It was the morning of December 23, 1974. The air was buzzing with the festive chaos of last-minute holiday shopping.
Three girls—Lisa Renee Wilson, Julie Ann Moseley, and Mary Rachel Trlica—set off for what seemed like a typical afternoon at the Seminary South Shopping Center in Fort Worth, Texas.
Christmas lists in hand, they had no idea their day would take a turn into the unknown.
Renee and Rachel, both preferring to go by their middle names, were close friends. Julie, just nine years old, tagged along as the little sister of Renee’s boyfriend, Terry Moseley.
Originally, the plan was for Renee, Rachel, and Terry to head out together. But life threw a small curveball—Terry decided to visit a friend in the hospital instead.
Julie, feeling left out at home, begged to join the girls. After some convincing and a quick call to her mother, Rayanne, she got the green light, but with one condition: she had to be back by 6:00 PM.
For the trio, this wasn’t an issue. Renee had her own deadline—she needed to be home by 4:00 PM to get ready for a Christmas party with Terry. It all seemed perfectly planned.
At noon, they hit the road. First stop? The Army/Navy surplus store, where Renee picked up a pair of jeans she’d put on layaway. Then, they headed to the bustling shopping center. Rachel’s sleek 1974 Oldsmobile 98 found a spot in the upper parking level, right by Sears.
The mall was packed with shoppers. Witnesses later reported seeing the girls wandering through stores, chatting and browsing like any group of teenagers. At some point, they even returned to Rachel’s car, likely to drop off their growing pile of purchases.
And then—silence.
Somewhere between their last shopping stop and their next move, the girls disappeared. No goodbyes. No dramatic scenes. Just three friends, gone without a trace.
The mystery of what happened next has haunted their families and the city of Fort Worth for decades.
The Night Hope Turned to Fear: A Mysterious Disappearance
When the girls didn’t make it home that evening, concern quickly turned into panic. Their families sprang into action, driving to the Seminary South Shopping Center to search for them.
Terry Moseley, Renee’s boyfriend and Julie’s brother, stayed by the phone at home, ready to take any calls with news or clues.
The first unsettling discovery came at around 6:00 PM—Rachel’s 1974 Oldsmobile was still sitting in the parking lot. It was locked, with a lone Christmas present lying on the backseat floorboard.
No sign of Rachel, Renee, or Julie. No evidence of a struggle. Just an eerily ordinary car in a bustling mall parking lot, as if the girls had simply vanished into thin air.
As the hours crept by, the families didn’t leave the mall. Renee’s mother, Judy Wilson, refused to rest. She had the girls’ names paged at every store, hoping they might respond. She called local hospitals, fearing the worst but clinging to hope.
Meanwhile, Rusty Arnold, Renee’s brother, and his mother combed through store after store, searching every corner for a trace of the trio.
By nightfall, desperation set in. Richard Wilson, Renee’s father, and a neighbor took to the roof of a nearby building armed with a shotgun, keeping vigil over Rachel’s Oldsmobile like sentinels. It wasn’t rational, but in the chaos of the moment, it felt like a way to protect what little they had left of the girls.
Calls to friends led nowhere—no one had seen or heard from them.
By this point, the families had contacted the police, and the case was turned over to the Youth Division of the Fort Worth Police Department’s Missing Persons Bureau.
The mall, which had been alive with holiday cheer just hours earlier, became a backdrop for dread. How could three girls, out shopping for Christmas, disappear without a trace?
Where could they have gone, and why hadn’t anyone seen anything?
A Letter of Doubt: The Search Gets Sidetracked
As the hours turned into days, the families of Rachel, Renee, and Julie were adamant—these girls hadn’t run away. But convincing the police was another matter. Officers leaned heavily on the “runaway theory,” a stance that would delay crucial investigative work for an entire year. The result?
Rachel’s Oldsmobile was left untouched, unprocessed for fingerprints or other evidence. Critical opportunities to uncover the truth slipped through their fingers like sand.
Then, on the morning of Christmas Eve, something unusual arrived at the Trlica household. A letter addressed to Rachel’s husband, Thomas, was sitting in the mailbox. The sender? Allegedly Rachel herself.
The message was short and strange, almost dismissive of the chaos back home:
“I know I’m going to catch it, but we just had to get away. We’re going to Houston [Texas]. See you in about a week. The car is in Sear’s [sic] upper lot. Love Rachel.”
