Criminology - The Lyon Sisters

Episode Date: August 7, 2022

In 1975, 2 sisters, 10-year-old Katherine Lyon and 12-year-old Sheila Lyon, disappeared in Wheaton, Maryland. The sisters had gone to the local mall to see the Easter decorations and eat lunch, but they never made it home. A number of people came forward to report that they had seen the two girls. One man even came forward, saying that he saw the sisters being abducted and put into a car. But, he later admitted that he was lying. There were fake ransom demands from people preying on the grief and agony that the parents were experiencing. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss the infamous case of the Lyon sisters. A number of suspects emerged over the years, including one man that the police dubbed "the tape recorder man" who had been seen with the sisters at the mall. It took many decades, but the police finally zeroed in on a man who crossed their path early in the investigation. And it was this man, Lloyd Welch, that turned about to be the culprit behind what happened to the Lyon sisters. You can help support the show at patreon.com/criminology An Emash Digital production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Bad hair. Leaning. Hi, everyone. This is Kimberly. And this is Katie. And we have a weekly podcast called A Date With Dateline, a recap of Dateline episodes. We talk about important issues like grainy surveillance footage, cell phone towers, Andrea Canning's white jeans, and Mankees-Hankies. We delve into the details of any victim who's ever loved life or lit up a room.

So find us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook. Facebook and iTunes to make a date with Dateline. And remember, don't watch alone. A Date with Dateline is a podcast hosted by two professional amateur true crime TV experts with no formal training but evidence lockers filled with snark and uninformed opinions. Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised. Everyone and welcome to episode 218 of the Criminology podcast.

I'm Mike Ferguson. And I'm Mike Morford. Mr. Mike Morford, what is going on with you, man? Getting the kids ready to go back to school and just getting some quiet time back in the house. What's new with you? Yeah, I'm kind of in the same boat. My wife is a teacher, so she's, you know, making her preparations. The kids are making their preparations.

And, you know, I love it when they're home during the summer. It's awesome. But podcasting-wise, not so great because of the scheduling and all of that. It's much easier when they go back to school and kind of have some dedicated time where nobody else is in the house. Yeah, your kids are a little bit older. So if you say, hey, I'm recording. Can you keep it down? They usually will.

But my kids, as soon as I say that, they start banging on stuff and screaming at each other. And it's like, ah. So, yeah, as much as I like having them home during the summer, that quiet time to get some work done is always a good thing, too. Yep, little life behind the scenes, right? Yeah. Hey, let's go ahead and give our Patreon shoutouts. we had Al Reed, Lisa Hobson jumped out at our highest level. We had Shea, Kaylee Curry jumped out at our highest level, Anthony Rubino, and Sean

Eagles. So that's a lot of great new support. We really appreciate it. Yeah, thank you so much. That support goes a long way. And for anyone that's out there wanting to support criminology, you can do so by going to patreon.com slash criminology. All right, Morph, let's go ahead and jump into this episode.

and today we're talking about a case out of the Wheaton, Maryland area that shocked that community back in 1975 and stumped investigators for decades until it was finally solved. We're talking about the abduction and murders of two sisters, 10-year-old Catherine Lion and 12-year-old Sheila Lion. This case is commonly referred to as the Lion's sisters. Wheaton Plaza and Wheaton, Maryland, had its grand. opening celebration on March 31st, 1960. It drew a lot of people to it, and it was big. In fact, it was the sixth largest shopping center in the United States at the time and saw over 400,000 people passed through its doors in the very first week of its existence. The main walkway through the plaza was open to the elements, though it would later be enclosed when the mall was expanded and a second level

was added. There was a fountain toward the end of the main walkway where there was another row of shops. The plaza was built on land that had once been reserved for residential use, so there were only homes to its south and west borders. It quickly became a convenient place for those who lived nearby to get medicine or pet supplies, as well as a hotspot for the typical mall activity, buying clothes, records, and hitting the food court or restaurant. This area is very suburban, with lots of houses and green space, but not a lot of businesses. Before Wheaton Plaza existed, you'd likely go a few miles south to downtown Silver Springs. spring and do your shopping there. Even looking today, if you live near Westfield Wheaton, which it's currently called, you'd have to drive into the District of Columbia for the nearest

Starbucks, Walmart, or Home Depot. It's easy to see why it was such a popular destination. In 1975, 15 years after the grand opening, the mall at Wheaton Plaza was just as popular as it was when it opened. The big anchor stores at the time were Montgomery Ward and Woodward and Woodward and Lothrop on opposite ends of the mall. In the spring of 75, there was a display set up for Easter near the fountain at the mall. Children were out of school for their spring or Easter vacations and many spent their days at Wheaton Plaza. And more of I don't know how it is where you live, but around me, malls have suffered a lot.

They've really kind of, you know, gone downhill. I don't know if that has to do with COVID. Amazon. I'm sure there's a host of factors, but malls are dropping like flies around where I live. But I remember, you know, when I was younger, this sense of awe. You know, when you walked into the mall, it was grand. There was people everywhere. And then especially around Easter or Christmas when they had the bunny. And then they've got, you know, Santa Claus. And you get to sit on somebody's lap and, and get your picture taken. It was just kind of a really cool thing.

