Three young girls dubbed the Fort Worth Trio, go shopping at a local mall but never return home. Mary Rachel Trlica, Lisa Renee Wilson, and Julie Ann Moseley were last seen in the mall. The car the girls were driving, a 1972 Oldsmobile 98, was left behind in the Sears parking lot at the mall, but the girls have not been seen since.
What happened to the Fort Worth Trio?
Joining Nancy Grace today:
- Kym Caddell - Neighbor & family friend who sent a letter to Crime Stories.
- Richard Wilson - Renee's father
- Sandy Harkcom - Julie's aunt
- Cloyd Steiger - 36 years at Seattle Police Department, 22-years homicide detective, & author of "Seattle's Forgotten Serial Killer: Gary Gene Grant"
- Sheryl McCollum - Forensic Expert & Cold Case Investigative Research Institute Founder
- Dave Mack - CrimeOnline Investigative reporter
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
A missing trio of young girls age nine, fourteen, and seventeen.
What do we know about their disappearance? How could three
girls be overcome and kidnapped at once? But we say
the names. It's not just them. There are moms, dad's,
(00:29):
sisters and brothers with broken hearts waiting for answers. Julie
Anne Mosley, Renee Wilson, Rachel Trelissa. One of these girls,
as young as nine years old, is gone. Crime Stories
(00:53):
with Nancy Grace. The girls seventeen year old Rachel Calisa,
the former Mary Rachel Arnold, fourteen year old Renee Wilson,
and nine year old Julie Anne Moseley Banny's December twenty third,
After telling their families they were going shopping, Their abandoned
(01:14):
car was found that afternoon in a parking area of
Seminary South shopping Center. The next day, the only major
lead in the case developed when a handwritten note was
received stating the three had gone to Houston. Police weren't
sure if the note had been written freely. It has
since been sent to the FBI lab in Washington for analysis. Tuesday,
a Justin Mann found some undergarments near a stream west
(01:34):
of justin near Texas Highway one fifty seven. They were
not there Christmas Day, but Renee Wilson's parents examined the
clothing and determined it did not belong to the missing girls.
Some of our friends called us this morning. They asked
me if we'd heard about down the Knees, and I
told him no, something. We called in here and they
taught us we could come look at them. What happened
When you looked at the clothing. They're not Renee, they're
(01:56):
not Juliets. I know, renee and heavy thing like that,
and they're bigger and renee and heavy thing that color
green like the panties for I know it sounds crazy
to a lot of people, but if you showed me underwear,
I would know whether it belonged to my twins twelve
years old, John, David and Lucy. Because I buy their underwear.
(02:19):
I know exactly what they have. I know when they
outgrow their underwear. I know it sizes, what colors, the works.
So when a mom says, no, those don't belong to
my daughter, the mom knows you were just hearing our
friends at WFAATV. That was Mike Miller reporting on the
(02:40):
so called fort Worth Trio. I mean and see Grace,
this is crime Stories. Thank you for being with us,
Joining me an all star panel, crime online dot com
investigative reporter Dave mac the founder of the Cold Case
Research Institute. Forensic expert Cheryl McCullum, Cloyd Stiger thirty six years,
(03:03):
Seattle PD, twenty two years, homicide author Seattle's Forgotten serial
killer Gary Jane Grant. You can find him at Cloyd
Steiger dot com. Special guests joining me, Kim Cadell. If
it hadn't been for Kim, I wouldn't even know about
this case. She reached me on Facebook. Sandy Harcom, Julie's aunt,
(03:27):
and Richard Wilson, Renee's dad. First to Cheryl McCallum, Joining me, Cheryl,
I want to get an understanding, a forensic unberstanding of
the disappearance of these three girls. Very very rare for
three girls to go missing like this. It's extremely rare, Nancy.
(03:50):
And what is shocking to me is they didn't plan
this like days in advance. This was something that happened
pretty quickly, and the nine year old literally called her
mom began, can I please go? Can I please go?
To hang out with these teenage girls. So again it
wasn't something that people knew about for a few days.
We know they made it to them all. We know
(04:13):
they shopped for Christmas presents because those were found in
the car, which incidentally was locked when they found it.
But there's no video of them. There's no you know,
fingerprints off the car that anybody has told us about.
So at this point all we have is a car.
And then the next day a letter shows up at
(04:35):
Rachel's home addressed to her husband, to Sandy Harcom, this
is nine year old Julian Mosley's aunt, Sandy, again, thank
you for being with us. What happened that day? You've
got two girls about two and a half years apart,
Renee Wilson, Rachel Trelisa one fourteen one seventeen, and then
you've got your niece, Julie Anne Mosley. First, how did
(05:00):
Leanne get hooked up with them on a trip to
them all? And did the girls all know each other?
Rachel and Renee knew each other, and Julie moved across
the street from Renee's grandmother, and Renee was there quite
a bit. In fact, I thought Renee lived there until
the girls disappeared because she was, you know, there quite often. Also,
(05:24):
Julie's older brother and Renee were going together and he
had given her a promise. Ring that morning, Rachel came
by asked Renee if she wanted to go, and Julie
was there and she wanted to go, and she called
my sister and just begged and begged and bagged. My
(05:44):
sister wasn't work and she finally said, okay, just be
home by six. There were other kids there, Julie's older sister, Janne,
it was asked to go. There was an older girl
even down the street that was asked to and the
older girl had Choe and she said, well, I'll just
meet you there later. So it wasn't just you know,
(06:07):
those three, but there are a lot of kids that
were invited by day. So you know, this was at
a time where it was absolutely fine to go to
the mall and walk around. Cheryl McCallum, I remember one
of my first jobs was working at Sears at the mall,
and I would be inside working and I would see
(06:30):
groups of teams just wandering around, not getting in trouble,
just going in and out of stores, going to the
candy store, going to the food court. It was a
very innocent way to pass time and hang out right,
no question about it. And Nancy, I wanted to tell
you something else. I've got a sixteen year old and
(06:51):
I've got a nine year old meet, and my nine
year old meet. All she wants to do is be
around Caroline McCollum. She wants the dress like her Caliker.
They were a hair like her. So I can totally
see even where these teenagers would have fun and letting
her tag along. So this trip to the mall, looking
at records, looking at clothes, going and getting some Christmas presents,
(07:15):
this was going to be a fabulous afternoon. To Dave Matt,
Crime online dot Com investigative reporter, exactly where is this,
what's the name of the mall and where is it located? Okay,
this is actually in Fort Worth, you know, in that
Fort Dallas Fort Worth area. The mall at the time
(07:35):
was a very popular shopping mall. You know, back back
in the day we had big, big shopping malls and
this was one of those. It had. One of the
anchor stores was the Fears which is where they parked by.
The mall's name was Seminary South they'd actually gone to
an Army Navy store on the way to the mall
(07:56):
in Fort Worth. Then they arrived at the mall where
again so they parked at the Sears parking area in
two seminary South Mall. Listen, there's some has happened to him.
I know it because it's just not like them. They
wouldn't have thrown off. Nobody heard nothing from them. Well
(08:17):
nine days ago I thought maybe they had just went somewhere,
But now I don't believe they have. I believe they've
been picked up by somebody and being held and that
have been heard or something. You haven't given up, hope, No,
huh no, hope, you just when I'm coming back home. Meanwhile,
police continue checking every possible lead. A reward fund has
(08:37):
been established with a Forest Hill State Bank in an
effort to prompt even more information. Floyd Stiger with me
thirty six years Seattle PD, including homicide and author Cloyd
the mall. You know, Cloyd, I've just been working on
this book so hard. Don't be a victim. It comes
out in June, and there is a whole chapter, one
(08:57):
of the longest chapters and the one I had to
research almost the most was about out and about shopping
at malls because it's well, it looks so friendly, it
is really full of pitfalls. A lot of people have
been abducted from malls, a lot of people have been
victimized at malls. Now we know that they parked outside
(09:21):
a Sears, which is one of the probably four big
anchor stores in the mall. There's usually one in every corner,
like a Macy's or at that time Belks or Sears.
Long story short, that's where they parked, Cloyd. When I
think about it, they were sitting ducks. Three young girls
(09:44):
walking into the mall alone and then coming back out alone. Yeah.
Well that's the same thing that attracts teenagers to malls.
Is the same thing is what it attracts predators to
malls because it's what we call a target ridge environment.
And whoever this is is somebody that I don't they
went there targeting these three girls. They were just I
think it's probably a looking for an opportunity and they
(10:06):
found one. So that, yeah, that is the danger of
malls and just hanging out of them. What we know
is that Rachel's younger brother, or Rusty, said the girls
were expected home around four pm, because there was going
to be a party. But four pm came and went.
The girls never showed up. Remember we're just talking about
a nine year old, a fourteen year old, a seventeen
(10:28):
year old girl. When they didn't arrive, everyone started to
get worried. Then the son began to set the parents
started getting home from work, and the girls still were
not there. Richard Wilson with me. Renee's father gathered together himself,
members of the neighborhood and they drove that ten minute
(10:49):
trip to the mall to search for the girls. Richard Wilson,
tell me about what happened when you got home from
work that afternoon. Well, when I got home from work,
I was already home, and she said Renee them hadn't
made it home, and she wanted to go down to
the mill and look. Me and Beauty went down to
the mall and drove. She went through the stores and
(11:12):
I drove all over that parking lot and we found nothing,
and she called the police. They wouldn't come out after
you know, eleven o'clock when the moell closed. Why that's
the only thea that they can tell you. Oh my stars,
(11:32):
because the girls, I mean, I know they made it
to them all. I don't know yet whether they made
it inside them all For all, I know they've been
missing since they first got there, if they were abducted
in the parking lot before they ever went in. But
do we know one way or the other, Richard, if
they made it in the mall where they spotted in
the mall. Yeah, they were supposedly spotted in a Murphy's
(11:57):
store and shoe store, and it's supposedly somebody so we
here was following them, a tall, skinny guy but a
jacket on it, head California on it. So we know
that really helps with the timeline, Cheryl, because we know
they got in them all and they probably wandered around.
(12:20):
And I mean that in a good way. You know,
when you don't have any real agenda, you just go in.
I can't even remember the last time I did not
have a schedule or an agenda, But teens do that.
They go in and one of them is nine and
all they have to do is get home in time
to go to a little party, so they're just kind
of wandering around. I can just see him going to
the food court too, does Shu store, looking at all
(12:44):
the windows, going by Spencers. Do you remember that poster? Police?
I think it actually still exists, but I could see that, Nancy.
