Port St. Joe

Tara's case went cold fairly quickly, and her family and loved ones were left with no answers and the perpetual fear that Tara would be found deceased somewhere, along with the perpetual hope that she would once again come walking through the front door someday.

That brings us to June of 1989, when it seemed that new life was breathed back into the case when terrifying new evidence was possibly found in the parking lot of a convenience store in Port St. Joe, Florida.

photograph was lying on the ground between two vehicles the woman who found the photo said it was found in the parking space of where a white windowless toyota cargo van driven by a man with a mustache believed to be in his 30s was parked when she arrived at the store however despite the police setting up roadblocks in an attempt to intercept the vehicle the man was never caught nor brought to interrogation the picture in question was a polaroid which shows a little boy and a young woman, both bound and gagged and with terrified looks on their faces.

Because of the duct tape and the gags in their mouth, it was hard to tell who the image was of.

An FBI analysis of the photo was inconclusive.

This is where the case seems to take an even more bizarre turn.

20 years after the discovery of the photograph, which was of course widely shared by media at the time, pictures of a little boy were sent to the Port St. Joe Police Chief, David Barnes.

He received two letters postmarked June 10th and August 10th, 2009 from Albuquerque, New Mexico.

In 1992, a young man turned up at the police headquarters saying that he'd just fled the scene of the crime and that he wanted to turn himself in.

This was in Port Saint Joe, a small town along the Gulf Coast of Florida.

The man told the police officer his name was Brian Bechtold, and that he was 23 years old.

The officer asked when the crime had taken place.

I probably shouldn't even be saying this, but anybody that is looking for somewhere to go, that right there is where it's at.

Port St. Joe.

Port St. Joe.

Which, Port St. Joe slash Mexico City Beach.

Or Mexico

Beach.

But I think Monroe has got a few more, and so we'll have to do a good job.

Coach, last week was Port St. Joe.

The Chiefs win 35-0.

Talk about that game for us.

Once we got the ball, we deferred, kicked off to them, and they had a little drive going, got a couple first downs, and then we were able to get it back.

And then Tyson Pfeiffer broke like a 70-yard run for us, which was very impressive.

We kind of big played Port St. Joe.

I think it was only 14 to nothing at half.

Hello, Peter.

Calling from, uh, Port St. Joe, Florida.

Okay.

I'd like to, uh, tell you, longtime, uh, podcast listener, and I really appreciate, uh, all the selflessness you guys have and all the hours you put in and, uh, helping us all be educated.

Always good to have you on Coach's Comments.

Coach, you guys are hosting Port St. Joe.

They're a pretty good squad, aren't they?

Yes, sir.

Uh, and that's kind of the way it is.

You know, a lot of people just look at the records, but, uh, as a coach, you know, you watch the team and you can tell, um, their, their head football coach is a very good coach.

And, uh, He does a really good job, and he's had some really good teams down there at Port St. Joe.

I think they're just young.

And we also have the Intercoastal Waterway that allows us to go out and run the boat wide open throttle for an hour or two at a time, and then go explore.

So we can run over to Destin or we can run to Port St. Joe.

Obviously we've got right here in our backyard, Shell Island.

So yeah, for us, man, we've got a little gem here.

They won their last game last week to try to continue the winning streak.

You've also got Port St. Joe traveling up to Bay High.

Bay is 5-3.

Port St. Joe is 2-3.

Arnold is 2-3.

They're traveling over to Lincoln over there in Tallahassee, who is 1-7.

They won that one 53 to 13.

From what I understand, Port St. Joe is not as good as they have been in the past.

And then they lost to Baker 35-13.

I don't know.

Baker's really good.

Gotcha.

So Destin did what they were supposed to do against Port St. Joe and kind of hung in there a little bit against a good Baker team.

So how does that bode for North Bay Haven to go travel over there? They're