Yeah, I think you're probably dating yourself with some of that stuff. Some of the younger listeners are probably, what's he talking about? But I sort of reminisce about it the same way you do, the train tracks at Christmas going around the mall and waiting in line to see San or the Easter bunny get your pictures taken. So I've been down here in Florida now for a couple of years. I haven't really explored the malls around here,

not that there are a lot of them, but before I moved down here from Jersey, the malls were sort of fading away and becoming a thing of the past. So I think it's definitely when you talk about this case and describe this mall, it's definitely got some throwback for some of the older listeners. On March 25th, Sisters Catherine and Sheila Lyon planned an outing at the plaza where they wanted to eat lunch and see the Easter displays. It was at Wheaton Plaza, just a half a mile from the lion home or somewhere along that route to the home, which was located in the 3000 block of Plyers Mill Road in Kensington, where something terrible would happen to the two young sisters. 12-year-old Sheel and 10-year-old Catherine lived in their Plyers Mill Road home with their older brother Jay, who was 15, and their parents, John and Mary Lion. John was a well-known disc jockey for WMAL Radio, a D.C. area radio station, and Mary was a homemaker. Life for the Lion family was uneventful, and their community considered a safe one.

Between 11 a.m. and noon on March 25, 1975, Catherine and Chil left their house and walked toward Wheaton Plaza. They had their day planned out. They were going to eat lunch at Orange Bowl, a pizza restaurant. They had also planned to see the Easter Bunny and walk around the mall before heading back home. At around 2 p.m., the girl's older brother, Jay, was also hanging out at the plaza. And he saw Sheila and Catherine at Orange Bowl, where they were eating pizza. And everything seemed fine. Sometime between 2.30 and 3 p.m., Sheila and Catherine were seen by one of their friends. They were easy to spot.

Both of them were blonde, Catherine with a shorter hairstyle, and Sheila with long hair and glasses. They were seen by this friend of theirs walking down west. Drum Avenue near Devon Place away from the mall and back toward their home. Mary Lyon had instructed the sisters to be home before 4 p.m. And based on the sighting of them, it seemed as though they were on track to get home by that time. But they never showed up. At first, it seemed like the girls maybe had lost track of time, as children sometimes do when they're having fun. But by 7 p.m., it was clear that there was something wrong and John and Mary

Lyon decided to call the police. The Montgomery County Police Department were contacted just after 7 p.m. And the girls were officially reported as missing. They were too young to be considered runaways and it was quickly established

that they would have only had about a maximum of $4 between them and they hadn't taken any clothing or belongings with them, which pretty much ruled out a voluntary disappearance in the eyes of the police. Police searched the neighborhood, along with local residents, but found no sign of the

sisters. And by 8.30 p.m., it was clear to them that the girls wouldn't be found that night. And the search was concluded for the night. Police quickly developed a timeline based on witnesses that saw the lion's sisters. At 1 p.m., Catherine and Sheila were outside of Orange Bowl. Another child who lived in their neighborhood had seen them in their talking to a man. This man was tall, about six feet, white, and he was older, maybe 50 or 60. He was wearing a brown suit and carrying a briefcase, which had a tape recorder in it.

He was holding a microphone that the lion sisters, along with other children, were talking into. Early on, this man became the main suspect in their disappearance, and police were eager to ID him. An hour after the girls were seen talking to this man, they were fine. They were eating pizza at 2 p.m. at the Orange Bowl. where their older brother saw them. Although the girls were fine at 2 p.m. After their interaction with a strange man, police were still interested in him.

And two sketches were made of this man, who would come to be referred to by many as the tape recorder man. But as much as police were interested in identifying tape recorder man, another friend of Sheila and Catharines told investigators about a different, suspicious man. This man, a white male in his late teen, or possibly into his early 20s had been staring at the sisters for so long and in such a manner that their friend actually spoke to him. He had been poorly dressed. He had long hair

and acne on his face. Police also made a sketch of this man based on the girl's description, but it was not spread as widely as the tape recorder man's sketches were. Police seemed more focused on him. The man in the suit with the tape recorder was also spotted at two different places, the Iverson Mall and the Marlow Heights Shopping Center, asking young girls to talk into a microphone as they read a note, typed onto an index card. It was said to be some sort of answering machine message that they were reciting. So you got a couple of people here that police are interested in, but it definitely sounds as though they were more focused on tape recorder man and i get why that is you know more if you think about what this guy is doing coming up to young children young girls

and asking them to talk into a microphone read something off of an index card okay why you know that's the question that you have to ask what's the motive here because I'm telling you right now, man, if I'm at the mall with my, you know, young children back when they were young, not that they probably would have been too far out of my side, but if I look over and I see a man, you know, 40s, 50, 60s, pretty much man on the street interviewing them, I'm going to have some questions for that individual. There's probably no way to know if this guy was just some innocent shopper at the mall or someone that was legitimately being friendly but outwardly that definitely can look like a creeper, someone that's hanging around kids. And we see a lot of times,

especially in what we cover and what we do, that monsters sometimes are disguising themselves to get the attention of kids and let their guard down. They'll dress up as clowns. They'll have puppies, they'll have candy, things that they think kids will be interested in. That's how they approach them. So the question is, was this guy some kind of predator that was using that as some kind of ploy, or was he just a nice guy that was coming off as some kind of creep? About one week after the girls disappeared, a teenager named Lloyd Welch told him all security guard that he had seen Sheila and Catherine with the tape recorder man. He claimed that the man had forced both girls into his car.