I know mister Wilson, Renee's dad was talking about what
was going on that day. Well. The Trace Evidence podcast,
The Apparances of the fort Worth Three Steve Pacheco specifically
talks about whether or not the girls were seeing in
(13:05):
the mall. Take a listen to this. Several witnesses reported
seeing the girls at the mall. When a girl failed
to return home by four pm, their families became concerned
and by six pm Rachel's younger brother, Rusty was on
the scene with his mother. They found the car locked
up with Christmas presents inside. They went to every store
in the mall, having the girls paged, but there was
(13:27):
no response. Police were called and when they arrived they
did a sweep of the mall. Several witnesses gave conflicting
accounts of seeing the girls in the parking lot in
the company of a man. Now we know they made
it in safely, so whatever happened originated either in the
mall or on their way out of them all. That
makes a big difference in the timeline, Cheryl. It makes
(13:48):
a huge difference fancy. But there was a young man
that came forward in nineteen seventy file that said he
ran into them at a wrect the store and did
see a man that he thought was following them a
lean around them. But we also know there were Christmas
presents in her vehicle that was locked, so we can
put them there, no question about it. Back to Richard Wilson,
(14:10):
this is Renee's dad. Renee just fourteen years old when
she goes missing. So you get to them all. You
can't find anything in the parking lot, but you see
the vehicle. Correct. No, Renee's kind of an uncle came
down there with us and he went out and found
that car because he was there at Renee's grandmother's that day,
(14:32):
and I think he spoke to him and he found
that car. And I'm understanding that Christmas gifts, this happens
at Christmas time. We're in the car and the car
was locked. Richard, Yes, it was locked. The Christmas gift
that was in there was supposedly so everybody says was
a gift that Renee had got for Sean, which is
(14:56):
Tommy's a little boy. I'm curious did they back it
up with a receipt that would have been timed, so
they knew at what time the girls he bought it
from home from home? Oh see, that changes things, Cheryl?
Did you get that that changed everything? I see, I
didn't know that. I knew there was a gift in
(15:16):
the car, But the fact that she didn't buy it
in the mall that hurts the case that it hurts
the timeline I'm building in my head, because if you
buy something in the mall, it'll have the time of
the date on the receipt. They can look that up.
But if she brought that from home to give away,
that doesn't help me with my timeline. But we do
know the car was locked. Okay, what does that tell me?
(15:37):
It tells me most likely they were not abducted from
the car, because if they were taken on the way
to the car and they had unlocked at the kidnapper
who have not had neatly you know, locked the car
back back to Richard Wilson. So you get there that night,
you can't find hiding her hair of them. What happens next, Richard? Well,
(15:58):
I drove down to a guy that wanted to date Renee,
and I told him Nope, never happened, and I guess
he decided it was easier to leave her alone than
to mess with me. And I think he was in
the next day, the detective come out to the house
that he had a phone call that those girls were
(16:18):
sold in a well. And do you remember that night, Richard,
you come back from them all and tell your wife
or him you and your wife are talking about no clues.
What was that first night like when you could not
find your daughter? Okay, about one o'clock I carried my
wife home, picked up the Arnold's next door neighbor, which
(16:41):
was a friend of mine, closer than my own brother.
He went down here with me and we sat down
there in front of Sears garage and watch that car
all night. No security guards went by. Nobody came back
to that car. Joining me right now. Kim Cadell, a neighbor,
(17:04):
a family friend who feels so strongly about this case.
She contacted crime Online dot Com and me on Facebook. Kim,
tell me what you know about the case. I want
as much information out there as possible for those of
you listening. We're talking about the so called fort Worth trio.
Is just three little girls. Julianne Moseley aged nine, Renee
(17:28):
Wilson fourteen, Rachel Trelisa just seventeen, Tipline eight one seven
four six nine eight four seven seven repeat eight one
seven four six nine eight four seven seven Kim Cadell
jump in. You know, that's the sad thing about the cases.
(17:48):
There's just no real facts out there to know. For me,
the biggest clue has always been that the letter. You
don't seeing the girls have gone to Houston. Other than
that letter, it seems like they just vanished and they
just haven't been a whole lot of clues left behind.
(18:20):
Time stories with Nancy Grace, my sister, and two of
your friends went on a shopping trip to what was
then Seminary South Back on December twenty third, byteen seventy four,
and all three of the girls just vanished and we
never saw me. This has been a case that has
weighed on these three families all of these years. Listen,
(18:42):
I've spent my entire adult life looking for my sister,
and I will never stop. Today we're gonna know we're
getting the third car out, and we're gonna know we
could be within three inches of the car and miss
it completely. It's supposed to be a quick, easy procedure.
(19:03):
But there's nothing quick and easy when you're doing a dive.
Let imagine laying in a coffin and closing the door.
The first six inches you see a green blur, but
past that it's pitch black. All you can hear is
your bubbles. Nobody understands just how dangerous this dive is.
(19:23):
It's a black water dive. You can't see your hand
in front of your face. You were just hearing from
our friends at the fort Worth Star Telegram. Divers renewing
the search for the three girls, dive into the black
water of a deep lake, searching for any evidence that
(19:45):
could relate back to the so called fort Worth Trio.
This one man search the brother of a missing girl
for his missing sister, takes him all the way to
the bottom of a lake. And let me tell you,
before I had the twins, Sandy Harcom, this is Julie's aunt.
(20:06):
I dived all over the world. Every time I got
a day off of work, I would go somewhere and
dive all the way down, over one hundred feet below
sea level. And one thing I always hated was a
lake dive or a night dive, because you can't see
(20:27):
and it's very, very difficult to do. What we know
is that the hope is that somehow, some way we're
going to find evidence linking back to these three little girls.
Sandy Harcomb, Julie's aunt at the time Julie goes missing.
(20:49):
What were your first thoughts. I really couldn't tell you.
I didn't know until the next day, about ten o'clock
in the morning that they were gone. My mom called
me and told me, and I said, well, you know,
what do you mean they're gone? And she said, they
never came back from shopping. And it's just so wrap
your head around that, you know. I couldn't. I couldn't imagine.
(21:13):
And she said, just whatever you do, though, don't call
the house because you know, runing was to keep the
line open in case they do the hawk and something
to think about too. That day it was a very
warm December day. They didn't have coats, you know. And
that mall also, it's not the mall that you think
(21:33):
about all today. That mall didn't have a closure on it.
The stores were all linked together, but in the center
it was open. There wasn't a top on it or anything.
But as far as as I just couldn't imagine what
had happened, you know. It just things like that. This
(21:55):
didn't happen to our families. We were talking about three
little girls that go missing on a trip to the mall,
back to Richard Wilson, Renee's father. So I'm imagining you
over there by the Sears garage where they do the
tires and all that, and you're keeping your eyes trained
on the vehicle that the girls were in when they
(22:16):
came to them. All what happened after that? I want
to hear about the letter that was received. The letter
that was received. I understand that Debbie carried it over
to her mother's house and they called the police. The
police came out, well where's the envelope. They had to
(22:39):
go back to the house and find an envelope. And
the envelope was supposedly mail from Truck Martin and received
the same day, and they supposedly got it about ten
o'clock in the morning. I think that there was hands
(23:01):
stamped at the little post office in Seminary itself, and
it was held onto because they don't the elope don't
fit the letter. It's not voted ride you try to
put it in there. The paper's not the right size
(23:23):
to go in the Let's call in forensic expert and
the founder of the Cold Case Investigative Research Institute, Cheryl McCollum. Cheryl,
let's talk for a moment about the letter and the
significance of the letter. Apparently there was no city name
on the postmark, only a blurred postal service number. And
(23:45):
it also appears that the three written on their seven
six eight three was backward or was it an unfinished eight.
But whatever the content of the letters, it's significant. What
do we know, Cheryl McCollum, Well, he's right. When you
look at how the letter itself is folded, it would
(24:05):
not have fit in that envelope. That's one thing. The
other thing, the envelope itself, to me is a money treat.
You can take the stamp off of that and try
to get DNA off the back of it. You can
try to get DNA off where somebody would have in
the seventies had to have licked it to feel it.
You could also get a partial palm print where they
(24:27):
put their hand down and was writing on the taper itself,
also fingerprints where they held it and attempted to mail
it or run it through the stamp machine. I think
that's where they need to go. The letter itself is
also curious. The person starts by saying, I know I'm
gonna catch it, but we had to get away. They
(24:48):
start with I and then immediately go to weed. But
it's like the other two people aren't going to be
in trouble for running away. And what's so crazy is
they're going to run away, but you're not going to
take your car, you're not going to have the money,
you don't have anywhere to sleep or get food or
anything like that. It makes no sense. The other thing
that doesn't make any sense is the way the envelope
(25:08):
is address. It's addressed very formal, so it would appear like,
I know, you know Rachel recently was married, but it
looked like whoever addresses to her husband did so formally
and used Thomas a Hern address as simply Rachel. When
the three girls did not return for earth, police was
called in. It was handed over to the Youth Division
(25:31):
of the Missing Person's Bureau. Sadly, the girls were presumed
to be runaways, which totally stalled the investigation. The next day.
The very next day, a letter was received in the
mailbox at the at Rachel's home that appeared to be
(25:52):
written by Rachel. See that that's the big part of this.
That is extremely significant time stories with Nancy Grace. The
(26:20):
next day, Thomas Trelisa received a strange letter in the
mail alleged to have been written by Rachel, explaining that
they had gone to Houston and would return in a week.
The letter sparked controversy, with no one believing Rachel had
actually written it, and even accusations that had in fact
been written by Rachel's sister Deborah. As the years passed,
(26:43):
Thomas would move away and sever all ties to the family,
Deborah would become a person of interest, at least in
the minds of the family and especially in the mind
of her brother Rusty. Dave, Matt, what's it all about, Nancy.
There's a very interesting relationship dynamic. Okay. We were listening
to the Tracy Evidence podcast, The Disappearance of the fort
were three, hosted by Steve Pacheco. Tommy was married to Rachel,
(27:07):
but prior to marrying Rachel, Tommy was romantically involved with
Rachel's sister Deborah. They were involved enough that at one
point in time Tommy and Deborah were engaged, they broke up.
Tommy then Mary's Deborah's sister Rachel. At the time of
the disappearance, Deborah had moved in with and was living
(27:27):
with Tommy and Rachel. And it was the morning after
the disappearance that the mysterious letter shows up and Deborah
and Tommy find that letter. A letter was received in
the mailbox at Rachel's home that appeared to be written
by Rachel. See that that's the big part of this
(27:49):
that is extremely significant. Whether it was or it wasn't.