At first glance, it seemed like the girls had left voluntarily. But the details didn’t add up. The note was written on a piece of paper too wide for the envelope it was crammed into. The handwriting?
Described as a “childish scrawl.” Then there was the postmark: blurry, with no city listed—just a Postal Service number, 76083.
The peculiarities didn’t stop there. The number “3” in the postmark was printed backward, leading to speculation. Some believed the stamp had been tampered with, possibly hand-loaded, which would place the letter’s origin in either Eliasville or Throckmorton, Texas. Others argued the numbers were meant to read “88,” pointing instead to Weatherford, Texas.
Rachel’s mother and husband were unconvinced the letter was genuine. Rachel always called her husband “Tommy,” never “Thomas,” as the letter was addressed.
Something about it felt off, like it was meant to mislead. Even handwriting tests failed to clear up the mystery—they came back inconclusive.
Was this a rushed attempt by the girls to communicate? Or was it a sinister ploy by someone else to derail the search? The letter, rather than bringing clarity, only deepened the confusion.
And with investigators still debating its origins, it became yet another layer of mystery in a case already riddled with unanswered questions.
If the girls hadn’t written the letter, then who did? And why?
A Trail of Clues: Shifting Theories and Lingering Doubts
At first, investigators believed Rachel might have written the mysterious letter under duress—or willingly. But even that assumption began to crumble over time.
A closer look at the letter revealed a subtle but curious detail: the loop in the “L” of “Rachel” appeared to have been altered. It looked as though it might have started as a lowercase “e,” suggesting a possible spelling mistake.
Despite its oddities, the letter remains the only tangible piece of evidence in the case. When DNA testing technology became available, investigators sent it for analysis. The results?
No matches in the police database, and no connection to Rachel, Renee, or Julie. The letter’s true origin remains a maddening enigma.
Rachel’s home life added another layer to the tangled story. At the time of her disappearance, her sister, Debra, was living with her and her husband, Thomas.
Debra and Thomas had once been engaged, though both insisted the relationship had never been serious and had ended amicably. They claimed there was no awkwardness in their shared living arrangement, but the situation sparked speculation among family members.
Some relatives of the Moseley, Wilson, and Arnold families began to suspect Debra might know more than she was letting on.
In 2000, after Debra gave an interview to the Fort Worth-Star Telegram, the families sent her a letter. In it, they pleaded for her cooperation with the authorities and asked her to take a polygraph test.
Debra, however, has consistently denied having any knowledge about the girls’ disappearance.
Meanwhile, the families refused to sit idle. They plastered missing persons flyers across Texas, contacted newspapers nationwide, and relentlessly pushed to keep the case alive in the public eye.
Occasionally, new leads surfaced, bringing flickers of hope—and frustration. One store clerk reported that a woman had told her she saw Renee, Rachel, and Julie being “hustled” into a yellow pickup truck parked by the Buddies grocery store at Seminary South Shopping Center on the day they vanished.
This account echoed a similar story from 1981, when another witness claimed to have seen a man forcing a girl—or girls—into a van in the mall’s parking lot.
The witness said he approached the group, only to be met with a chilling response: the man dismissed it as a “family dispute” and told him to “stay out of it.”
Was this just coincidence, or a critical clue that had slipped through the cracks? Decades later, these accounts remain part of a haunting puzzle, with the truth seemingly just out of reach.
What really happened in that parking lot? And who, if anyone, knows the full story?
A Web of Leads: False Starts and Unanswered Questions
The stories of witnesses, while intriguing, added more complexity than clarity to the case. Neither account—the yellow truck near Buddies grocery store nor the man forcing a girl into a van—could be verified by police.
Attempts to locate the woman who spoke to the cashier also hit a dead end, leaving investigators with no way to confirm or debunk her claim.
Other leads proved equally frustrating. A night watchman working at Alcon Laboratories, just down the road from the mall, reported seeing a car that night containing three women and two men in the building’s driveway. It seemed promising, but ultimately led nowhere.
The morning after the girls vanished, a ticket agent at the local bus depot claimed three girls had inquired about trips to Houston and other destinations. But the reliability of this account remained uncertain. It was just another flicker of possibility that faded without resolution.
In their desperation, the families turned to unconventional methods. A well-known psychic, J. Joseph, offered his services for free and even contributed to the growing reward fund. His insights were unsettling.
