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

It was sometime in the morning... I remember sitting in their living room in their recliner staring at the wall, it had been a long long night.. It all seemed surreal and this could not be happening. Way out of character for my sister. I could not see the hallway that went to to the front door. I remember hearing Tommy open the door and a few seconds later I looked up and he was standing there with the note. His look was total disbelief. He then walked over and sat on the arm of the recliner and handed me the note. It just didn't make any sense. The first thing I did was call my parents and we took it to their house. Everything after that is a blur. We were bombarded with all the family and police and media.
The police still have the letter and the envelope in their possesion. DNA testing at that time was not an option. Oh how I wished it were.
Princess Rose, I talked to my mom about the possibility of writing a book. I could see in her eyes how much pain it inflicted. I could not bear it. My Mom and I are really close. She said " I know in my heart our girls were tortured and used for prostitution, so where ever they are let them rest in peace." This is a feeling she had not shared before. I think to much CSI, Criminal minds etc... I respect her wishes and at this time will not pursue a book. She has suffered so much over the last 34 years. I am really grateful in a way she does not know how to use a computer. She is a great mother, grandmother a and Gigi. (greatgrandmother)
I want the time she has left with us to be as happy and peaceful as possible. I will fight for this. Thanks for you understanding

Diege, I believe you are doing the right thing in not writing a book and I support your decision 100%. Your mother's wishes are extremely important in this decision.

Thank you for answering the question about the letter. I can understand how you might not have been aware of the time, as in shock as you must have been over the preceeding days' events.

DNA is still possible with the letter and envelope that the police have. I hope that you and your family will urge them to take samples from the envelope. If you don't have a sample of Rachel's DNA, it's really not an issue because you or your mother can give a sample of mitochodrial DNA which wll be an exact match of Rachel's mitochondrial DNA. If the DNA on the envelope is not too degraded, police may be able to use your mitochondrial DNA to determine if Rachel licked the envelope or stamp - or if it was a male or other unrelated female.

Here's my next question, do you know of any articles that we could look at that would give us a clearer picture of the events surrounding your sister's disappearance? What we have seen on the internet has been extremely limited.

justthinkin said:

Yes, PrincessRose, that's it, Thorp Springs.

Was the murder of Becky Martin ever solved? Her murder predated Carla's, and she too was found in a culvert. I was never able to find any info about Becky Martin other than what Terrell has on his Carla Walker website.

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Unfortunately, I don't know anything about the Becky Martin case.

I believe that there is no way a letter could be delivered in one day by a US postman in the middle of the Christmas season back in 1974. Whatever happened to the girls had to have happened more than likely after 1 0r 2:00PM so at the earliest the letter is mailed at 2 or 3 in Weatherford, 3:30 or 4:30 in Throckmorton and I'm being very liberal with those times. If the letter did come by US mail then it had to be mailed before the day of the dissapearance, THAT MEANS PREMEDITATION !. If the letter was hand delivered by a person other than a US mailman that opens up a lot of other possibilities as to their fate that i havent thought about.

This is if the letter arrived the day after the dissapearance, which I assume is correct.

Diege answer one for me when you can, When do you think Rachel decided she was going to Seminary South that day? was it the day of? the day before? two days before?

Kaiser Sousa - I found the Texas Marriage/Divorce database for you and it's on page 9 of this thread - post 217. It's free to use. Do you think you could find Tommy's next marriage date again please? Also, can you please go to your profile under Edit Options and set it up so we can send you a PM on this board? This will protect your identity, but allow you to discuss things without them being displayed in a thread on the board. Thanks!

I dont see any edit options

Okay I found the marriage and divorce records but I dont think I ought to post them here, am I right?

Kaiser Sousa said:

I dont see any edit options

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Oh, sorry, I should have explained better. Go up to the top of this page and click on User CP - that stands for User Control Panel. From there you willl find the edit options.

Kaiser Sousa said:

Okay I found the marriage and divorce records but I dont think I ought to post them here, am I right?

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You can put the initials of the two parties (Tommy is TT, for example) and the dates of marriage and divorce here and the location(s) this was all filed in.

Tt (19) married sf(16) on 10/23/1971 in tarrant county

tt (21) divorced sf (18) on 4/26/1974 in tarrant county

tt (21) married ra (16) on 6/8/1974 in tarrant county

ra disappears 12/74

tt (24) married jb (17) on 12/15/1976 in parker county (weatherford is in parker county)

tt (25) divorces jb (19) 6/13/1978 in throckmorton county

tt (26) marries rf (23) 8/31/1978 in parker county

i DONT KNOW IF I TURNED ON ANYTHING LIKE A PM?

Has been a couple weeks since I last logged on so I'm catching up with the posts. May I just say how great it is to see this thread so active and all the great thinking that is happening!