It appeared to be written by Rachel, but yet the
addressing on the front, as Cheryl pointed out, was to
It was very formal, like if someone wrote me that
knows me, and they put to the Honorable Nancy A
(28:10):
Grace Esquire who knows me, that would write that. That's
what you formally put on the end of a letter
to a lawyer. So it seems as if this was
not written by Rachel, but it was purportedly written by Rachel.
The letter was written in ink, but the addressed envelope
(28:30):
was written in pencil. The letter was written on a
sheet of paper that was wider than the envelope. That's
what everybody's trying to say about how it wouldn't have
fit into the envelope, but if you folded it over
you can make it fit in there. It was addressed
formally as I said, also what we know Rachel. The
(28:55):
word Rachel was written in the upper left hand corner
of the envelope. It appeared to be initially misspelled, as
the L in her name was written like a lowercase E,
but it had been gone over again to form a
correct L. The postmark did not contain a city, only
(29:15):
a blurred ZIP code that appeared to be seven six
eight three, but the three looks backward like it was
applied by a hand loaded stamp. That is what Richard
Wilson was trying to explain. We assume that zip code
was meant to be either seven six o three eight,
(29:37):
which comes from Eliasaville near throck Morton, Texas, or seven
six eight eight, which comes from Weatherford, Texas. Back at
the time of the letter, handwriting experts across the nation
looked at the letter, including the FBI, but every time
(29:58):
the results seemed to come back in conclusive. Now back
to Richard Wilson, Renee's father. What did the letter say, well,
I'd like to say one more thing about that postmark. Okay,
I can come up with five more letters with exactly
(30:18):
the same postmark. Who are they? They're in a friend
of mine house. It was like, I think, invitations about
one of her kids and other things. Hmm. I have
a copy of all of those letters. I'm trying to
(30:40):
figure out what exactly the contents of the letter said. Okay,
the letter just says going to Houston, be back in
about a week. I know I'm going to catch it.
And then it just says, Rachel, it's not much there. Well,
(31:00):
that doesn't even make sense. 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. The person who
put that car in that lot had to know that.
The letter who wrote exactly that had to be the
(31:21):
person that was there, because they knew where the car
was parked. Cheryl McCollum, Director of Cold Case Research Institute
for instic Expert. We're learning a lot. We know Rachel
did not write the letter number one. We know that
it may not have truly been addressed. I'm not convinced
it even went through the mail. Was it marked Cheryl
(31:46):
as if it had actually gone through the mail? Or
could it have been hand delivered? Okay? Straight up, if
you are at a business that has one of the
machines where you can just handload a bunch of letters,
Let's say you take fifty of them and you just
run these through and take them home and put your
(32:06):
Christmas card in it and then mail it. That could
have happened. And what I want to be real clear
about did it actually go through the mail? That's my question.
You don't know that somebody could have taken envelope home,
is what I'm saying. And if they appeared, did they
have gone through the mail? That's what I'm saying. We
don't know, Richard. Did the envelope look like it went
(32:28):
through the mail or could it have been stamped and
hand delivered? Yeah, it looked like it went through the
mail because four or five letters got it. Got it? Okay?
That's that is significant because that letter came within like
seventy two hours of the girls missing or less. That
(32:49):
means the letter was sent almost immediately after the girls
go missing. Cheryl. So this person, Nancy, you got to
hear me out. Okay, go I'm today. In today's time,
it's going to take three days for that letter to
get there. In the seventies, it could have taken a week.
There is no way if you kidnap somebody at four
o'clock and mail a letter that their family is going
(33:12):
to get it the next morning in the mail, especially
a December twenty third with all these added Christmas cards
in that sort of thing. I called bogus on that
hand stamp. That's what I'm saying, guys. But this is
it's significant whether this went through the mail or whether
somebody made it appear it went through the mail and
(33:35):
delivered what I'm saying they made it. Now we also
know the ten cent stamp had been canceled that morning
December twenty four. What does that mean It was canceled,
That mean it was stamped by a mail but it
could have been a handstamp. The significance of that, let
me circle back to you, Richard, is that if it
was hand delivered, that means this is somebody that knows
(33:58):
you guys, that go back to the home to leave
that letter and I pick it up on something. Cheryl said,
this went out immediately did it? Could it really have
gone through the mail and arrived say they go missing?
How many days passed before the letter came in Richard?
(34:19):
The next day? No? No, no, do you see the
problem with that, Cloyd Steiger. I'm focusing on the letter
because it don't have anything else to focus on. And plus,
this is written by the perpetrator. These girls didn't write
this letter. Yeah, there's no question about that. And you're
exactly right, Cheryl is exactly right. You're not going to
(34:41):
get it the next day, especially right before Christmas in
a town like that. It doesn't because it doesn't do
that today. So somethingly didn't do it in nineteen seventy four.
Let's follow what our theory is to the logical conclusion.
The logical conclusion is at somehow the perpetrator could get
(35:03):
away from the girls, because you know, they were not
in the car when that letter was delivered, all the
way back to their home. He had them somewhere, or
they were already killed, but he circles back to the home.
This is not random. Why if you randomly kidnap somebody
(35:24):
and let's just say, you rape them and you kill them,
or you just kill them or you rob them and
you kidnap them. You want to get away, get rid
of the evidence as fast as you can. You're not
going back to the house to leave some bogus letter.
This is not random. Do you hear me, Cheryl? I
hear you see and I agree with you. This person
(35:45):
not only to the time to know where the victim's
cart is at. That means they watched them part. They
knew where the car was, they knew her address, they
knew her husband's formal name. And you with me is
Julie's aunt, Sandy Harkum. Sandy, what do you make of it?
I think the letter was supposed to throw everybody off,
(36:08):
and it makes no sense, like you said, because a
complete stranger that's going to have dot three girls, it's
not going to take the time to set and write
a letter and send it to the family. I mean,
they're gonna get them and go. So that letter was
kind of a smoking one out a smoking gun, but
a smoke screen, And it worked for a while because
that's what the detective used every time you ask them
(36:31):
what's going on with the case while they ran away.
Here's the letter. Time Stories with Nancy Grace. The next
(36:52):
day The only major lead in the case developed when
a handwritten note was received stating the three had gone
to Houston. Police weren't sure if the note had been
written free lead. It has since been sent to the
FBI lab in Washington for analysis. You were just hearing
our friends at WFAATV. You know, another really important part
about this letter is that when Tommy he came to
(37:16):
his place. When Tommy picked up the letter out of
the mailbox, nothing else was in the mailbox. No Christmas cards,
no bills, no flyers, nothing, which if they had been
thinking straight, they would have printed. They would have dusted
that mailbox for prints and the letter and the DNA.
(37:41):
Do we know, I'm just, you know, throwing this out there.
Do we know? Richard Wilson. Richard is Renee Wilson's dad.
His girl was fourteen years old. When he gets home
from work and finds out Renee never came home from them,
all his life been torn apart since this happened. You know,
(38:04):
when I cover a case like this, I just have
to go get in my car and go straight over
to the school. And sometimes I've even looked in the
window at the children. They go, there's mom again. Parking lot.
I can't help it when I think of what Richard
Wilson and the other parents of these girls have been through.
(38:26):
Fourteen years old, nine years old, seventeen years old. Richard,
it really strikes me that there was nothing else in
that mailbox. That's because the mail hadn't even come yet.
And the mail don't run that early over here. Because
I live approximately four blocks from Tommy's house, I get
(38:51):
my mail anywhere from five to seven o'clock at night.
Me too, I see them out five, six, seven o'clock
at night delivering them out. You know, I'm not knocking them,
but I can tell you this. I also do not
get mail at ten o'clock in the morning. Okay, Cheryl,
we can go on and on and on about this,
but what does it mean. It means did you ever
(39:15):
put the letter in the mailbox? It's in fact, it
was ever in the mailbox, and it wasn't placed there
by somebody that was in that home. Because here, you
got to look at Tommy. If this was a real investigation,
you have to look at him first. Well, I've already
looked at him, but you know what, that's a very
good point. Let's look at Tommy. Go ahead, where was
(39:36):
he that day? Cheryl? You got you gotta look at Tommy.
You know why you of all three families, three different addresses,
three different girls, why did the letter come to you?
That's significant. Then you look at why the letter does
not fit the envelope. It doesn't appear that it was
folded and put into that exact envelope when it was
(39:57):
taken over to the other house. The envelope wasn't even
brought with it. Why not? You would take everything. So
I'm telling you the money tree here is on the
back of that stamp and on the inside of the seal.
Somebody had to look back to see it if it
was ever sealed to Richard Wilson, Renee's dad. Do we know, Richard,
if a DNA analysis has been done on the stamp
(40:20):
or the seal? Oh yeah, but they say the DNA
did not match nobody that they found up was yet that.
I don't know. Now Sandy or Kim one may know that. Yeah,
let's find out. Kim Cadell. What do you know? We
just had a meeting with the chief of police and
(40:41):
in the abjective and they say that there's just not
enough DNA on the back of the stamp to do
anything else with it. Is that correct, Sandy? Well, they
did said, as Richard said, they have ruled out everyone
in Deborah and they've they've run the DNA. What they're
(41:07):
saying now is because I would like for this to
go to the Paragon Lab in Virginia where they can
actually do a composite of the persons you know from
the DNA, they said, there's just not enough left on
there anymore to do that. But they have, they have
tested the DNA and supposedly ruled out a number of people.
(41:27):
I find the interesting, Cloyd Steiger that she's saying, Sandy
Harcom is saying, and I have no reason to believe
she is not correct, because she's just come out of
this meeting with authorities that the DNA doesn't match any
of the family or the people they they secure DNA from.
But back to Cheryl's question, it needs to go into
(41:49):
kotas the national DNA data bank, and it needs to
be put in ancestry. What is it ancestry dot com
twenty three and me there is the data bank used
by the Golden State Killer Detectives, which was a public
(42:09):
data bank. What about that? Chloyd. What do we what
do we have to do to make that happen? Well,
it does have to be a complete profile. But my
question would be how long ago did they do the DNA,
because I mean, it advanced so much in the last
couple of years that smaller amounts you can get more
with and so that would be my first question. And
if they have a partial they could. They can't eliminate
(42:30):
people by direct comparison, but you have to have the
full profile. But I wonder how long ago they did this?
They mean he did try to do it again? Guys.