18-year-old Welch said he had not found it suspicious until reports of the Lion's disappearance had made the news. The description of the tape recorder man had also been published during this time between their disappearance and Welch's report. Montgomery County Police took the sighting seriously and interviewed Welch, but he failed a polygraph examination regarding his statement of events

and he immediately admitted that he had lied about witnessing their abduction, and he was sent home without facing any charges. to police, it seemed like a young man who was seeking attention. And they said about getting back to investigating the sister's disappearance. And I sometimes wonder if what we do, the research and, you know, all of the things that we look into, you know, week in, week out jades us. So when we have a story like this where, you know, there's an individual who a lot of people would say seems to be shady. Do we go overboard?

Do we automatically think because of, you know, all of the stuff that we research that, okay, this guy's up to something? Well, it definitely seems the police were interested in this guy for sure. And they probably got excited when they got this statement from Welch, only to find out that it was not true. And then there's that subject, right? Why would someone come forward claiming that they have information, and in this instance, very specific information,

this man abducted these two girls, put them into his car. Then only later to say or admit that he lied about it. Okay. I think you have to ask the question. What's the motivation there? Is it attention seeking? Or is it something deeper?

Is it something more sinister? So police got back to, investigating the lion's sister's disappearance, but unfortunately there was still no sign of Sheila or Catherine Lyon and no new leads had come in. Authorities were still unsure where exactly the girls had even disappeared from. James Mann, who lived in Kensington Heights, recalled saying hello to Sheila and Catherine on their way home from the plaza. Man's house at the corner of Drum Avenue and Devon Place is just over half a mile away from the lion home using the streets that exist today. Some of the wooded area between Jennings Road and where they were last seen near Drum Avenue

and Devon Place has been developed since 1975. What is now Drum Court didn't exist back then. And you couldn't drive all the way down Drum Avenue. You could only walk a path between the two segments of Road. The sisters were seen. just minutes away from their home. So with mansiding, that made two different people who saw the sisters walking near Drum Avenue and Devon Place. On April 4th, just a week and half after the girls vanished, their parents received an anonymous phone call, instructing their father,

John Lyne, to put $10,000 into a briefcase and leave it in a bathroom inside the Annapolis Maryland courthouse. Since John was a public personality on WMAL, the disappearance of the lion's sisters was covered heavily in the media, and police knew that this opened the door to hoaxers. Unable to be sure what was a prank and what might be a legitimate clue, the authorities told John to leave a briefcase with not $10,000 in it, but rather $101 in the briefcase. This dollar amount was the amount needed to classify its theft as a felony. John did as instructed, but no one came to pick up the suitcase. The man called John back, informing him that there had been too heavy a law enforcement presence at the courthouse and wanted to set up a second collection

attempt. John Lyon told the man that in order for him to cooperate with a second money drop, he would need to hear Sheila and Catherine's voices and make sure they were okay. After hearing John Lyon's demand, the man hung up and never called back. Sadly, this was just one of many phone calls to the lines apparently trying to extort money from the desperate parents. And you said sadly, Morp, and I do think it is sad, because you know, here you have a family who's going through an unimaginable amount of grief. They don't know where their daughters are. And you have individuals who are praying on that grief and, you know, hope for the return

of their daughters by trying to extort money from them. Or, you know, in some cases we do, you have individuals who call just to mess with family. who are going through this type of crisis. It makes me sick to my stomach to think that, you know, someone would would do something like that on top of the sick feeling I get regarding, you know, the person who has done whatever they have done to these sisters. Yeah, and I think it's a interesting phenomenon that that happens. And it's, it happens now in recent cases and it happened, has happened,

going way back into early true crimes that are documented where someone will come forward and with false pretenses for one reason or another. But I think from the police standpoint, they have to consider all of these because you never know if one of these calls is actually going to be some kind of clue that helps solve the case. Yeah, I don't think you, by any stretch, can just dismiss everything as a hoax or, you know, not give it any amount of merit at all. You have to pretty much consider everything seriously. On April 7th, around 7.30 a.m., someone in Manassas, Virginia, claimed to have seen two young

girls, possibly Sheila and Catherine, bound and gagged in the back of a 1968 beige Ford station wagon, being driven by a man who matched the description of the tape recorder man. The witness was able to give a partial license plate number as they had followed the man after seeing the girls in the car. However, the license plate was bent so that the full tag could not be seen. And according to the eyewitness, when the man driving the wagon realized that the witness was following them, he took off running a red light. The car was last seen headed towards Interstate 66 from Route 234. Authorities and the media immediately focused their attention on Manassas, Virginia.

