October 6, 2025 • 31 mins
"We just want our daughter's remains returned so we can have some closure to our grief."
On 15 August 2015, employees at the Mission Park Funeral Chapels North in San Antonio, TX closed up for the evening. They'd just held a service for a young woman named Julie Mott who had perished after a lifelong battle with cystic fibrosis. By 4:30 PM that Saturday, the doors were locked and the ADT alarm system was set.
When staff returned to the facility the following morning, they were surprised to see that Julie's casket had been moved from an empty hallway and now rested in a strange position near an exit door. And inside the casket, there was nothing. Her remains were missing...
Research by Ira Rai
Writing by Amelia White
Hosting & production by Micheal Whelan
Learn more about this podcast at http://unresolved.me
If you would like to support this podcast, consider heading to https://www.patreon.com/unresolvedpod to become a Patron or Producer
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/unresolved--3266604/support.
On 15 August 2015, employees at the Mission Park Funeral Chapels North in San Antonio, TX closed up for the evening. They'd just held a service for a young woman named Julie Mott who had perished after a lifelong battle with cystic fibrosis. By 4:30 PM that Saturday, the doors were locked and the ADT alarm system was set.
When staff returned to the facility the following morning, they were surprised to see that Julie's casket had been moved from an empty hallway and now rested in a strange position near an exit door. And inside the casket, there was nothing. Her remains were missing...
Research by Ira Rai
Writing by Amelia White
Hosting & production by Micheal Whelan
Learn more about this podcast at http://unresolved.me
If you would like to support this podcast, consider heading to https://www.patreon.com/unresolvedpod to become a Patron or Producer
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/unresolved--3266604/support.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
This episode contains graphic content that may not be suitable
for all ages. Listener discretion is advised. If you or
someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available,
call or text nine eight eight, or chat with someone
at nine eight eight lifeline dot org. Those outside of
the US, reach out to someone at your local crisis
(00:24):
center or hotline. Please do not suffer in silence. The
building was quiet. It was the late summer in San Antonio, Texas,
a Saturday evening in August of twenty fifteen. The funeral
(00:48):
home had done its work for the day. Mourners had
gone home. The staff had already tidied up, The lights
were off. A young woman's casket rested in a hallway,
waiting for cremation. The next morning, the alarm was set,
the doors were locked. The staff walked away, certain they
had fulfilled their sacred duty to guard the body of
(01:09):
the deceased until the final act of care could be performed.
But by the morning the impossible had happened. The casket
sat empty, its hinge was bent, its beer the rolling
stand that supported it shoved toward an exit. The room
smelled of polish and flowers, as though nothing had changed.
But everything had changed because the body insight of that casket,
(01:34):
twenty five year old Julie Mott, was gone. No alarm
had been triggered overnight, no window was broken, no door
forced open. The disappearance of a living person is a
tragedy that we can understand. Maybe it was an abduction,
a runaway, a crime, but the disappearance of the dead
that violated something deeper, a boundary that most of us
(01:57):
believe is sacred, that when we entrust a funeral home
with our loved ones, they won't just vanish. This is
the story of Julie Mott. Julie Mott was born in
(02:28):
San Antonio, Texas. She was the daughter of caring parents,
Tom and Charlotte Mott. From the very beginning, she faced
a challenge most children never have to confront. She was
born with cystic fibrosis, a genetic disease that affects the
lungs and digestive system. For Julie, it meant a life
filled with doctor's visits, treatments, and the constant awareness that
(02:50):
her body was fighting against her. Cystic fibrosis is cruel.
Thick mucus builds in the lungs infections thrive and breathing
becomes more difficult as the years pass. Many who live
with it are told to expect a shortened life. Julie
grew up with this knowledge hanging over her, but she
did not let it define her entirely. Those who knew
(03:11):
her describe someone warm, soft spoken, and deeply compassionate. Julie
loved horses. She spent time riding caring for them, finding
freedom in their strength and movement. Animals gave her joy,
and she gave them gentleness in return. Friends and families
say that she had a quiet resilience about her, an
ability to endure hardship without bitterness. By her early twenties,
(03:34):
Julie had lived longer than many with her condition. She was,
in many ways beating the odds, but cystic fibrosis does
not relent. On August eighth, twenty fifteen, after twenty five
years of struggling, Julie died in San Antonio. Her family
was devastated, though not unprepared. For years, they had known
this day would eventually come. They planned a service at
(03:57):
Mission Park Funeral Chapels North, a respected local funeral home.
The choice was practical. Mission Park had served the community
for decades, but it was also personal. They trusted the
people who worked there. They believed that Julie's body would
be treated with dignity. The funeral was set for August fifteenth.
For the Mots, the service was not just about mourning,
(04:20):
it was about closure. They had endured a lifetime of
watching Julie battle her disease. Now they wanted to give
her peace. Cremation was arranged for the day after the service.
In ordinary circumstances, this would have been the final chapter.
The family grieving a funeral performed a cremation befollow Julie's life,
(04:40):
remembered with sorrow and with love. But this was not ordinary,
because in the hours after Julie's funeral, something happened inside
that chapel, something that defies explanation to this day. On
(05:01):
August fifteen, twenty fifteen, the chapel at Mission Park Funeral
Chapels North filled with friends and family. The air was
heavy with grief, but also relief that Julie's struggle was
finally over. The service began at eleven in the morning.
Guest spoke about Julie's quiet, kindness, her patience, her love
of horses. They shared how her strength had inspired them.
(05:23):
For those who had walked beside her during her illness,
there was sorrow, but also a sense of peace. They
all knew that Julie was no longer suffering. She would
no longer have to go and visit doctors to get
an explanation about what was wrong with her. Among those
in attendance that day was Bill Wilburn, Julie's ex boyfriend.
Their relationship had ended about two years earlier, but Wilburn
(05:45):
had remained in orbit around Julie's life. People noticed his
presence that day. He lingered, staying behind after the service ended,
speaking with others and with staff. By early afternoon, the
last guest had departed. Julie's castine, still closed, was rolled
into a side hallway of the funeral home. It was
scheduled for cremation the next day. The staff performed their
(06:08):
closing routine. They locked the building at four thirty PM,
set the EDT alarm system, and walked away. For them,
the day had ended as it always did, quiet, respectfully,
with a body in their care awaiting its final transition.
That evening, San Antonio moved on with its weekend. The
funeral homes sat still and silent, its lights off, its
(06:30):
alarm armed. But when the sun rose the next morning,
that silence was shattered. On the morning of Sunday, August sixteenth,
funeral home staff arrived to begin preparations for the cremation.