I have investigated and prosecuted literally thousands of felony cases.
I have covered literally thousands of cases of missing people,
(42:53):
adults and children, unsolved homicides, violent crimes. After all the cases,
after speaking to all the victims, all the police, all
the witnesses over years, my question is what can we
do about it. I don't want to just sit back
(43:14):
and report on it. I want to take action. And
I know you must feel the same way. You don't
want to just hear about crime. You want to do
something about it and do something to stop it. And
here is the news. We have all worked so hard
to bring to you Don't Be a Victim, Fighting back
against America's crime Wave, a brand new book. After interviewing
(43:39):
literally hundreds of crime victims and police, we put our
knowledge into Don't Be a Victim. You could pre order
now go to Crime online dot com. Time Stories with
(44:08):
Nancy Grace. The next day, the only major lead in
the case developed when a handwritten note was received stating
the three had gone to Houston. Police weren't sure if
the note had been written freely. It has since been
sent to the FBI lab in Washington for analysis. It's
just hard for me to believe the only thing we
have to go on is that letter back to Richard
(44:30):
will Serene's father, and you believe you know who wrote
the letter, Hugh, tell me, well, the handwriting on that letter.
We have all kinds of symptoms did match out of
the writing. We've got divorced papers, marriage license d the houses,
(44:57):
letters to a judge eskin for some of the inheritance
you know, comes back to the same one. Do y'all
have just the second? I mean, I would like to
say this one thing real quick. So when I sent
(45:20):
that information, all the handwriting samples that mister Wilson is
talking about which was known to be written by Tommy,
like they were legal documents, and a girl came forward
and gave us like a two page letter. And when
that came back from Wendy Carlson that Thomas Telisa authored
(45:41):
those documents, the cold case detective told mister Wilson, I've
got good news and bad news. The good news is
it came back from DPS because they had had their
They told mister Wilson that Tommy wrote the envelope, that
DPS did not agree that he wrote the letter. And
(46:03):
then the detective wanted me to call her and give
her a POTE number. I called her. We had a
forty five minute discussion, same thing. Tommy wrote the envelope.
It was confirmed by DPS. And then when Sandra and
I had our meeting, they clearly said, Nope, that's not
what it said. Y'amas understood and there is no they
(46:27):
that as lad Tommy wrote better are the envelope? Have
you ever confronted him? Oh? Yes, I told Tommy one time,
I know where you're at because the police called me
and told me that they had sent called Tommy so
many times, but he won't answer them and he won't
(46:50):
call him back. And when he came to Fort Worth,
he called me and I told him, I know where
you're at, Tommy, and I'm going to be out there
an amend it. Only two I only woman was gonna
walk away, and he ran down to the police department.
(47:10):
Police department called me back and told me, I know
Tommy did it, but I can't prove it. He has
no conscience. He can pass my detector tests as fast
as I can throw him at him. And he said,
if you ever get any trouble over that boy, call
me first. As of right now, Tommy or anyone else
(47:31):
has not been named a person of interest or a
suspect in this case. Let me go back to Richard Wilson.
This is Renee's dad. Richard. Do you believe that the
mall and the mall employees were canvased thoroughly? I really
doubt it because that detective that got this case, my opinion,
(47:57):
he was useless. Why why he came to my house
I think it was the next day and told me
those girls throw in the well. He was going to
check it, and I thought, well, I'm going to follow
this bird. And when he went out of my house,
he went up the street. My pickup was parked across
(48:17):
the street. I went down the street about two blocks
and cut back to the street and got behind him,
and I followed him to a coffee shop. And I
sat across the street at a barber shop, and he
stayed in there about thirty minutes. Come out, went down
at Hemphield went down the city Hall called me a
(48:39):
little later. There was nothing to it. Well, there wasn't
nothing to it because I know there's not no well
in that coffee shop. You know, mister Wilson, your remind
me so much as my dad. I always I could
just reached through this microphone and get to you. What
can you tell me, miss Wilson about a woman who
(49:02):
told a store clerk that she saw one or more
men getting girls to go into a pickup truck. We
could okate that woman, but that's what was told to
a clerk. What other clues emerged to Dave mac investigative
reporter Crime Online Nancy. There had been a number of
(49:23):
eyewitness accounts, but they seemed to conflict with one another.
Early on in the investigation, there was a former police
officer who was working security for Sears at the time,
and he actually his name is Bill Hutchins, I believe,
and he said that he at that night, at eleven thirty,
(49:44):
the night they went missing, that he actually saw a
security truck with a security guy dressed in uniform in
the front seat and three girls in the vehicle. He
even described the youngest one sitting right next to the driver,
and another little bit older girl in the middle of that,
and then on the far side, next to the passenger door,
(50:06):
an older girl. And he told police this at the time,
said that he actually questioned, what are you doing out here?
And he said that they kind of blew him off
and then went on about their way, and he told
police the next day. They never followed up. He told
the story a couple of different times and it never
(50:29):
let anywhere, And the last time was in two thousand
and one when they reopened the case and mister Hutchinson
again said, hey, this is what I saw that night. Again,
there were other stories that came out of this from
again I'm putting air quotes around eyewitnesses, because there were
other people who claimed that they saw the girls being
physically pushed into a van on the day they went missing. Yeah,
(50:53):
and there was another eyewitnesses saw a girl says he
saw a girl being forced into a van and he
asked the guy, hey, hey, hey, what are you doing?
And the guy says it's a family matter, but out
and he has repeatedly stated that the families extremely frustrated
with the investigation. Hire a private eye, John Swain. Swain
(51:20):
discovers a twenty six year old man making a string
of obscene phone calls in the area and had worked
for a store in fort Worth where Rachel had applied
for a job just before Christmas. Turns out he was
using his position to get information from young women who
had applied for a job, and on all their applications
(51:44):
they would have their home addresses. Six women who applied
at the store had been getting those obscene phone calls.
He also once lived in the neighborhood of Rachel's parents.
In the end that suspect nothing ever came of him.
There have been hundreds of volunteers that have searched. There
(52:08):
have been skeletons that have been found in a field
that were compared to dental records and X rays. Not
the girls. Psychics have pointed to oil wells nothing. We
also know that a volunteer diver dragging cars from Benbrook Lake,
(52:33):
possibly tied to the so called fort Worth Missing Trio.
Listen on the shore at Benbrook Laked divers were ready
to breathe the murky deep, searching for concrete answers. We're
gonna bring those cars up. We're gonna put this part
of it to rest, whether there or whether they're not.
Rusty Arnold was just eleven years old when his big
(52:55):
sister Rachel disappeared. The family has had missing persons posters
printed up and a reward fund Distabilis WFA has covered
the case from the beginning. She was seventeen and days
before Christmas she drove to a fort Worth mall with
her friend Renee and nine year old Julianne Moseley. Has happened, Tune?
I know. There have been countless leads and theories, including
(53:16):
a letter purportedly from Rachel that said the trio suddenly
decided to go to Houston, but they have never been found.
This is just a hunch, it's all it is. Rusty
believes the answer may be here. There's two vehicles over there.
Three cars found in Benbrook Lake they say have been
there since the late seventies. Next month, they plan to
(53:36):
pull them out and look inside. I think we all
know what I'm hoping to find. You were just hearing
from our friends at the Fort Worth Star Telegram. It
was a very dangerous dive. The car's nearly forty feet
down and pitch black water. To Dave Matt, Crime online
(53:57):
dot Com investigative reporter, what happened with the die, Well,
they actually were able to get two of there were
three cars that were found at the bottom of the lake.
They were able to bring up and they were able
to get a piece of the other one, but it
was just two. It was falling apart as they brought
it up, and they actually entered a couple of divers
(54:19):
in that last dive and called it off after that.
But the end result was none of those cars were
tied directly back to this case. The case is now
being reopened and assigned to a homicide detective. He believes
the girls left them all with someone they trusted. He
says that they were at one point scene with one individual,
(54:41):
but believed there was more than one person involved. To
Kim Cadell, what do you make of it, I definitely
think it was somebody that they knew and trusted and
with Sandy. I do believe that that letter, you know,
to throw the investigation off and bit of time to
Sandy Harcom, Julie's aunt, Sandy, what do you believe happened? Well, again,
(55:05):
I believe that they did involves someone that the older
girl knew, and that Julie and maybe even Renee were
just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I
don't know that they were taken from the mall. It
could have been that they went somewhere in the car,
something happened, and whoever drove the car back to the
(55:26):
mall and left it there. And finally to Richard Wilson, Richard,
what do you believe happened? Really? I really don't know,
Dave mac what is the theory cops are working with Nancy.
The basic thing they're looking at is that, other than
the girls running off, is that they actually went willingly
(55:46):
with somebody they knew. Ostensibly, they believe that Rachel might
have known the individual and that they left with her then,
but a years later Nancy were left with not much
more than they knew the day after they got the letter.
It's just been sitting there for all these years. And
as mister Wilson pointed out at the very beginning, the
(56:09):
first detective placed on the case didn't seem to follow
up anything. It's coact. You know, they never fingerprinted the vehicle.
They might not. They didn't do anything with the car,
They didn't do any kind of investigation. Could I say something? Yes?
Jump in. My sister and I went a couple of
months later to the police department. I mean it was
(56:30):
one of the many times that we had gone, but
just to see how the investigation was going. And the
detectives told us, and I'm going to quote that, well,
at this time, we're really not looking because Easter's coming
and we think they're going to be found with the
Easter eggs, meaning people are out and about and they're
going to find them. Tiger, What if anything can be
(56:53):
done now, well, you know sort of said being redound
or done carefully on the envelope. This is the frustrations
because you have nobody, You have no physical evidence at
all other than that letter, and unless somebody comes across
the bodies somewhere, and they haven't in forty seven years,
so the odds are there not. I don't know what
(57:15):
else you could do, but I think the best route
would be to take that DNA and do some genealogy
on it. That may be your only hope. And to
Sheryl McCollum, you are the founder of the Cold Case
Investigative Research Institute. What can be done now, Nancy? I
think you can also go back and talk to every
single person again. The family can go back and say, hey,
(57:39):
now that we're talking, I did notice that X never
search for them, or X never seems concerned, or X
wanted to move past it and make you know everything
better and just say, hey, you know they're going to
turn up or whatever. It is odd to me that
somebody that would be a stranger that we kidnap three
(58:00):
young women would send something with potential evidence on it
telling people where to find the car. That just doesn't
ring true for any reason. And if you kidnap three
people and you're by yourself, which is hard to do,
one of them would have run. So it's difficult for
(58:20):
me to believe that you've got three people in a
car by force alone. And then within an hour you've
supposedly nailed some letter using two different writing instruments, and
you just happen to have an envelope, and you happen
to have a way to handload it. You happen to
have a stamp. I mean, none of this rings truth.
