Tara Leigh Calico went missing while on a bike ride in her hometown of Belen, N.M., but police have yet to make an arrest in her case.

“I believe that Tara’s case has been a huge misjustice within the Valencia County Sheriff’s Office,” Calico’s childhood friend, Melinda Esquibel, told The Sun in June 2023. “[I] hope that now the right people are working this case so justice can be served.”

The investigation has taken countless twists and turns since the 19-year-old college sophomore disappeared in September 1988. While former sheriffs have theorized that a group of local boys attacked her, an ominous photograph found a thousand miles away led her family to wonder if she had been abducted alongside a young boy.

Neither theory has ever been proven, leaving Calico’s loved ones still searching for answers while holding on to the memories of who she was.

“Tara had a bright light around her,” Esquibel said. “She was fun, serious, smart, playful and kind. That is how I remember her … She showed me kindness and I will never forget that. She showed me kindness when she didn’t have to.”

So, what happened to Tara Calico? Here’s everything to know about the New Mexico teen’s disappearance and why her case has never been solved.

Calico went missing after a routine bike ride

On Sept. 20, 1988, Calico left her home at 9:30 a.m. for her daily 36-mile bike ride, per the Valencia County News-Bulletin. She told her mother, Patty Doel, to come and pick her up if she wasn’t home by noon, because she had plans to play tennis with her boyfriend.

The last time anyone saw the 19-year-old alive was at 11:45 a.m.

When Calico failed to come home, Doel searched for her daughter along her route and called the police. Though her Sony Walkman and cassette tape were discovered along the trail, the teen and her bike were never seen again.

Witnesses reported she was followed by a pickup truck 

Multiple people saw Calico on her long bike ride the day she went missing, and some reported seeing her being followed by a light-colored Ford pickup truck.

Other witness reports alleged that “threatening” notes had also been left on the teen’s vehicle. Even Doel allegedly stopped cycling with her daughter because she believed she was being stalked by a driver and encouraged Calico to carry mace, The Sun reported.

“I knew, my parents knew, immediately that some foul play had happened,” Chris Calico, her older brother, told PEOPLE in 2018. “We didn’t have any idea what.”

A chilling Polaroid of a woman who looked like Calico was found months later

Ten months after Calico was reported missing, a Polaroid of a woman who looked eerily like her was found in a Florida convenience store parking lot. The unidentified female was bound and gagged and lying next to an unidentified young boy who appeared to be in a similar state. It looked like the two were in the back of a van.

The Polaroid made national news in July 1989 and caught the attention of Calico’s family, who believed she was the woman in the photo. Her stepfather, John Doel, reported the image to the Valencia County Sheriff’s Office.

“When people ask me, ‘Is that her?’ If I had to say yes or no definitively: Yes, that is her,” Michele Doel, Calico’s stepsister, told PEOPLE in July 2023. “Does it make sense? No. That’s not the story that makes sense.”

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It was analyzed at least three different times, including by the FBI, but the results were inconclusive. The sheriff’s office didn’t actively pursue the image and focused on local suspects.

Another New Mexico family believed that the boy in the image was 9-year-old Michael Henley, who had vanished on a hunting trip with his father in April 1988. However, his remains were found two years later.

The boy and the woman in the photo have never been positively identified.

Police believed she was taken by someone she knew

Former Valencia County Sheriff Rene Rivera, who led the case from 1996 to 2011, told PEOPLE that he believed Calico was killed by at least two local teenage boys and two accomplices. He alleged that the boys’ families helped cover up their crimes and that the teen is buried somewhere in Valencia County.

Esquibel has also subscribed to that theory, telling The Sun that she thinks a group of local boys stalked Calico after she rejected one of them.

In 1998, a judge officially declared Calico deceased and ruled her death a homicide, per KOAT.

Years later, in the fall of 2021, the Valencia County News-Bulletin reported that investigators executed a sealed search warrant tied to her case at a local home.

Police announced that they had identified “the offenders” in 2023 

In June 2023, the Valencia County Sheriff’s Office said they’d made “substantial progress” in Calico’s case and had enough evidence to send to the district attorney for potential charges, the Valencia County News-Bulletin reported.

Lead investigator Lt. Joseph Rowland told The Sun that new evidence emerged from work that began in October 2020. He said they now believe they’ve “identified the offenders associated with Tara Calico’s disappearance.”

“We are seeking to charge and arrest the offenders,” he told the outlet. “This case has obvious challenges due to its age and circumstances … A body has yet to be found. No DNA was recovered in the initial investigation.”

However, Lt. Rowland said he still believed Calico’s case was “solvable” based on the number of people who have continued to discuss it over the past three decades.

“Belen was a much smaller town in 1988 and almost everyone knew each other,” he explained. “I believe that the person or persons responsible for her disappearance are local.” 

Her mom died believing she was the girl in the 1989 photo

Up until her death in 2006, Doel believed that her daughter was the woman in the Polaroid. When she relocated to Florida with her husband, she kept a bedroom ready for Calico and would bring her gifts on her birthday and on Christmas.

“Mom really did not want to believe she was dead, period,” Chris told PEOPLE. “And [even] photographic evidence of a young woman alive — even though she’s in extremis — is something to latch onto.”

Following her mother’s death, Michele started a podcast about Calico’s case with Esquibel. The two now believe they know what happened to their lost loved one.

“I feel like me and my team have solved the case, but I am not the authorities and there is not much I can do about making arrests,” Esquibel told The Sun. She added that she had information about a possible abduction that a group of boys had allegedly planned four days before Calico went missing.

“This would mean it was premeditated and thought out,” she said.