What they found instead was something they would never forget.
The casket that had contained Julie's body just hours earlier
(06:52):
sat empty. The lid was closed, but inside nothing. One
hinge was bent, as though forced or strained open the beer.
The wheeled stand that supported the casket had been moved
to a strange position near an exit door, as if
pushed hastily or dragged in a struggle. But the most
chilling detail was what was missing, any sign of how
(07:13):
it had happened. The doors showed no forced entry, The
alarm system armed at four thirty PM had never been triggered.
The windows were impact, the locks were untouched. Julie's body
had simply vanished. Panic begun spreading through the staff. They
checked and rechecked, convinced there had to be some mistake,
(07:35):
but this was no mistake. The young woman whose parents
had entrusted her to their care, was gone, so they
called the police. When investigators arrived, they faced a scene
that looked less like a crime and more like a riddle.
How does a body disappear from a locked building without
a trace. Police quickly ruled out the possibility that Julie
had been cremated or moved by staff without record. The
(07:57):
timeline was pretty firm. The casket was intact when the
chapel was closed on Saturday. By Sunday morning, it was empty.
Julie's family was notified. For her parents, who had just
lost their daughter, the news was like losing her all
over again. Tom and Charlotte Mott had braced themselves for
the grief of death, but they were not prepared for
(08:17):
this to be told their daughter's body had likely been stolen.
From the very beginning, the case carried an air of impossibility.
In San Antonio, Texas, and in the funeral industry more broadly,
there was no precedent for a theft like this. Bodies
are sometimes mishandled, sometimes misplaced in horrifying bureaucratic errors, but
(08:39):
stolen from a locked, alarmed funeral home that crossed into
territory that felt almost supernatural, and yet the reality was stark.
Someone somehow had taken Julie Mott's body from her casket
during the night. The question was who, and more importantly why,
(09:02):
Police treated the disappearance of Julie Mott's remains as a
crime from the start. This was not a misfiled document
or a cremation scheduled early by mistake. The body had
been inside the casket when the chapel was closed. The
next morning, it was gone, so investigators combed through the building.
They examined doors, windows, and alarm systems. There were no
(09:22):
signs of forest entry. The alarm had been armed and
it had not gone off during the night. Whoever had
entered the building either did so without triggering the system,
or they were already inside before it was set. The
damaged casket, Hinge and the displaced beer told police that
Julie's body had not simply been misplaced. It had been
deliberately removed. This was no accident. Detectives began asking questions
(09:46):
who had access to the building, who had keys or
alarm codes, who was present in the hours before the
doors were locked. The funeral home offered up a twenty
thousand dollars reward for information. They insisted they had no
idea what it happened, and they urged the community to come
forward with tips. For the Mott family, grief began turning
into anguish. Their daughter had already been taken by illness.
(10:10):
Now she had been taken again. Without her body, they
could not lay her to rest, they could not cremate her,
they could not even visit her grave. It was, in
every sense an impossible crime, yet someone had done it
more after the break. In many mysteries, there is a
person whose presence lingers like smoke. In Julie Mott's disappearance.
(10:34):
That person was her ex boyfriend, Bill Wilburn. Julie and
Bill had dated for several years. Friends later said their
relationship was rocky and eventually fell apart, ending around twenty thirteen.
Julie had moved on by then, but for Bill, it
seemed the break never truly took hold. Rumors online alleged
that he had cheated on her and felt regret about it,
(10:56):
and he spent the next two years trying to win
her back. Even as Jewe July faced the final stages
of cystic fibrosis, he hovered close by. By the time
of her death, they had been apart for nearly two years,
yet his behavior after her passing suggested he was not
prepared to let go. On the day of Julie's funeral,
Bill Wilburn attended the service that in itself was not unusual.
(11:18):
Ex partners often attend funerals to pay their respects, but
his presidence drew attention for another reason. He lingered as
guest began filtering out and the staff began preparing the
chapel for closure, Bill remained. According to testimony later presented
in court, he was the last person to leave the
building hours later when the doors were locked. Julie's body
(11:39):
was still inside. By morning, it was gone. In the
days that followed, Bill Wilburn's behavior escalated. Mission Park staff
reported being inundated with phone calls from him. On one day.
Employees said that he called more than two hundred times.
Investigators described him as obsessed. These calls were not simply inquiry.
(12:00):
They were persistent, insistent, and at times hostile. Staff began
to fear his presence, especially after Julie's body had vanished.
The funeral home eventually issued a criminal trespass notice against
Bill Wilburn, formerly banning him from Mission Park properties, but
the notice did not keep him away. In twenty sixteen
(12:21):
months after Julie's disappearance, security cameras captured Wilburn entering the
funeral home at night. Staff recognized him and called police.
He fled before officers arrived. The trespass was not a
one time incident. It happened more than once in one encounter.
An employee testified that Bill Wilburn was caught sneaking into
the building twice in June alone. Eventually, police arrested him
(12:44):
for criminal trespassing in twenty eighteen. He pled guilty and
was sentenced to two days in jail and find The
charge was minor compared to the weight of the suspicion
hanging over him, but it was enough to mark his
name in court records. The strange behavior did not end
at the funeral heame's doors. Online, Bill Wilburn was rumored
to have posted on obscure message boards and forums, leaving cryptic,
(13:07):
unsettling comments about Julie and her death. On Reddit and
other true crime spaces, users claimed to have identified him
by his phrasing, his tone, and multiple references he made.
Some posts hint at deep grief and fixation, while others
struck readers as disturbingly detached. While no one has ever
really confirmed these postings as his, the rumors have spread,
(13:29):
reinforcing the image of a man whose mourning had curdled
into obsession. In a later civil trial brought by Julie's parents,
Mission Park's attorneys seized on this pattern of behavior. They
portrayed Wilburn as the likely culprit of this act, suggesting
that his opposition to Julie's cremation gave him motive. If
he had loved her to the point of fixation, perhaps
(13:50):
he could not bear to see her body reduced to ashes.
To him, preserving her physical form may have felt like
a way of keeping her alive. The argument was compelling
in theory, but it faltered in fact. Investigators never found
physical evidence tying Bill Wilburn to the theft of Julie's remains.
No fingerprints, no DNA, no surveillance footage, nothing but suspicion.