I mean it just doesn't. There's something very wrong with
(58:43):
the story. There's trying to get us to believe, and
I'm talking about the perfect
A missing trio of young girls age nine, fourteen, and seventeen.
What do we know about their disappearance? How could three
girls be overcome and kidnapped at once? But we say
the names. It's not just them. There are moms, dad's,
(00:29):
sisters and brothers with broken hearts waiting for answers. Julie
Anne Mosley, Renee Wilson, Rachel Trelissa. One of these girls,
as young as nine years old, is gone. Crime Stories
(00:53):
with Nancy Grace. The girls seventeen year old Rachel Calisa,
the former Mary Rachel Arnold, fourteen year old Renee Wilson,
and nine year old Julie Anne Moseley Banny's December twenty third,
After telling their families they were going shopping, Their abandoned
(01:14):
car was found that afternoon in a parking area of
Seminary South shopping Center. The next day, the only major
lead in the case developed when a handwritten note was
received stating the three had gone to Houston. Police weren't
sure if the note had been written freely. It has
since been sent to the FBI lab in Washington for analysis. Tuesday,
a Justin Mann found some undergarments near a stream west
(01:34):
of justin near Texas Highway one fifty seven. They were
not there Christmas Day, but Renee Wilson's parents examined the
clothing and determined it did not belong to the missing girls.
Some of our friends called us this morning. They asked
me if we'd heard about down the Knees, and I
told him no, something. We called in here and they
taught us we could come look at them. What happened
When you looked at the clothing. They're not Renee, they're
(01:56):
not Juliets. I know, renee and heavy thing like that,
and they're bigger and renee and heavy thing that color
green like the panties for I know it sounds crazy
to a lot of people, but if you showed me underwear,
I would know whether it belonged to my twins twelve
years old, John, David and Lucy. Because I buy their underwear.
(02:19):
I know exactly what they have. I know when they
outgrow their underwear. I know it sizes, what colors, the works.
So when a mom says, no, those don't belong to
my daughter, the mom knows you were just hearing our
friends at WFAATV. That was Mike Miller reporting on the
(02:40):
so called fort Worth Trio. I mean and see Grace,
this is crime Stories. Thank you for being with us,
Joining me an all star panel, crime online dot com
investigative reporter Dave mac the founder of the Cold Case
Research Institute. Forensic expert Cheryl McCullum, Cloyd Stiger thirty six years,
(03:03):
Seattle PD, twenty two years, homicide author Seattle's Forgotten serial
killer Gary Jane Grant. You can find him at Cloyd
Steiger dot com. Special guests joining me, Kim Cadell. If
it hadn't been for Kim, I wouldn't even know about
this case. She reached me on Facebook. Sandy Harcom, Julie's aunt,
(03:27):
and Richard Wilson, Renee's dad. First to Cheryl McCallum, Joining me, Cheryl,
I want to get an understanding, a forensic unberstanding of
the disappearance of these three girls. Very very rare for
three girls to go missing like this. It's extremely rare, Nancy.
(03:50):
And what is shocking to me is they didn't plan
this like days in advance. This was something that happened
pretty quickly, and the nine year old literally called her
mom began, can I please go? Can I please go?
To hang out with these teenage girls. So again it
wasn't something that people knew about for a few days.
We know they made it to them all. We know
(04:13):
they shopped for Christmas presents because those were found in
the car, which incidentally was locked when they found it.
But there's no video of them. There's no you know,
fingerprints off the car that anybody has told us about.
So at this point all we have is a car.
And then the next day a letter shows up at
(04:35):
Rachel's home addressed to her husband, to Sandy Harcom, this
is nine year old Julian Mosley's aunt, Sandy, again, thank
you for being with us. What happened that day? You've
got two girls about two and a half years apart,
Renee Wilson, Rachel Trelisa one fourteen one seventeen, and then
you've got your niece, Julie Anne Mosley. First, how did
(05:00):
Leanne get hooked up with them on a trip to
them all? And did the girls all know each other?
Rachel and Renee knew each other, and Julie moved across
the street from Renee's grandmother, and Renee was there quite
a bit. In fact, I thought Renee lived there until
the girls disappeared because she was, you know, there quite often. Also,
(05:24):
Julie's older brother and Renee were going together and he
had given her a promise. Ring that morning, Rachel came
by asked Renee if she wanted to go, and Julie
was there and she wanted to go, and she called
my sister and just begged and begged and bagged. My
(05:44):
sister wasn't work and she finally said, okay, just be
home by six. There were other kids there, Julie's older sister, Janne,
it was asked to go. There was an older girl
even down the street that was asked to and the
older girl had Choe and she said, well, I'll just
meet you there later. So it wasn't just you know,
(06:07):
those three, but there are a lot of kids that
were invited by day. So you know, this was at
a time where it was absolutely fine to go to
the mall and walk around. Cheryl McCallum, I remember one
of my first jobs was working at Sears at the mall,
and I would be inside working and I would see
(06:30):
groups of teams just wandering around, not getting in trouble,
just going in and out of stores, going to the
candy store, going to the food court. It was a
very innocent way to pass time and hang out right,
no question about it. And Nancy, I wanted to tell
you something else. I've got a sixteen year old and
(06:51):
I've got a nine year old meet, and my nine
year old meet. All she wants to do is be
around Caroline McCollum. She wants the dress like her Caliker.
They were a hair like her. So I can totally
see even where these teenagers would have fun and letting
her tag along. So this trip to the mall, looking
at records, looking at clothes, going and getting some Christmas presents,
(07:15):
this was going to be a fabulous afternoon. To Dave Matt,
Crime online dot Com investigative reporter, exactly where is this,
what's the name of the mall and where is it located? Okay,
this is actually in Fort Worth, you know, in that
Fort Dallas Fort Worth area. The mall at the time
(07:35):
was a very popular shopping mall. You know, back back
in the day we had big, big shopping malls and
this was one of those. It had. One of the
anchor stores was the Fears which is where they parked by.
The mall's name was Seminary South they'd actually gone to
an Army Navy store on the way to the mall
(07:56):
in Fort Worth. Then they arrived at the mall where
again so they parked at the Sears parking area in
two seminary South Mall. Listen, there's some has happened to him.
I know it because it's just not like them. They
wouldn't have thrown off. Nobody heard nothing from them. Well
(08:17):
nine days ago I thought maybe they had just went somewhere,
But now I don't believe they have. I believe they've
been picked up by somebody and being held and that
have been heard or something. You haven't given up, hope, No,
huh no, hope, you just when I'm coming back home. Meanwhile,
police continue checking every possible lead. A reward fund has
(08:37):
been established with a Forest Hill State Bank in an
effort to prompt even more information. Floyd Stiger with me
thirty six years Seattle PD, including homicide and author Cloyd
the mall. You know, Cloyd, I've just been working on
this book so hard. Don't be a victim. It comes
out in June, and there is a whole chapter, one
(08:57):
of the longest chapters and the one I had to
research almost the most was about out and about shopping
at malls because it's well, it looks so friendly, it
is really full of pitfalls. A lot of people have
been abducted from malls, a lot of people have been
victimized at malls. Now we know that they parked outside
(09:21):
a Sears, which is one of the probably four big
anchor stores in the mall. There's usually one in every corner,
like a Macy's or at that time Belks or Sears.
Long story short, that's where they parked, Cloyd. When I
think about it, they were sitting ducks. Three young girls
(09:44):
walking into the mall alone and then coming back out alone. Yeah.
Well that's the same thing that attracts teenagers to malls.
Is the same thing is what it attracts predators to
malls because it's what we call a target ridge environment.
And whoever this is is somebody that I don't they
went there targeting these three girls. They were just I
think it's probably a looking for an opportunity and they
(10:06):
found one. So that, yeah, that is the danger of
malls and just hanging out of them. What we know
is that Rachel's younger brother, or Rusty, said the girls
were expected home around four pm, because there was going
to be a party. But four pm came and went.
The girls never showed up. Remember we're just talking about
a nine year old, a fourteen year old, a seventeen
(10:28):
year old girl. When they didn't arrive, everyone started to
get worried. Then the son began to set the parents
started getting home from work, and the girls still were
not there. Richard Wilson with me. Renee's father gathered together himself,
members of the neighborhood and they drove that ten minute
(10:49):
trip to the mall to search for the girls. Richard Wilson,
tell me about what happened when you got home from
work that afternoon. Well, when I got home from work,
I was already home, and she said Renee them hadn't
made it home, and she wanted to go down to
the mill and look. Me and Beauty went down to
the mall and drove. She went through the stores and
(11:12):
I drove all over that parking lot and we found nothing,
and she called the police. They wouldn't come out after
you know, eleven o'clock when the moell closed. Why that's
the only thea that they can tell you. Oh my stars,
(11:32):
because the girls, I mean, I know they made it
to them all. I don't know yet whether they made
it inside them all For all, I know they've been
missing since they first got there, if they were abducted
in the parking lot before they ever went in. But
do we know one way or the other, Richard, if
they made it in the mall where they spotted in
the mall. Yeah, they were supposedly spotted in a Murphy's
(11:57):
store and shoe store, and it's supposedly somebody so we
here was following them, a tall, skinny guy but a
jacket on it, head California on it. So we know
that really helps with the timeline, Cheryl, because we know
they got in them all and they probably wandered around.
(12:20):
And I mean that in a good way. You know,
when you don't have any real agenda, you just go in.
I can't even remember the last time I did not
have a schedule or an agenda, But teens do that.
They go in and one of them is nine and
all they have to do is get home in time
to go to a little party, so they're just kind
of wandering around. I can just see him going to
the food court too, does Shu store, looking at all
(12:44):
the windows, going by Spencers. Do you remember that poster? Police?
I think it actually still exists, but I could see that, Nancy.
