Episode 9: The Fort Worth Missing Trio: A Mystery That Still Haunts Cowtown

On December 23, 1974, three girls left Seminary South Shopping Center in Fort Worth and were never seen again.

Rachel Trlica (17), Renee Wilson (14), and Julie Moseley (9) disappeared just two days before Christmas while shopping for holiday gifts. Their car was later found abandoned in the mall parking lot, but the girls were gone.

What happened next would become one of the most haunting unsolved cases in Texas history.

In this episode of the We Got The Funk Podcast, we examine the timeline, the strange evidence, the mysterious letter mailed after the disappearance, and the theories that have kept investigators and families searching for answers for nearly 50 years.

This case—often called The Fort Worth Missing Trio—remains unsolved to this day.

If you have information, authorities encourage tips to be reported to the Fort Worth Police Department.

🎙 Subscribe to the We Got The Funk Podcast wherever you get your podcasts for more stories about Fort Worth history, culture, and unsolved mysteries.

Topics Covered in This Episode:

• The events of December 23, 1974

• Who were Rachel Trlica, Renee Wilson, and Julie Moseley

• The Seminary South Shopping Center timeline

• The mysterious letter sent after the disappearance

• The investigation and theories

• Why the case still matters today

Keywords:

Fort Worth Missing Trio, Rachel Trlica, Renee Wilson, Julie Moseley, Fort Worth unsolved mystery, Texas cold cases, Seminary South Shopping Center, true crime Texas, missing persons Fort Worth