(14:13):
In civil court, the jury was asked directly if Wilburn
had unlawfully taken Julie's body. Their answer was no. This
leaves Bill Wilburn in a weird space. His actions, him
lingering at the chapel, making hundreds of calls to the
funeral home, breaking in and then posting online paints him
as a figure of deep unease. But suspicion, no matter
(14:34):
how strong, is not the same as proof. For Julie's family,
the question of Bill's involvement is torment without resolution. Did
his obsession with their daughter drive him to do something
drastic or was he simply a grieving ex boyfriend who
could not let go, whose actions looked damning but stopped
short of criminal. In mysteries like this, absence is everything.
(14:56):
The absence of Julie's body, the absence of evidence, the
a absence of any confession. Bill Wilburn remains for many
the most likely suspect, yet legally he is not guilty
of theft. His story is a bit of a study
in unease, a man whose behavior was so strange, so persistent,
so unnerving, that it shadows the case to this day,
(15:18):
even as the central question what happened to Julie Mott's
remains remains unanswered. The other great shadow in Julie Mott's
disappearance is not a single person, but an institution, Mission
Park Funeral Home. On the surface, it was a place
of tradition, a long standing establishment in San Antonio families
(15:39):
have long turned to it for dignity and care. The
Motts had trusted it to handle their daughter's remains, but
Julie's disappearance ripped that trust apart. When investigators found her
casket empty on the morning of August sixteenth, twenty fifteen,
one fact was unavoidable. Whatever it happened, it had happened
inside of Mission Park. The chapel had been locked, the
(15:59):
alarm was off. There were no broken doors, no shattered windows,
no tripped sensors. Whoever removed Julie's body had done it
without setting off any alarms. That simple fact left two possibilities.
Either the system was bypassed by someone who knew how,
or the removal happened with the proper authorized access, perhaps
(16:19):
through a key, a code, or both. This question became
the beating heart of a later civil trial. Mission Park
argued that the theft was unforseeable, that no reasonable security
system could have prevented someone determined to take Julie's remains.
They pointed outward at Bill Wilburn, painting him as the
obvious suspect, But the Mott family's lawyers pointed inward. They
(16:42):
argued that Mission park had failed its most basic duty.
They revealed that the funeral home used outside contractors, including
a mortuary service company called Buyer and Bidle. These subcontractors
handled embombing, transportation and sometimes after hours work. Employees of
that company had their own keys and alarm codes, which
(17:03):
meant the pool of people who could enter the building
undetected was far larger than the family realized. One employee,
in particular, Nicholas Moreno, became heavily scrutinized. Moreno played in
a metal band with a quote unquote satanic esthetic, and
his online post included dark and unsettling imagery. During their
civil trial, the mot's attorneys used this to suggest questionable judgment,
(17:27):
even hinting at sinister interest. Nicholas Moreno denied any involvement
with Julie's body, and no criminal evidence ever tied him
to the case. Still, his very presence in the courtroom
demonstrated how porous the boundaries of access really were. Security
consultants testified about the building's vulnerabilities. The ADT system in
place could be tricked. If a small object was wedged
(17:50):
into the plunger of a door, the alarm would believe
it remained closed. Even if it had been opened, The building,
one expert, said, was moderately secure. Moderately secure, however, is
not what grieving families expect from the guardians of their
loved ones. Remains. Other troubling details about the funeral home emerged.
Julie's body had been left not in a locked storage room,
(18:11):
but in a hallway. The casket itself, while heavy, could
be moved on its wheeled beer by a single, determined person.
The very positioning of the casket suggested ease of access,
not protection. The civil jury eventually sided with the Mott family.
They ruled that Mission Park had been negligent, awarding the
family eight million dollars for the anguish they suffered. While
(18:34):
later reportings suggested the case eventually settled, the verdict spoke
loudly the institution charged with protecting Julie had failed her. Still,
negligence is not theft. The trial did not identify who
removed Julie's body. It revealed how many people could have
done it and how poorly Mission Park had secured her remains,
but it did not say who crossed that final line.
(18:57):
This is the problem with the insider hypothesis. The door
was wide open metaphorically even if locked physically, Employees, contractors,
anyone with a code or key could have entered that night,
but there is no single person who has ever been
shown to have done so. The funeral home stands accused
of failure, but not of theft. Yet without its failures,
(19:19):
it is hard to imagine how Julie could have been
taken at all. When a case refuses to resolve, people
often turn to explanations that combine accident with deceit. In
Julie Mott's disappearance, this became the so called hybrid or
cover up theory, the idea that her body was not
actually stolen at all, but it was lost or mishandled,
(19:41):
and that someone inside the chain of custody concealed the
truth to avoid scandal and liability. On the surface, the
theory has appeal. Funeral homes, mortuaries, and subcontractors deal with
dozens of bodies, transfers, and schedules every week. Mistakes, while rare,
do happen. Families have sued funeral hef homes and other
states in the past for lost cremaines, for switched bodies,
(20:03):
even for mishandled remains that were buried in the wrong graves.
If an error occurred with Julie's body, perhaps it was
easier to stage the scene to look like a theft
than to admit negligence. But when you look closely at
the physical scene inside of Mission Park on August sixteenth,
the story gets complicated. The casket did not simply sit empty.
Its hinge was bent, suggesting force had been used to
(20:26):
open it. The beer the wheeled stand beneath the casket
had been shifted into an unnatural position near an exit door,
as if maneuvered by someone preparing to remove weight. That
tableau is difficult to reconcile with a paperwork error. If
Julie's body had been accidentally cremated early or misplaced in
a storage cooler, why damage the casket, why move the
(20:47):
beer toward an exit? These details look less like an
accident and more like an act carried out with intent. Still,
there are versions of the cover up theory that attempt
to explain this. One variation holds that a subcontracy mishandled
the body during transfer, say, leaving it somewhere it should
not have been, and when the mistake was discovered, the
staff panicked. They staged the bent hinge and shifted beard
(21:10):
to suggest theft, a crime that would shift suspicion outward
rather than inward. Another version speculates that something catastrophic occurred
during the embalming or storage process, an event that left
the body in a state that could not be returned
to the family. Faced with that horror, employees might have
staged a disappearance to avoid facing the consequences. The problem
(21:30):
with both variations is silence. No insider has ever come
forward with a confession, not even anonymously. In civil court,
employees were grilled about procedures, security and subcontract or access,
but none admitted to mishandling Julie's body. And while negligence
was proven, such as leaving the body in a hallway
and allowing so many outsiders to have keys, the jury
(21:53):
did not find any evidence of cover up. Yet the
theory of a cover up does lnker, not because of proof,
but because of the absence of proof In every other direction.
