A Mystery from 1989 - Port St Joe FL

A lot has changed here since
1989, but not the emotions Gulf County Sheriff Joe Nugent feels when he
sees the infamous Polaroid of a young boy and girl, seemingly bound
behind their backs, their mouths taped shut with duct tape, lying in
the bed of a van.
“It obviously is two kids with terror written all over them,” said
Nugent, who was a deputy 20 years ago when the picture was found in a
parking lot. “It’s kind of a bad time when you have to look at
something like that.”
The recent mailing of three letters containing a new, disturbing
image of an unidentified young boy to the Port St. Joe Police
Department and The Starnewspaper has added a twist to a
20-year-old mystery: Who are the children in these photos? Are they
dead or was it a hoax? And how did the photos end up in Port St. Joe?
“I think we were just dumbfounded,” Nugent said of the recent
mailings. “It is kind of weird the photos came in near the anniversary
of the original case, but if somebody is trying to send us a clue, send
us one we can act on.”

Haunting photos
Earlier this month, Port St. Joe Police Chief David Barnes received
two letters, postmarked June 10 and Aug. 10 from Albuquerque, N.M. The
children in the 1989 picture are believed by some to be two children —
Tara Calico and Michael Paul Henley — reported missing in New Mexico.
One letter contained a photo, printed on copy paper, of a young boy
with sandy brown hair. Someone had drawn a black band in ink on the
photo, over the boy’s mouth, as if it were covered in tape like the
1989 picture. The second letter contained an original image of the boy.
On Aug. 12, The Star newspaper in Port St. Joe received a third
letter, also postmarked in Albuquerque on Aug. 10 and depicting the
same image, of a boy with black marker drawn over his mouth.
None of the letters contained a return address or a note indicating the child’s identity.
Nugent said investigators as recently as this spring had looked at
the case file again, so he immediately made the connection between the
latest picture and the Polaroid photo found in Port St. Joe on June 15,
1989.
A witness at the time noticed the photo on the ground in the parking
lot of a convenience store — a Junior Food Store at the time, now an
Express Lane — after a white van, driven by a man with a mustache,
thought to be in his 30s, exited the parking lot.
Though the witness did not know if the photo dropped from the late
1980s-era windowless Toyota cargo van, and there remains no substantive
proof it did, Nugent said, police staged an unsuccessful road block to
intercept the vehicle.
Nugent remembers the case causing a stir in Port St. Joe, the region and the country.
“I’d just started and that was the biggest thing we worked around
here,” Nugent said “Months and months of people calling and giving
tips, and psychics calling, and we were never able to track anything
down for sure.”
The case file contains “stacks and stacks” of letters and clues gathered during the investigation.
The original Polaroid received national attention when it aired on
the television program “America’s Most Wanted.” Two stories about it
appeared in The News Herald in August 1989.

A mystery lives on
Though the Federal Bureau of Investigation never positively
identified the young girl and boy in the photo, they were initially
thought to be Calico and Henley.
Calico, then 19, was last seen on the morning of Sept. 20, 1988, riding a pink bicycle in Valencia County, N.M.
Henley, 9, also of New Mexico, disappeared in April 1988, while
hunting with his father in the Zuni Mountains in northwestern New
Mexico.
Henley’s parents believed the boy in the 1989 photo might be their
son, but his remains were found the next year not far from where he
disappeared, and there were no signs of foul play.
With the arrival of the Internet era, the mystery has not only lived
on, it has become the subject of numerous discussion boards and Web
sites, particularly as it relates to Calico.
One site, forthelost.org, talks about Henley and Calico, and
suggests another missing boy is actually the person in the picture.
Another site, the charleyproject.org, makes the case that Calico
is the girl and talks about two other disturbing pictures that cropped
up over the years with a girl resembling Calico in distress.
There is even a Wikipedia page dedicated to Calico and this case.
Albuquerque, where the latest letters were mailed from, is about 35
miles from Calico’s Belen, N.M., hometown and 111 miles from the Zuni
Mountains, where Henley’s body was recovered.

