The decades-old case of Katherine and Sheila Lyon, two young sisters who disappeared in 1975 after visiting a Maryland shopping center, resurfaced, with authorities initiating a new search. Initially unsolved, the case went cold for 42 years until 2017, when Lloyd Lee Welch Jr., a man with a violent criminal history, was convicted of abducting and murdering the girls. Investigators, motivated by new evidence, are now re-examining a piece of land in Virginia, where Welch had indicated the sisters’ remains might be buried.

Trigger warning: true crime, physical and sexual abuse – The Lyon sisters went missing in 1975 in Maryland, USA, days away from celebrating their 11th and 13th birthdays.

They went out for pizza but never returned home, missing their curfew. When the Lyon sisters went missing, their mother alerted police, sparking one of the largest searches in Washington, D.C., history with divers, dogs, and planes involved. 

The case remained unsolved for 42 years until investigators revisited the file of a young man previously questioned shortly after the girls’ disappearance.

The decades-old case of Katherine and Sheila Lyon, two young sisters who disappeared in 1975 after visiting a Maryland shopping center, resurfaced

Image credits: FBI Archives

Lloyd Lee Welch Jr. — now aged 67 — was convicted in 2017 of the sisters’ abduction and murder. To this day, their remains have not been found, The Independent reported on Monday (November 4).

New evidence from a cold case in Taylor’s Mountain, Virginia, has since prompted new examinations after seven years, with the area being long linked with the sisters’ disappearance.

Nevertheless, the US Marshals Service did not specify what the evidence was or which case it was related to.

It isn’t yet clear whether the search is again for evidence that could show they were buried on the land or if investigators are working on a case involving other victims, The Washington Post reported on October 29.

Image credits: FBI Archives

On March 25, 1975, when Katherine and Sheila Lyon didn’t return to their Kensington, Maryland, home by 4.  p.m., their mother reported them missing.

Witnesses reported seeing a man, later dubbed “Tape Recorder Man,” talking to the girls outside a pizza parlor, and police released sketches based on descriptions of him and another man with a scarred face who had reportedly been watching them.

On April 1, 1975, 18-year-old Lloyd Lee Welch Jr. reported seeing a man resembling the suspect’s description near the shopping center. 

Welch, a drifter with a growing criminal record, reportedly provided a detailed statement but failed a polygraph test before being dismissed by police. 

Authorities initiated a new search

Image credits: TheMoCoShow/Library of Congress

Despite extensive searches using planes, divers, and trained dogs, investigators were unable to locate any trace of the Lyon sisters, and a $9,000 reward was offered for the sisters’ safe return.

In May 1975, Maryland’s Lieutenant Governor ordered a search of Montgomery County forest involving 122 National Guardsmen, but it yielded no results. 

Police tapped the family’s phone and stationed an officer in their home, but by August, the girls’ mother had lost hope. 

The case went cold until 2013 when Montgomery County Sergeant Chris Homrock discovered a 1975 document on Welch, whose appearance resembled a suspect’s sketch. 

Image credits: FBI Archives

Further investigation revealed Welch was serving a lengthy prison sentence with a criminal history of violent offenses, including assault and molestation.

Homrock subsequently traveled to Dover, Welch’s hometown, to visit the suspect for the first in a string of eight interviews.

“I know why you’re here,” Welch muttered at the time, The Independent reported. “You’re here about those two missing kids.”

Welch reportedly initially gave conflicting accounts of the Lyon sisters’ fate, but by July 2014, he claimed they were abducted, abused, and incinerated. 

Initially unsolved, the case went cold for 42 years until 2017

Image credits: FBI Archives

He told investigators that their remains were taken to his uncle’s basement in Hyattsville before being buried on family land at Taylor’s Mountain, Virginia. 

In a 2014 search, Welch’s cousin testified to moving duffle bags from Welch’s vehicle in 1975 that smelled “like death,” which were later burned.

A forensic search of the Taylor’s Mountain home uncovered small degraded fragments of human bone, a single tooth, a beaded necklace believed to have been worn by Katherine, and a section of charred wire, which may have been from Sheila’s glasses, according to The Independent.

A May 2015 forensic test of Welch’s uncle’s basement later revealed extensive blood traces, though too degraded for DNA analysis. 

Image credits: Norm Shafer/ For The Washington Post

By July of that year, Welch was indicted for second-degree murder, ultimately admitting to abducting the girls for sexual abuse at his uncle’s Taylor’s Mountain property.

By the time of Welch’s indictment, cold case investigators had devoted more than 16,000 hours to the re-investigation of the sisters’ disappearance, issued more than 50 search warrants, and conducted more than 100 formal interviews with family members, eyewitnesses, and other persons of interest, as per The Independent.

On September 12, 2017, Welch pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree murder and received two concurrent 48-year sentences. 

After completing his current prison term in Delaware in 2026, he will be reportedly transferred to a Virginia facility, as investigators believe the girls’ remains are buried in Bedford County, where authorities have recently renewed their search.

“This has been a long brutal ordeal,” a reader commented

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