Theories pointing to the ex boyfriend Bill Wilburn run into
the problem of access. Theories pointing to the subcontractors stumble
on motive. The cover up idea persists because it seems
(22:13):
to explain the impossible, a disappearance with no signs of
forced entry, no tripped alarm, and no body ever recovered.
Whether true or not, the theory points to a larger truth.
Families hand over their loved ones to funeral homes, believing
the chain of custody is sacred, that it's something unbreakable.
The idea that a body could be lost or concealed,
(22:34):
intentionally or otherwise strikes at the heart of that trust.
For the Mots, this was the deepest wound. They had
given Julie to Mission Park, believing that she would be
safe until she could be cremated. Instead, they were left
with questions that point in every direction, including inward. In
the end, the cover up theory is less about evidence
than about faith, or rather the lack of it. When
(22:57):
institutions fail so dramatically when a body disappears under lock
and key, suspicion naturally turns toward those who had custody
all along. Among the theories surrounding Julie Mott's disappearance, one
stands apart for its simplicity. It does not require elaborate
cover ups or intimate insider knowledge. It requires only motive
(23:19):
rooted in belief that someone took Julie's body to prevent
her cremation. Julie's family had chosen cremation for her remains.
The process was scheduled to begin the day after her funeral.
To most, this was a personal and practical decision, but
for others, cremation is a deeply contentious act. Religious traditions
(23:39):
such as Orthodox Judaism, Islam, and even some branches of Christianity,
historically prohibit or discourage cremation, seeing it as a desecration
of the body. Even outside of organized faith, some people
hold personal convictions that cremation destroys what should remain whole.
What makes the theory compelling is timing. Julie's body vanished
(23:59):
in the narrowst of windows after her funeral on Saturday
afternoon and before her scheduled cremation's Sunday morning. Whoever took
her may have believed it was their last chance to
save her from the fire. Speculation about who this person
could be varies. Some people point again to Julie's ex boyfriend,
Bill Wilburn. In civil court, defense attorneys argued that he
(24:20):
had voiced opposition to cremation. If true, that could explain
a motive. He might have felt compelled to preserve Julie's
body at any cost. Others suggested it could have been
someone else close to Julie, a person with strong convictions
about burial. Another possibility is ideological intrusion that a stranger,
someone not connected to Julie personally, but driven by doctrine
(24:43):
or belief to that person. The funeral home may not
have been a place of mourning but a battlefield in
a war over the dignity of the dead. Still, this
theory faces problems. If an ideological opponent had taken Julie's body,
why has it never been recovered. If someone stole her,
he remains to bury her properly privately. One might expect
(25:03):
that a grave could be discovered, or for whispers to
eventually reach investigators. Instead, there's been nothing but silence. The
other problem that this theory faces is access. To remove
Julie's body, someone needed to enter a locked, alarmed building
without tripping the sensors. That level of access still points
back to insiders, employees, or those with knowledge of the system.
(25:25):
If an outsider with ideological motives carried out the act,
how did they bypass security with such precision. The cremation
theory remains compelling for just one reason. It explains the win.
Julie's body disappeared on the eve of her cremation. That
timing may not be coincidence, but it leaves the questions
of who and how unanswered. In the end, this theory
(25:46):
resonates because it's so human. Grief can distort reason, belief
can override law. The thought of someone seizing Julie's body
to save it from fire is terrible, but it is
also plausible. It is one of the only motives in
this case that seems to make any real sense. For
(26:07):
the Mock family, grief became anger. Losing their daughter had
already broken them, but losing her again in such a
strange and careless way felt like a betrayal. They turned
their focus on Mission Park funeral Home to Julie's family.
The funeral home was supposed to be a place of protection. Instead,
it was where the impossible had happened. The lawsuit was
(26:29):
eventually filed, accusing Mission Park of gross negligence. In the courtroom,
the story of Julie's disappearance was dissected detail by detail.
How the casket had been left in a hallway, how
the alarm had failed to reveal an intrusion, how subcontractors
had free access with keys and codes. The family's lawyers
painted a picture of a funeral home that had surrendered
(26:51):
its sacred duty. They argued that Julie's disappearance was not
a mystery born from the shadows, but from the direct
result of Lack's oversight. Park fought back. They insisted that
they had been blindsided, just like the family. They pointed outward,
suggesting that an obsessed outsider must have been responsible. They
highlighted the suspicious behavior of Julie's ex boyfriend, Bill Wilburn.
(27:14):
They argued that no matter how careful they had been,
they could not have anticipated such a crime. In February
twenty eighteen, a jury in Bear County returned a verdict.
They awarded Tom and Charlotte Mott eight million dollars in damages.
The jury had decided that mission Park was negligent. For
a brief moment, the family must have felt some kind
of vindication, but money was never the point. What they
(27:37):
wanted was Julie back, and that the court room could
not deliver. Later reporting noted that the case eventually settled.
The details of the settlement were never made public. What
mattered most was that the judgment stood as a reminder
a jury had agreed that the funeral home had failed
to protect Julie Mott. Yet, even with the verdict, the
(27:58):
mystery remained as signed blame. But it had not solved
the disappearance. Julie's body was still missing. For Tom and
Charlotte Mott, the disappearance of Julie's body has meant living
(28:19):
with a wound that never closes. Brief in its natural
form is already unbearable, but it has a rhythm. A funeral,
a burial, or a cremation a place to return to.
Rituals of mourning exist to give the living a way
to say goodbye. Julie's parents never had that. They never
got to hold her ashes in an urn. They never
buried her in a grave they could visit on her birthday.
(28:42):
They never marked her passing in the way families are
meant to. Instead, every anniversary is a reminder not just
of her death, but of the theft that followed. Her
father once described it as losing Julie twice, once to
her illness and once to enact that no one can explain.
For the Mots, the civil judgment against the funeral home
provided accountability, but not closure. Money could not replace the
(29:05):
absence of her body. It could not answer the question
that not at them every day, Where is Julie? This
question continues to echo. Who had access to the chapel
that night? Why did the alarm remain silent? Did someone
take her out of grief, out of ideology, or out
of something darker? Or was it something more mundane and
(29:26):
more terrible? A catastrophic failure hidden by silence. Without her remains,
the family has nothing to hold, nothing to late a rest,
just the empty space of an unsolved mystery. It has
(29:47):
been years since that quiet August night in San Antonio.
The city has carried on the chapel, doors have opened
and closed for countless other services. Families have entrusted their
loved ones to the care of funeral homes, believing they
would be safe. But for the Mott family, that trust
was forever broken. Their daughter's body vanished from a locked
(30:07):
casket inside of a building that was supposed to protect her.