‘A real look of fear’
Nugent could not tell whether the boy in the photos sent in the
recent letters is the same boy in the 1989 Polaroid, and it’s just
another mystery for investigators to solve.
“Unless something just pops up (from the investigation of the recent
letters), I don’t know why these letters were mailed here,” Nugent said.
He does believe the letters’ New Mexico postmark and arrival near
the 20th anniversary of the day the original Polaroid was found might
be more than a coincidence.
Nugent also is intrigued with the timing of a phone call received
the same day The Star turned over its letter to the Sheriff’s Office. A
woman claimed she had been having visions about the case over the years
and said she believed Calico to be buried in California. Nugent said
the woman related that she worked with a runaway in a strip club in
California and that the runaway was later reported murdered and buried.
Nugent said the woman described seeing a light blue Oldsmobile car
and the name of Tara Calico in a vivid dream she has had over the years.
Thus far, California authorities have dismissed the woman’s claims,
Nugent said, but added the timing of her call and the letters is
strange.
“It’s all just very weird,” Nugent said.
All the letters have been placed in evidence bags and have been sent
to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement lab in Pensacola where
they will be submitted to testing for fingerprints and DNA. The FBI is
not involved in the latest development.
Nugent said those tests likely will take at least a month and any
new evidence gleaned from the letters would be passed on to New Mexico
authorities where the case of the missing children remains open.
“If anybody has any information we’d be happy to contact the New
Mexico authorities and pass it on to them,” Nugent said. “Somebody
somewhere knows something about it.”
And he hopes someone is finally willing to share what they know.
“Nobody knows for sure if it was a set up,” Nugent said. “Some
people think it was a staged photograph, but it was a real look of fear
to me.”

PORT ST. JOE, Fla. – A mysterious photo of a young boy sent to police and media here has rekindled interest in a 20-year-old mystery surrounding a Polaroid of a young boy and girl, seemingly bound behind their backs, their mouths covered with tape.

The recently received picture shows a young boy with black marker etched across his mouth and face, as if it had been taped shut. The boy is similar in appearance to one of the youths in a Polaroid found here in 1989 that spawned national attention from police and the media.

"I think we were just dumbfounded," said Gulf County Sheriff Joe Nugent, who was a deputy 20 years ago when the Polaroid was found. "It is kind of weird these photos came in near the anniversary of the original case, but if somebody is trying to send us a clue, send us one we can act on."

The development sparked memories for many and revived several unanswered questions: Who are the children in the pictures, are they dead or was it a hoax, and what is the connection to Port St. Joe?

"It obviously is two kids with terror written all over them," Nugent said of the 1989 Polaroid. "It's kind of a bad time when you have to look at something like that."

Port St. Joe Police Chief David Barnes received two letters, postmarked June 10 and Aug. 10 from Albuquerque, N.M. The children in the 1989 picture are believed by some to be two children Tara Calico and Michael Paul Henley reported missing in New Mexico.

One letter contained a photo, printed on copy paper, of a young boy with sandy brown hair. Someone had drawn a black band in ink on the photo, over the boy's mouth, as if it were covered in tape like the 1989 picture. The second letter contained an original image of the boy.

On Aug. 12, The Star newspaper in Port St. Joe received a third letter, also postmarked in Albuquerque on Aug. 10 and depicting the same image, of a boy with black marker drawn over his mouth.

None of the letters contained a return address or a note indicating the child's identity.

Nugent said investigators as recently as this spring had looked at the case file again, so he immediately made the connection between the latest picture and the Polaroid photo found June 15, 1989, in Port St. Joe.

A witness at the time noticed the photo on the ground in the parking lot of a convenience store a Junior Food Store at the time, now an Express Lane after a white van, driven by a man with a mustache, thought to be in his 30s, exited the parking lot.

Although the witness did not know if the photo dropped from the late 1980s Toyota cargo van, and there remains no substantive proof it did, Nugent said, police staged an unsuccessful road block to intercept the vehicle.

Nugent remembers the case causing a stir in Port St. Joe, the region and the country.

"I'd just started and that was the biggest thing we worked around here," Nugent said. "Months and months of people calling and giving tips, and psychics calling, and we were never able to track anything down for sure."

