The Fort Worth Missing Trio /// Part 1 /// 241 | Forensic Files

[Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you welcome to True Crime garage wherever you are whatever you are doing thanks
for listening I'm your host Nick and with me as always ladies and gentlemen he is the reason that One-Eyed Willy
only has one eye he is the captain it's our time down here thank you thank you thank you it's good to be seen and it's
good to see you thanks for listening and thanks for telling a friend [Music] a Presumed Innocent IPA by the good good
Folks at legal draft beer company garage grade three and three-quarter bottle caps out of five Presumed Innocent is
brewed in the very exciting City of Arlington Texas just outside of Fort Worth this is a very approachable IPA
with a light Haze and a good handful of hops and tonight's beer was brought to us by these good garage friends first up
a double fisted cheers to Elizabeth and Becca up in Lansing Michigan and the big
cheers of Heather are wisconsinite that's living in Florida all right and here's a shout out to Andrew and Jessica
in Massachusetts and a big we like your jib to Brook in Harrisburg Arkansas next
we have Taylor who served this great country overseas last year she was stationed in Kuwait thank you Taylor for
your service and last but not least we have Ann from upstate New York and says the captain has the best
in radio and that's the fact Jack [Music] all right everybody go to True Crime garage.com and check out our website
and a big happy birthday to the colonel the extra crispy Colonel that extra crispy colonel
why is that because you were in Texas that's just who I am that's my personality
all right cheers to you Captain cheers everybody out there everybody gather around grab a chair grab a beer let's
talk some true crime Mary Rachel trulica went by her middle name Rachel she was still in high school but had
been married to Thomas trelicka for six months her maiden name is Arnold she is Caucasian with brown hair and
greenish blue eyes she is Left-Handed and has a small scar on her chin on the day in question she had on her
finger her wedding ring she is Caucasian with brown hair and greenish blue eyes she is Left-Handed
and has a small scar on her chin on the day in question she had on her finger her wedding ring
Lisa Renee Wilson also preferred to be called by her middle name she is Caucasian with reddish brown hair and
brown eyes Renee has a scar on her thigh and on the day in question she was wearing a ring
with a single Stone Julie Ann Mosley was the smallest of the three at just four foot three inches
tall she is Caucasian with light brown hair blue eyes and has a small scar under the
left eye and a scar on the middle of her forehead on December 23rd 1974 these three girls from three different
families set out on a shopping trip to purchase Christmas gifts for their friends and family
they piled in the car and drove off the South Fort Worth Texas they were supposed to be home by 4 pm
but they never returned the Charlie project has classified their disappearance as a non-family abduction
Rachel was 17 years old when she went missing and Renee was 14 years old Julianne was just nine at the time the
mystery surrounding their disappearance continues to confound law enforcement officials while it haunts and Tangles
the lives of all the families involved for some time stopped on that December day for others the tragedy created a
seed bed of suspicion that now divides it is a constant grieving to this day this case remains a riddle with no
answers but it does not have to be this is the story of the missing Fort Worth Trio
[Music] Fort Worth Texas 1974 it's the holiday season on the morning of December 23rd 17 year old
Rachel Arnold trilica is driving to her friend's grandmother's house the plan is
to pick up her friend and spend the day doing some almost last minute Christmas shopping
she arrives greets her longtime friend this is 14 year old Renee Wilson now Renee informs Rachel that they might
have a tag along going with them for the day little Julie Ann Mosley begged to go
along the older girl said that she would have to get permission Julianne was only
nine and on that morning she simply didn't want to spend the day alone with nothing to do so she persuaded her
mother to let her go with the two older girls Rachel and Renee had been friends for years their families camped and
fished together but Rachel hadn't known Julian Mosley the little nine-year-old at all now Julianne and her family lived
across the street from Renee's grandmother's house where Renee stayed when her mother was away at work
Renee knew all of the Mosley children in fact Renee and Julianne's older brother
Terry they were a bit of an item that morning Terry surprised Renee with a promise ring now Terry was 15 years old
with long brown hair and he was asked to go shopping if he wanted to go on the shopping trip but he said no because he
was planning to go see a friend he already had plans so it would be just the three girls
going out for the day they needed to be done shopping and back at their houses by 4 pm because Renee and Terry planned
to go to a Christmas party together that night the girl set out just before noon they
first stopped at the Army Navy Store this was to retrieve some items I I've seen this reported several ways
Captain a lot of times it says items uh what I actually think happened here is she had a pair of jeans that she had
previously purchased or put them on layaway remember layaway do they still do that I don't think so well she wanted
to pick up this item I believe it was a pair of jeans so then they traveled to Seminary South shopping center uh it
sounds like this is one of the nicer malls in the area at that time not sure about today but for those of you that
live in the area I believe them all well I know that the mall is still there I believe it was called the Fort Worth
Town Center for a time and nowadays it's called Le Grand Plaza when they arrived at the shopping center
they parked the car on the upper parking level near the Sears store so there's some very interesting
discussion and speculation that I found regarding this case on Reddit um not a lot of detail and to be honest
with you Captain some misinformation on there but one of the discussions on there you gotta love Reddit if you're a
true crime fan you gotta love Reddit well in in I here's here's going to be the the truth for everybody out there
I'm probably gonna dog Reddit and web sluice a little bit during this week because there's just a lot of bad
information regarding this particular case other cases there's been a lot of great information on I love both of
those websites and so it it hurts me it hurts me deep inside to say badly about Reddit and web sluice but I have to in
this case because people listen to our show and then they go out armchair detective work on their own right and I
want them to know that that's a bad spot well first of all we should also say that because of Reddit there have been
leads that have been developed and actually in the Golden State killer case I don't know if it was Reddit but it was
a forum that somebody gave the name of who they thought was a golden state killer like a year and a half before DNA
confirmed it so these four forums and these online armchair detectives they are very important yeah you called me
six months or maybe a year before they solved the um Golden State killer case and you had said hey I've I found this
on such and such and somebody mentions the name D'Angelo and I was like whoa and then sure enough it turns out to be
D'Angelo so we'll give them their pat on the back there but the discussion that I
found on there one that I found fascinating and interesting um was that there was a lot of
conversation about is there is it weird the big age difference in these three girls we have Rachel who's 17 Renee
who's 14 and then Julianne who's nine all together and this I thought would be something to get your opinion on do you
think that this is weird given the age range of the three girls it you know 17 year old and nine-year-old that's the
big gap I mean if somebody said to me um well I mean just taking like my stepsons
for example if they said to me we're going to go shopping and we're taking this nine-year-old boy along I'd think
well that's very nice of you because you probably don't want to be hanging out with a nine-year-old
yeah in the the speculation that a lot of people were kind of going toward on there was that maybe Rachel the 17 year
