TX TX - Julie Moseley, 9, Mary Trlica, 17, Lisa Wilson, 14, Fort Worth, 23 Dec 1974 - #1

[mkath59]

4 marriages in the span of 6 years. Wow. Did TT stay married to RF or have there been more divorces and marriages in the following years?

What puzzles me is that his parents apparently died before he married Rachel, so theoretically, he would have inherited at least a portion of their estate (if they had anything or any life insurance.) Texas is a community property state, so each wife would get 50% of his worth. You would think after the first wife, he would not have wanted to get married for a long time due to his financial situation. But perhaps his parents left little to nothing so he didn't care.

Inheritance is not community property.

 

[Balthazar]

More information about the missing trio case including Mary Roger's investigative report indicates I am not alone in linking the trio's disappearance to the I45 murders.

MISSING TRIO FORT WORTH - Cold Case Investigations

 

[Balthazar]

...When last seen, Mrs. Trlica was wearing an orange and white striped blouse with high waisted jeans and brown shoes with large heels. She was wearing wedding rings, a gold dinner ring with diamonds and a heart shaped pendant.

Miss Wilson was wearing a yellow T shirt with "Sweet Honesty" written on the front in green lettering, blue hip hugger pants, ....., red and white oxford shoes, and a white gold ... diamond ring

Miss Mosley was last seen wearing a red long sleeved with blue denim pants and red tennis shoes with white toes....

Advocate
Victoria Texas
Monday, April 14, 1975

 

[Balthazar]

Rumor about the case:

"At the time, everyone was saying the girls led idyllic lives and had no reason to leave," Mr. Arnold said. "But Rachel wasn't happy, and Renee had her own troubles."
Mr. James agreed.
"They had the motive to leave, and they had the opportunity - except for Julie Ann," he said. "It was a serendipity mistake for her to go to the mall."
The two men said they suspect that the older girls asked someone to come get Julie Ann at the shopping center so they could then go wherever they'd planned.
"That person was supposed to return Julie Ann home, but it never happened," Mr. Arnold said. "We have no hard evidence, so we can't prove anything, but that's what all the things we've learned have led us to believe."

http://officialcoldcaseinvestigations.com/showthread.php?t=2029&page=2

 

[Balthazar]

Possible additional cases in Ft, Worth:

Brenda Louise Hogan-White - disappeared Febuary 15, 1977, and her remains were found in June 2005.

Donna Williamson disappeared August 3, 1982- her remains were found in Johnson County in 1993, but were not identified until 2004

 

[tatertot]

This is my first post in a few days so it covers several subjects...

Princess Rose, that's a good point that Rachel might not have been the primary target of whoever made the girls disappear, and she could have become the focus of the investigation because she may have been the only girl with a license on her. Again, obviously since he was 11 when this happened Rusty's innocent, but I find his statement that "Julie was the true victim in all of this" rather unsettling...all three, regardless of their ages, strike me as victims in every sense of the word, no matter what happened that day. You have to wonder what he thinks happened to the older two girls if he doesn't think they were victimized as badly and were left alive, though I may be reading too much into his quote and he didn't mean it that way at all.

Debra, not to be nosy but the record of TT's marriages supports your statement from the article that your engagement to him wasn't "real." I assume you were engaged sometime before he married his first wife in 1971, when you would have been about 16. While I knew several girls who talked seriously about being engaged at that age, few of the marriages actually happened down the road, and I myself was "engaged" (minus the rings and newspaper announcement) at 20 but am married to someone else now. So having been in a similar boat, I can see why in hindsight you don't consider the engagement that real even though at the time it was probably very legitimate to you. I hope that LE didn't dwell too much on the fact that you were engaged at one point because IMHO it doesn't seem vital to the case.

Also, TT remarried Rachel less than two months after divorcing his first wife so I assume they'd separated sometime before. Mainly because I think he's as innocent as the rest of the family, I see the marriage records as a sign that TT had lasting trouble just as Debra said she and Rusty have had over the years...he had several early marriages that didn't work out.

PR, thank you for the quotes from the Cold Case thread. It's still hard to believe that if the girls left for their own reasons they wouldn't have eventually heard that Julie hadn't made it home safely. Why wouldn't they have called to say WHO they sent her home from the mall with? It makes no sense that they'd let that individual off scott-free.