I know mister Wilson, Renee's dad was talking about what
was going on that day. Well. The Trace Evidence podcast,
The Apparances of the fort Worth Three Steve Pacheco specifically
talks about whether or not the girls were seeing in
(13:05):
the mall. Take a listen to this. Several witnesses reported
seeing the girls at the mall. When a girl failed
to return home by four pm, their families became concerned
and by six pm Rachel's younger brother, Rusty was on
the scene with his mother. They found the car locked
up with Christmas presents inside. They went to every store
in the mall, having the girls paged, but there was
(13:27):
no response. Police were called and when they arrived they
did a sweep of the mall. Several witnesses gave conflicting
accounts of seeing the girls in the parking lot in
the company of a man. Now we know they made
it in safely, so whatever happened originated either in the
mall or on their way out of them all. That
makes a big difference in the timeline, Cheryl. It makes
(13:48):
a huge difference fancy. But there was a young man
that came forward in nineteen seventy file that said he
ran into them at a wrect the store and did
see a man that he thought was following them a
lean around them. But we also know there were Christmas
presents in her vehicle that was locked, so we can
put them there, no question about it. Back to Richard Wilson,
(14:10):
this is Renee's dad. Renee just fourteen years old when
she goes missing. So you get to them all. You
can't find anything in the parking lot, but you see
the vehicle. Correct. No, Renee's kind of an uncle came
down there with us and he went out and found
that car because he was there at Renee's grandmother's that day,
(14:32):
and I think he spoke to him and he found
that car. And I'm understanding that Christmas gifts, this happens
at Christmas time. We're in the car and the car
was locked. Richard, Yes, it was locked. The Christmas gift
that was in there was supposedly so everybody says was
a gift that Renee had got for Sean, which is
(14:56):
Tommy's a little boy. I'm curious did they back it
up with a receipt that would have been timed, so
they knew at what time the girls he bought it
from home from home? Oh see, that changes things, Cheryl?
Did you get that that changed everything? I see, I
didn't know that. I knew there was a gift in
(15:16):
the car, But the fact that she didn't buy it
in the mall that hurts the case that it hurts
the timeline I'm building in my head, because if you
buy something in the mall, it'll have the time of
the date on the receipt. They can look that up.
But if she brought that from home to give away,
that doesn't help me with my timeline. But we do
know the car was locked. Okay, what does that tell me?
(15:37):
It tells me most likely they were not abducted from
the car, because if they were taken on the way
to the car and they had unlocked at the kidnapper
who have not had neatly you know, locked the car
back back to Richard Wilson. So you get there that night,
you can't find hiding her hair of them. What happens next, Richard? Well,
(15:58):
I drove down to a guy that wanted to date Renee,
and I told him Nope, never happened, and I guess
he decided it was easier to leave her alone than
to mess with me. And I think he was in
the next day, the detective come out to the house
that he had a phone call that those girls were
(16:18):
sold in a well. And do you remember that night, Richard,
you come back from them all and tell your wife
or him you and your wife are talking about no clues.
What was that first night like when you could not
find your daughter? Okay, about one o'clock I carried my
wife home, picked up the Arnold's next door neighbor, which
(16:41):
was a friend of mine, closer than my own brother.
He went down here with me and we sat down
there in front of Sears garage and watch that car
all night. No security guards went by. Nobody came back
to that car. Joining me right now. Kim Cadell, a neighbor,
(17:04):
a family friend who feels so strongly about this case.
She contacted crime Online dot Com and me on Facebook. Kim,
tell me what you know about the case. I want
as much information out there as possible for those of
you listening. We're talking about the so called fort Worth trio.
Is just three little girls. Julianne Moseley aged nine, Renee
(17:28):
Wilson fourteen, Rachel Trelisa just seventeen, Tipline eight one seven
four six nine eight four seven seven repeat eight one
seven four six nine eight four seven seven Kim Cadell
jump in. You know, that's the sad thing about the cases.
(17:48):
There's just no real facts out there to know. For me,
the biggest clue has always been that the letter. You
don't seeing the girls have gone to Houston. Other than
that letter, it seems like they just vanished and they
just haven't been a whole lot of clues left behind.
(18:20):
Time stories with Nancy Grace, my sister, and two of
your friends went on a shopping trip to what was
then Seminary South Back on December twenty third, byteen seventy four,
and all three of the girls just vanished and we
never saw me. This has been a case that has
weighed on these three families all of these years. Listen,
(18:42):
I've spent my entire adult life looking for my sister,
and I will never stop. Today we're gonna know we're
getting the third car out, and we're gonna know we
could be within three inches of the car and miss
it completely. It's supposed to be a quick, easy procedure.
(19:03):
But there's nothing quick and easy when you're doing a dive.
Let imagine laying in a coffin and closing the door.
The first six inches you see a green blur, but
past that it's pitch black. All you can hear is
your bubbles. Nobody understands just how dangerous this dive is.
(19:23):
It's a black water dive. You can't see your hand
in front of your face. You were just hearing from
our friends at the fort Worth Star Telegram. Divers renewing
the search for the three girls, dive into the black
water of a deep lake, searching for any evidence that
(19:45):
could relate back to the so called fort Worth Trio.
This one man search the brother of a missing girl
for his missing sister, takes him all the way to
the bottom of a lake. And let me tell you,
before I had the twins, Sandy Harcom, this is Julie's aunt.
(20:06):
I dived all over the world. Every time I got
a day off of work, I would go somewhere and
dive all the way down, over one hundred feet below
sea level. And one thing I always hated was a
lake dive or a night dive, because you can't see
(20:27):
and it's very, very difficult to do. What we know
is that the hope is that somehow, some way we're
going to find evidence linking back to these three little girls.
Sandy Harcomb, Julie's aunt at the time Julie goes missing.
(20:49):
What were your first thoughts. I really couldn't tell you.
I didn't know until the next day, about ten o'clock
in the morning that they were gone. My mom called
me and told me, and I said, well, you know,
what do you mean they're gone? And she said, they
never came back from shopping. And it's just so wrap
your head around that, you know. I couldn't. I couldn't imagine.
(21:13):
And she said, just whatever you do, though, don't call
the house because you know, runing was to keep the
line open in case they do the hawk and something
to think about too. That day it was a very
warm December day. They didn't have coats, you know. And
that mall also, it's not the mall that you think
(21:33):
about all today. That mall didn't have a closure on it.
The stores were all linked together, but in the center
it was open. There wasn't a top on it or anything.
But as far as as I just couldn't imagine what
had happened, you know. It just things like that. This
(21:55):
didn't happen to our families. We were talking about three
little girls that go missing on a trip to the mall,
back to Richard Wilson, Renee's father. So I'm imagining you
over there by the Sears garage where they do the
tires and all that, and you're keeping your eyes trained
on the vehicle that the girls were in when they
(22:16):
came to them. All what happened after that? I want
to hear about the letter that was received. The letter
that was received. I understand that Debbie carried it over
to her mother's house and they called the police. The
police came out, well where's the envelope. They had to
(22:39):
go back to the house and find an envelope. And
the envelope was supposedly mail from Truck Martin and received
the same day, and they supposedly got it about ten
o'clock in the morning. I think that there was hands
(23:01):
stamped at the little post office in Seminary itself, and
it was held onto because they don't the elope don't
fit the letter. It's not voted ride you try to
put it in there. The paper's not the right size
(23:23):
to go in the Let's call in forensic expert and
the founder of the Cold Case Investigative Research Institute, Cheryl McCollum. Cheryl,
let's talk for a moment about the letter and the
significance of the letter. Apparently there was no city name
on the postmark, only a blurred postal service number. And
(23:45):
it also appears that the three written on their seven
six eight three was backward or was it an unfinished eight.
But whatever the content of the letters, it's significant. What
do we know, Cheryl McCollum, Well, he's right. When you
look at how the letter itself is folded, it would
(24:05):
not have fit in that envelope. That's one thing. The
other thing, the envelope itself, to me is a money treat.
You can take the stamp off of that and try
to get DNA off the back of it. You can
try to get DNA off where somebody would have in
the seventies had to have licked it to feel it.
You could also get a partial palm print where they
(24:27):
put their hand down and was writing on the taper itself,
also fingerprints where they held it and attempted to mail
it or run it through the stamp machine. I think
that's where they need to go. The letter itself is
also curious. The person starts by saying, I know I'm
gonna catch it, but we had to get away. They
(24:48):
start with I and then immediately go to weed. But
it's like the other two people aren't going to be
in trouble for running away. And what's so crazy is
they're going to run away, but you're not going to
take your car, you're not going to have the money,
you don't have anywhere to sleep or get food or
anything like that. It makes no sense. The other thing
that doesn't make any sense is the way the envelope
(25:08):
is address. It's addressed very formal, so it would appear like,
I know, you know Rachel recently was married, but it
looked like whoever addresses to her husband did so formally
and used Thomas a Hern address as simply Rachel. When
the three girls did not return for earth, police was
called in. It was handed over to the Youth Division
(25:31):
of the Missing Person's Bureau. Sadly, the girls were presumed
to be runaways, which totally stalled the investigation. The next day.
The very next day, a letter was received in the
mailbox at the at Rachel's home that appeared to be
(25:52):
written by Rachel. See that that's the big part of this.
That is extremely significant time stories with Nancy Grace. The
(26:20):
next day, Thomas Trelisa received a strange letter in the
mail alleged to have been written by Rachel, explaining that
they had gone to Houston and would return in a week.
The letter sparked controversy, with no one believing Rachel had
actually written it, and even accusations that had in fact
been written by Rachel's sister Deborah. As the years passed,
(26:43):
Thomas would move away and sever all ties to the family,
Deborah would become a person of interest, at least in
the minds of the family and especially in the mind
of her brother Rusty. Dave, Matt, what's it all about, Nancy.
There's a very interesting relationship dynamic. Okay. We were listening
to the Tracy Evidence podcast, The Disappearance of the fort
were three, hosted by Steve Pacheco. Tommy was married to Rachel,
(27:07):
but prior to marrying Rachel, Tommy was romantically involved with
Rachel's sister Deborah. They were involved enough that at one
point in time Tommy and Deborah were engaged, they broke up.
Tommy then Mary's Deborah's sister Rachel. At the time of
the disappearance, Deborah had moved in with and was living
(27:27):
with Tommy and Rachel. And it was the morning after
the disappearance that the mysterious letter shows up and Deborah
and Tommy find that letter. A letter was received in
the mailbox at Rachel's home that appeared to be written
by Rachel. See that that's the big part of this
(27:49):
that is extremely significant. Whether it was or it wasn't.
It appeared to be written by Rachel, but yet the
addressing on the front, as Cheryl pointed out, was to
It was very formal, like if someone wrote me that
knows me, and they put to the Honorable Nancy A
(28:10):
Grace Esquire who knows me, that would write that. That's
what you formally put on the end of a letter
to a lawyer. So it seems as if this was
not written by Rachel, but it was purportedly written by Rachel.
