Lyon Sisters Killer To Start Sentence For 1975 MD Murders: Report

MARYLAND — A man who pleaded guilty more than seven years ago to killing two girls after their 1975 abduction in Montgomery County will soon start serving his sentence for the crime, according to a WTOP report.

Lloyd Lee Welch pleaded guilty in September 2017 to killing 12-year-old Sheila Lyon and 10-year-old Katherine Lyon after they were abducted from Wheaton Plaza on March 25, 1975. As part of the global plea, Welch also pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting two girls in Prince William County, Virginia, in 1996. He was sentenced to serve 48 years in prison.

Before his arrest in the Lyon sisters case, Welch was already serving a 29-year sentence for assaulting one of the Prince William County girls when she lived in Delaware.

With his Delaware sentence nearing completion, WTOP reports the now 67-year-old will be transferred to Virginia to start serving his prison term for the Lyon sisters’ murders and the Prince William County sex crimes.

“It was a very long time coming, but justice, in some form, was finally served against Mr. Welch,” Wes Nance, a Virginia prosecutor who helped orchestrate the global plea in 2017, told WTOP in an interview.

It's unclear if a specific date has been set for the transfer.

Sheila and Katherine Lyon were the daughters of WMAL radio broadcaster John Lyon and his wife, Mary. They were in Montgomery County on Easter vacation when the abduction occurred, WTOP reported.

Detectives interviewed numerous witnesses and followed various tips. Hundreds searched stretches of woods for the sisters, but they did not turn up.

Authorities believe Welch burned the girls' bodies on a remote mountain in Bedford County, Virginia, where his family owned land. The bodies were never recovered, and the case laid cold for more than 40 years.

In a 2019 interview with The Washington Post, Welch denied harming the girls and said his uncle, Richard Welch Sr., a uniformed mall security guard, lured them. Richard Welch has denied all involvement in the case and has not been charged.

• RELATED: Lies, Bloody Crime Scene, Killer's Interview In Lyon Sisters Case

Periodically, a new team of detectives would re-examine the case, and Detective Chris Homrock came across an unfamiliar file. The file, according to the newspaper, was a six-page transcript of a statement by Welch, who was 18 at the time.

The Post said that Welch, a long-haired teenager with drug and alcohol problems, had contacted Montgomery County Police on April 1, 1975, and said he had witnessed the sisters' abduction. At the time, officers reportedly dismissed Welch's overly detailed account as an attempt to collect a reward.

Detective Dave Davis and Montgomery Deputy State's Attorney Pete Feeney traveled with Homrock in 2013 to the Delaware prison where Welch was serving his sentence. During later sessions, Welch admitted that he had helped kidnap Sheila and Kate, but said the crime had been planned and carried out by various relatives, The Post reported.

In 2014, detectives began investigating Welch's family, which had branches in Hyattsville and in the rural area of Thaxton, Virginia, a place the locals called Taylor's Mountain.

According to affidavits in the case, a relative of Welch told police that in the spring of 1975, Welch came by the house on Taylor's Mountain unexpectedly with a duffle bag of bloody clothes that he wanted the relative to launder, WUSA9 reported.

In another story published by The Post, a cousin, Henry Parker, also told detectives that he helped Welch burn two 60- to 70-pound duffle bags stained red and smelling of decay. The bags smelled like "death," Parker said in court documents.

While police had checked several Welch family members' homes, it was a house at 4714 Baltimore Ave. — the home where Welch's father, Lee, and his wife, Edna, had lived — that Davis visited and it matched every story Welch told detectives about a basement hangout with an exterior entry.

A forensics team using a blood-detection spray under a blue light in the back room of the basement found traces of blood "from floor to ceiling," The Post wrote. "It lit up like a murder scene. Someone or something had been slaughtered in this room."

Davis believed the sisters had been drugged, raped and imprisoned; and at least one of them had been killed and dismembered at the site.