Resolved FL - Port St Joe, 2 Children 96UMFL & 66UFFL, bound & gagged in photo, Jun'89

[tricket]

Two things to note:

From egghead wiki page:
Egghead was successful from the early days, expanding from a single store in*Bellevue, Washington, to a 200-store chain, with locations primarily on the West Coast.[1]

Tara Calico's mom looked at the photo, and said she was convinced it was her daughter.


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I think this photo resembles her the most compared to the photo in the van. Additionally, there is a statement on this news site that claims:

The Valencia County News Bulletin received an email from a former Georgia sheriff’s deputy, who said a young woman’s body matching Calico’s description was found on the side of an interstate in Georgia.

That woman is buried in an unmarked grave there. Her DNA was sent to a lab in Atlanta, but the body was never confirmed to be Calico’s.


http://m.koat.com/news/authorities-reopen-tara-calico-cold-case/22240062

However , I am not sure this is verified information.

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[sony12]

I thought it looked like a glasses case.

Only thing though is that a sunglasses case would be closed in and would not be open from the side. This thing is clearly open on the side.

 

[sony12]

Two things to note:

From egghead wiki page:
Egghead was successful from the early days, expanding from a single store in*Bellevue, Washington, to a 200-store chain, with locations primarily on the West Coast.[1]

Tara Calico's mom looked at the photo, and said she was convinced it was her daughter.


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Yes I know. However really the only evidence anyone should even consider it being Calico is the book and the book was actually a big reason her mom thought it might be her.

 

[Jigoku Dayu]

I've never been convinced that this is Tara Calico. It could be her, but the eyebrows and the shape/ width of the face appear very different to me. Also, it always looked to me like the boy was smiling.

Honestly, I pulled some nasty pranks in my chaotic youth. (I was nearly arrested for prank calling someone who turned out to be a deputy! He thought I was someone mad about an arrest he made. I had originally dialed him at random and was amused by his joke answering machine message. Having OCD, I felt compelled to keep calling and calling. Boy, did I get a horrifying surprise when an officer showed up at our door!) So I can understand being afraid to come forward, even now. People, especially young people, do some really stupid things, without considering they may hurt others deeply. The Beaumout children's case springs to mind. The was a teenage boy who faked letters to their parents. Mrs. Beaumont was convinced they were real and the police even thought it was Jane Beaumont's handwriting. It took 24 years before they determined they were a hoax and located the guy who wrote them. Apparently, he was having a difficult adolescence and was acting out. There are also the very malicious hoaxers, like "Wearside Jack." I don't put it past people to fake something like this.

 

[dotr]

Just started to entertain the thought that somebody/people, purposely chose a girl who looked similar to Tara C. posed a girl with a book known to be Tara's favorite, and then purposely left those pics for people to find.
Why?
Either as an elaborate prank, OR, to make LE and others believe Tara was still alive in order to redirect the investigation into her disappearance.
It also seems like a test of sorts, like a mock disaster, but in this case, to see how LE, the family and public would respond to the "event".
imo, speculation.

 

[Romulus]

The Valencia County News Bulletin received an email from a former Georgia sheriff’s deputy, who said a young woman’s body matching Calico’s description was found on the side of an interstate in Georgia.

That woman is buried in an unmarked grave there. Her DNA was sent to a lab in Atlanta, but the body was never confirmed to be Calico’s.

This case is already in Namus?

 

[Aleph]

The bondage tape mentioned up thread was a great find and new to me. I have probably read everything about this photo that's available on the Internet and I have never seen anything about the tape before.

I lean heavily towards this photo being real. The bondage tape is more evidence in that direction, in my opinion. It's not something most people have just sitting around the house or something that kids innocently play with. It tells us that the perp here was very interested in bondage and/or sadism.

I am thinking of the Finders case, which also popped up in Florida in the 80s. Has anyone ever linked the two in terms of place and time?


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[Romulus]

This case is already in Namus?