40 miles southwest of Wheaton, Maryland, databases were poured through, looking for the partial license plate number to match any station wagon. Nothing came from it. And eventually the account was dismissed as unreliable. Maryland's lieutenant governor, Blair Lee, enacted a search of a, forced in Montgomery County on May 23rd, 1975, ordering 122 members of the National Guard to search. It's not known what caused the search to be done in that area or why it was done at that time, but there wasn't a trace of evidence found that pointed to the whereabouts of Sheila and Catherine

Lyne. Tips and leads were few and far between, and area of residents were hesitant to let their kids go out unsupervised. It wasn't until November, 1977, that a possible suspect was identified, A man named Raymond Moleski killed his wife and one of their sons and injured his other son at their home in Suitland, Maryland. The home was near the Iverson Mall in the Marlow Heights Shopping Center in Prince George's County, where the tape recorder man had been spotted. Moleski was sentenced to 40 years in prison for the murders of his family, and after which, he claimed he had information about the Lion's disappearance.

He wanted better conditions in prison in exchange for sharing his information. In April, 1982, authorities searched the home where Moleski had lived in 1975. There was no evidence of the lion's sisters found in the house and eventually police dismissed his claims. In 2004, Moleski died while still in prison. And here again, something else that we see time and time again in cases. Someone is arrested for, you know, some type of heinous offense. And lo and behold, they just happen to have information. about a pretty infamous unsolved case.

So, you know, just like with everything else, you have to look at their motives. Could they be telling the truth? Sure. But could there be, you know, a motive to lie? Well, in this case, yeah, it probably was because they wanted something special. You know, Henry Lee Lucas wanted strawberry milkshakes. Yeah, I think these guys are in prison for these terrible crimes

and are looking at life in there anyways. have nothing to lose by copping to something else if it gets them better treatment or more perks. In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. I wonder what's emergency. We just walked in the door and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until new technology allowed investigators to do what had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020. Blood and water. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts. In 1979 in North Carolina, Fred Howard Coffey sexually assaulted and murdered a 10-year-old girl.

At the time of Sheila and Catherine's disappearance, Coffee was interviewing for jobs in Silver Spring, Maryland, including one interview on March 31st, just six days after the sisters were last seen. He had been the main suspect in other cases that involved the use of metal detectors and fishing poles to try to lure kids. The use of props to lure victims struck a chord with investigators bringing to mind the tape recorder man who had seemingly gotten the attention of some kids, including the lion's sisters. The MO seemed to fit. However, due to a lack of evidence, coffee was never named. a suspect in the disappearance of Catherine and Sheila Lyon, but he was convicted in 1987 of the attack and murder almost a decade earlier in North Carolina and sentenced to life

in prison. He initially received a death sentence, but it was overturned and replaced with a sentence of life in prison. Investigators also looked closely at a man named John Brennan Crutchley, not only for the Lion's disappearance, but for the murder of 15-year-old Kathy Lynn Beatty in July 1975. Kathy had gone missing from nearby Aspen Hill, Maryland, just a few miles north of Wheaton Plaza. She was found clinging to life in the woods the next day, but she was injured so badly that she died 11 days later in the hospital. She had been sexually assaulted and beaten, left for dead in the rain. In 1977, Crutchley had become a suspect in the disappearance and later the murder of his girlfriend, 25-year-old Deborah Fitzjohn, from Fairfax,

County, Virginia. She was last seen alive at the trailer park he was living in, and her body was subsequently found the next year. There was no evidence to tie Crutchley to her death, as by the time she was found, only her skeleton was left. In November 1985, Crushley was arrested for a different attack, this time in Malabar, in Florida's Brevard County. He had strangled a young female hitchhiker, until she was unconscious and tied her up on his kitchen counter. He filmed his attack on her, which included not just a sexual assault, but drawing her blood with a needle and drinking it. He moved her to his bathtub, still bound at the ankles and wrists where he repeated

the attack against sexually assaulting her, drawing her blood, and then drinking it. Crutchley left her in the tub, warning her that if she tried to get out, before he got back to take more blood, his brother would murder her. Amazingly, the woman was able to escape out the bathroom window where a passing driver stopped to help her. Doctors at the hospital discovered that Crutchley had drawn at least 40% of the young woman's blood and one more attack would have killed her from the loss of blood. Authorities obtained a search warrant and entered Crutley's home. at 2.30 a.m., taking photographs and searching for evidence. There was a video camera,

but the tape had been erased. Photos of the scene taken by investigators showed a large stack of credit cards and also many women's necklaces hidden in his closet, but neither were collected during the search. By the time investigators did a second sweep of the scene at a later date, the credit cards and jewelry were gone. Crutchley pleaded guilty to kidnapping and sexual assault in June 1986 as part of a plea deal in which prosecutors would drop the charge of grievous bodily harm for drawing so much blood during the assault. Crutchley was sentenced to 25 years to life, and it was also established that if he was ever released, he'd face 50 years of parole.