He told the families something felt “off” about the letter allegedly written by Rachel. He had a strong sense the girls had been taken north—perhaps to Oklahoma or Illinois—and were being held against their will. He speculated that drugs might be involved, along with three to five people.
Joseph also left the families with a cryptic and chilling statement during a visit to the Arnold home. If they never saw him again, he suggested, it would mean the girls were no longer alive.
True to his words, he never returned or contacted the families again.
In 1975, another potential clue surfaced. A man claiming to know Rachel said he had seen the girls at a record store in the mall on the day they disappeared. He remembered another individual with them and even recalled a brief conversation with Mary. But, like so many leads, this one didn’t bring investigators any closer to solving the case.
Later that same year, a glimmer of hope emerged when women’s clothing was discovered in Justin, Texas.
For a brief moment, it was believed the items might belong to one of the missing girls. But after investigation, the connection was ruled out.
The mounting false leads and dead ends added to the heartbreak for the families, but they refused to give up.
Every story, no matter how small or strange, was a piece of the puzzle that might someday unlock the truth.
Yet, as the trail cooled, the pressing question remained: would they ever find the answers they so desperately sought?
A Determined Investigator: The Efforts of Jon Swaim
By 1975, frustration with the police investigation had reached a boiling point.
The families of Rachel, Renee, and Julie decided to take matters into their own hands, hiring private investigator Jon Swaim to pick up where authorities had fallen short.
Swaim wasn’t one to tread lightly—he called press conferences, pushed the case into the national spotlight, and demanded access to police files. His aggressive approach brought attention but also uncovered a string of false leads.
One of the most publicized incidents that year involved an unidentified man who attempted to claim the reward money by offering false information about the girls’ whereabouts.
While his story didn’t pan out, it highlighted the desperation surrounding the case—and the lengths to which some people would go to exploit it.
In April 1975, Swaim led a bold search operation in Port Lavaca, Texas, bringing 100 volunteers to comb the area beneath local bridges.
A tip suggested the girls’ bodies had been dumped there, though police had already searched the location without success.
Unfortunately, Swaim’s search turned up nothing either, leaving the families still grasping for answers.
That summer, Swaim uncovered another lead. A 28-year-old man had been making obscene phone calls to young women in the area. He had once lived in Rachel’s neighborhood and worked at a store where she had applied for a job before her disappearance.
Suspicious? Certainly. But despite his history of using his job to gather personal information from female applicants—six of whom later reported receiving crude calls—no direct link to the case was ever established.
In 1976, a new discovery seemed to promise answers. Three skeletons were found in a Brazoria County field by an oil drilling crew.
Swaim quickly had the remains analyzed, but the results were disappointing. The skeletons were identified as one teenage boy and two females, none of whom matched the missing girls.
Tragically, Swaim’s relentless pursuit of the truth ended in 1979 when he died by apparent suicide.
In a final twist, he requested all his case records be destroyed upon his death. To this day, it’s unknown whether his files held any clues that could have helped solve the case.
Adding to the heartbreak, the families were tormented by prank calls. Renee’s parents, in particular, were frequently targeted by cruel individuals claiming to be their missing daughter.
The relentless calls forced them to install a second phone line just to separate the hoaxes from real inquiries.
Through it all, the families pressed on, refusing to let the girls’ story fade. But with every false lead, unanswered tip, and cruel joke, the mystery only grew deeper.
Was someone out there deliberately derailing the search? Or was the truth simply buried too far beneath the surface to ever be found?
A Renewed Effort: Clues and Sightings Decades Later
In 1999, Rachel’s brother, Rusty, wasn’t ready to let the mystery go. Determined to uncover the truth, he enlisted the help of private investigator Dan James to reexamine the case.
Together, they focused on a series of reported sightings of Rachel and Renee in the days following their disappearance. Witnesses claimed to have seen the girls at various stores and even a gas station.
Adding to the intrigue, other reports over the years suggested Rachel had been spotted in Fort Worth during multiple Christmas seasons.
Rusty and James reached a sobering conclusion—they believe Renee and Julie are no longer alive. But Rachel?
They’re convinced she is still out there. They argue that someone—an unidentified person or group—may be keeping her away from her family. However, they’ve remained tight-lipped about any evidence supporting this theory, leaving the claim shrouded in mystery.
In December 1999, James offered a $25,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for the girls’ disappearances.
