The Fort Worth Missing Trio: Unraveling the 1974 Disappearance of Three Girls. What Happened to Mary, Lisa, and Julie?

The Fort Worth Missing Trio is an unsolved case involving three girls who went missing on December 23, 1974. 

Mary Rachel Trlica, Lisa Renee Wilson, and Julie Ann Moseley vanished while shopping at the Seminary South Shopping Center in Fort Worth, Texas.

The girls' car was found in the parking lot at the mall, but the girls themselves were never seen again.

The case shocked the Fort Worth community, leaving the girls' families to cope with life without their children.

Authorities have followed thousands of leads, conducted dozens of searches, and interviewed hundreds of people. 

Despite these efforts, all attempts to find the girls have been unsuccessful.

The Victims

Mary Rachel Trlica, the oldest of the girls, was 17 years old when she disappeared.

She is known by her middle name, Rachel.

She was a married high school student at Southwest High School in Fort Worth.

She drove a 1972 Oldsmobile 98, and this was the car she and the other girls used to go to the mall the day they disappeared.

When she vanished, Rachel had been married to her husband, Tommy Trlica, for about six months and was wearing her wedding ring.

Mary Rachel Trlica

The second oldest victim was Lisa Renee Wilson.

She was age 14 at the time of her disappearance. 

She is known to go by her middle name of Renee. 

The youngest of the girls, Julie Ann Moseley, was age 9 at the time of her disappearance.

Lisa Renee Wilson

Julie Ann Moseley

Disappearance 

On the morning of December 23, 1974, just before noon, Rachel Trlica, Renee Wilson, and Julie Ann Moseley went out to do some Christmas shopping.

Moseley decided to join them at the last minute because she "didn't want to spend the day alone."

When told she needed permission to go, Moseley, the youngest of the girls, ran inside her home to ask her mother, Rayanne Moseley, if she could join them.

Her mother initially said no because she and her husband were separated and it was a difficult time for them. 

She didn’t want her daughter to go out anyhow.

After some persuasion from Renee and her mother, Moseley's mom agreed to let her go but told her to be home by six.

The older girls, especially Renee, wanted to be back by 4:00 p.m

This was because she had a Christmas party to attend with her new boyfriend, who had given her a promise ring that morning. 

So she needed plenty of time to get ready.

The girls first went to a surplus store in Fort Worth to pick up some layaway items that Renee had there.

From there, they went to the Seminary South Shopping Center.

Several witnesses reported seeing the girls at the mall that day, and it was the last confirmed sighting of them.

When the girls didn’t return home, their families grew worried and went to Seminary South to search for them.

They arrived around 6:00 p.m. that evening and found their car parked in the Sears upper-level parking lot.

It seemed the girls had returned to the car before their strange disappearance, as the gifts they bought were found inside it.

But no one knows what happened to them after they dropped those gift items in the car

The family stayed at the mall all night waiting for the girls to return. 

Sadly, they never came back, and there was no trace of them around the mall.

When the girls didn’t show up, the police were called in for official investigations.

The case was quickly handed over to the youth division of the Fort Worth Police Department’s Missing Persons Bureau.

Theories 

Although many theories about their disappearance were proposed, we will look into some of them.

Voluntary Disappearance: Investigators strongly believed the girls were runaways.

The next day after their disappearance, Tommy Trlica, Rachel's husband, received a letter that appeared to have been written by her.

It read:

"I know I'm going to catch it, but we had to get away. We're going to Houston. See you in about a week. The car is in Sears' upper lot. Love, Rachel"

In the following decades, handwriting experts from across the nation, including the FBI, have given inconclusive results regarding the authenticity of the letter.

Despite receiving the letter, the girls' families did not believe it was written by Rachel or that the girls had run away.

Julie Ann Moseley's mother, Rayanne, said, "I know my daughter and the other girls. They are not runaways." 

