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

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[Music] [Applause] % [Music] welcome to True Crime garage wherever you are whatever you are doing thanks
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Captain cheers every everybody out there everybody gather around grab a chair grab a beer let's talk some true
crime Mary Rachel trila went by her middle name Rachel she was still in high school but had been married to Thomas
trila for 6 months her maid 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 julieanne Mosley was the
smallest of the three at just 4' 3 in 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 to South Fort Worth Texas they were supposed to be home by 400 p.m. 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 at Hans and tank Les the lives of all the families
involved for some time stopped on that December day for others the tragedy created a seedbed 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 trila 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 Anne 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 Julianne Mosley the little
9-year-old at all now Julianne and her family lived across the street from Rene'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 Julie Anne'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 400 p.m. because Renee and Terry plan to go to a Christmas party together that night the girls 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
layway 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 jeans so then they travel 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 the mall 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 got to love
Reddit if you're a true crime fan you got to love Reddit well in in here's here's going to be the the truth for
everybody out there I'm probably going to dog Reddit and web SLO 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 SLU 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 the Golden State killer like a year and
a half before DNA confirmed it right so these forums and these online armchair detectives they are very important yeah
you called me 6 months or maybe a year before they solved the um Golden State killer case and you had said hey i' I
found this on S 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 9-year-old that's the big gap I mean if somebody said to me um well I mean just take like my
stepsons for example if they said to me we're going to go shopping and we're taking this 9-year-old boy along mhm I'd
think well that's very nice of you right CU you probably don't want to be hanging
out with a 9-year-old yeah and the 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 convenient 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 9-year-old was just with them the two older girls really didn't want the 9-year-old to go
with them in fact what had happened was we mentioned that Renee so Renee is the 14-year-old her boyfriend's Terry Terry
is the little 9-year-old's older brother that's Rene'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 overhears this right says can I
please go shopping with you I mean look we've all been nine you know when you're
nine and 10 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 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's 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 it 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' 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 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 ago they were longtime friends they had been friends for a long time that's not that big of a age their
families knew each other and look when I was 14 15 if somebody an older kid had a
car maybe I even if I didn't like them I went along CU 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 9-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 in 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 there shopping mhm 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/green
T-shirt with the word sweet honesty printed across the front so the interesting thing sweet 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 because 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 4:00 came and went and okay so 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 9-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 mhm they go
back to the car or we think so because there was purchases made corre are 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 jeans that she was going to return or did she actually
returned the jeans and she got new jeans no no no this was a 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 on 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 cuz 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 4: 5 and then some say 6:00
p.m. 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 400 p.m. and that stuck in
her mom's mind and when they didn't return at 4: well the mom calls the other you know homes are 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 mhm 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 cuz remember this is at a time period there's no cell phone 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 sluth online that talk about the discrepancy between the the parents age
and their son's age and bringing him to the mall the parents age and the son's age yes oh 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 mhm 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 store they do this until they go through all the stores mhm 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 p.m. is when they call and
notify the police now remember they spent some time between 4: looking for the car and then looking for the girl so
I don't find anything weird with 4 to 6:00 mhm I think that's where there's the discrepancy in the reports they went
missing at four five or six whatever the father gets the his neighbor to join him
the police at first are there's mixed reports on the police the families spring and 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 miss their curfew whatever yeah but
isn't that kind of a common theme in a lot of these stories somebody goes missing and they're never found the
police didn't care that's that that's the normal statement from the family mhm um you know what 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 5 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
wellknown 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 schaer single missing adults but I had not heard of this case not until about 6 months ago
so sometimes I wonder you know why why this case is kind of unknown and these other two were 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
to 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 in the mar 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 Mara Murray and Brian Schaefer 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 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 Schaefer 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 it's like no no they did they found no trace
of him now the other reason like I stated before it 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 MH well 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 Tim
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 time did they head to the mall again they left um Rene'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 mhm 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 going to run away and that's the plan why is this
9-year-old with us to begin with okay 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 the 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 MH and then furthermore
the parents keep pointing out if they were planning to run away why wouldn't they take their car they obvious 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 where
they gifts for somebody else and if they if they bought a gift for their father or 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 mhm and again then somebody would say well that was to throw him 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 question beer [Music] break this show is sponsored by better
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to the colonel oh thank you on to the investigation sounds so enthused well as well as some things that were later
learned m this is a weird case um 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 things that 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 MH okay um the jeans that
were picked up from layaway from the Army Navy Store were found in the trunk of the
car okay mhm 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 tip says that she saw some men MH hustling girls into a pickup truck pickup 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 M 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 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 that
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 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 9-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 mhm toss the 9-year-old in the back maybe the
14-year-old and then uh the 17 two two guys set up front they did have what we would call refer to as 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 there were full-size cabs back then with vehicles for 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 that in the early 7s 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 truck uh
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 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 uh
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 100 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'd want the details of the vehicle more so than the others because I I think you have to think
about the who's 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 maybe he knew them maybe he had some
reason to trust them maybe there was some con hey I take pictures for teen magazine you guys should you want to be
in teen magazine hell 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 a gif mhm you know or hey I'll
pay you $1,000 well the easiest con to me would involve the security car the patrol car
right 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 I 17 149 you're probably gone yeah cuz 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 FU 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 9-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 my car yeah or do we have a Jeffrey dmer 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 and the
interesting thing here about the idea of being conned or tricked by somebody it does go along with what the 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 could 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 asks the man mhm 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 like well yeah and the threat was always