The letter was written in ink, but the addressed envelope
(28:30):
was written in pencil. The letter was written on a
sheet of paper that was wider than the envelope. That's
what everybody's trying to say about how it wouldn't have
fit into the envelope, but if you folded it over
you can make it fit in there. It was addressed
formally as I said, also what we know Rachel. The
(28:55):
word Rachel was written in the upper left hand corner
of the envelope. It appeared to be initially misspelled, as
the L in her name was written like a lowercase E,
but it had been gone over again to form a
correct L. The postmark did not contain a city, only
(29:15):
a blurred ZIP code that appeared to be seven six
eight three, but the three looks backward like it was
applied by a hand loaded stamp. That is what Richard
Wilson was trying to explain. We assume that zip code
was meant to be either seven six o three eight,
(29:37):
which comes from Eliasaville near throck Morton, Texas, or seven
six eight eight, which comes from Weatherford, Texas. Back at
the time of the letter, handwriting experts across the nation
looked at the letter, including the FBI, but every time
(29:58):
the results seemed to come back in conclusive. Now back
to Richard Wilson, Renee's father. What did the letter say, well,
I'd like to say one more thing about that postmark. Okay,
I can come up with five more letters with exactly
(30:18):
the same postmark. Who are they? They're in a friend
of mine house. It was like, I think, invitations about
one of her kids and other things. Hmm. I have
a copy of all of those letters. I'm trying to
(30:40):
figure out what exactly the contents of the letter said. Okay,
the letter just says going to Houston, be back in
about a week. I know I'm going to catch it.
And then it just says, Rachel, it's not much there. Well,
(31:00):
that doesn't even make sense. 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. The person who
put that car in that lot had to know that.
The letter who wrote exactly that had to be the
(31:21):
person that was there, because they knew where the car
was parked. Cheryl McCollum, Director of Cold Case Research Institute
for instic Expert. We're learning a lot. We know Rachel
did not write the letter number one. We know that
it may not have truly been addressed. I'm not convinced
it even went through the mail. Was it marked Cheryl
(31:46):
as if it had actually gone through the mail? Or
could it have been hand delivered? Okay? Straight up, if
you are at a business that has one of the
machines where you can just handload a bunch of letters,
Let's say you take fifty of them and you just
run these through and take them home and put your
(32:06):
Christmas card in it and then mail it. That could
have happened. And what I want to be real clear
about did it actually go through the mail? That's my question.
You don't know that somebody could have taken envelope home,
is what I'm saying. And if they appeared, did they
have gone through the mail? That's what I'm saying. We
don't know, Richard. Did the envelope look like it went
(32:28):
through the mail or could it have been stamped and
hand delivered? Yeah, it looked like it went through the
mail because four or five letters got it. Got it? Okay?
That's that is significant because that letter came within like
seventy two hours of the girls missing or less. That
(32:49):
means the letter was sent almost immediately after the girls
go missing. Cheryl. So this person, Nancy, you got to
hear me out. Okay, go I'm today. In today's time,
it's going to take three days for that letter to
get there. In the seventies, it could have taken a week.
There is no way if you kidnap somebody at four
o'clock and mail a letter that their family is going
(33:12):
to get it the next morning in the mail, especially
a December twenty third with all these added Christmas cards
in that sort of thing. I called bogus on that
hand stamp. That's what I'm saying, guys. But this is
it's significant whether this went through the mail or whether
somebody made it appear it went through the mail and
(33:35):
delivered what I'm saying they made it. Now we also
know the ten cent stamp had been canceled that morning
December twenty four. What does that mean It was canceled,
That mean it was stamped by a mail but it
could have been a handstamp. The significance of that, let
me circle back to you, Richard, is that if it
was hand delivered, that means this is somebody that knows
(33:58):
you guys, that go back to the home to leave
that letter and I pick it up on something. Cheryl said,
this went out immediately did it? Could it really have
gone through the mail and arrived say they go missing?
How many days passed before the letter came in Richard?
(34:19):
The next day? No? No, no, do you see the
problem with that, Cloyd Steiger. I'm focusing on the letter
because it don't have anything else to focus on. And plus,
this is written by the perpetrator. These girls didn't write
this letter. Yeah, there's no question about that. And you're
exactly right, Cheryl is exactly right. You're not going to
(34:41):
get it the next day, especially right before Christmas in
a town like that. It doesn't because it doesn't do
that today. So somethingly didn't do it in nineteen seventy four.
Let's follow what our theory is to the logical conclusion.
The logical conclusion is at somehow the perpetrator could get
(35:03):
away from the girls, because you know, they were not
in the car when that letter was delivered, all the
way back to their home. He had them somewhere, or
they were already killed, but he circles back to the home.
This is not random. Why if you randomly kidnap somebody
(35:24):
and let's just say, you rape them and you kill them,
or you just kill them or you rob them and
you kidnap them. You want to get away, get rid
of the evidence as fast as you can. You're not
going back to the house to leave some bogus letter.
This is not random. Do you hear me, Cheryl? I
hear you see and I agree with you. This person
(35:45):
not only to the time to know where the victim's
cart is at. That means they watched them part. They
knew where the car was, they knew her address, they
knew her husband's formal name. And you with me is
Julie's aunt, Sandy Harkum. Sandy, what do you make of it?
I think the letter was supposed to throw everybody off,
(36:08):
and it makes no sense, like you said, because a
complete stranger that's going to have dot three girls, it's
not going to take the time to set and write
a letter and send it to the family. I mean,
they're gonna get them and go. So that letter was
kind of a smoking one out a smoking gun, but
a smoke screen, And it worked for a while because
that's what the detective used every time you ask them
(36:31):
what's going on with the case while they ran away.
Here's the letter. Time Stories with Nancy Grace. The next
(36:52):
day The only major lead in the case developed when
a handwritten note was received stating the three had gone
to Houston. Police weren't sure if the note had been
written free lead. It has since been sent to the
FBI lab in Washington for analysis. You were just hearing
our friends at WFAATV. You know, another really important part
about this letter is that when Tommy he came to
(37:16):
his place. When Tommy picked up the letter out of
the mailbox, nothing else was in the mailbox. No Christmas cards,
no bills, no flyers, nothing, which if they had been
thinking straight, they would have printed. They would have dusted
that mailbox for prints and the letter and the DNA.
(37:41):
Do we know, I'm just, you know, throwing this out there.
Do we know? Richard Wilson. Richard is Renee Wilson's dad.
His girl was fourteen years old. When he gets home
from work and finds out Renee never came home from them,
all his life been torn apart since this happened. You know,
(38:04):
when I cover a case like this, I just have
to go get in my car and go straight over
to the school. And sometimes I've even looked in the
window at the children. They go, there's mom again. Parking lot.
I can't help it when I think of what Richard
Wilson and the other parents of these girls have been through.
(38:26):
Fourteen years old, nine years old, seventeen years old. Richard,
it really strikes me that there was nothing else in
that mailbox. That's because the mail hadn't even come yet.
And the mail don't run that early over here. Because
I live approximately four blocks from Tommy's house, I get
(38:51):
my mail anywhere from five to seven o'clock at night.
Me too, I see them out five, six, seven o'clock
at night delivering them out. You know, I'm not knocking them,
but I can tell you this. I also do not
get mail at ten o'clock in the morning. Okay, Cheryl,
we can go on and on and on about this,
but what does it mean. It means did you ever
(39:15):
put the letter in the mailbox? It's in fact, it
was ever in the mailbox, and it wasn't placed there
by somebody that was in that home. Because here, you
got to look at Tommy. If this was a real investigation,
you have to look at him first. Well, I've already
looked at him, but you know what, that's a very
good point. Let's look at Tommy. Go ahead, where was
(39:36):
he that day? Cheryl? You got you gotta look at Tommy.
You know why you of all three families, three different addresses,
three different girls, why did the letter come to you?
That's significant. Then you look at why the letter does
not fit the envelope. It doesn't appear that it was
folded and put into that exact envelope when it was
(39:57):
taken over to the other house. The envelope wasn't even
brought with it. Why not? You would take everything. So
I'm telling you the money tree here is on the
back of that stamp and on the inside of the seal.
Somebody had to look back to see it if it
was ever sealed to Richard Wilson, Renee's dad. Do we know, Richard,
if a DNA analysis has been done on the stamp
(40:20):
or the seal? Oh yeah, but they say the DNA
did not match nobody that they found up was yet that.
I don't know. Now Sandy or Kim one may know that. Yeah,
let's find out. Kim Cadell. What do you know? We
just had a meeting with the chief of police and
(40:41):
in the abjective and they say that there's just not
enough DNA on the back of the stamp to do
anything else with it. Is that correct, Sandy? Well, they
did said, as Richard said, they have ruled out everyone
in Deborah and they've they've run the DNA. What they're
(41:07):
saying now is because I would like for this to
go to the Paragon Lab in Virginia where they can
actually do a composite of the persons you know from
the DNA, they said, there's just not enough left on
there anymore to do that. But they have, they have
tested the DNA and supposedly ruled out a number of people.
(41:27):
I find the interesting, Cloyd Steiger that she's saying, Sandy
Harcom is saying, and I have no reason to believe
she is not correct, because she's just come out of
this meeting with authorities that the DNA doesn't match any
of the family or the people they they secure DNA from.
But back to Cheryl's question, it needs to go into
(41:49):
kotas the national DNA data bank, and it needs to
be put in ancestry. What is it ancestry dot com
twenty three and me there is the data bank used
by the Golden State Killer Detectives, which was a public
(42:09):
data bank. What about that? Chloyd. What do we what
do we have to do to make that happen? Well,
it does have to be a complete profile. But my
question would be how long ago did they do the DNA,
because I mean, it advanced so much in the last
couple of years that smaller amounts you can get more
with and so that would be my first question. And
if they have a partial they could. They can't eliminate
(42:30):
people by direct comparison, but you have to have the
full profile. But I wonder how long ago they did this?
They mean he did try to do it again? Guys.
I have investigated and prosecuted literally thousands of felony cases.