 

[Kaiser Sousa]

This was stated in two of the newspaper articles on the cold case thread:


A few days later, a letter bearing Mrs. Trlica's name arrived at her husband's home. "I know I'm going to catch it, but we just had to get away," the letter says. "We're going to Houston. See you in about a week. The car is in the Sear's upper lot."


So when did the letter really get there

 

[justthinkin]

Rumor about the case:

"At the time, everyone was saying the girls led idyllic lives and had no reason to leave," Mr. Arnold said. "But Rachel wasn't happy, and Renee had her own troubles."
Mr. James agreed.
"They had the motive to leave, and they had the opportunity - except for Julie Ann," he said. "It was a serendipity mistake for her to go to the mall."
The two men said they suspect that the older girls asked someone to come get Julie Ann at the shopping center so they could then go wherever they'd planned.
"That person was supposed to return Julie Ann home, but it never happened," Mr. Arnold said. "We have no hard evidence, so we can't prove anything, but that's what all the things we've learned have led us to believe."

http://officialcoldcaseinvestigations.com/showthread.php?t=2029&page=2

I'm glad you posted this, PrincessRose. I remember reading it on Rusty's site. Now that I look at it again, it makes zero sense. How would the older girls have known whether or not Julie Ann arrived home if they weren't home themselves? They would have either had to call home or driven by there to know the answer.

I get the idea from what Rusty has written that the wildest possible story makes more sense to him than the likely awful truth that his sister and the other two girls were murdered the day they disappeared.

And as Debra said there is no way those girls would've left town 2 days before Christmas. ITA with her on that. If they had problems, they'd have just put them off and dealt with them after Christmas.

I truly wonder what Tommy had gotten Rachel for Christmas that year or if he even had a gift ready for her to open on Christmas Eve or Day.

 

[justthinkin]

I spent quite a few hours researching the I-45 killings and suspects. There were only 4 girls ever found at the Calder Rd. place which got dubbed "the killing field," Tim MIller's daughter, Beth, being one of them.

I think LE had the right guy in their sights on those 4 killings though they never could tie him to the cases. I read they also searched a farm his family had in Austin County, and actually found the remains of a woman there. I also searched that, but Austin Co. does not have a person listed as a UID there, but she's listed on the doe network. That potential perp later committed suicide.

I would suspect some of the other numerous killings to be copy-cat killings, and I think the Allen Shore character is good for more deaths than he lets on. He looks enough like the drawing of the suspect in the Laura Smithers case to be good for her death too, imo.

I don't think the Ft. Worth girls can be considered as part of the I-45 murders. At the time they disappeared, all the killings had taken place in a span that stretched from Houston to Galveston. It was not until 1977 the girl was discovered north of Georgetown, Tx who became known as orange socks.

An interesting thing about her death is that she was found in a culvert, just like Carla Walker and Becky Martin. OTOH, culverts seem to be popular spots for disposing of bodies. Sheesh, the things I learn from looking into these cases. Still, orange socks could somehow tie back into Ft. Worth because of disposal similarity. I don't recall if Walker and Martin were found naked though. If not, then it would seem likely it was a diff killer from the person/s who killed them.

On a different note, I've begun to wonder about Terrell's statement that Wilhoit said, "I was wondering when you were going to come after me for Walker's murder." If I had to hazard a guess, I'd bet Wilhoit didn't say that, but Terrell said Wilhoit did, in trying to get the then current LE to look into Wilhoit again. They had dismissed both Terrell and the idea that Wilhoit did it, so that is the only statement Terrell could make to try to get them interested in Wilhoit again. It didn't work.

 

[Balthazar]

The letter arrived the morning of December 24:

"The 10-cent stamp had been canceled that morning: Dec. 24, 1974."

from the article by Mary Rogers.