Randomly tossing out thoughts that came while reading:

Does anyone know of any other cases in/around the area back then that also had a note delivered to family/roommates/friends to excuse or explain the sudden and immediate absence of someone missing? (this thinking came from Princess Rose bringing forward an older post regarding statistics of missing/found girls in the area of the time)

I occasionally get confused about the mall. My understanding is that it was a strip mall, is that incorrect? Or was it a mall where some stores had parking entrances but most were entered once inside the mall? Also, I know it got confused regarding the "upper lot" which then got mentioned as an "upper deck".. was the parking lot all ground level parking or was it different levels. (sorry... you may virtually smack me upside the head to knock out the confusion!

tatertot's wording got me thinking (about the letter and whether or not it served a purpose)... We tend to tackle this as if Rachel was the "main" target and Renee and Julie just happened to be there. I guess the letter is the reason we tend to do this. Because it was addressed to her home, her husband. With Julie, it's easy to see why we would think that way since she was the one who (seemingly excitedly) asked if she could go along and not that the older girls had intended her to go. But what if the letter's purpose was to throw attention onto Rachel and away from the idea that one of the other girls was the reason for the incident? What if Renee had a crazy admirer or (and I am not recalling about Julie's parents, only that her mother was working and she was being looked after by grandma.. so clue me in, if you can) what if Julie's father was out of their home/marriage/family and had been watching for a time to claim her and knowing mom was at work, Julie's at grandma's ... but oops now he has to deal with two others that are messing up his plans... and he has to pull it off differently then just snatching from grandma's house. (honestly, I don't recall if Julie's dad is spoken of in articles so I'm just throwing out a possible scenario, no offense is meant if her dad was in the home (or not) and was a great dad!) My point is to just broaden my own thinking a bit because I decidely lean toward Rachel being the key victim for some reasoning and I'm not entirely sure I should. It leaves alot of "the picture" out, obviously and if that's been LE's take and tack too... that's a scary thought.

(Kaiser Sousa: Welcome to websleuths... glad you found us here!)

Debra, once again, thank you so much for bearing with us and participating here.

Kaiser Sousa said:

i DONT KNOW IF I TURNED ON ANYTHING LIKE A PM?

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Hi, I'm here at the moment so I'm going to see if I can walk you thru it. From clicking on your name (or right clicking) I can see that it's not turned on yet. When it is, it will be an option via your name.

In the control panel under "settings & options" is "edit options".... under the second heading of Messaging & Notification the third area is "private messaging".... place a check in the "enable private messaging" box go to the very bottom of that page and click "save changes".

Hope this helps!

under the second heading of Messaging & Notification the third area is "private messaging"....



That area under Messaging and notification is not there

Its kinda hard to describe the mall, wish i could draw you a picture, Imagine a mall with no roof , most of the stores were one story, the larger stores were 2 to 3 stories. the mall was built where there use to be a small lake so it is at a lower level than the area to the south of it where Seminary drive went by it, I-35 was on its eastern border and a railroad track on the west side and a hispanic older neighborhood to the North. Like I said I spent many a saturday as a teenager there and even worked there for awhile. The Mall is L shaped with an open area surrounded by stores. Sears had 3 levels , On the southern side by Seminary Drive was by sea level the highest parking lot, you would enter the store on the 2nd level in the mens Dept. or you would walk along side the store south to enter the inside open area of the mall. East of Sears was a retaining wall that runs East-West for about 50 yards, On the other side of the wall was a parking lot that was quite lower than the Seminary drive parking lot. If you parked there you would enter Sears a level lower than you would if you walked in the mens Dept., or the first level(basement). You would walk into the Garden dept, sporting goods, lawn mowers etc. , That parking lot was not a popular parking spot it was dark , not much foot traffic, deserted, and sealed from view on the South by the retaining wall an on the East by a hill that led up to the access road of I-35, and on the north side more Parking. But it was used by customers to pickup large item purchases from sears.

I still dont know where they were parked, By upper lot I always assumed the seminary Drive Lot by the Mens dept entrance, because it sat higher than the garden dept lot.

sorry for the run-on rambling reply

old Photo of inside the open area of the mall.


http://www.flickr.com/photos/spaceageboy/2773054422/

I think I'll go to the library soon to read the old newspaper articles when it happened, I'll copy them but the copies dont scan well, but I'l try to show them to ya'll.

Thanks for the description... that actually was easy to follow and picture!

Hmm, on the private messaging... I'm stumped as to why the option isn't there. Maybe someone else knows if there is some other option that needs "turning on" before you get that option? Or.... just had a thought... it may have something to do with how new to the site you are and the low number of posts you have thus far. I recall that those things had an affect on when you can sign up to private social groups that are created here... maybe it extends to other "perks" as well such as private messaging?? Anyone know?

Sorry it didn't work for you Kaiser Sousa, I was hoping it would be that simple. ;-) what in life is, right?!

Kaiser Sousa said:

old Photo of inside the open area of the mall.


http://www.flickr.com/photos/spaceageboy/2773054422/

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Thanks for that... that's what I was picturing!

Kaiser Sousa said:

I think I'll go to the library soon to read the old newspaper articles when it happened, I'll copy them but the copies dont scan well, but I'l try to show them to ya'll.

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Good luck, I hope you find a little tidbit or nugget we've not seen so far! Keep us posted.