So obviously this Crutchley guy was clearly bad news. He was an absolute predator. Authorities, namely FBI profiler, Robert Ressler, suspected Crutchley of the murders of multiple women in Brevard County, as well as the murders and disappearances of women in Pennsylvania at a time when Cushley had been living there.

Although Cushley was clearly a monster, there was nothing connecting him to the Lion's Disappearance, and he was never charged in relation to their case, nor was he charged with the murder of Kathy Bady. Cutchley died in prison of apparent

autoerotic affixiation gone wrong. In March 2002 at the age of 55. Every passing decade brought fresh eyes and new investigators looking into the lion case. In 2013, Sergeant Chris Homrock was combing through the case files, something he had done many times before. This time, he found a document that he had never seen before, and it caught his attention. It was a transcript of Lloyd Welch's interview from the week after the girl's disappearance. Welch was the 18-year-old who had falsely claimed

to have seen the lion's sisters abducted by the tape recorder man. The document's cover sheet, a summary read, lied in bold letters. Looking into the young man who had provided false information, he found a mugshot of Welch from the 1970s, and Sergeant Homrock realized that Welch looked an awful lot like one of the composite sketches from 1975. Interestingly, part of Welch's statement included describing a man with a limp. Raymond Moleski, who had killed his wife and son in Suitland, Maryland, had died in prison,

but he had never been ruled out as a suspect in the disappearance of the lion sisters. Raymond Moleski had a limp. Investigators wondered if Welch had witnessed the crime after all or even possibly participated in helping Moleski kidnap the girls. Sergeant Homrock found that Welch's criminal history after 1975, was disturbing and included convictions in three different states for the sexual assault of a young girl. Sergeant Homrock wanted to look into Welch a little closer, and fortunately he was pretty easy to find. Welch was in prison in Delaware serving a 29-year sentence at the time for one of the

assaults. Starting on October 6, 2013, detectives interviewed Lloyd Welch for eight total hours. When Welch started talking, he didn't stop. The interview's transcript is 232 pages. He told a few different stories before coming clean. At first, he said he only saw someone else abduct the girls and put them into a car. A second story was that he saw Catherine crying in someone's car and then saw both sisters at someone's house, drugged, and being sexually assaulted. In this version, he ran from the house when one of them screamed. A third story was that his cousin was responsible for for their abduction. Eventually, he admitted that he was involved with planning the abduction with his relatives and claimed that he and his girlfriend, Helen Craver, had kept an eye on the

sisters after they had been kidnapped. The details and stories from Welch left the investigator's head spinning. They didn't know what the thing, but they knew that they needed to look at Welch closer. And more if, you know, I talked about it earlier when I said, what would the reason be for this guy to come forward and say that he saw something that ultimately turned out not to be true, something that he admitted, he lied about. Well, now we're seeing what the motive was. He came forward, at least in my eyes, to try to throw the investigators off his trail. And I think that's a tactic that has been used by many over the years. But it's something I don't completely understand. I would understand it more if you thought or knew that the authorities

were looking at you. But just to willingly come in, I think, you know, some of these individuals are not thinking things through because they're really placing themselves on police radar when they may have never ended up on there at all. Yeah, and I think sometimes it's a case of these people that do this stuff wanting to insert themselves in the case, maybe see what investigators know or just some kind of thing that drives them to do it when staying silent and staying away from the police is probably their smartest move they could do. Yeah. And a lot of times I think, you know, some of these individuals think that they're smarter than what they are. They have this puffed up ego or, you know, thought or sense of their own intelligence that may not match

reality. Now, we're glad in a lot of cases that that's true because it ultimately leads to a lot of people's downfalls where if they didn't have that had not inserted themselves into the situation, they may have gotten away with their crimes. In February 2014, almost 40 years after the lion's sisters vanished, authorities officially and publicly named Lloyd Welch, who, was now at that point 57 years old as a person of interest in their disappearance. After this, relatives noticed that Lloyd's uncle, Richard Welch, and Richard's wife, Patricia, had visited the Bedford, Virginia area multiple times unexpectedly. According to the Washington Post, Richard and Patricia were extremely interested

in what information their relatives had provided to the investigators. In a July 2014 interview, Lloyd Welch started to settle on his final version of accounts to police. This time, he told investigators that he had seen his uncle, Richard Welch, who was 29 years old. At the time, the girls vanished, sexually assault one of the sisters. Now, it's unclear which sister this was. Finally, in May 2015, Lloyd Welch claimed that he had witnessed the murder of Catherine, the younger of the Lion Sisters. The story from Lloyd Welch had many twist and turns, and was a long time coming.

Ultimately, he admitted that he was with the Lion Sisters in a car on March 25, 1975. He claimed that his uncle, Richard, had kidnapped the girls and that he and a minor relative, 10-year-old Thomas Welch Jr., had been in the car with him when his uncle abducted the girls. He also claimed that Richard dropped him off close to his house, driving off with the sisters still in his car. The next day, he visited his uncle Richard at his home and saw him sexually assaulting one of the sisters. Lloyd Welch said he left his uncle's home and never saw either girl again.

