Tara Jane White was an 18-year-old science student from Banff who disappeared after leaving a Calgary residence on July 1, 1976. Witnesses saw her later that day walking across a field near Crowchild Trail toward a bus station; she reportedly planned to buy a ticket back to the Lake Louise area. When she vanished she carried an orange backpack and was reportedly wearing a tan corduroy jacket, blue jeans and a white blouse. She was reported missing two days later.

Nearly five years after her disappearance, skeletal remains and an orange backpack were found in a shallow grave in a wooded area west of Calgary near Morley (Mînî Thnî) on March 24, 1981, and the discovery was ultimately connected to Tara. Investigators noted similarities between her killing and several other Banff and Calgary area victims who had been strangled with rope or cord and had accepted rides; police at the time considered the possibility of a single offender, but no arrest followed and the case remained unsolved.

More recent developments in other cases prompted renewed attention to highway-linked killings, but Tara’s homicide has no publicly identified killer and no reported arrest, charge, trial or conviction. Did anyone who knew Tara in 1976 or who traveled those routes in the summer of 1976 see her or recall someone offering her a ride?