New Mexico’s Top Unsolved Murders & Missing Persons (Part One)

***Update 06/13/2023***

***Investigators make ‘significant breakthrough’ in 1988 cold case of University of New Mexico student, Tara Calico***

Today we’re going to dive into New Mexico’s top Unsolved Missing Persons & Unsolved Murders. Eventually, the bad guys get caught, right? Maybe not as the years roll on. The suspects die from old age, or suicide, or miraculously stay out of sight by leading the good life. These cases are still under investigation by law enforcement at the State, Local, or Federal levels. I had plans to make this one article but it would be exceptionally long so it is broken down into multiple articles. If you know something, no matter how small, contact the FBI or law enforcement departments listed below. In this Shop Talk article, we explore:

The Mysterious Disappearance of Tara Calico

No other case in New Mexico has captured the hearts and minds of people when you mention the name of Tara Calico. Everyone knows Tara Calico and her mysterious disappearance. The case has taken so many disappointing twists, turns, and developed tons of leads and false narratives, but they have led nowhere. There are times I wonder if the law enforcement officers involved in the initial investigations, knew who the culprits were. It looked like they were getting fed a bunch of false info from people who knew these suspects. The reasons can be obvious. Some people wanted to genuinely help, others looked to be helping in covering up the suspect’s trails thus helping them keep just a few paces ahead of the law. This raises a red flag on who the suspects are and just how close law enforcement is to solving this case.

On September 20, 1988, at 0930, nineteen-year-old Tara Calico goes on her routine morning bike ride on Highway 47 in Belen, NM. Sometimes her mother, Patty Doel, would accompany her on these morning rides. On this particular morning, Doel did not accompany Calico on her morning ritual. Before Calico left her home, she gave instructions to Doel to come to pick her up if she was not back by noon. Calico had plans to meet her boyfriend for tennis that afternoon.

The time strikes 1205. Doel drives down Highway 47 when Calico does not arrive home. She drives along Calico’s usual bike route – twice – and finds no signs of her. Doel, in a panic, contacts the local Sheriffs who go searching for Calico. They find no signs of her either. The only things found are broken pieces of a Walkman cassette player and a Boston cassette tape that belong to her. Other pieces of this Walkman are found later near the remote John F. Kennedy campgrounds, which were approximately fifteen miles from Calico’s home in Belen. Everyone searches for days and weeks, but Tara Calico has vanished into thin air.

The only other facts that can be added to the mix were the few witnesses available. No one had witnessed Tara’s abduction – if that is what occurred – or saw anything out of the ordinary that morning. Only one witness claimed to have seen Tara Calico riding her bike. This witness said he had seen a light-colored truck with a homemade camper shell following close behind her. The truck is said to be a 1953 to 1956 Ford. If the FBI image sketch shown below is correct, it would be a 1955 Ford. The popular ’55 Fords had the bent V upper grill bar denoting the V8 motor. Tara Calico was riding her bike and wearing earphones the witness stated. Officials speculate she didn’t know the truck was following behind her.

Days turn to weeks and weeks to months, and no further information could be found. Essentially, the investigation grinds to a halt with…surprise, no new developments. Things get a little strange some months later when a Polaroid photograph is found in a Florida gas station parking lot. The FBI, Scotland Yard, and anyone with an expert opinion analyzed and reanalyzed the photograph and came up with mixed reactions. Some said it was Calico, and others were coming up as inconclusive. The photograph has been analyzed so many times over the years, but with the advancement of technology, it was ultimately said not to be Tara Calico. Though the mystery as to the identification of the young woman and the boy in the Polaroid remains.

Other photographs and some videos have surfaced over the years, most of the sexual bondage-themed variety. People believe they are of Calico. Some people hold the belief that she was kidnapped and flushed into the human trafficking sewer line. Even though this is a regular event that happens with some women, there is no conclusive evidence this was what happened to Calico. Investigators concluded these photos appeared staged or the women were not of her.

You would think that with the case gathering national interest on television shows like Oprah Winfrey, Current Affairs, and Unsolved Mysteries, something would have come to light in terms of new information. The opposite was the case. All it produced was a deafening roar of silence that has echoed across several decades.