It was a deeply personal move—he funded the reward from his own savings and insisted he’d never taken a penny for his investigative work. His commitment to the case came with risks: anonymous death threats warning him to abandon the search.
But James refused to back down.
By January 2001, the official investigation was reopened. A few months later, a press conference revealed significant progress. Investigators had interviewed over 20 new witnesses who claimed to have seen the girls at the mall on the afternoon of December 23, 1974.
More importantly, they announced they had narrowed down their list of potential suspects to just five individuals.
Around this time, a former Fort Worth police officer and security guard at the Sears outlet came forward with startling information. He told KXAS NBC-5 that he had seen three girls and a young male security guard in a pickup truck at around 11:30 PM on the night of their disappearance.
According to the guard, the girls appeared to be there willingly, laughing and talking casually with the driver.
The details were oddly specific. He remembered the seating arrangement: the youngest girl sat closest to the driver, the second-eldest in the middle, and the oldest next to the passenger-side door.
The truck eventually drove off into the night, taking with it what might have been the last known sighting of Rachel, Renee, and Julie.
Was this yet another dead-end lead, or a vital piece of the puzzle? Despite the renewed investigation and tantalizing hints of progress, the case remains unsolved. Each new clue seems to bring as many questions as answers.
Who were the five suspects investigators identified? And if Rachel truly is still alive, why has she never been found—or reached out to her family?
A Lifetime of Searching: Hope, Heartbreak, and Unyielding Determination
Over the decades, the search for Rachel, Renee, and Julie has been a story of hope interwoven with heartbreak.
Witness accounts, false leads, and countless searches have kept their families teetering between despair and determination.
One of the most intriguing early leads came from a security guard at the Sears outlet who claimed to have seen the girls in a pickup truck on the night they disappeared. He reported the sighting to police days after their disappearance, but investigators didn’t follow up until April 2001—nearly 27 years later.
When finally located, the guard denied the girls had ever been in his vehicle, leaving the lead cold once again.
The families have endured the torment of false claims about the discovery of remains.
Investigators even combed through medical examiner records in New Mexico for unidentified females, comparing dental records and DNA samples, but no matches were found. Rachel, Renee, and Julie’s DNA and dental records remain available for future comparison, should their remains ever be located.
In 2018, Rachel’s brother, Rusty, spearheaded a bold search in Benbrook Lake. With help from Texas EquuSearch, he focused on two submerged vehicles thought to be connected to the case.
A GoFundMe campaign funded divers and equipment, and by September, the first car was raised. A second followed in October.
Scientists analyzed both vehicles, but neither yielded clues about the missing girls. The VIN numbers were preserved for potential connections to other unsolved cases.
A third car remains underwater, but its disintegrated frame makes retrieval too dangerous. Still, Rusty’s persistence exemplifies the tireless efforts of the families, who refuse to abandon the search.
Along the way, they’ve endured hoaxes that cut deeply. Rusty once received a call from a woman claiming to be Julie. She believed she’d been abducted as a child and identified with Julie after seeing her picture online.
While her appearance offered a glimmer of hope, a DNA test ultimately ruled her out.
The last significant lead came in 2001, when investigators collected DNA evidence. However, they’ve kept the results private due to the case’s active status.
Police believe the girls left the mall willingly with someone they trusted but later fell victim to foul play.
The lack of transparency has frustrated the families. Richard Wilson, Renee’s father, recalled a particularly crushing moment when police falsely claimed they’d searched a well in Aledo, Texas, after promising to investigate a lead.
In reality, they never even traveled to the location, further eroding trust in the investigation.
Despite these setbacks, the case remains alive in the public consciousness. In 2022, an anonymous donor offered a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible.
In 2023, billboards featuring age-progressed renderings of the girls were erected across northern Texas.
Spearheaded by Terry and supported by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) and Clear Channel, the campaign marked National Missing Person’s Day and reignited awareness of the case.
Thousands of leads have been chased, and hundreds of searches conducted over the years.
From the Texas brush to back roads, creek beds to country trails, the families and investigators have combed through every possible location.
Decades later, their hope endures. For those who loved Rachel, Renee, and Julie, the question isn’t if the truth will surface, but when.
Until then, the search continues, fueled by love, perseverance, and the unwavering belief that justice is still within reach.
Aftermath: A Legacy of Heartbreak and Relentless Determination
The disappearance of Rachel, Renee, and Julie left scars that ran deep, fracturing lives and families while leaving unanswered questions hanging in the air.
