Little girl lost
It made no sense five years ago. Why would it make any sense now? But Rebecca Exposito holds out hope. What happened to Tara?
By Lane DeGregory, Times Staff Writer
Published November 18, 2007
ST. PETERSBURG - The setting sun stripes the cemetery, casting shadows between the trees. Rebecca Exposito walks among the streaks of light and darkness, threading the endless rows of dead. Twice a year - on her daughter's birthday and this day, Nov. 6 - Rebecca buys miniature roses at Publix and brings them here. The roses remind her of Tara: small and beautiful, just thorny enough. This afternoon, on the fifth anniversary of the day her daughter disappeared, Rebecca bought a bouquet of pink flowers and two sprays of golden yellow, like the highlights in her daughter's hair. Now she combs the thick grass for the makeshift marker. Finally, she finds it: "Courtesy of Woodlawn Memory." Across the bottom, stick-on letters spell TARA EXPOSITO. There are no dates, so if you didn't know her, you wouldn't know: Tara was 14 when she died.
Rebecca is 37. She has been a mom for more than half her life. Her husband is in prison for violating a restraining order meant to keep him away from her. She supports her children on the $450 a week she earns processing student loans.
Tara was the middle of Rebecca's three daughters, her jokester, her tomboy - the hardest and softest of her five kids. One minute, Tara would be wrestling her brother to the ground, then she'd sing her baby brother Jewel songs until he fell asleep. Her sisters laugh about all the girls Tara beat up, about the times she got drunk in middle school.
Rebecca would rather remember the nights Tara laid her head in her mom's lap - even as a young teenager - and looked up, pleading: "Why aren't I pretty?"
On Nov. 6, 2002, Tara called her mom after school. "I just want you to know," she said, "this was the worst day of my life." She had been suspended for fighting. Then she said, "I love you."
In front of their Gulfport home, Rebecca found a crumpled sweater and a ponytail holder nestled in the grass. She never saw Tara again.
Police said Tara ran away. Her mom didn't believe it. Tara had run away before, but had always called to say she was okay.
Rebecca hung hundreds of fliers, scoured car washes and groceries, interviewed Tara's friends. On Christmas Eve she wrote her daughter a note, in case she was still out there, and stuck it in her bedroom window: "Tara," it said, "please come home."
Eight months later, a Hillsborough County detective told Rebecca about a human skeleton that had been found in an abandoned orange grove near Dover. Cause of death: unknown. A forensic artist made a clay sculpture around the skull. The face looked just like Tara's.
Rebecca demanded police check dental records, DNA. Everything matched.
Nothing made sense.
- - -
The shadows are long now. The cemetery is silent. Rebecca's two sons and granddaughter are by her side.
She kneels in the dusk and sweeps the leaves from her daughter's grave.
She doesn't talk to Tara here. That isn't Tara in the ground. Tara is inside her, Rebecca says.
Tara's friends all have grown and graduated from high school. A detective who worked her case has been promoted to sergeant. The orange grove where Tara was found has been turned into a housing development. And still, Rebecca doesn't know what happened to her daughter.
Weeks before Tara disappeared, Tara's dad, Shawn Exposito, was arrested for child abuse for slapping her. He once said in an interview that the police suspected him in her death, but he was never charged.
Rebecca prefers a theory floated by Gulfport police: Tara drank herself to death. Maybe her friends got scared and dumped her body. Maybe her daughter passed out . . . then passed away.
It would be better than knowing she suffered.
Rebecca couldn't afford a headstone, so this cheap cemetery marker is her daughter's only memorial. In the vase on Tara's grave, someone has planted silk flowers: pink carnations on plastic stems. Rebecca used to get angry when someone else left an offering. Was it from some stranger with a secret? A symbol of remorse?
Now she accepts anything anyone does to honor her daughter. She peels the cellophane from the bouquet she brought, slides the other stems aside.
The fake flowers have faded, like false hope. But even in the twilight, the little yellow roses look bright.
Lane DeGregory can be reached at 727 893-8825 or degregory@sptimes.com.
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ON THE WEB
Tara Exposito: A history
St. Petersburg Times reporter Lane DeGregory wrote about Rebecca Exposito's extraordinary efforts to find her daughter after Tara disappeared in 2002. When a skeleton was found in Hillsborough County, DeGregory showed how the police identified the bones as Tara's. Read both articles at life.tampabay.com.