Forty years have passed since Sheila Lyon, who was 12 years old at the time and Katherine Lyon, who was 10, disappeared at the Wheaton Plaza Mall on March 25th, 1975.
At the time, the authorities did not have many leads related to the young girls, who seemed to have simply vanished, but now there are sources confirming there is a break in the case.
Even if no official statements were issued, the police and prosecutors from Maryland, Montgomery and Bedford county, Virginia are scheduled to hold a press conference regarding the developments that have been made so far.
It seems that there might be more than one person of interest in the case, but the investigators have been focusing on 58-year-old Lloyd Lee Welch for the past two years. Welch is a child sex offender who was convicted a while ago and is now imprisoned in Delaware, Montgomery County, Maryland.
According to the authorities, his uncle, Richard Welch from Hyattsville, Maryland, is the second suspect that they are considering, even if he has not been charged on any account yet.
Although there is no formal statement to support the theory, there have been many members of the Welch family seen entering and exiting the courtroom, which led the public to believe they have been interrogated regarding their knowledge of the case.
Moreover, the investigators have been searching a mountain in Bedford County, in hope that they would find traces of the two sisters who went missing 40 years ago. Some of the Welch family members’ homes have also been searched.
It would not come as a surprise at all if Lloyd Welch were connected to the case, given the fact that he used to work close to Wheaton at the time.
Court records revealed that he was in fact at the same shopping mall where the girls went missing and, according to witnesses, the girls were seen going away in car with a man that resembled Welch very much.
When Lloyd Welch spoke to the investigators, he told them that the following day he witnessed his uncle sexually abusing one of the two sisters in his home from Hyattsville, but he left the house and never saw them again.
However, the investigators have found many inconsistencies in his statements and are not yet sure how much of the story is really credible.
The case was very much debated at the time because it shattered many parents’ belief that their children were safe in public places. Those were much simpler years, when everybody looked out for everybody. However, after the girls’ disappearance, this idea changed up to a very large extent.
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