old was up to no good like okay so we know this is a disappearance we know this is a missing person's case so she
disappears and conveniently goes missing with two younger girls and some people have wondered well was Rachel up to no
good was she getting these younger girls for somebody else and I think that when
you dive further into what was actually going on that day you will realize that the nine-year-old was just with them the
two older girls really didn't want the nine-year-old to go with them in fact what had happened was we mentioned that
Renee so Renee's the 14 year old her boyfriend's Terry Terry is the little nine-year-old's older brother that's
Renee's boyfriend she asked she asked Renee you know Renee asked Terry hey you want to go shopping with us he says no I
already have plans the little girl over here here's this right it says can I please go shopping with you I mean look
we've all been nine you know when you're nine and ten you see teenagers and you're like oh they're the coolest well
and it's also different too because if that's her boyfriend's sister she's probably spent time watching her she's
probably spent time with her right and so hey you want your uh significant others Family to like you so wow you
know what's the best way to get her on your side take her shopping with you well and Terry commented on this years
later and he says look the the two older girls didn't want my little sister to go
with them right but they were too nice to say no so they kind of came up with a plan and the plan was well we won't tell
her no because we want to be nice but you have to ask your mom for permission and Terry says they did this on purpose
because my mom always said no to everything they just assumed that the answer would be no right but for
whatever reason the mother says yes and the mother would later say look I wish I
if I would have just said no my whole life would have been different and that's something I always look back and
reflect on and she said but I couldn't say no I knew these two girls as families right you know I knew their
family so I'm like my my daughter will be safe traveling along with them and also it's your son's girlfriend and
you've spent time with her and you'd probably know that your daughter kind of looks up to her and again it's funny
sometimes how people will take something so innocent and maybe meaningless and and speculate on it when it's simply
these girls were nice and they were doing a nice thing for a younger girl and as far as the 17 and 14 year old go
they were long time friends they had been friends for a long time that's not that big of a right their families knew
each other and look when I was 14 15 if somebody an older kid had a car maybe be
I even if I didn't like them I went along because they had a car but you know so you're a horrible person
just to just to squash that idea from the get-go okay there's nothing weird about the age difference here the older
girls really didn't want the nine-year-old tagging along but they were just too nice to say no
so we do have good reason here Captain we said that they parked the vehicle and the upper level near the Sears store and
we do have very good reason to believe that the trio made it to the shopping center not just because the car was
parked there on the upper level but several people would later report having seen the three they're shopping so
during the shopping portion people that saw the three said nothing appeared out of the ordinary none of the girls seemed
distraught and some gave a detailed description which I believe solidifies the the sightings the eyewitness
accounts so regarding the uh we we briefly mentioned a description of each girl but what we
didn't mention was that Renee Wilson the 14 year old she was wearing red and white sneakers and a pale yellow green
pale yellow slash green t-shirt with the word sweet honesty printed across the front
so the interesting thing here honesty a few people specifically that did not know Renee Rachel or Julianne they said
I know I saw the three girls you're talking about because I saw that sweet honesty shirt I remember the shirt
so it's so bad well apparently they must have made it back to the car at some point during this trip because uh
purchases were found locked inside the vehicle so what happened after that is a big mystery so four o'clock came and
went and so let me just go through this a little slower right so we have uh 17 and a 14 year old they're going to hang
out they're going to the mall a nine-year-old which is the 17 year old's boyfriend's sister
decides that she wants to go with them so they say cool right so they go to the mall they Park
there's multiple entrances at malls but they park at the Sears entrance so we think that they went into the mall going
into the Sears store they're in the mall for a time period enough where we have eyewitnesses that saw multiple
eyewitnesses they go back to the car or we think so because there was purchases made
car in the car but we don't know where they went we don't know where they went and the car is found with the purchases
inside and locked so the weird thing here though Captain is that do we have a detailed report on what was
found in the vehicle so from my understanding there was at least one quote-unquote Christmas gift found
inside the vehicle in the back seat this was a uh Oldsmobile so a car uh in the trunk locked in the trunk was the pair
of jeans that Rachel had picked up from the Army Navy store so what were they the genes that she was going to return
or did she actually return the jeans and she got new jeans no no no this was a a
pickup like so she had either previously purchased these jeans or they were on layaway something like that and she
picked them up that day before going to the shopping mall okay so we have multiple items inside the vehicle to
lead us to believe that they possibly made it back to the vehicle at some point um now that's not to say that they
didn't go out to the vehicle put some items in there and then return to the shopping mall yeah because that's not
out of the norm sometimes when you're going shopping you get a few items you don't want to carry those around hey
let's run this back to the car real quick come back in and Shop so there are multiple reports stating
that the um the report of missing girls happened at four five and then some say six pm and I
think the reason for the confusion is that the family spent a decent amount of time looking for the kids before they
actually reported them missing so the way that this goes down and this should have helped the investigation remember
Renee the 14 year old was planning to attend a Christmas party later that day with her boyfriend Terry so
she she was adamant that she had to be home by 4 pm and that stuck in her mom's mind and when they didn't return at four
well the mom calls the other you know homes or have they returned yet no they've not so she takes her son her
son's like 11 at the time and gets her husband and the three of them go to the shopping mall and they assumed that the
car probably broke down that they ran into car trouble right so on the way to the mall their eyes peeled looking both
sides of the road hoping to see this Oldsmobile and they'll get out and help the kids right right because remember
this is at a time period there's no cell phones so they can't just call right and
say hey we broke down you'd have to find a pay phone or go to a gas station so they don't see the vehicle on the way to
the mall and once they get to the mall they drive around for some time still looking for the vehicle now is there any
web sleuth online that talk about the discrepancy between the the parents age and their son's age and bringing him to
the mall parents age in the son's age yes no no no no nobody found that to be weird so
the way that I understand this is is this so they spot the vehicle they find the vehicle
the Assumption was that the girls would then be they're still inside the mall they go in so the the mother father and
brother of the middle girl Renee go into the mall and they are telling the store
clerks at each store hey these three people are missing can you page them so they make an announcement nobody shows
up they go to the next door they do this until they go through all the stores the
girls are not at the mall okay and so the father decides hey the father immediately thought something was very
wrong thought that they may have been abducted that there was Foul Play involved at 6 PM is when they call and
notify the police now remember they spent some time between four looking for the car and then looking for the girls