The profile is maybe this

http://www.websleuths.com/forums/sh...t-Side-of-NB-I-59-Dec-88&highlight=namus+4694

https://identifyus.org/en/cases/4694

Calico disappeared on September this Uid wad found in December 1988

 

[sony12]

The bondage tape mentioned up thread was a great find and new to me. I have probably read everything about this photo that's available on the Internet and I have never seen anything about the tape before.

I lean heavily towards this photo being real. The bondage tape is more evidence in that direction, in my opinion. It's not something most people have just sitting around the house or something that kids innocently play with. It tells us that the perp here was very interested in bondage and/or sadism.

I am thinking of the Finders case, which also popped up in Florida in the 80s. Has anyone ever linked the two in terms of place and time?


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It's up to everyone to decide for themselves what the bondage tape might mean (as obviously nobody has ever come forward in regards to this photo and there have been absolutely no leads at all about the two children).

To me though the bondage tape makes it lean towards the side of it not being real and not being the photo of a real kidnapping. Bondage tape wouldn't be something someone would generally use if they were truly trying to hide kids away and keep them quiet. It wouldn't be something too difficult to get off and as is made not to hurt the people who are wearing it. Basically all it is is for people that are wanting to play out a scene they can play out a scene without hurting their skin or anything. Also you need to ask yourself is it just a coincidence that none of the girls hair (or the boys for that matter) is in contact with the tape or did they purposely set it up that way?

That to go along with the fact that it really doesn't even look like in many ways that the kids are even tied up. There also seems to be objects strategically placed in the photo that seem out of place (like they were purposely put their in order to play the scene up).

Now if we had reports of missing children that looked similar to these two I probably then would believe it was somehow real. However since nothing at all has come out about these two and nobody has come forward saying their missing child looks like them I'm inclined to believe that these two never were missing.

Now of course it is entirely possible that the parents/other adults were involved in the making of the photo however I don't believe their is very strong evidence at all that this was a photo of a kidnapping and the kids involved were ever missing from their families.

 

[Dionysia]

I'm not sure that pain-free bondage tape was available 30+ years ago. (Not going to Google that at work! LOL)

I still think it's a real photo of kidnapped / abused children.

 

[sony12]

I'm not sure that pain-free bondage tape was available 30+ years ago. (Not going to Google that at work! LOL)

I still think it's a real photo of kidnapped / abused children.

Bondage tape still isn't pain free if applied incorrectly. However the way it was applied in the photo is how they instruct you to apply it to avoid a loss of circulation and all that other stuff
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bondage_tape

 

[Dionysia]

Just because the tape was put on to avoid pain doesn't mean this is a prank.

 

[sony12]

Just because the tape was put on to avoid pain doesn't mean this is a prank.

True. We don't know what the true intentions were of the photo. However when you add all the things up of their seemingly never being any missing children reports for these two, kids look to be well taken care of, it looks like they may not be bound at all, it does start appearing like this very well may not be a real kidnapping scene at all. All guesses are equal at this point because we have virtually no info at all about the background of the photo but my interpretation of it is that these are not two missing children and the reality of the photo isn't quite as ugly as one may originally think when first looking at it.

 

[tricket]

This case is already in Namus?

Yeah, I will post the link. Her DNA was not tested Cavan at this person, but it also said this doe did not have any scars and Tara did

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[tricket]

Yes I know. However really the only evidence anyone should even consider it being Calico is the book and the book was actually a big reason her mom thought it might be her.

I disagree. The mother was convinced it was Tara because the girl in the photo had an identical scar on her leg that Tara got from a car accident


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[sony12]

I disagree. The mother was convinced it was Tara because the girl in the photo had an identical scar on her leg that Tara got from a car accident


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True she thought she saw a scar. Looking at that photo though do you see a scar or is it just a camera blemish? I have looked at that photo over and over again trying to see what she said she saw and all I see is a little camera blemish. I completely understand her choosing to believe it was her because it brought a little hope to the situation but I think it may have been a situation where Tara's mother was seeing what she wanted to see.

In anycase the girl in the pic looks several years younger than Tara would be anyways so I think you can practically eliminate Tara just from that alone without going into all the other things that don't add up between the two.