Investigators were able to piece together the truth using Lloyd Welch's lies because in each story, he just altered different versions of the truth. He would substitute an unidentified person or a family member for himself and a friend's house or his uncle's house for his own. In September 2014, investigators searched a wooded area in Thaxton, Virginia, 250 miles away from Wheaton, Maryland. They also searched Lloyd Welch's parents' home in Hyattesville, Maryland, where in 1975, Lloyd had lived in the basement, which was described by the Washington Post as two rooms completely cut off from the house above, where you could do whatever you wished.

in this space without being seen or hurt. Police found evidence of blood in the basement, and tests revealed that it was human blood, but the DNA was too degraded for any matches. Authorities spoke to Lloyd Welch's cousin, Henry Parker, who had shocking information. Parker recalled that in 1975, he went to Towers Mountain Road in the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia,

where Richard Allen Welch, Sr., and Elizabeth Parker, Lloyd Welch's aunt and uncle owned parcels of land. Multiple members of Lloyd Welch's family, but not Lloyd himself, lived on the mountain. They sold their property and moved away in 2012, that day when Henry Parker saw him. Henry Parker revealed that Lloyd Welch showed up at the property unexpectedly one day, and that he had helped Lloyd move large duffel bags from his car and throw them into a fire. The bags, according to Parker, were stained red, and smelled terrible. He said they were heavy, 50 pounds each. Another one of Welch's cousins

recalled a duffel bag full of bloody clothes, which Lloyd Welch said he used to carry ground beef, explaining away the blood and the smell. Neighbors to the property also recalled that day back in 1975. This day where Henry Parker said he helped Lloyd Welch throw heavy duffel bags into a fire, they backed Parker's story up. Some of these neighbors remembered the fire and they said, it smelled terrible. And according to the York Daily record, some said it had the stench of death and that it lasted four days. So I'm going to take a step back more and talk about this, right? You have a family member who kind of shows up out of the blue. That happens, right? They just might want to say hello. they might want to, you know, talk, reminisce, whatever.

But to have one show up with two duffel bags, heavy duffel bags, stained in red, a bunch of clothes stained red with, with what, you know, had to look like blood. Now you're getting into the realm of the bazaar. Me personally, I would be asking a lot of questions. It sounds like they did ask some questions and Lloyd tried to explain it away. by saying he had carried a bunch of ground beef. And that's why there was so much blood. And that resulted in the smell.

Okay. My follow-up question would be, in what capacity are you carrying so much ground beef? Was this guy a butcher? Did he work in a butcher shop? What's going on? Yeah, it just sounds unbelievable on top of the fact that he has already lied to police about the case.

He's already connected to the case and all of a sudden he's showing up. at this family's property 250 miles away from the crime scene with these mystery bags throwing them into a fire. It just doesn't add up. It sounds like a bunch of BS. Yeah, I don't know. It's it's unclear to me, especially from the research. What, if anything, you know, some of these family members knew about this case, about, you know, Lloyd's involvement in the fact that he had lied already in this case that occurred, what, 250 miles away. But I still think you have to question, you know, what's going on? Yeah, I don't know. Just, you know, we hear about these crazy things that happen and all of us sometimes say, or most of us would probably say,

how could he not ask questions? How could they not want enough? If a relative or a friend or anyone showed up at my house and said, hey, I've got these bags. I don't want you to look in here. Don't ask questions. I'm just going to burn them in a fire in your backyard. I'm sorry, I'm going to ask questions. But as we know, from some of these cases, not everyone does. Authorities searched areas of Taylor's Mountain Road multiple times digging and scouring the dirt for evidence. During one of the searches, though it's unclear which search, a tooth was found in the dirt. No DNA or dental record match has been reported.

It's unclear if any testing was ever done as the tooth apparently disappeared from police custody before any forensic testing could ever be completed. Bones or bone fragments were also uncovered during one of the searches of the Towers Mountain property. The search was complicated by an old, unkempt cemetery with over two dozen unmarked graves that existed on the property. A cadaver dog was said to have given an alert signal away from the cemetery area, raising the possibility that any remains found away from the graves may belong to the lion's sisters. Ashes were also found on the property, and by looking at satellite photographs, investigators noticed what was listed in court documents as an unusual anomaly on the property. This was likely to be a garden, and a garden is where one of the witnesses remembered the ashes from a large fire in 1975 had been dumped on the property.