To this day, no one has been charged with the theft,
no one has confessed to involvement. Julie has never been found.
Theories continue to circle this story, but evidence remains absent.
The obsessed acts, the subcontractors with keys, the possibility of
a cover up, the chance that someone acted out of
(30:30):
religious or personal conviction. None of them answered the question fully,
so the case remains open. The silence remains heavy. At
the center of it all is Julie, a young woman
who lived with courage and kindness through the hardship of
cystic fibrosis. She should have been laid to rest with dignity. Instead,
her body became the center of one of the strangest
(30:51):
mysteries san Antonio has ever seen, and so the question lingers,
who took Julie Mott and where is she now? Of
this episode's recording, the story remains unresolved.
This episode contains graphic content that may not be suitable
for all ages. Listener discretion is advised. If you or
someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available,
call or text nine eight eight, or chat with someone
at nine eight eight lifeline dot org. Those outside of
the US, reach out to someone at your local crisis
(00:24):
center or hotline. Please do not suffer in silence. The
building was quiet. It was the late summer in San Antonio, Texas,
a Saturday evening in August of twenty fifteen. The funeral
(00:48):
home had done its work for the day. Mourners had
gone home. The staff had already tidied up, The lights
were off. A young woman's casket rested in a hallway,
waiting for cremation. The next morning, the alarm was set,
the doors were locked. The staff walked away, certain they
had fulfilled their sacred duty to guard the body of
(01:09):
the deceased until the final act of care could be performed.
But by the morning the impossible had happened. The casket
sat empty, its hinge was bent, its beer the rolling
stand that supported it shoved toward an exit. The room
smelled of polish and flowers, as though nothing had changed.
But everything had changed because the body insight of that casket,
(01:34):
twenty five year old Julie Mott, was gone. No alarm
had been triggered overnight, no window was broken, no door
forced open. The disappearance of a living person is a
tragedy that we can understand. Maybe it was an abduction,
a runaway, a crime, but the disappearance of the dead
that violated something deeper, a boundary that most of us
(01:57):
believe is sacred, that when we entrust a funeral home
with our loved ones, they won't just vanish. This is
the story of Julie Mott. Julie Mott was born in
(02:28):
San Antonio, Texas. She was the daughter of caring parents,
Tom and Charlotte Mott. From the very beginning, she faced
a challenge most children never have to confront. She was
born with cystic fibrosis, a genetic disease that affects the
lungs and digestive system. For Julie, it meant a life
filled with doctor's visits, treatments, and the constant awareness that
(02:50):
her body was fighting against her. Cystic fibrosis is cruel.
Thick mucus builds in the lungs infections thrive and breathing
becomes more difficult as the years pass. Many who live
with it are told to expect a shortened life. Julie
grew up with this knowledge hanging over her, but she
did not let it define her entirely. Those who knew
(03:11):
her describe someone warm, soft spoken, and deeply compassionate. Julie
loved horses. She spent time riding caring for them, finding
freedom in their strength and movement. Animals gave her joy,
and she gave them gentleness in return. Friends and families
say that she had a quiet resilience about her, an
ability to endure hardship without bitterness. By her early twenties,
(03:34):
Julie had lived longer than many with her condition. She was,
in many ways beating the odds, but cystic fibrosis does
not relent. On August eighth, twenty fifteen, after twenty five
years of struggling, Julie died in San Antonio. Her family
was devastated, though not unprepared. For years, they had known
this day would eventually come. They planned a service at
(03:57):
Mission Park Funeral Chapels North, a respected local funeral home.
The choice was practical. Mission Park had served the community
for decades, but it was also personal. They trusted the
people who worked there. They believed that Julie's body would
be treated with dignity. The funeral was set for August fifteenth.
For the Mots, the service was not just about mourning,
(04:20):
it was about closure. They had endured a lifetime of
watching Julie battle her disease. Now they wanted to give
her peace. Cremation was arranged for the day after the service.
In ordinary circumstances, this would have been the final chapter.
The family grieving a funeral performed a cremation befollow Julie's life,
(04:40):
remembered with sorrow and with love. But this was not ordinary,
because in the hours after Julie's funeral, something happened inside
that chapel, something that defies explanation to this day. On
(05:01):
August fifteen, twenty fifteen, the chapel at Mission Park Funeral
Chapels North filled with friends and family. The air was
heavy with grief, but also relief that Julie's struggle was
finally over. The service began at eleven in the morning.
Guest spoke about Julie's quiet, kindness, her patience, her love
of horses. They shared how her strength had inspired them.
(05:23):
For those who had walked beside her during her illness,
there was sorrow, but also a sense of peace. They
all knew that Julie was no longer suffering. She would
no longer have to go and visit doctors to get
an explanation about what was wrong with her. Among those
in attendance that day was Bill Wilburn, Julie's ex boyfriend.
Their relationship had ended about two years earlier, but Wilburn
(05:45):
had remained in orbit around Julie's life. People noticed his
presence that day. He lingered, staying behind after the service ended,
speaking with others and with staff. By early afternoon, the
last guest had departed. Julie's castine, still closed, was rolled
into a side hallway of the funeral home. It was
scheduled for cremation the next day. The staff performed their
(06:08):
closing routine. They locked the building at four thirty PM,
set the EDT alarm system, and walked away. For them,
the day had ended as it always did, quiet, respectfully,
with a body in their care awaiting its final transition.
That evening, San Antonio moved on with its weekend. The
funeral homes sat still and silent, its lights off, its
(06:30):
alarm armed. But when the sun rose the next morning,
that silence was shattered. On the morning of Sunday, August sixteenth,
funeral home staff arrived to begin preparations for the cremation.
What they found instead was something they would never forget.
The casket that had contained Julie's body just hours earlier
(06:52):
sat empty. The lid was closed, but inside nothing. One
hinge was bent, as though forced or strained open the beer.
The wheeled stand that supported the casket had been moved
to a strange position near an exit door, as if
pushed hastily or dragged in a struggle. But the most
chilling detail was what was missing, any sign of how
(07:13):
it had happened. The doors showed no forced entry, The
alarm system armed at four thirty PM had never been triggered.
The windows were impact, the locks were untouched. Julie's body
had simply vanished. Panic begun spreading through the staff. They
checked and rechecked, convinced there had to be some mistake,
(07:35):
but this was no mistake. The young woman whose parents
had entrusted her to their care, was gone, so they
called the police. When investigators arrived, they faced a scene
that looked less like a crime and more like a riddle.