 

[Wyle_E_Coyote]

True. We don't know what the true intentions were of the photo. However when you add all the things up of their seemingly never being any missing children reports for these two, kids look to be well taken care of, it looks like they may not be bound at all, it does start appearing like this very well may not be a real kidnapping scene at all. All guesses are equal at this point because we have virtually no info at all about the background of the photo but my interpretation of it is that these are not two missing children and the reality of the photo isn't quite as ugly as one may originally think when first looking at it.

BBM

All one needs to do is take a scan through the cold cases here on WS, or look through NAMUS or one of the other websites dedicated to the missing and unidentified. There are, sadly, many, many children who went missing and were never located (as well as bodies found and never identified). In 1989, no one had Internet, there were no national databases, and jurisdictional cooperation was often non-existent. Even though it recieved a lot of publicity, it would be very easy for there to be a missing person report filed and never connected to these two children.

Tara Calico's family believes it could be her. There are also a couple of other photos that may be Tara, one of which shows a girl bound with a striped material in the background similar to this one (the other two photos have never been made public).

Also, this photo was analyzed by the FBI and the Scotland Yard. Apparently, both organizations thought it was real (and one did conclude it was likely Tara).

I vote real.

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[Wyle_E_Coyote]

http://store.painfulpleasures.com/b...ethod-for-stretching-ears-or-for-bondage.html
View attachment 97752 View attachment 97753
Bondage tape. http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/66uffl.html

I don't think the resolution is good enough to say definitively what type of tape it is.

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[Aleph]

True. We don't know what the true intentions were of the photo. However when you add all the things up of their seemingly never being any missing children reports for these two, kids look to be well taken care of, it looks like they may not be bound at all, it does start appearing like this very well may not be a real kidnapping scene at all. All guesses are equal at this point because we have virtually no info at all about the background of the photo but my interpretation of it is that these are not two missing children and the reality of the photo isn't quite as ugly as one may originally think when first looking at it.

I would love it if you are right -- and, obviously, I can't prove that you aren't. Let's hope you are.

But I'm forty years old and relatively worldly and I just now learned about the existence of bondage tape. This kind of thing is probably relatively easy to stumble upon these days (but no one else has ever identified the tape -- the True Crime Garage podcast just did an episode on this case and they thought it was electrical tape). I would think that thirty years ago, an item like this would be vanishingly rare. You'd have to know what you were looking for and where to look for it, right?

I think this is evidence of human trafficking. Unfortunately, I don't think it's significant that neither child has been matched with a known missing person. There is some deep, dark stuff out there.

Also -- this has been said before but bears repeating -- I'm not sure the book is super significant either. I read it and other gruesome books by the same author when I was, like, eleven. So did everyone I knew. It was like the Twilight of its time.




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[sony12]

I would love it if you are right -- and, obviously, I can't prove that you aren't. Let's hope you are.

But I'm forty years old and relatively worldly and I just now learned about the existence of bondage tape. This kind of thing is probably relatively easy to stumble upon these days (but no one else has ever identified the tape -- the True Crime Garage podcast just did an episode on this case and they thought it was electrical tape). I would think that thirty years ago, an item like this would be vanishingly rare. You'd have to know what you were looking for and where to look for it, right?

I think this is evidence of human trafficking. Unfortunately, I don't think it's significant that neither child has been matched with a known missing person. There is some deep, dark stuff out there.

Also -- this has been said before but bears repeating -- I'm not sure the book is super significant either. I read it and other gruesome books by the same author when I was, like, eleven. So did everyone I knew. It was like the Twilight of its time.




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It definitely all is subjective at this point. However my feelings on the matter was that if these were two missing children they would have been identified by now or at least strongly attached to particular names. It may have been more difficult to identify them prior to the internet age. But once this photo started circulating around on the internet I'm pretty sure if these kids were missing their families would have seen the photo and come forward saying it was likely their kid. The only way I see it as being slightly possible that these two kids were in fact kidnapped would be if they were not American.

As far as the bondage tape went people have been doing bdsm type of stuff for ages. Can't say how long bondage tape has been around but I'm sure it was around back in the '80's and early '90's. I would assume all you would need to do to get it back then is go to a sex store.