so I don't find anything weird with four to six o'clock I think that's where there's the
discrepancy in the reports they went missing at four five or six whatever the father
gets his neighbor to join him the police at first are there's mixed reports on the police the families would
bring in the Blue Bloods the families would tell you that the police didn't seem to care I think what what we have
here is this is 1974. they think that they are runaways or they're just out misbehaving they're missed their curfew
whatever yeah but isn't that kind of a common theme and a lot of these stories if somebody goes missing and they're
never found the police didn't care that's that that's the normal statement from the family
um you know I mean where it's like I'm sure there's a lot of cases that somebody goes missing and is never found
and the police really did care well the police would later State and this is about five years later they would later
state that they sent a couple of officers to the mall and they did go store to store looking for the girls
just like the parents had done you know earlier but the father he gets his neighbor and the two of them decide to
stay on the rooftop of a nearby store that night and watch the car with guns they're they're on top of this
is like that that zombie movie this is what kind of father you want right they he thinks something went wrong and he
thinks that he the car was the most troubling thing to this father and so he sat there and he watched it that night
now nobody ever came back to the car and eventually they would take the car home
so one thing I always I was pondering while researching this case is why is this case not more well known what I
mean by that is we have three missing people here uh all of them technically children I know one of them was married
but she was still only 17. and just about everyone has heard of Mara Murray and Brian Shaffer single missing adults
but I had not heard of this case not until about six months ago so sometimes I wonder you know why why this case is
kind of unknown and these other two are so popular and I wonder if is it is it just the age of the case or the time
period I think that has something to do with it and two uh the the age of the individuals I
think when you think about the Brian shaver case um there's a lot of males that could
identify with that case being a college age student going out to a bar for a drink you go missing or even Mara Murray
case young college girl going through some tough times and decides to go somewhere to take a break
disappears from the face of the Earth those they're singular but I think people can identify with them more well
with Maura Murray and Brian Shaffer the other thing you know we had the internet
when both of those cases took place and we we didn't for this case and I also too think that this could be a case that
many think is solved you know that the girls came home at some point we experienced that here in Columbus with
the Brian Shafer case some people just they were aware of it at the time that he went missing and then as years went
by you would talk to people and they're like yeah they found that guy and he's like no no they did they found no trace
of him now the other reason like I stated before it's not um more of a well-known case maybe
because 1974 so of course at first the police said the girls had simply run away and
we we won't see this type you know knee-jerk reaction by law enforcement change until the early 80s so that's
going to happen with like Adam Walsh's case yeah so maybe some people heard that the girls or thought that the girls
ran away took off and came back someday and it's just not that well known okay so we do know that they went shopping
but these receipts would have some kind of time stamp on them um I don't know that they found receipts
I I looked and looked for that and there I could find no mention of receipts but
what time did they head to the mall again they left um Renee's grandmother's house around
noon okay so they're there for a couple hours we have a bunch of eyewitnesses the weird thing
to me though is it's like the father had that hunch the car you put things back in the car but if you're just going to
run away why wouldn't you take your car well that and that's the thing that's what they
tried to tell the police like okay first of all if we're if we're gonna run away
and that's the plan why is this nine-year-old with us to begin with okay uh from the outside looking in some
people could just say well she's collateral damage or she she was tagged along or that was part of the plan all
along yeah but then the answer is no she was not part of the plan all along she happened to end up with the girls and
the girls didn't want her there really and then furthermore the parents keep pointing out
if they were planning to run away why wouldn't they take their car they obviously you need Transportation okay
let's let's get over that fact and say okay maybe they parted ways with the car well why would they spend their money
these girls didn't have a lot of money why did they spend their money on purchases that they could have just used
for their time on the run right and then the question is what purchases did they
make and were they gifts for somebody else and if they if they bought a gift for their father a gift for their mother
why would you buy that if you're planning to run away the most specific and detailed report I could find about
the vehicle was that one of the items found in the back seat of the car was a Christmas gift to somebody that was not
that is not missing and again then somebody would say well that was to throw them off but again if
you don't have a lot of money you're not going to come up with a plan to buy a gift and throw them off throw the law
enforcement off and throw the family off the scent of you running away well and let's talk about the investigation well
let's let's do that right after this quick beer break [Music] all right we're back cheers mates cheers
to you Captain happy birthday to the colonel oh thank you on to the investigation
it sounds so enthused well as well as some things that were later learned this is a weird case
um if this case fascinates me I tell you uh we know that several people remember
seeing them at the mall so there's no question about that now one woman wait hold on we know that they were seen at
the mall but on top of that don't we have items that they purchase in the mall that's unclear
that's unclear so the the news articles out there state that a gift was found a Christmas gift was found in the back
seat of their vehicle other news articles state that uh things the purchases made that day were found in
the back seat of that car but they don't say that they came from the mall right well what I'm getting at is I
don't I don't trust these news articles uh a lot of times and so when I'm when I'm trying to be perfectly upfront and
honest with everybody I want it to be thrown out there that I can't say with 100 certainty that purchases made that
day in the mall were found in the vehicle what I can say is that the most detailed report says that a gift a
Christmas gift for another individual that was not that did not go missing was found in that vehicle I don't know if it
was purchased on that particular trip or if it was already in the vehicle for some reason okay
um the genes that were picked up from layaway from the Army Navy Store were found in the trunk of the car
okay but regardless we know that they were at the mall that day okay we have several eyewitnesses who
saw them and were detailed about what they saw they saw three girls together that age group
um with matching the description given of the girls and several people specifically saying we saw the sweet
honesty t-shirt oh sweet honesty now we have one woman who told three different store clerks
that she saw some men hustling girls and she says the girls which would mean she's indicating these three girls
specifically into a pickup truck now this story of course is of great interest to the police and they looked
into this a lot the problem is the woman did not give her name to any of these store clerks the police never spoke to
this woman directly only to the store clerks and they publicly asked for this woman to come forward she
never did so this is probably a good lead but it's going to go nowhere okay do we know how
many boys there were in the pickup truck no the the the the the tip says that she saw some men
hustling girls into a pickup truck pick up these girls into a pickup truck so I don't know how many that would mean