I have covered literally thousands of cases of missing people,
(42:53):
adults and children, unsolved homicides, violent crimes. After all the cases,
after speaking to all the victims, all the police, all
the witnesses over years, my question is what can we
do about it. I don't want to just sit back
(43:14):
and report on it. I want to take action. And
I know you must feel the same way. You don't
want to just hear about crime. You want to do
something about it and do something to stop it. And
here is the news. We have all worked so hard
to bring to you Don't Be a Victim, Fighting back
against America's crime Wave, a brand new book. After interviewing
(43:39):
literally hundreds of crime victims and police, we put our
knowledge into Don't Be a Victim. You could pre order
now go to Crime online dot com. Time Stories with
(44:08):
Nancy Grace. The next day, the only major lead in
the case developed when a handwritten note was received stating
the three had gone to Houston. Police weren't sure if
the note had been written freely. It has since been
sent to the FBI lab in Washington for analysis. It's
just hard for me to believe the only thing we
have to go on is that letter back to Richard
(44:30):
will Serene's father, and you believe you know who wrote
the letter, Hugh, tell me, well, the handwriting on that letter.
We have all kinds of symptoms did match out of
the writing. We've got divorced papers, marriage license d the houses,
(44:57):
letters to a judge eskin for some of the inheritance
you know, comes back to the same one. Do y'all
have just the second? I mean, I would like to
say this one thing real quick. So when I sent
(45:20):
that information, all the handwriting samples that mister Wilson is
talking about which was known to be written by Tommy,
like they were legal documents, and a girl came forward
and gave us like a two page letter. And when
that came back from Wendy Carlson that Thomas Telisa authored
(45:41):
those documents, the cold case detective told mister Wilson, I've
got good news and bad news. The good news is
it came back from DPS because they had had their
They told mister Wilson that Tommy wrote the envelope, that
DPS did not agree that he wrote the letter. And
(46:03):
then the detective wanted me to call her and give
her a POTE number. I called her. We had a
forty five minute discussion, same thing. Tommy wrote the envelope.
It was confirmed by DPS. And then when Sandra and
I had our meeting, they clearly said, Nope, that's not
what it said. Y'amas understood and there is no they
(46:27):
that as lad Tommy wrote better are the envelope? Have
you ever confronted him? Oh? Yes, I told Tommy one time,
I know where you're at because the police called me
and told me that they had sent called Tommy so
many times, but he won't answer them and he won't
(46:50):
call him back. And when he came to Fort Worth,
he called me and I told him, I know where
you're at, Tommy, and I'm going to be out there
an amend it. Only two I only woman was gonna
walk away, and he ran down to the police department.
(47:10):
Police department called me back and told me, I know
Tommy did it, but I can't prove it. He has
no conscience. He can pass my detector tests as fast
as I can throw him at him. And he said,
if you ever get any trouble over that boy, call
me first. As of right now, Tommy or anyone else
(47:31):
has not been named a person of interest or a
suspect in this case. Let me go back to Richard Wilson.
This is Renee's dad. Richard. Do you believe that the
mall and the mall employees were canvased thoroughly? I really
doubt it because that detective that got this case, my opinion,
(47:57):
he was useless. Why why he came to my house
I think it was the next day and told me
those girls throw in the well. He was going to
check it, and I thought, well, I'm going to follow
this bird. And when he went out of my house,
he went up the street. My pickup was parked across
(48:17):
the street. I went down the street about two blocks
and cut back to the street and got behind him,
and I followed him to a coffee shop. And I
sat across the street at a barber shop, and he
stayed in there about thirty minutes. Come out, went down
at Hemphield went down the city Hall called me a
(48:39):
little later. There was nothing to it. Well, there wasn't
nothing to it because I know there's not no well
in that coffee shop. You know, mister Wilson, your remind
me so much as my dad. I always I could
just reached through this microphone and get to you. What
can you tell me, miss Wilson about a woman who
(49:02):
told a store clerk that she saw one or more
men getting girls to go into a pickup truck. We
could okate that woman, but that's what was told to
a clerk. What other clues emerged to Dave mac investigative
reporter Crime Online Nancy. There had been a number of
(49:23):
eyewitness accounts, but they seemed to conflict with one another.
Early on in the investigation, there was a former police
officer who was working security for Sears at the time,
and he actually his name is Bill Hutchins, I believe,
and he said that he at that night, at eleven thirty,
(49:44):
the night they went missing, that he actually saw a
security truck with a security guy dressed in uniform in
the front seat and three girls in the vehicle. He
even described the youngest one sitting right next to the driver,
and another little bit older girl in the middle of that,
and then on the far side, next to the passenger door,
(50:06):
an older girl. And he told police this at the time,
said that he actually questioned, what are you doing out here?
And he said that they kind of blew him off
and then went on about their way, and he told
police the next day. They never followed up. He told
the story a couple of different times and it never
(50:29):
let anywhere, And the last time was in two thousand
and one when they reopened the case and mister Hutchinson
again said, hey, this is what I saw that night. Again,
there were other stories that came out of this from
again I'm putting air quotes around eyewitnesses, because there were
other people who claimed that they saw the girls being
physically pushed into a van on the day they went missing. Yeah,
(50:53):
and there was another eyewitnesses saw a girl says he
saw a girl being forced into a van and he
asked the guy, hey, hey, hey, what are you doing?
And the guy says it's a family matter, but out
and he has repeatedly stated that the families extremely frustrated
with the investigation. Hire a private eye, John Swain. Swain
(51:20):
discovers a twenty six year old man making a string
of obscene phone calls in the area and had worked
for a store in fort Worth where Rachel had applied
for a job just before Christmas. Turns out he was
using his position to get information from young women who
had applied for a job, and on all their applications
(51:44):
they would have their home addresses. Six women who applied
at the store had been getting those obscene phone calls.
He also once lived in the neighborhood of Rachel's parents.
In the end that suspect nothing ever came of him.
There have been hundreds of volunteers that have searched. There
(52:08):
have been skeletons that have been found in a field
that were compared to dental records and X rays. Not
the girls. Psychics have pointed to oil wells nothing. We
also know that a volunteer diver dragging cars from Benbrook Lake,
(52:33):
possibly tied to the so called fort Worth Missing Trio.
Listen on the shore at Benbrook Laked divers were ready
to breathe the murky deep, searching for concrete answers. We're
gonna bring those cars up. We're gonna put this part
of it to rest, whether there or whether they're not.
Rusty Arnold was just eleven years old when his big
(52:55):
sister Rachel disappeared. The family has had missing persons posters
printed up and a reward fund Distabilis WFA has covered
the case from the beginning. She was seventeen and days
before Christmas she drove to a fort Worth mall with
her friend Renee and nine year old Julianne Moseley. Has happened, Tune?
I know. There have been countless leads and theories, including
(53:16):
a letter purportedly from Rachel that said the trio suddenly
decided to go to Houston, but they have never been found.
This is just a hunch, it's all it is. Rusty
believes the answer may be here. There's two vehicles over there.
Three cars found in Benbrook Lake they say have been
there since the late seventies. Next month, they plan to
(53:36):
pull them out and look inside. I think we all
know what I'm hoping to find. You were just hearing
from our friends at the Fort Worth Star Telegram. It
was a very dangerous dive. The car's nearly forty feet
down and pitch black water. To Dave Matt, Crime online
(53:57):
dot Com investigative reporter, what happened with the die, Well,
they actually were able to get two of there were
three cars that were found at the bottom of the lake.
They were able to bring up and they were able
to get a piece of the other one, but it
was just two. It was falling apart as they brought
it up, and they actually entered a couple of divers
(54:19):
in that last dive and called it off after that.
But the end result was none of those cars were
tied directly back to this case. The case is now
being reopened and assigned to a homicide detective. He believes
the girls left them all with someone they trusted. He
says that they were at one point scene with one individual,
(54:41):
but believed there was more than one person involved. To
Kim Cadell, what do you make of it, I definitely
think it was somebody that they knew and trusted and
with Sandy. I do believe that that letter, you know,
to throw the investigation off and bit of time to
Sandy Harcom, Julie's aunt, Sandy, what do you believe happened? Well, again,
(55:05):
I believe that they did involves someone that the older
girl knew, and that Julie and maybe even Renee were
just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I
don't know that they were taken from the mall. It
could have been that they went somewhere in the car,
something happened, and whoever drove the car back to the
(55:26):
mall and left it there. And finally to Richard Wilson, Richard,
what do you believe happened? Really? I really don't know,
Dave mac what is the theory cops are working with Nancy.
The basic thing they're looking at is that, other than
the girls running off, is that they actually went willingly
(55:46):
with somebody they knew. Ostensibly, they believe that Rachel might
have known the individual and that they left with her then,
but a years later Nancy were left with not much
more than they knew the day after they got the letter.
It's just been sitting there for all these years. And
as mister Wilson pointed out at the very beginning, the
(56:09):
first detective placed on the case didn't seem to follow
up anything. It's coact. You know, they never fingerprinted the vehicle.
They might not. They didn't do anything with the car,
They didn't do any kind of investigation. Could I say something? Yes?
Jump in. My sister and I went a couple of
months later to the police department. I mean it was
(56:30):
one of the many times that we had gone, but
just to see how the investigation was going. And the
detectives told us, and I'm going to quote that, well,
at this time, we're really not looking because Easter's coming
and we think they're going to be found with the
Easter eggs, meaning people are out and about and they're
going to find them. Tiger, What if anything can be
(56:53):
done now, well, you know sort of said being redound
or done carefully on the envelope. This is the frustrations
because you have nobody, You have no physical evidence at
all other than that letter, and unless somebody comes across
the bodies somewhere, and they haven't in forty seven years,
so the odds are there not. I don't know what
(57:15):
else you could do, but I think the best route
would be to take that DNA and do some genealogy
on it. That may be your only hope. And to
Sheryl McCollum, you are the founder of the Cold Case
Investigative Research Institute. What can be done now, Nancy? I
think you can also go back and talk to every
single person again. The family can go back and say, hey,
(57:39):
now that we're talking, I did notice that X never
search for them, or X never seems concerned, or X
wanted to move past it and make you know everything
better and just say, hey, you know they're going to
turn up or whatever. It is odd to me that
somebody that would be a stranger that we kidnap three
(58:00):
young women would send something with potential evidence on it
telling people where to find the car. That just doesn't
ring true for any reason. And if you kidnap three
people and you're by yourself, which is hard to do,
one of them would have run. So it's difficult for
(58:20):
me to believe that you've got three people in a
car by force alone. And then within an hour you've
supposedly nailed some letter using two different writing instruments, and
you just happen to have an envelope, and you happen
to have a way to handload it. You happen to
have a stamp. I mean, none of this rings truth.
I mean it just doesn't. There's something very wrong with
(58:43):
the story. There's trying to get us to believe, and
I'm talking about the perfect
Host
Nancy Grace
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