The case file contains "stacks and stacks" of letters and clues gathered during the investigation.

The original Polaroid received national attention when it aired on the television program "America's Most Wanted." Two stories about it appeared in The News Herald in August 1989.

A mystery lives on

Though the Federal Bureau of Investigation never positively identified the young girl and boy in the photo, they were initially thought to be Calico and Henley.

Calico, then 19, was last seen on the morning of Sept. 20, 1988, riding a pink bicycle in Valencia County, N.M.

Henley, 9, also of New Mexico, disappeared in April 1988, while hunting with his father in the Zuni Mountains in northwestern New Mexico.

Henley's parents believed the boy in the 1989 photo might be their son, but his remains were found the next year not far from where he disappeared, and there were no signs of foul play.

With the arrival of the Internet era, the mystery not only has lived on, it has become the subject of numerous discussion boards and Web sites, particularly as it relates to Calico.

One site, forthelost.org, talks about Henley and Calico, and suggests another missing boy is actually the person in the picture. Another site, charleyproject.org, makes the case that Calico is the girl and talks about two other disturbing pictures that cropped up over the years with a girl resembling Calico in distress.

There even is a Wikipedia page dedicated to Calico and this case.

Albuquerque, where the latest letters were mailed from, is about 35 miles from Calico's hometown of Belen, N.M., and 111 miles from the Zuni Mountains, where Henley's body was recovered.

A real look of fear'

Nugent could not tell whether the boy in the photos sent in the recent letters is the same boy in the 1989 Polaroid, and it's just another mystery for investigators to solve.

"Unless something just pops up (from the investigation of the recent letters), I don't know why these letters were mailed here," Nugent said.

He does believe the letters' New Mexico postmark and arrival near the 20th anniversary of the day the original Polaroid was found might be more than a coincidence.

Nugent also is intrigued with the timing of a phone call received the same day The Star turned over its letter to the Sheriff 's Office. A woman claimed she had been having visions about the case over the years and said she believed Calico to be buried in California. Nugent said the woman related that she worked with a runaway in a strip club in California and that the runaway was later reported murdered and buried.

Nugent said the woman described seeing a light blue Oldsmobile car and the name of Tara Calico in a vivid dream she has had over the years.

Thus far, California authorities have dismissed the woman's claims, Nugent said, but added the timing of her call and the letters is strange.

"It's all just very weird," Nugent said.

All the letters have been placed in evidence bags and have been sent to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement lab in Pensacola where they will be submitted to testing for fingerprints and DNA. The FBI is not involved in the latest development.

Nugent said those tests likely will take at least a month and any new evidence gleaned from the letters would be passed on to New Mexico authorities where the case of the missing children remains open.

"If anybody has any information, we'd be happy to contact the New Mexico authorities and pass it on to them," Nugent said. "Somebody somewhere knows something about it."

And he hopes someone is finally willing to share what they know.

"Nobody knows for sure if it was a setup," Nugent said. "Some people think it was a staged photograph, but it was a real look of fear to me."

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2009/08/29/new-letters-stir-year-old-unsolved-mystery-apparent-child-abduction-photos/?test=latestnews#ixzz1biVsFlwA








http://www.foxnews.com/us/2009/08/29/new-letters-stir-year-old-unsolved-mystery-apparent-child-abduction-photos/?test=latestnews

