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

[Armchair14]

Ooops, my bad. When I referenced "van," I meant, the van/vehicle in the back of which the kids were laying. I was just saying that it creeped me out that kids would lay in the back of a van/vehicle and take these shots for shiSS and giggles. Then, to send additional photographs to the police years later further adds to the strangeness of it. For whatever it's worth, I do think kids have been abducted and tied up in the back of vehicles before, and that some of them were ultimately murdered and not found. I do not think it's beyond the pale to consider that. Especially when you think about situations such as J.C. Dugard who lived in a tent in a pedophile's backyard for years with no one ever suspecting anything. Or a young lady who was abducted and forced to live in a box under a bed for years. Or young women who have been abducted and tied against basement walls by sexual predators. Or BTK doing his "thing." It all sounds so bizarre, does it not? Of course I cannot prove that the pictures were not staged, but why keep the gag going for so many years? The police also cannot verify the pictures are a simple hoax...can they?

Phantom,

There is no evidence that this photo was taken in a van or any vehicle. There is no evidence that a van had anything to do with the photo!

The person who found the photo merely said he or she discovered it on the parking space where a van had apparently been parked before it pulled out. The witness said he or she did not know if the person or people in the van had anything to do with the photo or not. The van could have been the sixth vehicle which parked over the photo before it was discovered. This was a convenience store in which people in vehicles constantly pull in and out, and the photo might have just blown under the van via the wind as well.

 

[Armchair14]

"The recent drawings almost certainly did not come from the (then) kids who took the photo years ago" -- by recent drawings, do you mean recent pictures? I'm now referencing the picture of the young boy that was sent to the Pt. St. Lucie police dept.

Yes. I'm sorry for the confusion, but it makes no difference to the point. The original photo has been public knowledge for many years.

 

[ThePhantom]

It depends on what articles you're reading, and what you believe you see in the a rear window just behind the kids' heads -- it looks like it's the back window of a van or some other vehicle. I searched around a bit further just to make sure I wasn't dreaming, and I found this statement in several articles pertaining to the pictures: "The photo depicted a young boy and teenage girl, seemingly bound behind their backs, their mouths taped shut with duct tape, lying in the bed of a van."

 

[ThePhantom]

"Two other photos have surfaced over the years. The first was found near a residential construction site in Montecito, California. The haunting Polaroid, taken on film not available until June 1989, shows the blurry image of a girl's face, her mouth again covered with tape, her hairline exhibiting that same cowlick at the right temple. Behind her is light-blue striped fabric similar to that on the pillow in the Toyota van photo."

I have no idea how they concluded it was a Toyota van.

 

[Armchair14]

It depends on what articles you're reading, and what you believe you see in the a rear window just behind the kids' heads -- it looks like it's the back window of a van or some other vehicle. I searched around a bit further just to make sure I wasn't dreaming, and I found this statement in several articles pertaining to the pictures: "The photo depicted a young boy and teenage girl, seemingly bound behind their backs, their mouths taped shut with duct tape, lying in the bed of a van."

Here is a news article recounting where and how the original photo was discovered, and it states what I have said all along. There is absolutely no evidence that the white, windowless Toyota van seen pulling out of a parking space where the photo was found on the ground was connected with the photo:

http://www.nwfdailynews.com/news/joe-19942-port-rekindles.html

This goes to show how misinformation gets started, with one person following another and often embellishing in the process. (Indeed, I myself was guilty of that by accepting as fact what another said earlier in this thread!)

I see nothing about the photo that particularly suggests that it was taken in a van or other vehicle. I agree that it looks like the very bottom of a window can be seen. However, rooms often have windows as well! Even if it is a vehicle, the van seen pulling out of where the photo was discovered was described as windowless; so I fail to see how two unsubstantiated claims can equal one substantiated one! Yet, that it what it seems we have here in the minds of many.

The man described as having driven the van might well have stopped in the store for a cup of coffee and unwittingly became an integral figure in an enduring mystery and legend simply because he happened to park over a photo he never noticed. Indeed, because of it he became the reason for a roadblock! I’ve been a Republican and a conservative since voting age. But if I would have gotten stopped and searched because of this, it would have tempted me into becoming a card carrying member of the ACLU!

 

[ThePhantom]

Well, what do you make of the other pictures of the same young lady showing up in another part of CA -- more of the same game? And, why did someone send pictures of the little boy from Albequerque (sp) NM years later on the anniversary of when Tara went missing? Was it just a long term scam over decades? What would be the motivation for it?

 

[Armchair14]

Well, what do you make of the other pictures of the same young lady showing up in another part of CA -- more of the same game? And, why did someone send pictures of the little boy from Albequerque (sp) NM years later on the anniversary of when Tara went missing? Was it just a long term scam over decades? What would be the motivation for it?

