Studio portraits commissioned by John and Mary Lyon. – Lewiston Morning Journal. 24 August 1975 edition, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=138339728
Is it really justice if the murderer goes free for 50 years? Is it really justice if the murderer is behind bars, but the bodies are never found and brought home?
Katherine and Sheila Lyon disappeared from a shopping center in Wheaton, Maryland, on March 25, 1975. The sisters were 10 and 12. This double kidnapping sparked one of the largest police investigations in the history of the Washington Metropolitan area.
It was the second day of their summer vacation, and the two girls decided to walk to the Wheaton Plaza Shopping Center to meet some friends, but they decided to stop off at the Orange Bowl to eat some pizza first. Eyewitnesses say the sisters were seen talking to an unidentified man outside the Orange Bowl. The girls had a curfew and needed to be home by 4:00 p.m., so shortly after 2:00, they left the shopping center, and witnesses saw them heading back towards their home. This is the last verified sighting of the sisters.
By 5:45 p.m., Mary Lyon was cooking dinner and starting to get annoyed because her daughters hadn’t returned home. That annoyance turned into panic by 7:00 p.m., and the police were called in. House-to-house searches were conducted, witnesses were interviewed, and tips poured in, but no one could find the two sisters.
The police theorized that it must have been a group of people working together to kidnap two children at the same time. They were looking for multiple suspects.
Over the years, the family threw themselves headlong into the investigation, doing everything they could to raise awareness about their missing children. Rewards were offered, hoaxes were dealt with, and missing person fliers were printed, yet no leads gave them the answers they needed.
Suspects:
#1: Tape Recorder Man:
A young boy who knew the sisters claimed to have seen them sitting on a bench outside the Orange Bowl speaking to a man. He said he was between 50 and 60 and wearing a brown suit. Strangely, he was also carrying a briefcase with a tape recorder inside. He also had a microphone that the children were enjoying speaking into. He claimed that they were speaking live on some local radio station. Of course, there was no radio station, and this was a clever ruse to get the children to pay attention to a stranger. The police ended up calling him the tape recorder man, but no one could identify him.
#2: A Younger Man:
A local girl told police that she actually saw the girls headed back towards the house but she also saw a younger long-haired man that was following them. The girl’s name was Danette Shae. She told the police that he had been staring at her and her friends so much that they got nervous and told him he should just take a picture it would last longer.
The police made composite sketches of the two men, but they chose to pay more attention to the older tape recorder man than the younger one. Leads came in, but they led nowhere.
After the composite drawing was released to the public, an 18-year-old man named Lloyd Lee Welch Jr went to the shopping center and informed the security guard that he had seen a man matching the description of the tape recorder man. He gave the police just enough information to sound credible. He also told them that he believed he saw the man force the children into a red Camaro with white upholstery before hurriedly leaving the scene.
The eyewitness provided a six-page report and consented to have a polygraph test done, but he failed it. He was released by the police and classed as unreliable. Unfortunately, he wasn’t just unreliable, he was responsible!
On May 23rd, 1975, the lieutenant governor, Blair Lee, ordered the National Guard to help search the County forest for the missing girls. Surely 122 soldiers could find the missing girls, but they found nothing.
2013 Reinvestigation:
Sergeant Chris Homrock looked into the cold case, trying to see any clues that could have been missed at the beginning. And boy, did he find them. At first, he noticed a mugshot taken of Lloyd Welch back in 1977. He had been arrested for a burglary. Strangely, his mugshot looked almost identical to the young man in the second composite sketch. Everyone had been so focused on the older, Tape Recorder Man, but they didn’t pay much attention to the younger one.
Then, when he realized Lloyd Welch had come in and given false statements, it was pretty obvious who was responsible. Welch did not come in to give a tip out of the goodness of his heart. No, he gave a tip that would send all of the attention towards someone else.
In the years since the girls disappeared, Welch had acquired a large, violent criminal history and was in prison. So, the sergeant scheduled an interview on October 16th, 2013. At first, Welch refused to speak, but eventually he would admit to playing a part in their kidnapping and murder, but he claimed somebody else actually killed the girls. Other members of his family were even suspected of helping to kidnap the girls.
In July of 2015, Welch was indicted for the first-degree murder of both girls. It is still unclear if any of his family were involved in the kidnapping or murders. Since his father is deceased, we may never know. Sadly, the bodies of these two beautiful young girls have never been found.
Synova’s Chasing Justice Video:
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