In 1975, Lloyd Lee Welch pulled up to a relative’s home along a steep hillside in Virginia, 200 miles southwest of suburban Washington. He carried two duffel bags, each weighing about 60 or 70 pounds, that had red stains and an odor of decay. A fire was built. The bags were thrown into it.
The account, described in court documents unsealed Wednesday in Bedford County, Va., appears to be one of the most compelling pieces of evidence implicating Welch in the long-ago disappearance of Sheila Lyon, 12, and her sister Katherine, 10. Authorities also announced that Welch, a 58-year-old imprisoned child sex offender, was indicted Friday on two counts of first-degree murder in the course of an abduction.
For many Washington-area residents, the case remains an indelible memory of innocence and horror. The sisters vanished after walking to a shopping mall to look at Easter decorations and see their friends. Parents became convinced it was no longer safe to leave children alone.
“The abduction of Sheila and Katherine Lyon has haunted this community and this police department,” Montgomery County Police Chief J. Thomas Manger said at a news conference. “We’re finally able to start answering the questions of what happened.”
For those of us who have lived in this area for a while, this story still strikes terror and horror in our hearts. Who will ever forget the picture of those two little faces? The disappearance of the Lyons sisters was my first real taste of loss of innocence. I had a one year old baby girl. The horror of not knowing what happened to your children seemed almost too abhorrent to imagine.
Forty years later, we come fact to fact with pure evil. The Lyons parents were in the audience for the press conference. What must they have felt? Is this closure of sorts for them? The girls were missing, heretofore, not declared dead.
The Lyons’ sisters disappearance struck a fear in the hearts of metro area parents–that it wasn’t safe to let your kids out of your sight. Not much has changed to reassure us either. How could police have had this criminal and not suspected him? Has criminal justice changed that much?
Lloyd Lee Welch probably won’t be getting out any time soon if ever. He is serving a 30 year sentence for his second conviction of child molestation. If it walks like a duck, talks and a duck, it’s probably a duck. May he rot in hell.
This is a horrible story on any level, but for those of us of a certain age who have lived in the area for some time, the horror of this is magnified by the fact that John Lyons, the girls’ father, was a very popular drive-time radio host at a time when radio choices in the morning were limited to perhaps three or four stations. That made these children’s disappearance and the unclosed nature of the case a very intimate kind of issue for a lot of people who were accustomed to listening to the father day in and day out.
I cannot imagine how traumatic it must be for the parents, who have had to live with this for decades, to now have to get a glimpse of the bestial, hopeless circumstances of these girls’ deaths far, far from home. I don’t think I could have survived the first loss, and I more surely would have trouble dealing with what they’re dealing with now.
You are right. It was horrible and it seemed very personal.
another one that bothered me a great deal and also got a little too up close and personal was the disappearance of Melissa Brannen. I can’t imagine what that poor family must have gone through and probably still goes through.
I will email you.