This is from Wikipedia (Tara Calico article):

“Two other Polaroid photographs, possibly of Tara, have surfaced over the years, but they have yet to be released to the public.” (You can read their source if you’re interested. It’s linked below the article.)

Are these the photos you are referring to? Of what bearing do photos unseen by the public that might be of Tara Calico have on this photo we are discussing here? Even if one or both of the women in these photos alleged to exist are Tara C., that wouldn’t necessarily mean that it was her in this photo. As stated previously, at least The Doe Network estimates this girl to have been a few years younger than what Tara had been when she went missing, and they possibly derived the estimate elsewhere, possibly from LE sources.

In regard to the more recent photos with “gags” drawn across the faces of a boy, they obviously refer to this photo, yes. However, this photo has been public knowledge for years, so any crank or idiot prankster mocking the cops in Port St. Joe could be responsible for them.

 

[Armchair14]

To all:

As an afterthought to my last post to Phantom, the photos of the boy with a “gag” drawn over his mouth that were mailed to the Florida authorities in 2009 should be, if not already done, sent to (former) Sheriff Rene Rivera of Valencia County, New Mexico. As most here know, it has been reported that he claims to know what actually happened to Tara Calico, but he cannot find the body and thus cannot prove it.

He believes her disappearance did not involve an abduction. He believes teens she knew had been harassing her the day she went missing on her bike and an accident occurred in which she had been killed. The culprits then apparently panicked and buried the body and agreed to cover it up by keeping quiet.

If that theory is correct, then there is an outside chance that the photos of a boy sent to Florida LE in 2009, which were postmarked Albuquerque in an envelope, came from one or more of those complicit in Ms. Calico’s death in an attempt to keep the original Port St. Joe photo mystery alive to deflect attention from Sheriff Rivera’s theory.

If people continue to believe that it was Tara in the 1989 photo, then they also believe Sheriff Rivera’s theory cannot be true and thus discredit it. Therefore, whoever the boy in the 2009 photo is he might have some relationship with one of those that the sheriff suspects. That is, the sender needed a boy model around that age and might have looked to a relative or neighbor.

As I said, this is a long shot, but worth at least looking into. Maybe the photo can be published in Albuquerque newspapers and websites to see if anyone recognizes him.

 

[chemcopout]

Well, what do you make of the other pictures of the same young lady showing up in another part of CA -- more of the same game? And, why did someone send pictures of the little boy from Albequerque (sp) NM years later on the anniversary of when Tara went missing? Was it just a long term scam over decades? What would be the motivation for it?

i don't think it's a hoax. otherwise the fbi would have cleared that up.
honestly imo the killer is messing with the cops.
catch me if you can type of thing.
probably another serial killer on the loose.

or it could be a random nutjob doing it for attention after the original event.

the boy in the phone wasn't henley and it's very possible the girl isn't tara. they could be 2 other victims.

 

[Armchair14]

i don't think it's a hoax. otherwise the fbi would have cleared that up.
honestly imo the killer is messing with the cops.
catch me if you can type of thing.
probably another serial killer on the loose.

or it could be a random nutjob doing it for attention after the original event.

the boy in the phone wasn't henley and it's very possible the girl isn't tara. they could be 2 other victims.

What do you mean that if it was a hoax the FBI would have cleared it up? How? You think they would have scoured the nation looking for whoever these kids had been? They might not even have been Americans. This is a vacation resort. They might have been Canadian or European.

 

[MargotKidder]

I think that this may be a staged hoax, however, there is one similarity that I see with Tara Calico, other than the physical ones.

My Sweet Audrina was V.C. Andrews only stand alone novel. She may have intended to write a sequel, but maybe she died before she could do that. She died in 1987 and a ghostwriter has been writing the books in her name since that time.

In the book, a 9 year old girl is brutally gang raped by a group of older boys from school on her way home from school. I do not know where Tara was going on the day she disappeared but that is the only similarity that I see with her that it was boys from school that knew her and followed her, at least from Carl's post on page 6 of this thread. That the sheriff in New Mexico alluded to what actually happened to Tara.

Anyway, the rape so traumatizes Audrina that she tries to commit suicide. Her family then lets her have ECT and it leaves her forgetting what had happened to her. The family then tells her that she is actually 7 years old and that she had an older sister also named Audrina who died 9 years earlier after she was raped and killed on her way home from school. They even have a grave for this other Audrina, which the family visits. It is a really twisted novel, and at the end of it, Audrina realizes that it was really her older half-sister that arranged the entire rape scenario the day that it happened because she was jealous of Audrina.