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

So listen up, Funky Town. I want you to sit and chill with your boy for a second. Picture a December day. December 23rd, matter of fact. 1974. Probably like noon-ish. I'm talking about the kind of day where the air feels like winter, but the sun's still trying to act like it's got something to prove. I mean, Christmas was right around the corner. Folks rushing, bags in hand, bells in the background. Now imagine this. Three little girls walk in the seminary south mall, what we call the Grand Plaza today, and they never made it home. I'm talking about no goodbye, no witness with certainty, no clear suspect, just a lock Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme sitting in the Sears lot, like Tom paused right there and refused to start again. So this one right here, this was one of Fort Worth's most enduring and maddening cold cases. And today, I'm telling it the way Fort Worth remembers it. With facts, with respect, and with the weight that it still carries. Hey, what's up with it, good people? It's your boy Donna Barber, and I'm back with another episode of We Got the Funk, where Fort Worth history meets real life reflection. Now before we get into it, I want to set the tone. This episode involves missing kids, families who never got answers, and decades of rumors and pain. So we're not doing sensational, we're not doing conspiracy cosplay. We telling what's known, what's reported, and what's been said by the people who lived it. And we holding space for the fact that real mamas, fathers, siblings still carry this. If you listening with kids in the car, use your judgment. It ain't really no gore here, but the reality is heavy. Aye, let's step into 1974. December 23rd, 1974. Rachel Trelika is 17, newly married, six months into marriage with a 22-year-old husband named Tommy. Renee Wilson, she 14, young, determined, and on a schedule. Julie Mosley is nine. She still got that little kid, Glo. Still living in a world where grown folks are supposed to be able to keep you safe. They leave to do last-minute Christmas shopping at Seminary South Mall. Rachel drives her Oldsmobile Cutler Supreme, parks it on the East Lot near Sears. And this is what we know about time. Because time matters in every disappearance. Renee is supposed to be home by 4 o'clock for a Christmas party. Julie, she's supposed to be at home by 6. That's what her mama told her. Those times pass, and like any parent, like any auntie, any big cousin, your stomach starts talking to you in a language you don't want to understand. The parents go to the mall, and what do they find? They find the car. Locked. Purchases the girls made that day are still inside on the rear floorboard, not scattered, not stolen, just sitting there like a sentence with no period. Rachel Mother goes into the mall, store to store, asking managers to make announcements. But the girls don't respond, and the police, like police often do, move slower than fear. So that night, the fathers do what fathers do when their babies are missing. They take matters into their own hands. Armed with a shotgun, they stake out that Oldsmobile like it's bait, waiting for whatever might come back. That detail always hits me because it's not just a true crime detail, it's a human detail. That's a father saying, if the world won't protect my baby, I'm gonna do what I can. Even though the parents fear a foul play, police theory leaned towards they ran away. Now listen, people do run away, but according to the reporting, none of these girls had run away before. And then comes the letter. December twenty fourth, Christmas Eve, morning. A letter arrives at Rachel's home addressed to Thomas A. Trilka. Not Tommy, it was formal, cold, like somebody trying to sound like they know the house rules. On the envelope, Rachel is scrawled in pencil. The cancellation is weird. No clear city, and the zip code was blurred. Investigators interpreted it to suggest it could have been mailed from Throckmarton or Weatherford. Inside, a sheet of paper with a message in ballpoint ink, a childish like scrawl, and it said, I know I'm gonna catch it, but we just had to get away. We in Houston, see you in a week, the cars in Sears upper lot, love Rachel. But then the details start arguing with each other. One investigator thinks the handwriting matches a sample of Rachel's. Parents and Rachel's husband are skeptical. And across the years, some say genuine, some say prank, and some say inconclusive. Even the FBI handwriting analysis three times came back inconclusive. And this the piece of evidence that made people lean forward. The stamp was canceled the morning of December 24th, so that means a letter had to be mailed before then. But the first news of the account of their disappearance didn't appear until that evening, meaning the writer knew details, like Sears upper lot, before it was publicly described. Now, does that prove anything? Nah. But it keeps the question alive. Who knew where the car was and why was they writing like Rachel? That letter becomes something like a ghost in the case. Always there, but never fully solid. So the laws examine the car, right? No clues, they turn to the mall. People song, sure. Employees, shoppers. Somebody remembers Renee's shirt that said, sweet honesty. But nothing useful comes back. And when you don't have solid leads, the mind starts making its own. Theories start to multiply. They left voluntarily with somebody they knew. They was taken against their will. Or the scariest mix, they left voluntarily and then something sinister happens. A reward fund gets established on December 27th for anybody that came forward with information leading to their recovery. But as the year ends, the paper can only report no news. Now that's the worst kind of headline because no news feels like your loved one is slowly being erased. Within a week, the families contact psychics. And before anybody laughs, let's be real. When your child is missing and the official answers are thin, you'll probably do anything that looks like hope. First is a psychic from Dallas, Mr. Joseph. The families visit him in person. Renee mama says he tells him stuff about Renee that he shouldn't even know. He said dope was involved, three to five people involved, and the girls was being held against their wills. He visualizes a lake with horses nearby. He mentions Julie wearing red tennis shoes, a detail not in the media. He asked Mr. Tommy Trilker if 150 means anything. Tommy says$150 in bonds had been in the Oldsmobile that day, but wasn't there when the police examined them. Mr. Joseph also says he senses something wrong with the leather, and he believes they went north, not to Houston. Then came in other psychics that talked about clothing items that were sent and the blue hippie band. One of them even said it was a shallow grave near a creek in Mansfield. Rachel Mama, her sister Deborah, and Mrs. Wilson walk the creek bank following a map. At one point where the psychic says one of the girls was supposed to be, Deborah reaches into the water