A disturbing Polaroid featuring a girl and boy gagged in the back of a van has baffled police and detectives for decades.
It has long been linked to the disappearance of Tara Calico – a 19-year-old who went missing while on a bike ride on September 30, 1988.
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The girl in gray in the photo – pictured bound and gagged next to an unidentified boy – has been theorized by many as Tara.
The sinister snap was discovered in a Florida parking lot in August 1989, sparking an investigation.
And after the harrowing photo was circulated, families came forward to claim they recognized the bereaved couple.
The Calico family were sure that the girl in the picture was Tara, meaning she should still be alive months after her disappearance.
Police were divided over the photo – several agencies that studied the photo yielded inconclusive results.
For decades since the Polaroid was found, it has been the source of both hope and heartache.
It has been circulated by the media and shown on TV, and yet the business remains open for over 30 years.
But now a friend of the missing teen, who has spent years investigating her disappearance, has said the girl in the photo is NOT Tara.
Melinda Esquibel, Tara’s former classmate, believes her friend was being stalked by a group of local guys after she rejected one of the guys who asked her out on a date.
And she believes the teen was murdered the same night she disappeared and was buried just 20 miles from where she was killed — rather than being kidnapped by whoever was behind the creepy Polaroid.
But it raises a new set of questions: If Tara isn’t the girl in the picture, who is she?
Melinda told The Sun Online: “I know the family thinks it is or could be her, but the data I’ve gathered shows it can’t be her.
“None of the data I have leads to that girl being Tara.”
I feel like me and my team solved the case
Melinda Esquibel
Tara Calico never returned after a bike ride near her home in the town of Belen, New Mexico.
She set out on the 36-mile route at 9:30 a.m.—a route she rode most mornings, often with her mother, Patty Doel.
But her mother had stopped riding her bike because she thought she was being stalked by a driver.
Patty encouraged Tara to wear a club to defend herself, but she rejected the idea.
Tara was last seen along a highway at 11:45am, with witnesses claiming to have seen her being followed by a light-colored Ford pickup.
She had asked her mother to pick her up if she hadn’t returned by noon that fateful day because she had plans to play tennis with her boyfriend that afternoon.
When she didn’t return, Patty searched the route and contacted the police after failing to find her.
The 19-year-old was never seen again with only fragments of her Sony Walkman and cassette tape found along the path.
She came up with the theory of Tara’s death after interviewing hundreds of people and compiling a file containing as many as 25,000 items.
Melinda told The Sun Online: “I feel like me and my team have solved the case, but I’m not the authorities and there’s not much I can do about arrests.
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“That’s why I have to leave that to them. I have no idea if anyone in this case will ever make any arrests.”
Based on her years of detective work, she believes the group of local boys knocked Tara off her bike before grabbing her and killing her.
And Melinda thinks Tara is only 20 miles from where she was brutally murdered.
“I have information that it was a possibility that this boy and his friends would grab her four days before the day she was actually taken on September 16, 1988,” she said.
“This would mean it was premeditated and thoughtful.
“Anyway, I believe they knew her route, she was stalked and followed.
“The boys hit her bike and it knocked her down. She ran and they followed her, grabbed her, attacked her and killed her.
“I believe her body was buried within 20 miles of where she was hit.
“The details are horrifying about what happened and what happened next.”
‘TRAUMATIZING’
Melinda became interested in the case after a news article appeared on the 20th anniversary of her death – 13 years ago.
She said: “In 1988 this whole event was very traumatic for the community.
“I blocked it until my mom cut the article out and mailed it to me in California. When I read it, I started crying and the wounds just tore open.
“I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten what happened all those years ago.”
Melinda went home to New Mexico and met a group of old school friends who said to her, “Oh Melinda, the whole town knows who did it!”
“They told me a lot of stories that were quite shocking to me,” she said.
“It was at that moment that I knew I had to do something.”
Melinda began her investigative work by investigating the sheriff at the time of Tara’s death and conducted hundreds of interviews with local people in the community.
“Several years back in 2017, a researcher contacted me after listening to my podcast,” she said.
“He said he could help make me a good investigator so I could create datasets usable by authorities with all the information I collected.
“He trained me for years and in the process we put together a professional team of investigators that I could hold back any day about any law enforcement in New Mexico, and we put the case together.
“I shared my findings with the FBI. I never shared them with the sheriff’s office because they weren’t interested in going through it with me.
“They just wanted me to turn it around.”
Tara had a bright light around her. She was fun, serious, smart, playful and kind
Melinda Esquibel
Melinda’s file now contains as many as 25,000 items.
“New leads are always coming in. I add it to the datasets and link charts, so that’s a living and breathing document,” she said.
“The frustrating thing is, a lot of the information that’s coming in is rumor, so I have to see how the information fits into what we have as factual reports, timelines, etc.”
In tribute to her beloved classmate, Melinda said, “Tara had a bright light around her. She was fun, serious, smart, playful and friendly.
“That’s how I remember her. She was an upperclassman and we met in the marching band.
“She showed me kindness and I will never forget that. She showed me kindness when it wasn’t necessary.
“It says a lot about a person’s character when he does the right thing when no one is looking.
“She and I had more things in common than I ever realized.”
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Lieutenant Joseph Rowland, the agent in the Tara Calico case for the Valencia Sheriff’s Office, told The Sun Online that the matter can be resolved.
“But one of the difficulties with this research is that there is very little physical evidence,” he said.
And also Mr. Rowland said the FBI has confirmed that it is not Tara in the photo.
“No body has been found yet. No DNA was found in the first investigation. The investigation has been going on for more than thirty years now.”
Last year, a new tip led to a raid on a home in Belen, New Mexico.
Mr Rowland said: “The search warrant, along with the information obtained to meet the probability standard in obtaining the warrant, has been sealed by a court judge.
“I cannot discuss the information that led to the search warrant being obtained.”
But the detective believes the case is “progressing extremely well and is in a very active status”.
He said: “My belief that this case is solvable comes from the large number of people who have spoken about it over the years.
“Belen was a much smaller town in 1988 and almost everyone knew each other. I believe the person or persons responsible for her disappearance are local.”