December 23, 1974: Seminary South Shopping Center in Fort Worth, Texas. Seventeen-year-old Rachel Trlica, fourteen-year-old Renee Wilson, and nine-year-old Julie Ann Moseley head out for last-minute gifts and promise to be home by late afternoon. By nightfall, their Oldsmobile sits locked in the lot with bags and receipts inside—proof of errands, not of exit. On Christmas Eve, a letter postmarked Fort Worth, written in a fast adult hand and signed only “Rachel,” claims the girls needed a break and headed to Houston. Families and investigators have never agreed on what the note means. In this episode, we rebuild the timeline from front door to parking space, analyze the letter as an artifact (authorship, phrasing, postmark), and map the witness accounts that hint at a brief encounter near a van. We place the case in its 1970s context—shopping-center security, fragmented policing, and the early days of media amplification—and we outline what modern tools could still do: hyperspectral imaging on the letter, photogrammetry of the lot sight lines, and targeted re-interviews. It’s a story framed by three constants: a car that didn’t explain itself, a note that never settled the room, and families who never stopped asking for the next true step.