other than some men it's more than one um then another witness says that the girls were spotted sitting in a security
patrol car now in 1981 so years after The Disappearance a man came forward and said that he had been in the parking lot
that day and he had seen a man forcing a girl into a van the man he questioned the man what was going on and the Man in
the van told him it was a family dispute and to stay out of it um so okay so we have I mean the
truck is a little fishy the tough thing about the truck though is this is back in the day when they don't have
four-door trucks so you know you're going to be riding in the back of that truck
the girls would be right no not according to the eyewitness account the three girls would have been in the
pickup truck with uh a man with a man yeah so there's multiple reports about this pickup truck
okay so one of them states that it just simply says this is this is the the start and end of it I saw the girls
in a pickup truck that's that's all the information that we have there's another
witness that states I saw the girls in a pickup truck with a with two other men in the pickup truck as well
okay first of all we got a 17 year old 14 year old and nine-year-old and and a man and if that's an adult
male that's going to be a tight squeeze now you throw in another adult male have
fun with that one you're probably not going to fit so well now you could have the little half seats in the back
possible toss the nine-year-old in the back maybe the 14 year old and then uh the 17 but they do two guys
sit up front they did have what we would call refer to as an extended cab trucks
back then so they weren't called trucks that's what I said you have the little tiny
half seats in the back no we have we have eyes ABS back then with vehicles for like they weren't
called trucks technically called a pickup truck back then and we have this witness stating that it was a pickup
truck so maybe I'm going down the wrong path here but I do know from other cases
that we've covered the in the early 70s there were no I understand that you have
Broncos and stuff like that and it's just like there were vehicles that I would describe as a truck that has a
full cab that has you know multi four doors uh full-size seats throughout uh the front and the back of that cab right
and who knows what she calls a truck and what she calls a pickup truck and we just won't know because she never came
forward so all in all Captain we have about five reports eyewitness reports that we can trace back uh to that day
and then as late as 1981. the interesting thing here is there are some similarities Within These five different
stories there's also some obvious differences we have the mention of the security car the pickup up truck a van
and then we have stories of either multiple men or a single individual male the interesting thing here is
like what you just pointed out these accounts would only end up raising more questions than providing answers to any
of us you know so you have to wonder did the girls leave with someone that they knew did did they split up for some
reason you know did the middle one go off elsewhere and so on and so forth and the other thing you have to wonder
too is if this is an abduction who was the target was it the oldest girl the youngest girl
or just all three in general you know after The Disappearance uh the families worked very hard to try to find
these girls and they they walked creek beds they walked Country Roads looking for their missing uh sisters and
children psychics and pranksters called the houses of all three girls and they called the police department as well the
psychics obviously trying to offer some tips now private investigators were hired and looked into the case
throughout the years the police chased a hundred or more empty leads back to the eyewitness accounts of the
possible abduction so all three what I would say here though what is consistent throughout
most of these eyewitness accounts is I would be I would believe that they're all describing
somewhat of an abduction the problem is only one of them suggests that a girl is being forced to do
something yeah and that that's the one that I want the details of the vehicle more so than the others because I think
you have to think about them who is going to be you have to be pretty damn ballsy
to take the risk of trying to abduct three individuals at a mall right I think just that
just the scenario itself makes people want to lean towards the fact that maybe these girls knew this individual or knew
these individuals or had reason to trust the person for some reason so maybe so but then on the other hand so you have
one side maybe knew them maybe you had some reason to trust them maybe there was some con a I take pictures for teen
magazine you guys should you want to be in teen magazine oh yeah we want to be in teen
magazine all right jump in my truck we're just going to go down to my studio it's just right down the street we'll
take a couple pictures you'll be back in the GIF you know or hey I'll pay you a thousand dollars
well the easiest con to me would involve the security car the patrol car right because we have is that security
car for real or is it just fictitious or is it real but it's from a different location and this guy's just a creep
using it to hey uh I need to question you girls for a second what do we do officer get in the back of my car
right you know right I mean 17 14 9 you're probably gone yeah because you think that's just part of the deal it's
just the way that this goes down you know we talked about this a few weeks ago with the Oakland County child killer
yeah or you could be like MGK you could get in their face and say F you pig well regarding regarding this so what
I'm getting at here is we have three teenage girls we've already said that they didn't have much money what if the
nine-year-old or the 14 year old decided to pocket something or even the 17 year
old decided to pocket something and and was spotted by a real life security guard inside that Mall and thought well
I got three young girls in my car all to myself here's my opportunity I'm going to take advantage or like you said do we
have a Ted Bundy situation where we have somebody posing to be a security officer
that works at that mall you know driving around in the parking lot looking for younger females who are not accompanied
by a male or somebody they would consider to be adults and pull up on them and say hey I know you did this I
saw you do this and like you said get in the back of my car yeah or do we have a
Jeffrey Dahmer situation where you're going around the mall and tracking people and you're going to try to abduct them
in the mall well and the interesting thing here about the idea of being conned or
tricked by somebody it does go along with what the um the majority of the eyewitness accounts are and that is that
most of these accounts don't say that the girls were being forced to do anything that they they were going along
willingly or even sitting in the vehicle and appeared to be happy or smiling so right right but that's what I'm saying
is you can offer the world to somebody if you know that you never have to pay it up
well and then I know what some people are asking too is that they're saying hey Nick these are conflicting
eyewitness accounts that they they don't line up with one another why would you think that maybe these girls were
tricked or conned and go with what you said seems to be what's going on in the majority of these eyewitness accounts
there's a part of me that wonders Captain if maybe they're not conflicting at all did the eyewitness one did the
eyewitness get something wrong or two are these small portions of a much larger story
that an eyewitness only sees a small portion of the story reports what they see and then there's a larger story
going on and these might possibly could be all little pieces of this bigger story yeah yeah and I I think the
biggest one though is the man that says he sees uh a guy forcing a girl into a van and he actually asked the man
because this is 74. I mean even in the 80s uh I don't know if you ever remember but
like there was a couple times like you'd go to the store and a kid would get out
of line and the parents would just smack the [ __ ] out of their kids well yeah and the threat was always uh
you know I'm gonna take you don't make me take you to the restroom don't make me take you out to the car was an often
one don't make me because you're not gonna slap your kid in the middle of the store you take them out to the car and