 

[txsvicki]

Just listened to Rusty's radio interview on the missingtrio website and heard a couple of things. First off he seems to think something happened to Julie that made the older girls run...he says they were seen at a gas station the following morning getting into the pickup truck of the station's owner, and he stated to an employee that he was taking them to the bus station to head to Houston but first was going to get him a "little". Rusty goes on to say that that same employee went to his boss' house a few days later and saw blood stains and fresh digging in the yard. Rusty states the man would be in his 80's at the time of the interview and they have been unable to locate him.
Rusty then goes on to say there was another suspect, a family friend, but doesn't give a reason why and says the man is now deceased. And he never was a suspect until after he was dead.
Apparently Debra did indeed take a polygraph and the results indicated, at least in Rusty's viewpoint, she may know more about the disappearences than she has revealed.

He says more than once that the case centers around young Julie. "Something had to happen to her to make the other two not come home. And yes I'm saying I think she's alive." Refering to Rachel

He is also estranged from his mother Fran over this. (I knew she didn't share his theories but didn't know they were no longer speaking)

The biggest thing that struck me is the interviewer asked why Rachel wouldn't have contacted him and Rusty says "Whos to say she hasn't?" The interviewer didn't seem to catch this and says "And you just don't know about it?"
Rusty stammers and then says "Yeah, who's to say that she hasn't? And that ought to open alot of doors for you if you think about it with what I told you wallago."
I listened three times and it sure seems to me that Rusty is eluding to the fact that he has indeed heard from her.
Rusty seemed to think there would be something enlightening very soon, he said something about the police interviewing someone soon, and at the end he restates the recent polygraph.
If you haven't listened to it, I highly recommend doing so. I had to install a plugin for it but it was quick and was direct from microsoft. It's in the upper left corner of the missingtrio.com website. It will also let you watch a local TV News segment on the girls. Nothing new mentioned in it but they do restate that the police think they left with someone they knew, and then met with foul play.
With the 35th anniversary approaching I am hopeful we will see more press releases and interviews. This case needs another big round of media coverage. DNA has been mentioned several times, and that was in 2000 or 2001, methods and technology have come a long way since then..maybe it's time to examine the evidence once more.

Do you know the name of the gas station owner and if he had a gas station in any other Texas town the year or two prior?

 

[justthinkin]

txsvicki, would you care to please elaborate on what you're getting at? You've piqued my curiosity for sure.

 

[ZubenElSchemali]

I too was wondering the actual day of delivery of the letter, Princess Rose. I read three news articles on the page you linked and all three said it arrived a few days later. But it could simply be bad reporting, on taking the "facts" from another news article that didn't have the facts checked. The letter is a key piece of evidence.

 

[Balthazar]

I too was wondering the actual day of delivery of the letter, Princess Rose. I read three news articles on the page you linked and all three said it arrived a few days later. But it could simply be bad reporting, on taking the "facts" from another news article that didn't have the facts checked. The letter is a key piece of evidence.

I agree, the reporting on the case is terrible and contradictory. Some say a few days later and some say the next day. I would guess that Mary Roger's article is probably the best researched, so I tend to go with what she wrote, but that could be wrong. Even in my own memory, I feel like I remember the letter being announced on the news on Thursday or Friday of that week. But I don't know for sure.

 

[Balthazar]

txsvicki, would you care to please elaborate on what you're getting at? You've piqued my curiosity for sure.

Me, too! Is there something you know about that could possibly be related?

 

[Balthazar]

Because of the disjointed approach to law enforcement, I thought it would be interesting to get on the Doe Network and look up similar North Texas cases to the I45 murders. Basically, I concentrated on women and girls who were caucasian, ages 8 to mid twenties who disappeared around North Texas between 1970 and 2000. I found many of these - a disturbing number in fact. I eliminated those who disappeared in such a fashion that there was a reasonable suspect - such as a spouse or parent, those whose occupations might put them in harm's way and those who were likely runaways and those who were likely victims of the El Paso serial killer:

Susan Renee Smalley and Stacy Madison 1988 - missing from Dallas, TX
http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/102dftx.html
http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/103dftx.html

Elizabeth Ann Campbell 1988 - missing from Copperas Cove, TX
http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/113dftx.html

Terrie Lynn Hefner 1984 - missing from Dallas, TX
http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/116dftx.html

Ashley Fuller Reed 1980 - missing from Garland, TX
http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/221dftx.html

Kimberly Rachel Norwood 1989 - missing from Hallsville, TX
http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/295dftx.html