Years have come and gone now. The sad reality is that there are people out there at this moment in time who know exactly what happened to Tara Calico. Some of the suspects could be dead by now, but surely they had to have bragged about it to someone. Those people will not come forward to admit, confess, or at the least explain what happened. Since three decades plus have come and gone, it is an easy assumption to conclude that Calico was murdered. The bigger question is where are Tara Calico’s remains?

Another twist in the case rolled around in 2013. A man by the name of Henry Brown gave police a deathbed confession claiming he knew what had happened to Calico. The twist is he knew who the suspects were and what events had transpired. He claimed Calico was abducted, raped, and dumped into a pond. Her pink Huffy bike was tossed in a junkyard. The name he dropped into the investigator’s lap was Lawrence Romero Junior. He was Brown’s neighbor around the time Calico first disappeared. Romero bragged to him that he and a couple of friends were responsible for Calico’s disappearance. Brown even claimed to have seen a blue tarp that Romero said contained the remains of Calico. The twenty-two-page police report can be read here. It has bombshell potential because Romero’s father was the Valencia County Sheriff at the time Calico disappeared.

The thing I note after reading through this twenty-two-page report is that multiple names come floating to the surface. I question their motives as to why they went to law enforcement with these statements. It appears they had ulterior motives. It read like they were trying to gauge how close law enforcement was to solving this case and who they were eye-balling as suspects.

Even if Brown’s admission is truthful, and there are red flags in his statement, there is little that can be done to Romero Junior if he was involved in the Calico mystery. To add another chapter in this saga, it is alleged he committed suicide several years after Calico’s disappearance, but even his death is under suspicious circumstances. Found in the archives of The Santa Fe New Mexican newspaper dated July 21 of 1991, there is an article where former Valencia County Sherriff Romero Senior was calling into question his son’s death by suicide. He maintained his son was murdered after a heated argument with another man. Romero Senior passed away on May 1, 2017, without any answers to the mysterious death of his son.

An additional note to mention is the hearsay of a confession letter Romero Junior wrote admitting guilt in Calico’s disappearance and murder. He allegedly wrote a full confession before extinguishing his own life. This letter, if it even existed, mysteriously disappeared soon after his death.

As the years roll by, the people involved in the Tara Calico disappearance are passing away, retiring, or moving out of state.

Patty Doel, 64, passed away May 11, 2006, from complications from a series of strokes in Port Charlotte, Fla. She and her husband John Doel had moved away from Belen, New Mexico several years prior. Even though they were looking for a fresh beginning in life, the shadows of her daughter were ever-present until the very end.

Conclusion: I believe Tara may have known her assailants. Belen was a small town back in 1988 and everybody knew everyone. Even though it has grown over the years, the small-town attitude remains and people still know just about everyone including all the dirty laundry in their personal lives.

I suspect there were two, possibly three men involved in the initial attack. The suspects live or lived in the Belen/Los Lunas area. It is possible they moved away from the area soon after the crime. I believe there was criminal intent when they spotted Calico riding her bike. After the culprits were done, these same culprits murdered Tara Calico to keep it quiet. I believe relatives and close friends of these suspects could be involved. They helped hide her body and the pink Huffy bike together out on one of the suspect’s properties. Despite all the massive searches done over the years, nothing new has come to light. Many people still believe she is buried in a remote area outside Belen, NM.

I believe there is no evidence that there was a massive cover-up by law enforcement early into the Calico investigation. The case was too high-profile from the very beginning and any cover-up would have been discovered early on. There may have been a few missteps, but I’m tossing out the cover-up theory.

Despite all the false leads and rabbit trails, I believe that the case will eventually be solved. I feel they are close given all the reports. A new team of determined investigators within the Valencia County Sheriff’s Office and the FBI have opened up the case. There is a sealed outstanding warrant issued for an unknown person as of 2021.

If you have any information, the family and friends of Tara Calico would appreciate it. Someone out there may know a small detail that could lead to bigger things. The family deserves some closure on the matter. Click on the images below for your information.

New Mexico’s Top Unsolved Murders and Missing Persons (Part Two): The West Mesa Murders