Renee's mother, Judy Wilson, added, "I knew that night they didn't run away. [Renee] was excited about that party. No nine-year-old would run off two days before Christmas. Everyone knows that!" 

Rachel's mother, Frances Langston, believed the girls were kidnapped, stating, "Some might think they left with someone they knew, but I’ll always believe the girls were taken until the day I die."

Determined not to give up, the families continued their search.

They handed out missing person flyers throughout the state and reached out to newspapers across the country.

Foul play by stranger: In early 1975, a young man who claimed to know Rachel came forward.

He claimed to have seen the three girls in the record department of a store inside the mall just before they disappeared.

According to him, he and Rachel saw each other and had a brief conversation.

The man claimed that another person was with the girls in the mall. 

Around the same time, some women's clothing was found in Justin, Texas, but it was later determined not to belong to the girls.

Job Application Gone Wrong - Frustrated with the police investigation, the families decided to hire a private detective named Jon Swaim. 

In August 1975, Swaim found out that a 28-year-old man, who had worked at a local store where Rachel had applied for a job before her disappearance, was making a series of obscene phone calls in the area.

It was discovered that the man was using his job to gather information from young women who had either applied for jobs or been listed as references.

Six female job applicants had been receiving disturbing phone calls.

The man had also lived in Rachel's parents' neighborhood but moved away shortly before Rachel got married. 

In the end, the investigation into this suspect led to no results.

Yellow Truck: Around the time of the girls' disappearance, a store clerk came forward.

 She said a woman had told her she saw the girls at the mall that day.

The woman reported seeing three girls being forced into a yellow pickup truck near Buddies grocery store at the mall. 

The truck was described as having lights on top.

However this witness was never located by police, and the story was never verified.

Aftermath

In April 1975, Swaim went to Port Lavaca, Texas, with 100 volunteers. 

They searched under local bridges after receiving a tip that the girls had been killed and taken to that area.

However, no trace of the girls was found.

A year later, an oil drilling crew found three skeletons in a field in Brazoria County.

Swaim compared the bones to X-rays and dental records of the girls, but they turned out to belong to a teenage boy around 15 to 17 years old and two other females. 

None of them were identified as the missing girls.

In March 1976, a psychic called one of the families and said the girls might be near an oil well. 

For unknown reasons, the searchers concentrated on the small community of Rising Star, Texas, but they didn’t find anything.

In 1979, Swaim died from a drug overdose, which was ruled a suicide. 

Before his death, he had ordered that all his files on the case be destroyed.

In the spring of 1981, police were called to a location in Brazoria County where human remains had been found in a swampy area.

After a month of investigation, they found that the bones did not belong to the three girls.

In January 2001, the case was reopened and assigned to homicide detective Tom Boetcher.

He believes the girls left the mall with someone they trusted.

"We can say that they were at one point seen with one individual, but we believe there was more than one involved" he said.

In 2018, two cars were pulled from Benbrook Lake because they were thought to be connected to the case. 

However, these efforts did not produce any results.

Ongoing Efforts 

Over the years, investigators have thoroughly searched Texas, exploring hundreds of back roads.

The families have searched creek beds and country roads without finding any leads. 

Decades after the disappearance, there have been no new developments in the case.

In 1981, years after the disappearance, a man claimed he had been in the parking lot that day and saw a man forcing a girl into a van.

The man in the van told him it was a family dispute and to stay out of it.

In April 2001, Bill Hutchins, a former Fort Worth police officer and security guard at the Seminary South Sears outlet came forward.

He said he saw the three girls with a security guard on the night they disappeared.

However, no concrete evidence has been found to support any of these claims.

Mary Rachel Trlica, Lisa Renee Wilson, and Julie Ann Moseley are still missing, and their case remains an unsolved mystery. 

If you have any information about their disappearance, please contact local authorities.

In another cold case, a woman and her child who went missing in 1974 were recently found in a submerged car in a canal in Plantation. 

Click here to see details of the case.

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