VALENCIA COUNTY, N.M. (KRQE) - Nearly 21 years after Tara Calico disappeared from a remote Valencia County highway, a new clue may have emerged in the form of two pictures of a young boy mailed to Port St. Joe Florida that were postmarked in Albuquerque.
Police in Port St. Joe said the first picture of a young boy's face arrived on June 20th. They didn't know what to think of it until weeks later when they received a second picture of the boy with a gag drawn on his mouth.
That's when some investigators realized the first picture had been sent to them exactly 20 years after a picture showed up in a Port St. Joe convenience store parking lot showing a boy and young woman gagged and tied up.
It's a picture that many believed showed Tara Calico and Michael Henley who disappeared in New Mexico around the same time.
Henley's remains were found about a year after his disappearance in the Zuni Mountains.
Medical investigators determined he likely died from exposure, but Calico has never been found.
Police in Port St. Joe said the date the picture was mailed, its similarity to the original picture and the fact that it was postmarked in Albuquerque are reasons to investigate further.
Detective Jake Richards said the picture and the envelope it was mailed in are being treated as evidence, and have been sent to the Florida state crime lab for DNA and fingerprint testing.
Richards said it's likely a long shot, but a lead they need to follow.
"You never know, I've worked cold cases in the past and identified bodies from the 1970's that could never be identified. You never know where you can go with a cold case. If no one is working it, it can never be solved," Richards said.
Sheriff Rene Rivera, who worked the Calico extensively during his time as a detective said he feels the same way.
"Anything that comes in is worth exploring," Rivera said.
Rivera said he has long believed that the person or people who kidnapped or killed Tara are from the Valencia County area. He has held out hope that this case will be solved and that the people who were involved, or know about the crime will reveal clues in one way or another.
"I believe that we will get that break some day. I believe people know. This case has gone on for 20 or 21 years and I believe those people want to see a closure to it," Rivera said.

http://www.krqe.com/dpp/news/crime/c...e_200908211800

Renewed hope for answers 29 years after disappearance of Tara Calico

By Kim Vallez
Published: September 20, 2017, 4:16 pm

BELEN, N.M. (KRQE) – It is one of New Mexico’s greatest mysteries. A young woman from a small, typically seen as a safe town vanished without a trace.

Rumors and so many questions have been circling for the last 29 years. Now, there is renewed hope that answers may also finally be found regarding the disappearance of Tara Calico.


On a rural highway south of Belen on September 20, 1988, college student Tara Calico, who was 19 at the time, vanished.

Now, 29 years later her family is still searching for answers.

“This isn’t just an urban legend, just a story out there, or a photograph or something people heard about or warned kids about,” Michele, Tara’s sister, said. “This was a person and she deserves it.”

Her sister Michele is not ready to stop looking, and after years of disappointment she is now taking matters into her own hands with the help of a friend.

Melinda Esquibel didn’t have many friends until she bonded with Tara on a band trip in high school.

“She said nope you are hanging with us and took me and hugged me and that is how we became friends,” Esquibel said.

After Tara’s disappearance, Esquibel moved on with life. Then after one Christmas dinner with friends, Tara came up again.

“The response I got from those at the table who were my classmates were ‘Oh Melinda, the whole town knows who did it,'” Melinda said.

It was after that conversation the justice for Tara Calico mission began.

Melinda Esquibel, who is a filmmaker, decided to create a documentary, but when she saw the case file at the sheriff’s office the mission took a new turn.

“They were in shambles… there were files with people’s names on it and there was nothing in there,” Esquibel said. “It was like, okay now what? What do we do now? So we started investigating.”

The investigation took them to places they didn’t expect.

According to Esquibel, people did not want to talk about what happened and says through the course of her investigation, her life and her family’s lives have been threatened.

However, she says progress in the investigation has been made.

According to Esquibel, different areas that were overlooked before are now being searched, unearthing secrets that have been hidden for years.

She also believes that there are too many powerful people involved who do not want the case to be solved.

“People have passed who have strong ties to the community who may have deflected people coming forward from talking and getting involved. I think that has made a difference,” Esquibel said.

Michele and Melinda have shared all the information they’ve gathered with investigators at the Valencia County Sheriff’s Department who remain the lead agency on the case.

The two are also releasing what they’ve learned through a podcast that is now being shared around the country.

Hollywood stars and many others are joining the fight “#JusticeForTara.”

Despite the picture many believed could have been Tara, found in a parking lot in Port St. Joe, Florida months after her disappearance, Michele and Melinda believe the story goes no further than Valencia County.

Much of the information uncovered cannot be released to the public because the FBI and the sheriff’s department are still building a case. A new detective was recently appointed to the case.

Anyone with information, no matter how little, is asked to call the FBI tipline or the sheriff’s office.

http://krqe.com/2017/09/20/renewed-hope-for-answers-29-years-after-disappearance-of-tara-calico/