spank them there yeah or it'd be like just wait till your dad gets home with his belt and you're like what why does
he need to use the belt well and that's why I reference who was the Target no but that's but let me finish this point
Sorry is that that happen you would see kids get spanked right there then and there right it
wasn't always let's go to the restroom it wasn't always let's go to the car and for somebody to speak up
on something there had to be a little bit more of a struggle you see what I'm saying right
like it wasn't just like all this girl's not cooperating getting into the vehicle
this was a struggle and the guy actually said something well I think you're making two points there one being that
it was it was something that that was brought to his attention so much so that he felt
he needed to say something vicious enough yes but two things like this were commonplace enough that when told hey
this is just a family thing you need to stay out of it he does stay out of it and in fact he doesn't report the issue
until five years later right until five years later so but then but then you have to then
here's the problem though with all these eyewitness accounts I mean this guy's coming
five years later did this happen on the day the girls went missing right did this happen six
months after the girls went missing we don't know I I have a really hard time believing any eyewitness story that
comes fourth five years later unless they said I know this happened then and I thought about it for five
years and then I came forward but a lot of these eyewitnesses that come forward five years later
they it's almost like I saw something on Dateline and then that sparked my interest and I thought
oh yeah I was at that mall one time oh yeah that's where that girl was trying to get in the van yeah I mean and then
they're calling them law enforcement oh I saw something and they don't even know
when they saw it or when they did it well yeah I have a hard time trusting something that comes out five six years
later I also have a hard time trusting something where uh the police call for make a call to action for you to come
forward hey we need to speak with you directly we heard what you reported to the store clerks we need to speak with
you directly and then that woman never never makes her a presence known she never comes forward and talks to talks
to the police so as far as we know what's been reported publicly now we had said that the police said at
first that the girls simply ran away we also said that the parents protested this thought and they did not agree with
this but doesn't make any sense though I mean I mean I know it's 74 but it's like come
on where's your evidence of this I mean I understand that they went to the ball uh
they didn't go back to their car we have their car they disappeared Into Thin Air so
therefore they ran away come on 1714 and 19 year old well and if the 14 and the 17 year old were planning
to run away so the day that they're playing in a runaway they would have done everything in their power to have
the nine-year-old not go with them it wasn't like they're like you know what we're going to be on the run for a while
and uh we might need some extra food so let's take this nine-year-old along you know because if we run out of food
we can use her it's not I mean it makes zero sense well as if to back up the police's
Theory a letter arrived the next morning it was addressed to Rachel's husband wait hold on when when did the letter
arrive the next morning the day after they went missing correct so they would they disappeared on the afternoon or
evening of the 23rd and on the 24th a letter arrives to Rachel's husband question and I don't know if you know
this but did the police come out and state this the first night at all like we think we're leaning
towards Runaway do we have any no I think that would just be something they told the the
parents so um the letter was addressed to Rachel's husband the strange thing though that
would be noticed right away is the name on the envelope was a formal addressing it was addressed to Thomas a trilica and
Rachel called her husband Tommy Rachel was scrawled in the upper left hand corner of the envelope as to imply that
the letter inside was from Rachel there was no return address there was no city name on the postmark only a blurred
Postal Service number and it says 76083 now the number three appears to be backward which is strange inside Thomas
found a letter the letter was on a sheet of paper that was wider than the envelope that it was sent in written in
what has been described as a childish scroll the letter red well it's cursive yeah okay but it has been described as a
childish scroll the letter read I know I'm going to catch it but we just had to get away we are going to Houston see you
in about a week the car is in Sears Upper lot la love Rachel the L on Rachel's name was a short Loop
that looked more like an e the the writer apparently had gone back over this making it a taller Loop to make
sure that it looked like an l now again that's speculation correct but if you if you zoom in there Captain you
can see that there's a small Loop off to the right of her name on the bottom of the page
and you would have to pick up your pencil to make the other loop yeah but this is
not the best penmanship anyways right so so I think that should have to come into
play and we'll post this um letter on our website truecramgarage.com we'll also post it on
all the social media platforms so you can take a look at what we're seeing Thomas says that he
he picked the letter up out of the mailbox himself he says he believes that the letter was
sealed but can't say for certain he doesn't remember anything else in the mailbox that day there were no Christmas
cards no Flyers no bills just this letter we'll start off with the first point you're making though
uh she called him Tommy correct and she addresses him Thomas well the whoever wrote the letter or wrote the envelope
addresses it Thomas a trilica I don't find that that odd right right okay I mean just like you
know the only reason why is because it's a letter and it's like well and it's the
envelope it's not like it says Dear Thomas a trilica inside it's the envelope right and then you might know
that everything that goes to this house is addressed this way so you'd address it the same way
now we do know that the the car was found the day before exactly where it said it would be found in this letter
right um the interesting thing here the 10 cent stamp had been canceled that morning so
it appears that this would have been it would have had to been mailed either the
night before or the morning of the date of delivery which is December 24 1974. now a lot of people have suggested early
on in this case that one it states hey we had to get away and it's written supposedly signed by a person that's
missing part of the group so they say that that backs up the runaway Theory then there's other people that state
there's no way it could have been delivered in that short period of time so it must have been wrote in advance
and mailed in advance prior to having taken off [Music] um I think law enforcement confirmed later
that that was not the case that it was very possible and even likely that it would have been dropped in a box
somewhere on the 23rd or the morning of the as late as the morning of the 24th right so
either the day they went missing or the next morning yeah so you said Rachel called her husband
Tommy but this is is this technically her husband yes at 17 yes so they've been married for six months
by the time that she had disappeared okay so it was the 14 year old that got the promise ring from her boyfriend
Terry who's 15. okay that's that's where I was confused I was like wait a second
they're married and he's given her a promise ring hey we're I know we're married but hey I promise to
promise to love you well let's talk about the L uh originally in my opinion looking like an e
um now look okay it's the not the Rachel that is on the outside of the letter it's on the inside so it's the bottom on
on the letter itself not on the envelope um like I said it appears to most uh what I can gather most people seem to
believe that it looks as if somebody wrote an a cursive e at first and then went back over top of it making it a
cursive L at the end of her name Rachel personally I do believe this I've looked
at it quite a bit and I think that it appears that I don't know why somebody would go back over and make it look like
