Murders of Katherine and Sheila Lyon

Katherine Mary Lyon (aged 10), and Sheila Mary Lyon (aged 12) were sisters who disappeared without a trace during a March 25, 1975 trip to a shopping mall in the Wheaton, Maryland suburb of Washington, D.C.. Known colloquially as The Lyon Sisters, their case resulted in one of the largest police investigations in Washington Metropolitan Area history.

In 2013, a team of cold case investigators with the Montgomery County, Maryland, police made a break in the case. They focused on Lloyd Lee Welch, Jr., then serving a lengthy prison sentence in Delaware for child sexual abuse, the culmination of a long criminal record that had begun a few years after the girls' disappearance with a burglary arrest in their jurisdiction. In September 2017, Welch pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree murder for the abduction and murder of the two sisters. It had long been "one of the most high-profile unsolved cases in the D.C. area." The girls' remains have never been found.

Police records show that during the original investigation, Welch came forward a week after the girls' disappearance and falsely told a security guard at the shopping center visited by the girls (immediately before they disappeared) that he had witnessed another man abduct them there. The description Welch provided of the other man matched a description that newspapers and other media already had provided the public. According to that description, a conservatively dressed man had demonstrated a new type of audiocassette player at the shopping mall as children and teens, including the Lyon sisters, gathered near him. A short time after Welch told this story to the mall security guard trying to cast suspicion on the other man, he was questioned at a police station, failed a lie detector test, admitted he had lied, was released and was not questioned again until more than 38 years later.

During the reopening of the case, police discovered that a mug shot taken of Welch in 1977 bore a strong resemblance to a police sketch of a possible suspect who had been seen staring inappropriately at the Lyon sisters in the shopping mall. Detectives began interviewing Welch in prison; he made statements that further implicated him although he continued to protest his innocence. One of his relatives told them he had helped Welch burn two heavy, bloodied duffel bags in Bedford County, Virginia. In July 2015, Welch was indicted and charged with the girls' murders there; he pleaded guilty to murder two years later. His uncle is a person of interest as well.

Background to the sisters' disappearance

The two sisters were born to John and Mary Lyon in Kensington, Maryland. They had an older brother, Jay, who later became a policeman. Their father, John Lyon, was a well-known radio personality at WMAL, a local radio station then held by the owner of the ABC Television affiliate in Washington and the now-defunct Washington Star; he later worked as a victims' counselor. The sisters' disappearance continued to be featured in high-profile stories in the national media for months.

Located a half-mile away from their home was Wheaton Plaza shopping mall (now Westfield Wheaton). On March 25, 1975, Katherine and Sheila Lyon walked to the mall to see the Easter exhibits. It was their spring vacation and they planned to have lunch at the Orange Bowl, which was part of the mall. They left home between 11:00 AM and noon. Their mother had instructed them to return home by 4:00 PM; when they had not arrived by 7:00 PM, the police were called and an extensive search was conducted. Police felt comfortable enough with the accuracy of this timeline to release it to the public.

• 11:00 AM to Noon: The girls leave home.
• 1:00 PM: A neighborhood child sees both of the girls together outside the Orange Bowl speaking to an unidentified man, according to what he later tells investigators.
• 2:00 PM: The girls' older brother sees them at the Orange Bowl eating pizza together.
• 2:30 to 3:00 PM: A friend sees the girls walking westward down a street near the mall which would have been one of the most direct routes from the mall to their home. This is the final sighting of the sisters that is absolutely confirmed by the police.
• 4:00 PM: This curfew set by their mother passes. The girls are expected home and do not arrive.
• 7:00 PM: Police are called. The investigation and an active search by professionals begin.

Police investigation

Police were told by witnesses that the sisters were in the Wheaton Plaza mall at approximately 1 PM. A neighborhood boy, who knew the sisters, reported that he saw them together outside the Orange Bowl speaking with an unidentified man, about 6 feet tall, 50 to 60 years old, and wearing a brown suit. The man was carrying a briefcase with a tape recorder inside; there were also other children around who were speaking into a microphone he was holding. The witness's description of the man led authorities to view the unknown person as a prime suspect in the Lyon sisters' case and two composite sketches of the man were created.

Police investigating the case followed up on reports from several people who said they recognized the sketch of the unknown man with the briefcase. Press reports indicated that a man matching the sketch was seen a few weeks earlier at the Marlow Heights Shopping Center and the Iverson Mall, both in neighboring Prince George's County, Maryland. These people reported that he had approached several young girls and asked them to read an answering machine message typed on an index card into his hand-held microphone. The police never publicly acknowledged a direct link between these reports and the Lyon sisters' disappearance.

As the weeks wore on, numerous volunteer groups combed vacant lots and stream beds for the sisters. The search continued and press interest reached such a fever pitch that on May 23, 1975, Maryland Lt. Gov. Blair Lee ordered 122 National Guardsmen to participate in a search of a Montgomery County forest for the missing girls.

No trace of the girls was ever found.

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Justice for the Lyon Sisters

How a determined squad of detectives finally solved a notorious crime after 40 years

By Mark Bowden
APRIL 1, 2019

For decades, the disappearance of Sheila and Kate Lyon wasn’t just an enduring mystery; it was an unhealed regional trauma. On a March day in 1975, the sisters — daughters of a well-known Washington radio personality — had gone to Wheaton Plaza, a suburban Maryland shopping mall, on an innocent outing, and then vanished. They were never seen again, though the hunt for them was relentless and extensive. Police interviewed countless witnesses and followed hundreds of tips. Every stand of woods or weeds was searched. Storm sewers were explored, as was every vacant house for miles. The residents of a nearby nursing home were interviewed, one by one. Scuba divers groped through mud at the bottoms of ponds. Nothing was found. Nothing came of anything the police did.

I was a green 23-year-old reporter with the Baltimore News-American when the story broke. My job was to show up in the newsroom at 4 a.m. and phone every police barracks in the state, asking whether anything interesting had happened overnight.

When, on the morning of March 26, the desk officer in Wheaton told me about the missing children, I drove directly to the scene. This was a story that was sure to attract attention. Millions of families in the region lived in neighborhoods just like the Lyons’ in Kensington, Md., shooing their kids out the door in the morning and catching up with them at mealtimes, unconcerned about where they went. A story like this struck at suburbia’s idea of itself.

My first story ran two days after the girls vanished, under the headline “100 Searching Woods for 2 Missing Girls.” It had photos of 12-year-old Sheila, in blond pigtails and glasses, and 10-year-old Kate, with her blond hair cut in a cute bob. As days passed with no good news, the tale turned grimmer. In my newspaper the story was still on the front page at the end of the week: “Hope Fades in Search for Girls.” But in time, as nothing happened, the story moved off the front page and then out of the news completely, overtaken by fresh outrages.

As the decades passed I wrote thousands more stories, big ones and small ones. I raised five children of my own. I became a grandfather — of two little blond-haired girls, as a matter of fact. To me, the Lyon story was sad and beyond understanding. Few haunted me as this one did.

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Mark Bowden is an award-winning journalist and author. This article is adapted from his most recent book, “The Last Stone: A Masterpiece of Criminal Interrogation,” published this month by Atlantic Monthly Press.

Credits: Story by Mark Bowden. Designed by Christian Font.