Missing Lyon sisters (Photo : Montgomery police department)
Maryland police have not yet brought charges against two men who they said are the prime suspects in the kidnapping and murders of sisters Sheila and Katherine Lyon 40 years ago.
This despite the prime suspect in the crime, convicted sex offender Lloyd Welch, 58, allegedly admitting to the kidnapping and saying his uncle, Richard Welch, raped one of the girls. Police have tagged both men only as "persons of interest".
Lloyd admitted to detectives he abducted the two girls from Wheaton Plaza Shopping Center, said The New York Daily News. He then left the sisters at his home and later saw his uncle sexually assaulting one of the victims, police said in newly unsealed court documents.
Sheila was 12 years old and her sister, Katherine, 10, when they were kidnapped.
The Lyon sisters from Montgomery County, Maryland never came home after walking to the mall together. A massive search turned up nothing, said The Daily Mail. The sisters' parents, John and Mary Lyon, have never been able to find out the fate of their daughters.
Lloyd Welch, a convicted as child sex offender currently in jail, admitted to police the sisters had left Wheaton Plaza, a Washington D.C. area mall, with him. Welch allegedly told detectives he later on saw his uncle, Richard, rape one of them according to his affidavit given the police. His uncle was at the wheel of the car they used in kidnapping the sisters.
Surprisingly, the 58-year-old Welch and his 69-year-old uncle haven't been charged with disappearance of the girls. Richard Welch said that he had nothing to do with these disappearances.
Witnesses in 1975 said they saw a middle-aged man with a tape recorder talking to the sisters outside a pizza parlor while another claimed he saw two girls bound and gagged in the back of a moving car.
Lloyd Welch is serving a 30-year sentence for sexual assault on a 10 year-old girl to which he pled guilty in 1998.
Washington D.C. detectives believe the girls were kidnapped from the mall and at least one of them was raped before both were killed. They believe the bodies of the sisters were dumped in a remote mountain area located far from their home.
Detectives revived the cold case in 2013 after realizing Welch's mugshot from a 1977 arrest matched the sketch of a man seen staring and following Sheila and Katherine at the mall.
"Our department and our partners in Virginia remain committed to determining what happened to Katherine and Sheila Lyon," said Montgomery Police Chief Tom Manger.
"We believe that there are people, including family members of Dick and Lloyd Welch, who have information that would further this investigation."
He said those responsible for missing girls "will be brought to justice".
Manger said Welch, then 18, worked at a traveling carnival and was seen paying attention to the Lyon girls at the mall.
