Why It Took 42 Years to Convict the Lyon Sisters’ Killer

In 1975, two sisters from suburban Wheaton, Md., disappeared. It took investigators more than 40 years to solve a case in which key evidence was right under their noses.

Sisters Katherine and Sheila Lyon stopped by Wheaton Plaza about a half-mile down the road on March 25, 1975, to check out the Easter decorations and meet some friends. Their mother, Mary, suggested they get some pizza before heading home. Their older brother, Jay, saw them enjoying a slice. Katherine, 10, and Sheila, 12, left the shopping center after 2 p.m., plenty of time before their mother wanted them home at 4 p.m. A neighbor waved at the girls as they passed by his house. 

It was nearly 6 p.m., and the sisters weren’t home yet. Mary was annoyed as she prepared dinner. By 7 p.m, her annoyance turned to panic and she notified the police. A massive search involving rescue dogs, scuba divers and planes combing through woodland, vacant buildings, ponds and storm sewers. A police officer was stationed in the family’s house for nearly a month pursuing tips. 

Within weeks, several extortion attempts were made. One caller said he would return the sisters in exchange for $10,000. The girls’ dad John placed a briefcase with $101—enough to qualify as a felony crime—inside a trash can at the Annapolis county courthouse. The man called the next morning and said he didn’t follow through because there were too many cops. He was reminded of the folly in choosing a courthouse as a drop-off point.

Another caller instructed John to stand outside the Orange Bowl pizza parlor, where the girls ate their last slice, holding $1,050.

A friend of the sisters told investigators that she noticed a young man with long hair staring at them, and police drew up a composite sketch. Witnesses said they saw an older man with a tape recorder talking to the girls at a bench near a pizza parlor. He became a suspect. 

One week after their disappearance, Lloyd Lee Welch claimed to have seen the sisters leave with the tape recorder man in a car. He took a polygraph, and police determined he was lying. 

By August, Mary lost hope and assumed her daughters were dead. The case went cold.

In 2013, Montgomery County Police deputy sergeant Chris Homrock was reviewing the case when he noticed a file on then-18-year-old Welch, the man who failed the polygraph test. Welch had a criminal record that began in 1973 and included offenses such as rape, domestic violence and assault with a knife. Homrock saw a picture of a young Welch and recalled the uncanny resemblance to the composite sketch of the long-haired man who supposedly leered at the girls. Welch was serving a 33-year sentence for molesting a 10-year-old girl in 1998. 

Welch was interviewed in prison. Although he gave contradictory accounts that implicated several Lyon family members, the consistent part of his story was that the Lyon sisters were abducted, raped and disposed of by fire. He eventually admitted to abducting them and claimed that he and an uncle sexually abused them but insisted that the uncle killed the girls. The uncle became a person of interest but was never charged. 

Welch’s cousin, Henry Parker, helped take out two Army-style duffle bags from the trunk of Welch’s car, according to Parker's affidavit. He said they smelled “like death” and were covered in red stains. Both bags were tossed into an open fire, a common way to burn trash in the area. The Lyon sisters' bodies have never been found.

“That was going to be one of the key features of this trial as we prepared it, finding witnesses who were still alive and willing to speak to us that could have corroborated parts of Lloyd Welch’s statements to law enforcement,” Bedford County Commonwealth Attorney Wes Nance tells A&E Crime + Investigation. “Part of it was this fire that ran extremely hot for several days, had the odor of death associated with it.”

Investigators searched the property with the open fire in 2014. No conclusive evidence was found. However, there was enough evidence that Welch pleaded guilty to the sisters’ abduction and murder. He was convicted in 2017 and sentenced to 48 years in prison.

“What astounded me was how impactful that crime was on that entire community. You would think that 40 years later it would be hard to find individuals that recalled it,” Nance says. “I think it was a seminal event for that portion of Maryland. So many people recall where they were when they heard about it, how they lost some innocence when the girls were abducted.”

While the case is closed, Nance would have liked for the Lyon family to find closure. 

“Some answers were uncovered for the family, but there’s still a lot of details and others’ participation that we weren’t able to [uncover],” Nance says. “I’m convinced that others assisted him in some form or fashion but not convinced who those individuals were. I’m proud of all of the agencies that came and worked together toward this common goal. I’m still not fully satisfied with what we were able to accomplish. I think we did all that we could and some mysteries, I guess, will remain unsolved.”