Fifty years after three Fort Worth girls disappeared during a Christmas shopping trip, their families are still looking for answers.
“There’s not a day goes by that we don’t think about it, or something on TV makes us relive that feeling,” said Debra Hopper, a sister of one of the girls.
It was Dec. 23, 1974.
Mary “Rachel” Trlica, 17; Lisa “Renee” Wilson, 14; and Julie Ann Moseley, 9, left together that morning to get some jeans out of layaway and buy Christmas gifts. Family members later found their car — a 1972 Oldsmobile — in the parking lot of Seminary South Shopping Center, which is today La Gran Plaza mall. There was no trace of the girls.
The Fort Worth “missing trio” is the city’s oldest unsolved case of its kind . Multiple police detectives have investigated the disappearance without results. For a time, an entire task force was dedicated to the case.
Although Fort Worth police continue to receive theories about what happened to the three girls, it’s the lack of real evidence that’s hurting the case the most, said police spokesperson Buddy Calzada.