an e if they already wrote an L so the only thing that makes sense to me is that somebody either uh missed a step in
their signing of the name or they put an e there first and went back over it to correct it to make it an L the thing
that's strange about that for me is look I've misspelled a lot of words in my day
right I don't recall ever misspelling my name at any point and you know Nick Nicholas I go by Nick 99 of the time one
percent of the time I go by Nicholas and even when I have to pull that up and do
it on the quick I never misspell or miswrite my name you know so that seems very strange to me meaning what I think
is it was written by somebody other than Rachel the other thing that I find to be
weird is that out of the three girls that go missing the middle girl's name is Renee well her
name would end with two e's Rachel's name ends with e-l and somebody having just learned the name of their three
captive girls that they have with them could have made that slip in that process and they corrected it yeah or it
could be Renee writing the note and her messing up kind of going into her own name there so that's a
possibility but also when you look at the actual letter part it's very jumbled up things are a little
too close um there's there's miss the the problem is is you know if we're gonna say this l slash
e at the end of Rachel is this big huge mistake and this is a tell well you can look
through the letter and find a bunch of mistakes anyways I mean when you say um I had to get away
uh we're going to Houston want to catch there's like a out of nowhere up here so I don't know what that's from uh it's
above the we're going to Houston and then see you that looks to me as the if they almost
put three E's and C hmm see you in about a week um so um and then the way they like
here's okay okay if you look at weak and you look at C that would make me think you're correct
on the mess up because you see how they connect the ease together very rounded at the bottom same thing
happens in Rachel so before where I didn't see the mess up if you look at weak and you put it by Rachel
they're going into their little Loop loopy E's so that's that is pretty interesting but
it's just again it's jumbled so then it makes you wondered Wonder uh if this was like written and mailed out
before before they went to the mall why not take a little more time to write it out
right this seems pretty rushed um I feel like the the letters are feminine more so than
you know like that this is probably written by a female I don't see that personally but the
thing the things that I find weird in this are look we have Rachel's mother Fran
Langston she never believed that this letter came from her daughter Rachel um and then we have Tommy her husband
who agrees and even in a recent interview says quote I never thought it came from Rachel right so do we have
Renee's mom saying that this could be her handwriting that's that's that's interesting that you bring that up
because that's not an angle that I thought of and we don't have any all you have to figure out is these loopy E's
that's a dead giveaway some somebody else does these loopy E's you see it in C you see it in week and I
guarantee somebody knows somebody that does that well according to law enforcement we have mixed reviews
so at first where they believed that the letter is from Rachel's claiming you know backing up their thought that the
girls had run away uh later we have law enforcement say stating that we gave this letter as well as other uh
documents and letters that we collected from Rachel's belongings and we sent all
of them to the FBI what we get back is that the tester inconclusive that they can't the FBI cannot say with 100
certainty that Rachel did not write this letter they cannot say with 100 certainty that she did write this letter
um but the weird thing to me that that really stood out to me is one like I said I've never misspelled my own name
but what can we gather what can we gather from this note there are things that we can say for certain that that
are our certainties regarding the information that's on the envelope and within the letter itself one that we can
say with the certainty is either the the author of this letter either knew Rachel
or abducted her and then got information from her and what I mean by that is look if if she was abducted and she had
her driver's license on her it might have that address she's only been married for six months
let's say it does have that address on her driver's license well that you can send the letter that way what's not
going to be on her driver's license is the proper spelling of her husband's name okay so either this individual that
wrote the letter knew Rachel new information personal information about her or got that information
directly from her as she was being held captive yeah or if you have the address there's probably a way that they could
look that up but it seems like you'd have to know more to be able to say I I I don't understand what the
motive for writing the letter would be if you captured it's to buy time it's to buy time to to to let the loved
ones and let law enforcement think that I because look they they specifically point they point to a large city right
but you're here going to Houston well that's difficult it's not like they're saying went to take off to Houston Went
to went to Grove City where there's you know 30 000 people or I don't even know how many people live here these days but
you pick a city like Houston you know went to New York City well that's uh there's a lot of people that visit my
city thank you very much no I know that but we have some Brewer breweries now we
have some great craft bars craft beer bars right but regardless of how fancy your city is if you are an abductor and
you want to buy time you're going to say hey we took off had to get away for a while went to a big city you're not
going to mention a little city and then on top of that they put a time period in
there see you in about a week obvious to me that whoever wrote this letter is trying to buy a week's worth
of time but hold on a second so you send the letter just to one person thinking that well since Rachel
was seen with these two other girls that Thomas is gonna let everybody know is that the idea
because I think if that was the idea to buy time like and and you're having these girls write
the letters for you anyways why not just write three letters you know I get I get
what you're saying and and then every family gets a thing going hey we're going to Houston we'll see you in about
a week right so I I don't know it's uh it's very strange I mean I get your point yes it could buy you time but to
me then everybody else is going well where's the other two girls and why are they gone and why and then why would
Rachel take but the letter speaks to that says we had to get away with the nine-year-old that you never
hung out with that you mean it's not supposed to make sense right but what I'm saying is it's
you just said that it's to buy time well you asked you asked why would anybody cat take these girls captive and then
send a letter and that's the only reason I can think of no right which I understand but what I'm
saying is because the letter doesn't make any sense that it's it's a red flag you know I mean it's like
all it does is add another red flag is what I'm saying like girls are missing if you think that
you're going to send this letter and it's going to ease everybody's mind and stop looking for them to me this is like
oh [ __ ] something bad happened oh I see what you see what I'm saying like when I'm getting the letter I'm not
just all of a sudden going to be at ease because I got this letter I'm gonna go this makes zero sense
now I'm more heightened I'm now more worried as a as opposed to just well maybe there's some because it is 74.
there's a if if they went back to their car maybe the car didn't start maybe people didn't check that like you start
going through all these things did they just go to get something to eat or did they just go here or maybe they're at
somebody's house right maybe you know we can't find them right now but maybe they
just stayed out too late and then they decided to go back to Renee's house or you know I mean
you get this letter the next day going we went to Houston that's what I'm saying it's the next day of going
oh [ __ ] there's something really wrong here well and I think that's why you have a discrepancy between the way that
the family remembers this case in the way that law enforcement remember this case okay so you might have law