uh you know I'm going to take you to I'm 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 cuz you're not going to slap your kid in the middle of the store you take him out to
the car and spank him 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 f finish
this point first is that that happened 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 oh this girl's not cooperating and 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 that was brought to his attention so much so that he felt he needed to say
something one 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 5 years later right till 5 years later so right but
then but then you have to then here's the problem though with all these eyewitness accounts I mean this guy's
coming 5 years later mhm did this happen on the day the girls went missing right
did this happened 6 months after the girls went missing we don't know I I have a really hard time believing any
eyewitness story that comes fourth 5 years later unless they said I know this happened then and I thought about it for
5 years and then I came forward but a lot of these eyewitnesses that come forward 5 years
later they it's almost like I saw something on Dat line 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 you know what I mean and then they're calling the law enforcement oh I
saw something and they don't even know when they saw it or when they didn't yeah I 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 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 17 14 and 19y old well and if the 14 and the 17y old were planning to run away so the day that they're
playing a run away they would have done everything in their power to have the 9-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 9-year-old along you know cuz 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 were leaning towards runaway do we have any no I think that
would just be something they told the the parents mhm 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 trila and Rachel called her husband Tommy Rachel was scrolled in the upper
leftand 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 read well it's curu yeah okay but I 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 Sear's upper lot 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 um 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 um 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 truecrime garage.com we'll also post it
on all the social media platform 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 trila 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 like well and it's the envelope it's not like it says Dear Thomas a tril
inside it's the envelope right and then you might know that everything that goes
to his house is addressed this way so you would 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 10cent stamp had been canell 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 24th
1974 now a lot of people have suggested early on in this case that one it it states hey we had to get away and it's
written WR 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 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 6 months by the time that she had disappeared okay so it
was the 14-year-old 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 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 it 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 nick9 9% of the time 1%
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 mis write
my name you know what 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
Rachel's name ends with e l MH 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 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 mhm uh things are a little too close um there's there's miss the the problem is is
you know if we're going to 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 how to get
away uh we're going to Houston want to catch there's like a 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 and C mhm 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 mhm 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 EAS mhm 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 be 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 then 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 Rene'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 that's a dead giveaway some somebody
else does these loopy e 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 believe 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 the detester 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 the author of this letter either
knew Rachel or abducted her and then got information from her MH and what I mean by that is
look if 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 6 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 mhm okay
so either this individual that wrote the letter knew Rachel knew 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 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 a 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 and about a week mhm 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 seene with these two other girls that Thomas is going to let everybody know is that the idea cuz 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 no 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 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 9-year-old that you never hung out with that you know what I mean
it's not supposed to make sense right but what I'm saying is it's you just said that it's the buy
time well you ask you ask why would anybody C 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 saying is because the letter doesn't make any
sense that it's it's a red flag you know what 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 happen oh I see what
you're saying you see what I'm saying like when I'm getting the letter I'm not just all of a sudden gonna 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 mhm as
as opposed to just well maybe there's some because it is 74 there's a if 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 just
get something to eat or do 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
Rene'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 and the way
that law enforcement remember this case okay so you might have law enforcement saying 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 tried 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 mhm 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 MH but the regardless of whatever it is or the reasoning behind it it's a clue whether
it came from Rachel whether it came whe whether she was forced to write it whether she wrote it of her own 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 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 right they become second nature to you mhm 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 yeah 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 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
mhm uh the letter would have come from somewhere and whether Weatherford Texas Weatherford is about 35 to 40 uh 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 38 if it is 38 or 38 then it may have been
stamped in Eliza I'm sorry elizaville which is a little further away this is a 2hour drive east of Fort
Worth still in the great state of Texas Captain do you have a preference or or Theory as to whether you believe
it's supposed to be a 38 like Dan James says or supposed to be an 88 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 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
7688 Weatherford postal code and what I mean by that is that I think it's easy 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 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 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 would have a postal code stamp an official I'm just
saying it's possible it's not possible 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 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 like
76088 better than that 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 got to 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'
never worked for the Post Office gotcha but but my belief is that this would be a a mistake that more likely leans to
the fact of being just not applied fully MH 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 abductor is 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 Co 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 MH is 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 you know and you think that
possibly they would do that to throw him off the scent but I would also wonder where is this in location to not only
the car and the mall they went missing from but where is 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 so they would both be east of Fort Worth like I said I
think no no no I lied west of Fort Worth yeah and I I really just think the this
this letter and General is just 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
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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 Adon Sayed 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 [Music] [Applause]
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The Fort Worth Missing Trio /// Part 1 /// 241

Part 1 of 2

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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.

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Brief Summary

Three girls went missing in Fort Worth, Texas in 1974 during a shopping trip, sparking a complex investigation and ongoing mystery.

Key points

The Disappearance of the Fort Worth Trio. Three girls went missing during a Christmas shopping trip in 1974, leaving families devastated.
Eyewitness Accounts. Multiple witnesses reported seeing the girls shopping, but they never returned home.
The Search Begins. When the girls didn't return by 4 PM, their families initiated a frantic search.
The Mystery of the Missing Girls. Three girls disappeared without a trace, raising questions about their fate and the investigation.
Eyewitness Accounts. Multiple eyewitnesses reported seeing the girls, but their stories raise more questions than answers.
The Mysterious Letter. A letter arrives addressed to Rachel's husband, raising questions about its authenticity.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

This case remains a riddle with no answers.

Describing the ongoing mystery of the missing girls.

5:50WatchNov 16, 2023

Tension

65/ 100Some tension

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