The reason that I think it's staged is because who is going let kidnapped kids read in a van and then take the time to bound them for a photo op? And even if the girl was not reading herself, I think that it would be weirder for someone to be reading the both of them My Sweet Audrina, even if they were just bound and in the back of the van.

 

[Ives]

Is that a peice of tape in front of the boy?

 

[Ambercat]

I vividly remember the case of the woman who was in a photo found outside a gas station in Oklahoma (link below). LE finally said that the photo had been sent by a soldier to his grandfather in Oklahoma, and it had fallen out of the grandfather's truck. It was an Iraqi woman, but we never learned why the soldier would have that photo, and we never learned why he sent it to his grandfather. We also never learned who the woman was, or how she had died. It was a fascinating thread and we searched for pictures of where that robe came from for days on end. One of our WS's noticed that her eyebrows were so well done, that they appeared to be "threaded" which is a Middle Eastern way of shaping the eyebrows. That then led us to decide the robe the woman was wearing was really a Middle Eastern garment called a "throbe". It wasn't too long after this, that we were told the case had been solved. The Oklahome photo had nothing to do with the photo of the bound girl and boy. Hope that helps...

OSBI Needs Help to Identify Woman Found In Photo*update-solved* - Websleuths Crime Sleuthing Community

A thoab is the white garment men wear in the Middle East. The female equivalent is black and called an abaya -- I think that's what you mean.

 

[rosario]

just my two cents here, I read through a lot of these posts, I believe this photo is real. Even if these children were not kidnapped I believe whatever environment they lived in was not a good one. Through all of the stories I have read about kidnapped victims and scary real footage that we have had glimpses of over the years (the brief video they showed of the kidnapped victims in california, with the two psychopaths I think Ny was the last name of one) shows people acting in so many different ways. I really feel these kids are being submissive. I sincerely believe that people find ways to survive and the speculation that there would be a chaotic mess or there would be no books or they dont look "scared" enough, i find puzzling. I think both of their eyes are exressing fear and exhaustion. If this was a "staged" incident I do not believe it was "children" fooling around I feel like it was someone making them look at the camera and orchestrating the entire thing. also if it was staged and the children at the time and even now were "embarrassed" there were probably many people who would immediately recognize them and speak up..I have always felt this was real and the person or persons behind it wanted it to be seen.

 

[CanManEh]

If im not mistaken this is the polaroid that was left just oudside of a convienant store and when someone seen it they saw a white van peel away and im pretty sure this photo i assume another copy was left or tara calico's parents door step.

 

[CarlK90245]

If im not mistaken this is the polaroid that was left just oudside of a convienant store and when someone seen it they saw a white van peel away and im pretty sure this photo i assume another copy was left or tara calico's parents door step.

If there was a copy left on Tara's parents' doorstep, it is very unlikely that it was by the same person who left the Polaroid in the convenience store parking lot.

Polaroid photos don't have negatives, so you don't normally make copies of them, unless from a scanner (which were not that commonly available back then). After dropping it at the convenience store, he no longer had the original from which to make a copy. He would have had to have made the copy prior to dropping it at the store, or obtained the copy from a public source.

 

[buffetoflies]

Maybe instead of a 'copy' there was more then 1 pic taken in a short time span.

I agree with the staged thoughts. I used to play cops and robbers with my brother and sister, and sometimes we'd tie each other up with gags sometimes as well. We never played in the cars though. No garage = very hot inside of car in summer, I can see some kids playing around back there, though.

We lived in a very rural area, and were rather poor so we used our imaginations a lot to entertain ourselves.

 

[Ambercat]

[IMHO] the shirt that the girl is wearing looks like one sold to tourists in beach areas. The boys shirt has a design on the front that I just can't make out. Can anyone tell what it is?

 

[Deeds]

Here is a side-by-side of Mary Jo Burnett vs. Jane Doe

MARY JO BURNETT
Case Type: Endangered Missing
DOB: Oct 18, 1967
Sex: Female
Missing Date: Jun 1, 1985
Race: White
Height: 4'11" (150 cm)
Weight: 98 lbs (44 kg)
Hair Color: Brown
Eye Color: Blue
Missing City: ROCKFORD
Missing State : AL

Circumstances: She was last seen on June 1, 1985. It was confirmed that Mary Jo was in Atlanta, Georgia, during August of 1985. She also might have traveled to Florida and Texas afterwards. Mary Jo may go by the nickname Joe. She has a scar on her left knee, a scar on her left calf, and had a noticeable tooth that slightly protrudes on the top right side of her mouth. Mary Jo may wear glasses.

