The case shocked the Fort Worth community and left the families of the girls to adjust to life without their children.

[1] The oldest of the girls, Mary Rachel Trlica (née Arnold), was aged 17 at the time of her disappearance.

She was a white female who, at the time, was 5 feet 6 inches (1.68 m) in height, 108 pounds (49 kg), with long brown hair, green eyes, a chipped upper front tooth, and a small scar on her chin.

At the time she vanished, Rachel had been married to her husband, Tommy Trlica, for about six months, and wore a wedding ring.

Clothing she was known to be wearing when she disappeared includes bluish-purple hip hugger pants, a white pullover sweatshirt with "Sweet Honesty" in green letters (some have reported it as a pale yellow T-shirt with green letters),[3] red and white Oxford shoes, and a promise ring with a single clear stone.

She is a white female who, at the time, was 4 feet 3 inches (1.30 m) in height, 85 pounds (39 kg), with shoulder-length sandy blonde hair and blue eyes.

[5] On the morning of December 23, 1974, a little before noon, Rachel Trlica, Renee Wilson, and Julie Ann Moseley set out to go Christmas shopping.

[3] The girls first headed to a surplus store in Fort Worth to pick up some layaway items that Renee had waiting.

[3] In subsequent decades, handwriting experts across the nation, including from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), have yielded inconclusive results as to the legitimacy of the letter.

Julie Ann Moseley's mother Rayanne stated, "I know my daughter and I know those other girls and they are not runaways.

"[9] Judy Wilson, Renee's mother, stated: "I could have told you that night that they didn't run away.

"[7] Not willing to give in, the families continued their search by distributing missing person fliers throughout the state and contacting newspapers across the country.

[11] Frustrated with the police investigation, the families decided to hire a private detective named Jon Swaim.

In August 1975, Swaim discovered that a 28-year-old man, who had worked for a local store where Rachel had applied for a job before her disappearance, was making a string of obscene phone calls in the area.

It was discovered that the man was using his position to obtain information from young women who had either submitted job applications or been listed as references.

In April 1975, Swaim went to Port Lavaca, Texas with 100 volunteers[3] to search under local bridges after receiving a tip that the girls had been killed and taken there.

For reasons that are unclear, the searchers focused on the small community of Rising Star, Texas, but nothing was ever found.

[3][dead link‍] In the spring of 1981, police investigators were called to a location in Brazoria County after human remains had been found in a swampy area.

The woman reported that she saw three girls being forced into a yellow pickup truck near Buddies grocery store at the mall.