Court documents also show that Welch was involved in multiple incidents that seemed very similar to the Lion's Sisters disappearance. In the spring of 1975, two girls got into Welch's car near Wealthe. Wheaton Plaza, only to become extremely uncomfortable and afraid. When they tried to get out of the car, the door handles didn't work. They rolled down the windows and were able to open the door from the outside to escape. Also in the spring of 1975, Welch approached a 12-year-old girl at Wheaton Plaza Mall and claimed that he was a police officer working undercover. He told the girl that he saw her brother shoplift a transistor. radio from the record store they were standing outside of and that if she came with him toward the

parking lot there wouldn't be any trouble she said she should get her mom but welch told her that she didn't need to bother her there wouldn't be any trouble and they could talk about it without her mom thinking quickly the girl yelled to her brother who ran over she asked him about to transistor radio, patting him down, even checking his pockets. But there was nothing. She turned to talk to Welch again, but he was gone. Apparently, Welch was very active in the spring of 1975 and up the no good. Because that same spring, Welch approached a young woman working at the Orange Bowl,

the pizza place that the lion sisters had gone to that March. And he told her that he was a security guard. He attempted to assault her, but she escaped. All of this terrible stuff by Lloyd Welch is on top of the multiple incidents involving both the physical and sexual assault of minors and young women spanning multiple states. Maryland, Delaware, Arizona, Virginia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Minnesota, as well as Washington, D.C. Lloyd Welch had been employed as a carnival worker traveling around the country, coming to a new town and disappearing days later. As a roaming serial predator, he could have countless victims. On December 5th, 2014, Patricia Welch, Lloyd Welch's aunt, and Richard Welch's wife testified in front of the Bedford Grand Jury regarding the Lion's disappearance.

The testimony was sealed, but she was charged with and found guilty of perjury for whatever she disclosed. Thomas Welch, Jr., who was just 10 years old, when the Lion's sisters displeasure, but she was, disappeared has admitted doubt that his uncle Richard Welch could have harmed the girls. He told the Washington Post, I still don't feel in my heart that my uncle had anything to do with this. About his cousin Lloyd Welch, though, he told the post, if Lloyd did it, I hope he fries for this. Lloyd Welch's cousin, Patricia Ann Welch, who was eight years old when the lion sisters disappeared and when Lloyd is claiming that her father killed them, believes that Lloyd and only Lloyd is responsible,

saying to WTOP news, I think he did it 100%. Lloyd has done it to other people. That's what he's in jail for. I think a lot of cases we see family members that come to the defense of people and say, I don't think he could do this and they stick by them. And in Lloyd Welch's case,

it seems like the opposite, the family members that talk to the news outlets are saying that they think he did it and he alone did it. Well, but he's also trying to, you know, shift the blame from himself to another relative. So, you know, at that point, you got to pick a side. Man, it seems pretty clear that that side wasn't Lloyd's. On July 10, 2015, Lloyd Lee Welch Jr. was indicted on charges of abduction with intent to defile and murder Catherine and Sheila Lyon. Instead of going to trial, Welch took a plea deal.

If he had gone to trial, as reported by the Washington Post, it would have represented the longest known duration between someone's disappearance and a nobody trial in U.S. history. In September 2017, 60-year-old Lloyd Welch pleaded guilty to the murders of Sheila and Catherine Lyon. He received the sentence of 48 years in prison on top of his previous 10-year sentence in Delaware. One week later, he also pleaded guilty to two counts of aggravated sexual battery in Prince William County, Virginia. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison to be served at the same time as the 48 years for the murders of the lion's sisters.

Welch would later tell a reporter, Mark Bowden of the Washington Post that he was innocent, saying, just because a person pleads guilty to something doesn't mean they are guilty of it. He went on to be clear, I did not murder or murder. kidnap them girls. He insisted that his uncle Richard, who had worked as a security guard, was the one who would have been able to take two little girls out of the mall, kicking and screaming. However, Lloyd Welch asked that same reporter, tauntingly,

I'll bet it seemed like the perfect crime, didn't it? Referring to the fact that he went completely unsuspected for almost four decades. Lloyd Welch had only allowed this reporter to visit him in prison in hoping. of negotiating a $5,000 payment into his prison account, as well as other unspecified terms. And it's hard to take anything he said seriously. He spilled a lot, even without the reporter paying anything and without a formal interview about the lion sisters or the crime itself. When his $5,000 deal was rejected, he wrote back to say that he was very disappointed in that any further visits would require a $300 advance payment into his prison account.

He wrote, my time is money now. Yeah, so to me, this guy is an enigma. I mean, he is all over the place, has been all over the place in his stories and his accounts for, you know, 40 years at this point. I understand him wanting to get $5,000 into his prison account. $5,000 buys a lot of ramen noodles. And we know prisoners don't make that much money, depending on what type of job they have in prison.

But what I want to go back to is the plea deal. You know, at the time he made that deal, he was 60 years old. He had to have known that, you know, whatever he got as far as a sentence relating to that plea deal was most likely going to put him in prison for the rest of his life. So my thought, or I guess my question is at that point, what did he have to lose? Why would he not tried to have fight it? I mean, we mentioned it would have been a no body trial. Those are always tougher on the prosecution. That part, I just didn't

quite understand. Yeah. And I, every time you see someone like this, it's always shifting their story and and squirrely and just basically untrustworthy, you always have to wonder, again, is this person, you know, playing people? Is he out to sort of mess with them to entertain himself? But, you know, one way or another, this guy Welch is just like you mentioned, all over the place.

