Crime & Safety
ICYMI: Investigators Return to Mountain in 40-Year Search for Lyon Sisters
A convicted sex offender reportedly told police he took Sheila and Katherine Lyon from a mall in Wheaton almost 40 years ago.
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Investigators were back in the Taylor’s Mountain area in Bedford County, Va. this week in the search for the missing Lyon sisters, who have been missing for almost 40 years from Montgomery County.
Cpl. Rebecca Innocenti told Montgomery Community Media that officers and investigators from Montgomery County Police went to the area Monday afternoon. Bedford County Police and Virginia State Police were in the area of Taylor’s Mountain on Sunday.
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Authorities released no new information about the renewed effort to send officers to the site.
Last month, investigators said they believed the girls were taken by a convicted sex offender and later sexually assaulted by his uncle, according to court documents.
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The information was contained in search warrants executed as Montgomery County Police, the FBI and sheriff’s deputies search for traces of sisters Sheila Lyon, 12, and Katherine Lyon, 10, of Wheaton on Taylor’s Mountain. The area is the one-time home for convicted sex offender Lloyd Lee Welch, 58, and his uncle, Richard Allen Welch Sr., 69, who have been named persons of interest in the girls’ disappearance, say police.
The girls walked to Wheaton Plaza (now Westfield Wheaton Mall) on March 25, 1975, but never returned home, Patch previously reported.
The Washington Post cited documents that say Lloyd Welch told detectives he took the girls when he left the mall the day they disappeared, and that he later saw his uncle sexually assaulting one of the sisters.
“Our department and our partners in Virginia remain committed to determining what happened to Katherine and Sheila Lyon,” saidMontgomery Police Chief J. Thomas Manger last month. “We believe that there are people, including family members of Dick and Lloyd Welch, who have information that would further this investigation.”
In February 2014, police named Lloyd Lee Welch a person of interest in connection with the kidnapping of the Lyon sisters. Welch, who was charged with sex offenses against girls in several states, has been in a Delaware prison since 1997, according to police.
Montgomery County Police said that Welch was “noticed paying attention to the sisters the afternoon they disappeared.”
His uncle was named a second person of interest in the abductions in October 2014. The elder Welch was a security guard in the Wheaton area during the time of the sisters’ disappearance, Patch previously reported.
Investigators believe Richard Welch owned property at Taylor’s Mountain in the Thaxton area of Bedford County, WJLA TV reports.
Montgomery County Assistant Police Chief Russ Hamill Hamill said previously he thinks “there’s a good chance” the girls are on the mountain.
In an earlier letter to the Post, Lloyd Welch denied any involvement in the disappearance of the sisters. Richard Welch’s daughter told the newspaper the allegations are a lie.
Anyone with information about the case is asked to call Montgomery County Police at 240-773-5070.
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