How does a body disappear from a locked building without
a trace. Police quickly ruled out the possibility that Julie
had been cremated or moved by staff without record. The
(07:57):
timeline was pretty firm. The casket was intact when the
chapel was closed on Saturday. By Sunday morning, it was empty.
Julie's family was notified. For her parents, who had just
lost their daughter, the news was like losing her all
over again. Tom and Charlotte Mott had braced themselves for
the grief of death, but they were not prepared for
(08:17):
this to be told their daughter's body had likely been stolen.
From the very beginning, the case carried an air of impossibility.
In San Antonio, Texas, and in the funeral industry more broadly,
there was no precedent for a theft like this. Bodies
are sometimes mishandled, sometimes misplaced in horrifying bureaucratic errors, but
(08:39):
stolen from a locked, alarmed funeral home that crossed into
territory that felt almost supernatural, and yet the reality was stark.
Someone somehow had taken Julie Mott's body from her casket
during the night. The question was who, and more importantly why,
(09:02):
Police treated the disappearance of Julie Mott's remains as a
crime from the start. This was not a misfiled document
or a cremation scheduled early by mistake. The body had
been inside the casket when the chapel was closed. The
next morning, it was gone, so investigators combed through the building.
They examined doors, windows, and alarm systems. There were no
(09:22):
signs of forest entry. The alarm had been armed and
it had not gone off during the night. Whoever had
entered the building either did so without triggering the system,
or they were already inside before it was set. The
damaged casket, Hinge and the displaced beer told police that
Julie's body had not simply been misplaced. It had been
deliberately removed. This was no accident. Detectives began asking questions
(09:46):
who had access to the building, who had keys or
alarm codes, who was present in the hours before the
doors were locked. The funeral home offered up a twenty
thousand dollars reward for information. They insisted they had no
idea what it happened, and they urged the community to come
forward with tips. For the Mott family, grief began turning
into anguish. Their daughter had already been taken by illness.
(10:10):
Now she had been taken again. Without her body, they
could not lay her to rest, they could not cremate her,
they could not even visit her grave. It was, in
every sense an impossible crime, yet someone had done it
more after the break. In many mysteries, there is a
person whose presence lingers like smoke. In Julie Mott's disappearance.
(10:34):
That person was her ex boyfriend, Bill Wilburn. Julie and
Bill had dated for several years. Friends later said their
relationship was rocky and eventually fell apart, ending around twenty thirteen.
Julie had moved on by then, but for Bill, it
seemed the break never truly took hold. Rumors online alleged
that he had cheated on her and felt regret about it,
(10:56):
and he spent the next two years trying to win
her back. Even as Jewe July faced the final stages
of cystic fibrosis, he hovered close by. By the time
of her death, they had been apart for nearly two years,
yet his behavior after her passing suggested he was not
prepared to let go. On the day of Julie's funeral,
Bill Wilburn attended the service that in itself was not unusual.
(11:18):
Ex partners often attend funerals to pay their respects, but
his presidence drew attention for another reason. He lingered as
guest began filtering out and the staff began preparing the
chapel for closure, Bill remained. According to testimony later presented
in court, he was the last person to leave the
building hours later when the doors were locked. Julie's body
(11:39):
was still inside. By morning, it was gone. In the
days that followed, Bill Wilburn's behavior escalated. Mission Park staff
reported being inundated with phone calls from him. On one day.
Employees said that he called more than two hundred times.
Investigators described him as obsessed. These calls were not simply inquiry.
(12:00):
They were persistent, insistent, and at times hostile. Staff began
to fear his presence, especially after Julie's body had vanished.
The funeral home eventually issued a criminal trespass notice against
Bill Wilburn, formerly banning him from Mission Park properties, but
the notice did not keep him away. In twenty sixteen
(12:21):
months after Julie's disappearance, security cameras captured Wilburn entering the
funeral home at night. Staff recognized him and called police.
He fled before officers arrived. The trespass was not a
one time incident. It happened more than once in one encounter.
An employee testified that Bill Wilburn was caught sneaking into
the building twice in June alone. Eventually, police arrested him
(12:44):
for criminal trespassing in twenty eighteen. He pled guilty and
was sentenced to two days in jail and find The
charge was minor compared to the weight of the suspicion
hanging over him, but it was enough to mark his
name in court records. The strange behavior did not end
at the funeral heame's doors. Online, Bill Wilburn was rumored
to have posted on obscure message boards and forums, leaving cryptic,
(13:07):
unsettling comments about Julie and her death. On Reddit and
other true crime spaces, users claimed to have identified him
by his phrasing, his tone, and multiple references he made.
Some posts hint at deep grief and fixation, while others
struck readers as disturbingly detached. While no one has ever
really confirmed these postings as his, the rumors have spread,
(13:29):
reinforcing the image of a man whose mourning had curdled
into obsession. In a later civil trial brought by Julie's parents,
Mission Park's attorneys seized on this pattern of behavior. They
portrayed Wilburn as the likely culprit of this act, suggesting
that his opposition to Julie's cremation gave him motive. If
he had loved her to the point of fixation, perhaps
(13:50):
he could not bear to see her body reduced to ashes.
To him, preserving her physical form may have felt like
a way of keeping her alive. The argument was compelling
in theory, but it faltered in fact. Investigators never found
physical evidence tying Bill Wilburn to the theft of Julie's remains.
No fingerprints, no DNA, no surveillance footage, nothing but suspicion.
(14:13):
In civil court, the jury was asked directly if Wilburn
had unlawfully taken Julie's body. Their answer was no. This
leaves Bill Wilburn in a weird space. His actions, him
lingering at the chapel, making hundreds of calls to the
funeral home, breaking in and then posting online paints him
as a figure of deep unease. But suspicion, no matter
(14:34):
how strong, is not the same as proof. For Julie's family,
the question of Bill's involvement is torment without resolution. Did
his obsession with their daughter drive him to do something
drastic or was he simply a grieving ex boyfriend who
could not let go, whose actions looked damning but stopped
short of criminal. In mysteries like this, absence is everything.