Mary Jo Burnett Link:
http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/1403dfal.html

Jane Doe Link:
http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/66uffl.html

 

[Deeds]

Reasons that the UID in the photo could be Tara;

1) UID has a mark on her calf similar to a scar Calico got from an car accident injury
2) The hairline (Cowlick on her right temple) and ear are similar to Calico's
3) A book from her favorite author is in the picture
4) The photo was found after Tara went missing and the photo could not have been taken before 1989 because the film not available till after said date
5) Her parents & another non-US professional authority claims it is indeed Tara

Article: Hopes dashed that Calico photo had DNA
Date: Tuesday, 17 Nov 2009

“While FBI analysts determined the woman in the old photo is not Calico, her mother said she had no doubt it was her, saying Calico and the woman in the photo had the same birthmark.”

http://wkrg.com/301349

- There is no mention of a birthmark on the UID just a possible scar on her leg

Reasons against it being Tara:

1) Tara has Hazel/Green eyes – UID has Blue
2) Tara’s nose looks to large at the bridge and tip
3) The eye shape and brows do not look the same
4) The LE’s quoted saying he know what happen to Tara making it impossible for her to be in this photo*

*
Missing children mystery rekindles in Port St. Joe
August 22, 2009 12:23:00 PM
By DESPINA WILLIAMS
Florida Freedom Newspapers

“Despite all those leads coming up empty, Rivera says he knows what happened to Tara that day and who is responsible. While he won't say who the suspects are, he did say that he's received information over the years that two men, who were teenagers at the time of Tara's disappearance, found her riding her bike on the rural road that day and had help afterwards disposing of her body.”

*Valencia County Sheriff Rene Rivera

http://www.newsherald.com/news/joe-76835-port-rekindled.html

Weird Note:

It’s strange that NamUs does not report that Tara Calico has a scar on the back of her leg in her scars and marks area it only reads

“Large scar on the back of her right shoulder. Dime-sized brown-colored birthmark on the back of one of her legs.”

But it does mention it when describing that she maybe the girl in the photo under Circumstances

https://www.findthemissing.org/cases/654

Similarities to Mary Jo Burnett:

1) Mary has a scar on her left calf like the UID
2) Mary as Blue eyes
3) Ears, Chin, and eyes closely resemble UID’s
4) She was known to be alive in 1985 then she may have traveled to Florida after

On the possibility that the UID Male is actually a female, list of matches in the timeframe: My guess would be Jennifer Lee Martin;

JENNIFER LEE MARTIN
Case Type: Non Family Abduction
DOB: Jan 14, 1976
Missing Date: Jun 28, 1987
Sex: Female
Race: White
Height: 4'6" (137 cm)
Weight: 49 lbs (22 kg)
Hair Color: Brown
Eye Color: Blue
Missing City: RENO
Missing State : NV
Missing Country: United States
Case Number: NCMC601816
Circumstances: She was last seen at approximately 3 p.m. when she left a grocery store in the Lemmon Valley area of Reno, Nevada. She has a birthmark on her right hip, white bumps on her back, a star-shaped scar on the inside of her right arm and two small scars under her chin.

http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/m/martin_jennifer.html

SHANNON MARIE SHERRILL
DOB: Aug 12, 1980
Missing Date: Oct 5, 1986
Sex: Female
Race: White
Height: 3'0" (91 cm)
Weight: 30 lbs (14 kg)
Hair Color: Brown
Eye Color: Blue
Missing City: THORNTOWN
Missing State : IN
Missing Country: United States
Case Number: NCMC601901
Circumstances: She was last seen at 1:30 p.m. playing in her yard with several other children. She was wearing a white dress with blue trim. She has a 4 inch scar on her abdomen, pierced ears, and is extremely shy.

http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/s/sherrill_shannon.html

CHERRIE ANN MAHAN
Case Type: Non Family Abduction
DOB: Aug 14, 1976
Missing Date: Feb 22, 1985
Sex: Female
Race: White
Height: 4'2" (127 cm)
Weight: 68 lbs (31 kg)
Hair Color: Brown
Eye Color: Hazel
Missing City: PITTSBURGH
Missing State : PA Missing Country: United States
Case Number: NCMC601805

Circumstances: She was last seen getting off the school bus about 100 yards from home. A bright blue 1976 Dodge van with a mural of a mountain and a skier may be involved in her disappearance. She has pierced ears. She was last seen wearing a gray coat, blue denim skirt, blue leg warmers and beige boots.

http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/m/mahan_cherrie.html

Questions:

Were the witnesses that the beach, Port St. Joe, Florida on June 15, 1989 shown a picture of Tara and asked if this is the girl seen at the beach with the unknown males?

Has there ever been a notice put out to keep an eye out for a used copy of V. C. Andrews novel My Sweet Audrina with a phone number written on the spine of the book?

Did the Port St. Joe, FL convenience store have video surveillance and if so was it ever checked for the license plate of the van which the photo was found under, or to see if you could see into the back of the van through the windshield for passengers?