and pulls up a pig skull. That's a scene that feels like a metaphor. A mother searching for a child and pulling up proof of death, but not the death she needed to face. Just enough horror to keep her heart unsettled. It was like six weeks later, February 6th, around 11 p.m. Julie Mosley's mother gets a phone call. The caller is a girl. At first, nobody speaks, then a low moan. Then she could hear somebody say, Mama. Miss Mosley said she believed it was Julie, said she swear it was her. She asked him, is this Julie Mosley? And the caller said, Yes. Miss Mosley begs, if this is a joke, please stop. I can't take no more. She asked where she is, the girl says she doesn't know. And then the line goes dead. Mrs. Mosley says the girl didn't sound normal, sounded drugged or sick. Hey, let me tell you something. That kind of call will haunt a family for generations because it's not closure, it's not proof, and it's a doorway cracked open just enough to let your imagination torture you. A woman later reports seeing a man forcing a girl into a pickup at the mall that day. Two girls and another man inside the truck, but nothing comes from it. The families hire private investigators. One is John Swain. Anonymous calls come in, claims that the bodies are under a bridge somewhere. Over a hundred people went on a search but found nothing. Bones left near San Antonio, unrelated. Undergarments near Justin, unrelated. More remains in Brazoria County, unrelated. And in 1978, four years later, a Fort Worth police investigator admits something that hurts to even say. Meaning, after all that time, they still didn't have a clear narrative of how the girls left the mall. In 1981, a Houston man said he saw three men force three girls into a van, and when he approached, one claimed the oldest girl was his wife. He said he made a mental note of the license plate, but by the time he learned of the case, he had forgot all about it. Again, one more almost, one more maybe, and one more missing piece. So by Christmas 1982, eight years later, Renee's mother says she dreams about her often. She kept Renee's gifts under the tree that first Christmas. Years pass. Those gifts end up stored in the attic. Because when you can't put a person in the past tense, you also can't put their presence away. And then there's Rachel's brother, Rusty Arnold. He was 11 when Rachel disappeared. Over time, he becomes maybe the most relentless searcher in the whole story. He creates a website, a Facebook group, and keeps the case in the public eye when the world wants to move on. Later, he connects with a private investigator, Dan James, who offers a$25,000 reward in 1999. James claims credible witnesses saw Rachel after the disappearance. He says he received death threats. By 2000, he suggests Rachel might be the only one still alive. Inside the family, strain. Rusty begins to believe maybe the older girls ran away. His mother disagrees, says Rachel wouldn't leave her terminally ill father and was looking forward to Christmas with her stepson. So it was accusations, even the idea that somebody close to one of the girls had involvement. And that's another truth about cold cases. They don't just steal the missing, they steal peace from the living. In 2018, Rusty said he was looking into a person of interest. He believed a person lived within five miles of Binbrook and disposed of a car after the girls vanished. So he wondered, was the car dumped in Brimbrook Lake? A marine salvage team uses technology and finds three submerged cars. In September 2018, they raised the first car. It was a 1960s model and had no connection. The next month, they raised a Lincoln Continental. Turns out it was a 1976 model, two years after the disappearance. In 2019, they try to raise the third car, but it's too rusted and it falls apart during the recovery. Rusty says his heart broke. He wanted closure for his mama. Hey, and that's where the case stands. Over 48 years of searches, theories, and heartbreak. Few clues, fewer suspects, and no closure. So right here in this space, when a story like this comes up, you're gonna hear three kinds of talk. Number one, we're gonna deal with the facts. I'm talking about what people know, what was reported, and what can be verified. The second thing you're gonna hear is the theories. What might have happened, what people believe, and what people heard. The third is the pain. And I'm talking about the part nobody wanna say out loud. Something like that could have been my baby. Fort Worth in the 1970s was growing, changing, but still small enough that a story like this could live in everybody's chest. In every holiday season, when the paper ran anniversary stories, it became a shadow behind the Christmas lights. And the hardest part is this. The case doesn't just ask who did it, it asks how can people vanish in plain sight? A mall, a parking lot, midday. Hey, that's why I drive everybody crazy. And I ain't here to play detective. I'm here to honor lives and remind the city we still accountable to the truth. So this what we can do right now in 2026. Let's keep their names spoken with respect. Rachel Trilka, Renee Wilson, and Julie Mosley. Encourage responsible remembrance, no harassment, no rumor spreading, and no disrespect. Support missing persons advocacy and family support resources. If you ever have credible information on any code case, use proper channels, law enforcement tip lines, and establish missing persons organizations. And if you're a parent listening, hug your babies a little tighter today. Not out of fear, but out of love. Hey, and let me talk to the younger listeners for a second. I'm talking about Gen Z and the young millennials. Y'all grew up in a world with amber alerts, phone location sharing, doorbell cameras, and social media posts that can go viral in minutes. In 1974, families ain't have all left. No location pings, no digital trail, no instant footage. If somebody didn't come forward, the case could stall for decades. So the bridge is this. Y'all generation's tools can keep stories alive. And sometimes that pressure helps solve what once seemed unsolvable. But the responsibility is real. Use the tools for truth, not just for entertainment, for dignity, not for clout. Because these are not content stories. We're talking about human beings. Rachel Mama, she wrote a poem that sums up what the families feel. It went like this. If only you knew what it would mean to mend our hearts to say it's been a bad dream. So check it out, Funky Town Fort Worth. If you're listening and you've ever carried a piece of this story, if you're one of them people that remember the mob, remember the posters, or remember the whisper, hold that memory with respect. Hey, and to the families, I'm talking about across the years. May peace find you in whatever form it can. Hey, if this episode moved you, share it, because memory is a kind of justice. And if you want more Fort Worth stories told with truth and soul, subscribe and tap in. This is your boy Donna Barbara. Amen. Y'all be safe, stay smooth, and by all means, keep it funky.