(14:56):
The absence of Julie's body, the absence of evidence, the
a absence of any confession. Bill Wilburn remains for many
the most likely suspect, yet legally he is not guilty
of theft. His story is a bit of a study
in unease, a man whose behavior was so strange, so persistent,
so unnerving, that it shadows the case to this day,
(15:18):
even as the central question what happened to Julie Mott's
remains remains unanswered. The other great shadow in Julie Mott's
disappearance is not a single person, but an institution, Mission
Park Funeral Home. On the surface, it was a place
of tradition, a long standing establishment in San Antonio families
(15:39):
have long turned to it for dignity and care. The
Motts had trusted it to handle their daughter's remains, but
Julie's disappearance ripped that trust apart. When investigators found her
casket empty on the morning of August sixteenth, twenty fifteen,
one fact was unavoidable. Whatever it happened, it had happened
inside of Mission Park. The chapel had been locked, the
(15:59):
alarm was off. There were no broken doors, no shattered windows,
no tripped sensors. Whoever removed Julie's body had done it
without setting off any alarms. That simple fact left two possibilities.
Either the system was bypassed by someone who knew how,
or the removal happened with the proper authorized access, perhaps
(16:19):
through a key, a code, or both. This question became
the beating heart of a later civil trial. Mission Park
argued that the theft was unforseeable, that no reasonable security
system could have prevented someone determined to take Julie's remains.
They pointed outward at Bill Wilburn, painting him as the
obvious suspect, But the Mott family's lawyers pointed inward. They
(16:42):
argued that Mission park had failed its most basic duty.
They revealed that the funeral home used outside contractors, including
a mortuary service company called Buyer and Bidle. These subcontractors
handled embombing, transportation and sometimes after hours work. Employees of
that company had their own keys and alarm codes, which
(17:03):
meant the pool of people who could enter the building
undetected was far larger than the family realized. One employee,
in particular, Nicholas Moreno, became heavily scrutinized. Moreno played in
a metal band with a quote unquote satanic esthetic, and
his online post included dark and unsettling imagery. During their
civil trial, the mot's attorneys used this to suggest questionable judgment,
(17:27):
even hinting at sinister interest. Nicholas Moreno denied any involvement
with Julie's body, and no criminal evidence ever tied him
to the case. Still, his very presence in the courtroom
demonstrated how porous the boundaries of access really were. Security
consultants testified about the building's vulnerabilities. The ADT system in
place could be tricked. If a small object was wedged
(17:50):
into the plunger of a door, the alarm would believe
it remained closed. Even if it had been opened, The building,
one expert, said, was moderately secure. Moderately secure, however, is
not what grieving families expect from the guardians of their
loved ones. Remains. Other troubling details about the funeral home emerged.
Julie's body had been left not in a locked storage room,
(18:11):
but in a hallway. The casket itself, while heavy, could
be moved on its wheeled beer by a single, determined person.
The very positioning of the casket suggested ease of access,
not protection. The civil jury eventually sided with the Mott family.
They ruled that Mission Park had been negligent, awarding the
family eight million dollars for the anguish they suffered. While
(18:34):
later reportings suggested the case eventually settled, the verdict spoke
loudly the institution charged with protecting Julie had failed her. Still,
negligence is not theft. The trial did not identify who
removed Julie's body. It revealed how many people could have
done it and how poorly Mission Park had secured her remains,
but it did not say who crossed that final line.
(18:57):
This is the problem with the insider hypothesis. The door
was wide open metaphorically even if locked physically, Employees, contractors,
anyone with a code or key could have entered that night,
but there is no single person who has ever been
shown to have done so. The funeral home stands accused
of failure, but not of theft. Yet without its failures,
(19:19):
it is hard to imagine how Julie could have been
taken at all. When a case refuses to resolve, people
often turn to explanations that combine accident with deceit. In
Julie Mott's disappearance, this became the so called hybrid or
cover up theory, the idea that her body was not
actually stolen at all, but it was lost or mishandled,
(19:41):
and that someone inside the chain of custody concealed the
truth to avoid scandal and liability. On the surface, the
theory has appeal. Funeral homes, mortuaries, and subcontractors deal with
dozens of bodies, transfers, and schedules every week. Mistakes, while rare,
do happen. Families have sued funeral hef homes and other
states in the past for lost cremaines, for switched bodies,
(20:03):
even for mishandled remains that were buried in the wrong graves.
If an error occurred with Julie's body, perhaps it was
easier to stage the scene to look like a theft
than to admit negligence. But when you look closely at
the physical scene inside of Mission Park on August sixteenth,
the story gets complicated. The casket did not simply sit empty.
Its hinge was bent, suggesting force had been used to
(20:26):
open it. The beer the wheeled stand beneath the casket
had been shifted into an unnatural position near an exit door,
as if maneuvered by someone preparing to remove weight. That
tableau is difficult to reconcile with a paperwork error. If
Julie's body had been accidentally cremated early or misplaced in
a storage cooler, why damage the casket, why move the
(20:47):
beer toward an exit? These details look less like an
accident and more like an act carried out with intent. Still,
there are versions of the cover up theory that attempt
to explain this. One variation holds that a subcontracy mishandled
the body during transfer, say, leaving it somewhere it should
not have been, and when the mistake was discovered, the
staff panicked. They staged the bent hinge and shifted beard
(21:10):
to suggest theft, a crime that would shift suspicion outward
rather than inward. Another version speculates that something catastrophic occurred
during the embalming or storage process, an event that left
the body in a state that could not be returned
to the family. Faced with that horror, employees might have
staged a disappearance to avoid facing the consequences. The problem
(21:30):
with both variations is silence. No insider has ever come
forward with a confession, not even anonymously. In civil court,
employees were grilled about procedures, security and subcontract or access,
but none admitted to mishandling Julie's body. And while negligence
was proven, such as leaving the body in a hallway
and allowing so many outsiders to have keys, the jury
(21:53):
did not find any evidence of cover up. Yet the
theory of a cover up does lnker, not because of proof,
but because of the absence of proof In every other direction.
Theories pointing to the ex boyfriend Bill Wilburn run into
the problem of access. Theories pointing to the subcontractors stumble
on motive. The cover up idea persists because it seems
(22:13):
to explain the impossible, a disappearance with no signs of
forced entry, no tripped alarm, and no body ever recovered.
Whether true or not, the theory points to a larger truth.
Families hand over their loved ones to funeral homes, believing
the chain of custody is sacred, that it's something unbreakable.
The idea that a body could be lost or concealed,
(22:34):
intentionally or otherwise strikes at the heart of that trust.