enforcement stating well and we do know that they said that look we thought they ran away here's this
letter saying that they ran away and then you have the families saying all along we never believe this letter came
from Rachel and we try to tell the police that so that's why you have that and keep in mind too does it make any
sense to send a letter is that the best idea that you can come up with after you
abduct uh three children it's what I mean by it's not supposed to make sense is it doesn't make sense to
abduct three children that's not what normal people do so there is no normal once you've committed that act and this
might just be a knee-jerk reaction to try to throw somebody off the scent to buy yourself some time maybe it's a
panic maybe it's a panic move but the regardless of whatever it is or the reasoning behind it it's a clue
whether it came from Rachel whether it came whether she was forced to write it whether she wrote it of her own free
will or if somebody else wrote it for her pretending to be her regardless it's a clue and the other thing that makes me
think that Rachel did not write this letter was I tried to over and over again I tried to recreate the way that
the r looks and her name signed on the letter and it looks to me to be a very it's not a smooth motion to make that r
that is a is a weird R I couldn't see somebody that's probably signed her name a thousand times by the time that she
was 17 having that weird looking R and to have to contort her hand and pick it pick the pen up off of the paper maybe
even more than once uh twice to get that R written it just doesn't seem like a natural motion to me well that really
blows my theory on the idea that it was Renee that wrote the letter she was probably forced to write that letter by
somebody but it would be her because that would make that would be the only reason why it would be tossing a double
e at the end the reason why I say that is because somebody that has a double e at the end of their name what becomes
second nature to you because you sign your name so much double E's right they become second nature to you and then if
you look at the ease and weak and you look at the ease and see it's almost like second nature double e now I
almost think that if if uh abductor or somebody involved with the abductor was writing this out there's a chance that
they could have just made a quick slip of the mind and we have two two victims Rachel and Renee and oh
brain fart slip of the hand and and wrote two e's there on accident now more importantly I think is what about that
weird postal code so there's no city name on the postmark only the post service number
76083 with the three backwards here's the speculation maybe the person who stamped it was a little light on the
right hand side of the stamp and it's not a backwards three but it's an unfinished eight
I think that this would make sense because this would make the postal code from where the letter was mailed as
76088 so if that were the the intended postal code or the correct postal code the letter would have come from
somewhere in Weatherford Texas Weatherford is about 35 to 40 35 to 40 minute drive from the Center of Fort
Worth now we have another thought though perhaps as private investigator Dan James believes the last two digits of
the stamp were hand loaded and put in the wrong way so it is supposed to be 3 8 if it is 3 8 or 38 then it may have
been stamped in Eliza I'm sorry elisaville which is a little further away this is a
two hour drive east of Fort Worth still in the great state of Texas Captain do you have a preference or or a
theory as to whether you believe it's supposed to be a 3 8 like Dan James says or supposed to be an eight eight at the
end of the postal code no I think all it really proves is that it came from somewhere else you know it
came from either somebody a half a half an hour away or an hour away again that to me leads
more to abduction than these girls running away and so again I this letter in general
doesn't make a lot of sense to me I have a strong preference on which I think is
correct so I like the 76088 Weatherford postal code and what I mean by that is that I think it's easier
for me to believe that the stamp was just not applied all of the way this would be a very and more common mistake
I would have to believe the the postal code being loaded wrong seems to me like a very
like a stretch like it's it's a reach for me and what I mean by that is it's a postal code you you load your
stamp once okay if if you hand loaded that and you loaded it incorrectly then you would think that this would not be
the only letter that has this code wrong now it is the only letter that's being examined in such a way that people would
notice this it's there's a chance that it was never noticed or what that the guy did the guy or girl did it once and
corrected themselves and it was forever fixed well or again that's if you're believing that the post
office is stamping this code I mean it's possible that um the abductor would be able to but have a postal code
stamp an official I'm just saying it's possible it's not impossible I agree so then that leads you to believe if it was
somebody doing that they're changing that number to throw you off for whatever reason
right so but it sounds like the dumbest crime but it's like man if you can get your hands
on one of those you're not paying for postage well but here's here's the reason why I like seven six zero eight
eight better than than it was loaded wrong not only because I think this would be a more common issue I mean to
this day man I get letters that the the stamp is only halfway on there or partially on there they stamp hundreds
and thousands of these things maybe even daily this has got to be a common issue
the other thing too is if you load a stamp wrong how many times are you loading the
postal code of a stamp that you're using every day guess what if you load it correctly you only load it once maybe in
your entire career it's not like you're loading a date stamp where you change it
every day when you come into work because you have to put a new date today's current date on the item that
you're stamping unless you're responsible for multiple locations and then you have to stamps you know I gotta
stamp all these once I'm done I change stamp all these then once I'm done with that pile change again
unless that's your job I mean I don't know I've done for work for the Post Office gotcha but but my belief is that
this would be a mistake that more likely leans to the fact of being just not applied fully
it's it's weird though it's it's strange well it's strange but I think also at the end of the day whether the the
abductors changing this themselves whether it's just a mistake maybe they're having the person change it who
knows but chances are they're dropping off if they didn't change it they're dropping off in a postal code to throw
you off of something is what my belief would be you know they're not going to you know
abduct you in Columbus Ohio and then send you know go down to the local post office and go hey can you mail this
letter out for me is what I believe right so they could easily drive to a blue box somewhere and drop it in the
Box that's what I'm saying I think um you know and you think that possibly they would do that to throw them off
but I would also wonder where is this in location to not only the car and the mall they went missing from but where's
it in location to Houston Texas is it on the way or is it not on the way neither
of them would be on the way right so they would both be east of Fort Worth like I said or no no no I lied west of
Fort Worth yeah and I I really just think the this this letter in general is this a huge
red flag that something really bad has happened interestingly enough Captain I did find one article that states that
the letter was later obviously much later tested for DNA or touch DNA and the test results come back that it did
not match the girls or anyone else in their database all right for our old episodes you
should check us out on the Stitcher app all of our old episodes are free and we do a weekly bonus show called off the
Record and if you haven't listened to it lately it's been heating up this week we
talked more about the West Memphis 3 case a couple details in that case and we actually got into a little bit of the
Adnan Syed case as well and you can find that on Stitcher premium all right we will see everybody back here in the
garage tomorrow for the continued story of the missing Fort Worth Trio until then be good be kind and don't litter
[Music] [Applause] [Music]