For Rachel’s father, Cotton Trlica, the tragedy came at a cruelly short chapter in his life. Just six months after his daughter vanished, he passed away from stage 4 melanoma. Rachel’s mother, grappling with unimaginable grief, remarried a few years later.
Rachel’s husband, Thomas, initially held onto hope, believing the girls would be found within days. He even offered a $2,000 reward, a significant sum at the time. But as days turned into years, the strain became unbearable.
Less than two years after the disappearance, Thomas filed for divorce on the grounds of abandonment. He eventually moved away from Fort Worth, remarried multiple times, and became a supervisor at a Texas-based water company.
For Renee’s family, the pain lingered in the home they had shared with her. Richard Wilson threw himself into the search, knocking on neighbors’ doors and joining volunteer efforts.
Judy, Renee’s mother, endured the long years with quiet strength but passed away in 2015 from pulmonary hypertension, her heart burdened by unanswered questions.
Rusty Arnold, Rachel’s brother, has dedicated much of his life to unraveling the mystery. For him, the case isn’t just an unsolved crime—it’s a deeply personal mission.
Nearly every day, Rusty investigates leads, working with private detectives and scouring sites across Texas, from a bayou in Port Lavaca to a wrecking yard in Kennedale. He also runs the Missing Ft. Worth Trio Facebook group, keeping the girls’ story alive and rallying support for continued efforts.
But Rusty’s relentless pursuit hasn’t come without a cost. His relationship with his family has suffered, particularly with his mother and sister.
His sister, Fran, blames Rusty’s obsession partly on the influence of Dan James, one of the private investigators who worked on the case. She believes the investigation has consumed Rusty and fractured their family in the process.
Julie’s mother, Rayanne, bore the grief in her own way. For two decades after her daughter’s disappearance, she struggled with emotional breakdowns, seeking help from psychiatrists and psychologists, and even spending time in the hospital.
To process her pain, Rayanne turned to journaling, pouring her anguish into words in an effort to find peace. Tragically, she passed away without ever learning what happened to her daughter.
Through it all, the families have endured the crushing weight of uncertainty. Each passing year brings both the hope of answers and the fear that closure may never come.
Yet their resilience has kept the girls’ story alive—a testament to the love that drives them and the belief that, one day, the truth will finally be uncovered.
Details of the Fort Worth Missing Trio
On December 23, 1974, three young girls—commonly referred to as the Fort Worth Missing Trio—vanished without a trace from the Seminary South Shopping Center in Fort Worth, Texas. Their case remains one of the most haunting mysteries in Texas history.
The Missing Girls
Lisa Renee Wilson
- Age: 14
- Physical Description: 5’2″, 110 pounds, with shoulder-length wavy brown hair (reddish highlights), brown eyes, and fair skin with acne. She has a scar on the inside of her thigh.
- Clothing: Purplish-blue hip-hugger pants, red and white sneakers or Oxford-style shoes, and either a pale yellow/green shirt or a white sweatshirt with “Sweet Honey” printed in green.
- Jewelry: Promise ring with a single stone.
- Nickname: Commonly addressed by her middle name, Renee.
Mary Rachel Trlica (née Arnold)
- Age: 17
- Physical Description: 5’6″, 108 pounds, with long brown hair, green eyes, and a chipped upper front tooth. She has a small scar on her chin.
- Clothing: Specific outfit unknown, aside from her wedding ring.
- Nickname: Commonly addressed by her middle name, Rachel.
Julie Ann Moseley
- Age: 9
- Physical Description: 4’3″, 85 pounds, with shoulder-length light brown to sandy blonde hair and blue eyes. She has a small scar under her left eye, another in the middle of her forehead, and a round scar on the back of her calf.
- Clothing: Red shirt, dark jeans, and red tennis shoes.
Case Information
The disappearances of Rachel, Renee, and Julie are classified as non-family abductions. Decades of investigations and thousands of leads have yet to produce definitive answers, leaving the case active and unresolved.
Contact Information
Anyone with information that could help solve this case is urged to come forward. Tips can be submitted to:
- Fort Worth Police Department: (817) 335-4222
- Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office: (817) 496-9402
- Texas Department of Public Safety’s Missing Persons Clearinghouse: (512) 424-5074
The families of Rachel, Renee, and Julie, along with investigators, continue to seek the truth. Every piece of information, no matter how small, could bring them closer to resolution.