For the Mots, this was the deepest wound. They had
given Julie to Mission Park, believing that she would be
safe until she could be cremated. Instead, they were left
with questions that point in every direction, including inward. In
the end, the cover up theory is less about evidence
than about faith, or rather the lack of it. When
(22:57):
institutions fail so dramatically when a body disappears under lock
and key, suspicion naturally turns toward those who had custody
all along. Among the theories surrounding Julie Mott's disappearance, one
stands apart for its simplicity. It does not require elaborate
cover ups or intimate insider knowledge. It requires only motive
(23:19):
rooted in belief that someone took Julie's body to prevent
her cremation. Julie's family had chosen cremation for her remains.
The process was scheduled to begin the day after her funeral.
To most, this was a personal and practical decision, but
for others, cremation is a deeply contentious act. Religious traditions
(23:39):
such as Orthodox Judaism, Islam, and even some branches of Christianity,
historically prohibit or discourage cremation, seeing it as a desecration
of the body. Even outside of organized faith, some people
hold personal convictions that cremation destroys what should remain whole.
What makes the theory compelling is timing. Julie's body vanished
(23:59):
in the narrowst of windows after her funeral on Saturday
afternoon and before her scheduled cremation's Sunday morning. Whoever took
her may have believed it was their last chance to
save her from the fire. Speculation about who this person
could be varies. Some people point again to Julie's ex boyfriend,
Bill Wilburn. In civil court, defense attorneys argued that he
(24:20):
had voiced opposition to cremation. If true, that could explain
a motive. He might have felt compelled to preserve Julie's
body at any cost. Others suggested it could have been
someone else close to Julie, a person with strong convictions
about burial. Another possibility is ideological intrusion that a stranger,
someone not connected to Julie personally, but driven by doctrine
(24:43):
or belief to that person. The funeral home may not
have been a place of mourning but a battlefield in
a war over the dignity of the dead. Still, this
theory faces problems. If an ideological opponent had taken Julie's body,
why has it never been recovered. If someone stole her,
he remains to bury her properly privately. One might expect
(25:03):
that a grave could be discovered, or for whispers to
eventually reach investigators. Instead, there's been nothing but silence. The
other problem that this theory faces is access. To remove
Julie's body, someone needed to enter a locked, alarmed building
without tripping the sensors. That level of access still points
back to insiders, employees, or those with knowledge of the system.
(25:25):
If an outsider with ideological motives carried out the act,
how did they bypass security with such precision. The cremation
theory remains compelling for just one reason. It explains the win.
Julie's body disappeared on the eve of her cremation. That
timing may not be coincidence, but it leaves the questions
of who and how unanswered. In the end, this theory
(25:46):
resonates because it's so human. Grief can distort reason, belief
can override law. The thought of someone seizing Julie's body
to save it from fire is terrible, but it is
also plausible. It is one of the only motives in
this case that seems to make any real sense. For
(26:07):
the Mock family, grief became anger. Losing their daughter had
already broken them, but losing her again in such a
strange and careless way felt like a betrayal. They turned
their focus on Mission Park funeral Home to Julie's family.
The funeral home was supposed to be a place of protection. Instead,
it was where the impossible had happened. The lawsuit was
(26:29):
eventually filed, accusing Mission Park of gross negligence. In the courtroom,
the story of Julie's disappearance was dissected detail by detail.
How the casket had been left in a hallway, how
the alarm had failed to reveal an intrusion, how subcontractors
had free access with keys and codes. The family's lawyers
painted a picture of a funeral home that had surrendered
(26:51):
its sacred duty. They argued that Julie's disappearance was not
a mystery born from the shadows, but from the direct
result of Lack's oversight. Park fought back. They insisted that
they had been blindsided, just like the family. They pointed outward,
suggesting that an obsessed outsider must have been responsible. They
highlighted the suspicious behavior of Julie's ex boyfriend, Bill Wilburn.
(27:14):
They argued that no matter how careful they had been,
they could not have anticipated such a crime. In February
twenty eighteen, a jury in Bear County returned a verdict.
They awarded Tom and Charlotte Mott eight million dollars in damages.
The jury had decided that mission Park was negligent. For
a brief moment, the family must have felt some kind
of vindication, but money was never the point. What they
(27:37):
wanted was Julie back, and that the court room could
not deliver. Later reporting noted that the case eventually settled.
The details of the settlement were never made public. What
mattered most was that the judgment stood as a reminder
a jury had agreed that the funeral home had failed
to protect Julie Mott. Yet, even with the verdict, the
(27:58):
mystery remained as signed blame. But it had not solved
the disappearance. Julie's body was still missing. For Tom and
Charlotte Mott, the disappearance of Julie's body has meant living
(28:19):
with a wound that never closes. Brief in its natural
form is already unbearable, but it has a rhythm. A funeral,
a burial, or a cremation a place to return to.
Rituals of mourning exist to give the living a way
to say goodbye. Julie's parents never had that. They never
got to hold her ashes in an urn. They never
buried her in a grave they could visit on her birthday.
(28:42):
They never marked her passing in the way families are
meant to. Instead, every anniversary is a reminder not just
of her death, but of the theft that followed. Her
father once described it as losing Julie twice, once to
her illness and once to enact that no one can explain.
For the Mots, the civil judgment against the funeral home
provided accountability, but not closure. Money could not replace the
(29:05):
absence of her body. It could not answer the question
that not at them every day, Where is Julie? This
question continues to echo. Who had access to the chapel
that night? Why did the alarm remain silent? Did someone
take her out of grief, out of ideology, or out
of something darker? Or was it something more mundane and
(29:26):
more terrible? A catastrophic failure hidden by silence. Without her remains,
the family has nothing to hold, nothing to late a rest,
just the empty space of an unsolved mystery. It has
(29:47):
been years since that quiet August night in San Antonio.
The city has carried on the chapel, doors have opened
and closed for countless other services. Families have entrusted their
loved ones to the care of funeral homes, believing they
would be safe. But for the Mott family, that trust
was forever broken. Their daughter's body vanished from a locked
(30:07):
casket inside of a building that was supposed to protect her.
To this day, no one has been charged with the theft,
no one has confessed to involvement. Julie has never been found.
Theories continue to circle this story, but evidence remains absent.
The obsessed acts, the subcontractors with keys, the possibility of
a cover up, the chance that someone acted out of
(30:30):
religious or personal conviction. None of them answered the question fully,
so the case remains open. The silence remains heavy. At
the center of it all is Julie, a young woman
who lived with courage and kindness through the hardship of
cystic fibrosis. She should have been laid to rest with dignity. Instead,
her body became the center of one of the strangest
(30:51):
mysteries san Antonio has ever seen, and so the question lingers,
who took Julie Mott and where is she now? Of
this episode's recording, the story remains unresolved.
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