The Fort Worth Missing Trio /// Part 1 /// 241

Part 1 of 2

www.TrueCrimeGarage.com

On December 23rd, 1974, three girls from three different families set out on a shopping trip to purchase Christmas gifts for their friends and family. They piled in the car and drove off to south Fort Worth, Texas. They were supposed to be home by 4pm but they never returned... The mystery surrounding their disappearance continues to confound law enforcement officials. For some, time stopped on that December day. For others, the tragedy created a seedbed of suspicion that now divides. To this day this case remains a riddle with no answers. Tonight we crack a few cold ones and take a look at a cold case, that is heating up again.

Beer of Week - Presumed Innocent by Legal Draft Beer Company

Garage Grade - 3 and 3 quarter bottle caps out of 5

Beer Fund: https://truecrimegarage.com/home

Brief Summary

Three girls disappeared in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1974, leading to a mysterious investigation and a suspicious letter claiming they ran away.

Key points

The Disappearance of the Fort Worth Trio. Three girls went missing during a Christmas shopping trip in 1974, leaving families devastated.
The Mystery of Maura Murray. Exploring why some missing persons cases gain more attention than others.
Eyewitness Accounts. Conflicting reports raise questions about the girls' disappearance.
The Mysterious Letter. A letter arrives addressed to Rachel's husband, raising questions about its authenticity.
Conflicting Theories. Law enforcement and family members have differing views on the letter's origin.
The Letter's Red Flag. The letter raises serious concerns about the fate of the missing individuals.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

This case remains a riddle with no answers.

Introduction to the mystery of the missing girls

4:49WatchNov 24, 2022

Tension

70/ 100High tension

More from True Crime Garage TV

Solve the Crime

Read a real case one clue at a time, then see how your call held up against the investigators.