And I don't know if we can really believe anything that he's told police or any officials along the way. It's just a lot of bizarre stuff going on with him. No, like with most criminals, I don't believe much that comes out of their mouths. But, you know, I think about what the trial could have possibly been. You know, could a defense attorney have created enough reasonable doubt around Lloyd's uncle Richard? That maybe a jury would have had a tough time saying conclusively, yes, we feel as though he did this. And I think there's a scenario where you could envision that happening.

Welch's uncle, Richard Allen Welch, Sr. passed away on August 11, 2020. He was never charged relating to the abduction, assault, or murders of the lion's sisters. And it doesn't appear that he was still an official person of interest. Carter Garrett, Richard Welch's attorney, told WTOP News, the only person who can be held accountable is Lloyd Lee Welch. In 1992, John Lyon, the father of Catherine and Sheila, joined the Montgomery County Victim Assistance and Sexual Assault Program. He and his wife, Mary, never found out what really happened to their daughters

and were never able to give them a proper goodbye or lay them to rest, although both did get to see Lloyd Welch held accountable for their abductions and murders. The only person that may be able to reveal all the answers is, Welch. But whether he will ever do that is a mystery all on its own. So Morph as we wrap up this case, you and I both did searches on Lloyd Welch Jr. We wanted to see where he was. He's 65 years old. Right now. He's still alive according to everything that we saw. It appears as though he served his time in Delaware and is now serving his sentence in Virginia because he has an active ID number in Virginia. And at some point, if he finishes out that sentence, I'm assuming he'll be transferred

to Maryland to serve out the remainder of that sentence. I just don't see this guy ever getting out. You know, it's 65 years old now. He got 12 years in Virginia. I don't know how much left he has on that. And then he's got 48 years in Maryland. He's never getting out. Nor should he, in my opinion, for, you know, what he's done. And that's just what he was convicted of. You know, I think we kind of hinted at it earlier being a carnival worker traveling all around the country. You know, how many victims could this man truly have had over the years? I'm afraid to even talk about the number because it could be staggering. Imagine all the stops these carnivals have as they travel back and forth through small

towns all over the place. You're right. He could have an untold amount of victims, which is frightening. But one thing that I take away from this, it really makes me angry is although he pled guilty and took responsibility as part of this plea deal, it makes me mad that he wasn't forced to tell the truth about where. are these remains? Where can we find them, even if it's teeth or bones or fragments, just to have some official, not that there's closure in a case like this, but to have something we could give

to the parents and say, here, here's what's left of your children, lay them the rest, the way that you see fit. The fact he wasn't forced to pinpoint on a map or go in person to reveal that location to find this, these remains. just boggles my mind that they wouldn't make him do that. So the fact we're sort of left with nothing from this guy other than the fact him saying, yeah, I did it. That doesn't really, in my mind, it seems like there could be something else that he could provide, but it's just not there.

Now, the one thing that we didn't talk about is that there was some type of gag order related to the plea agreement. So there could have been information that he revealed. to the authorities that they never released. But you would think if there was information about, you know, where the remains could have been found. Investigators would have tried to find them. They would have notified the family, all of that,

but other types of information they might have kept under wraps. So this is a pretty infamous case. It was a very infamous unsolved case for many, many years. And then once the revelations came out about Lloyd Welch, it was a pretty big deal to the true crime community because they had been following it many people for many, many years. And what's scary about this case overall to me is having two kids of my own, especially. You're reluctant, I think, as a parent to let your kids go out and play because you see someone's of stuff in the news and especially with what we do, you think they're going to be safer if they're with a friend or with a sibling,

that there's safety in numbers that old saying, here's a case where there were two kids together and it still didn't stop them from being taken and who knows what was done to them. So I think that's real frightening when you look at it from that perspective. Yeah, it absolutely is. I mean, everything is frightening when it comes to our children. Now, the one thing that maybe you and I don't talk about enough is that because of what we do, you know, how do we strike a good balance between, you know, making sure our kids are safe and letting them have some freedom. Because when you research the stuff that we do weekend and week out, it can scare the, you know what, out of you.

But that also is the same for all the listeners of true crime. You know, you're hearing this all the time and many people listen to a lot of different podcasts. It can be tough to strike that balance, that correct balance. If you love the show, but you haven't done so yet, take a minute, go out, give us a rating, leave a review, and keep telling your friends, that word of mouth about the podcast really helps us out. If you want to find us on social media, we're on Twitter with the handle at Criminology Pod. you can also find us on Facebook by searching for criminology podcast or by joining our Facebook discussion group criminology podcast discussion and fans. So that is it for our episode on The Lion Sisters.

But we'll be back with everyone next Saturday night with an all new episode of criminology. So until then, for Mike and Morph. We'll talk to you next week. Take care, everyone. When a wealthy woman is found brutally murdered, there's only one suspect. her handsome young lover. An open and shut case, right? Not so fast.

The Shaw Festival presents Agatha Christie's Witness for the Prosecution, a courtroom drama full of plot twists only Agatha Christie could weave. Don't miss, witness for the prosecution. For best seats at best prices, go to Shawfest.com.