Michelle Lee Richardson 1989 - missing from Palestine, TX
http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/339dftx.html

Elizabeth Bishop 1981 - missing from Abilene, TX
http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/357dftx.html

Dorothy Richardson 1981 - missing from Abilene, TX
http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/361dftx.html

Teresa Marie Byers 1979 - missing from Kilgore, TX
http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/427dftx.html

Kathy Mae Brownfield Gold 1982 - missing from Ft. Worth, TX
http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/976dftx.html

Lorraine Migl Light 1989 - disappeared from Spring, TX
Spring is close to Houston, but I am including this case because it contains a phone call similar to Rachel's supposed note
http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/1102dftx.html

Jeane Naomi Loftin 1994 - disappeared from Carthage, TX
http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/1108dftx.html

Sharon Zelinski McCully 1984 - disappeared from Austin, TX while Christmas shopping on Dec 11.
http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/1114dftx.html

Carol Sue Snyder 1982 - disappeared from Richardson, TX
http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/1156dftx.html

Kathleen Murphy 1976 - disappeared from Ft. Worth, TX
http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/1186dftx.html

Kristin Smith 1991 - disappeared from Beaumont, TX
http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/1187dftx.html

Melissa Gail Crabill 1995 - disappeared from Ft. Worth, TX
http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/1281dftx.html

Kellli Ann Cox 1997 - disappeared from Denton, TX
http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/1833dftx.html

 

[justthinkin]

Here's something that may be kind of interesting. Anyone remember the short-lived GSW airport in Ft. Worth?

There's an article about it online.
http://www.airfields-freeman.com/TX/Airfields_TX_FtWorth_NE.htm

I'm not sure what year it was abandoned, but it was abandoned by 1974. In reading through the article, I found out that teenagers had held drag races out there until security guards were hired. I sure would like to know when they hired guards.

More than halfway into the article is a picture of a white souped up Chevy parked on a runway. Off in the near distance is a lot of vacant land and trees. Has it all been redeveloped? I wonder if LE ever thought to check out there. If the perp or perps were younger guys, they may have been attracted to the drag races out there or anything LE wouldn't approve of! Long shot, but who knows.

Also read there were lots of tunnels out there under the runways and terminals, and some guy who utilized the tunnels. Article called him the Airport Phantom. That kind of creeps me out. Said police tried to catch him but never could. What year was that guy running around out there? Guess he could have just been a clever transient or....

I also see now, that the airport wasn't really in Ft. Worth, but almost at Euless. Still, I wonder if LE checked that place. In reading about other cases here at WS, I've learned that some serial killers spend a lot of time scoping out places to dump their victims.

Maybe there were drag races out there the night the girls disappeared. Kids were all out of school. Maybe someone talked them into going out there & there were no drag races or there were. Maybe like Rusty says, someone swiped Julie Ann and the two older girls couldn't go home without her. Maybe they stayed out there to look for her. & the phantom got them. Okay, I'm weirding myself out. It seems the only thing that could make Rusty's theory plausible. Anyone else think it's a real possibility the girls may have gone off with someone they met at the mall, and planning on going to drag races later?

 

[txsvicki]

txsvicki, would you care to please elaborate on what you're getting at? You've piqued my curiosity for sure.

I was a teenager in '73 and had a bad experience with a owner of a gas station. Not wanting to go into details, but he was a monster lunatic. I once knew his name, but have since forgot, and can't even remember for sure if it was '72 or '73. I don't know if he moved away from Lubbock or not, but thought it was kind of a coincidence that another horrible gas station owner about the same age was reported in Dallas/Ft Worth area about 4 hours away. If I knew the name of the Dallas person it might click if they are the same person.

 

[Stella]

PrincessRose, you left off your list one of the most puzzling (for me) cases-Kelli Dae Wilson. She's on Doe Network, et al. Really strange case!

 

[Balthazar]

PrincessRose, you left off your list one of the most puzzling (for me) cases-Kelli Dae Wilson. She's on Doe Network, et al. Really strange case!

http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/w/wilson_kelly.html

What a horrifying case. I only left it off due to her carrying large sums of cash which doesn't fit with the trio case, but you never know this could somehow be related to the trio case.