42 years after young Md. sisters vanished, man pleads guilty in case that stunned D.C. region

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Source: Washington Post

42 years after young Md. sisters vanished, man pleads guilty in case that stunned D.C. region

By Dan Morse September 12 at 9:52 AM

BEDFORD, VA. A sex offender accused in the 1975 abduction of sisters Katherine and Sheila Lyon from a Maryland shopping mall pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree felony murder on Tuesday morning answering some but not all of the lingering questions in one of the Washington regions most painful mysteries.

Wearing a bright orange prison jumpsuit, Lloyd Lee Welch, 60, stood before a judge and admitted he participated in the abduction of the sisters, ages 10 and 12, who were last seen at Wheaton Plaza Mall where theyd gone to have lunch, see friends and look at Easter decorations. ... I plead guilty to felony first-degree murder, Welch said for each of the two counts. ... Welch did not admit to directly killing either girl but he was held accountable for their deaths under a felony murder doctrine for killings in the commission of abduction with intent to defile.



Lloyd Welch in 1997 and 2015. (Maryland and Virginia law enforcement)

Welch received a sentence of 48 years in prison, as part of an earlier agreement with prosecutors. Given his age, and the fact he still must finish a prison sentence in Delaware for the unrelated sexual assault of a 10-year-old, it is unlikely Welch will ever be released. He was prosecuted in the Lyon sisters case in Bedford County some 200 miles southwest of Washington because authorities established that the remains of at least one of the girls may have been buried there.
....

It was about five years ago that the Montgomery County Police Department decided to make one final push to solve the mystery. ... The approach: Let’s act as if a call had just come in for the two missing girls and scour the boxes and boxes of case records as if starting from scratch. ... One of the most intriguing finds, early on, was a brief report — written by investigators a week after the disappearances — about an 18-year-old named Lloyd Lee Welch who had gone up to a security guard at the mall a week after the disappearance and said he’d been at the mall on the day the girls disappeared.
....

Dan Morse covers courts and crime in Montgomery County. He arrived at the paper in 2005, after reporting stops at the Wall Street Journal, Baltimore Sun and Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser, where he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. He is the author of The Yoga Store Murder. Follow @morsedan

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/suspect-in-1975-lyon-sisters-murders-set-to-plead-guilty/2017/09/12/06d968d0-8d93-11e7-8df5-c2e5cf46c1e2_story.html

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Retweeted by David Fahrenthold: https://twitter.com/Fahrenthold

BREAKING Four decades after abducting Lyon sisters from a Maryland mall, Lloyd Welch pleads guilty to their murders.

Link to tweet

[Maggiemayhem]

1. I can't read he link since I'm not a subscriber, but

I like the fact that you put the source at top of blog.

[CottonBear]

3. DU rules for LBN require a source link & no more than a 4 paragraph excerpt.

The thread cannot be a duplicate thread and the link must be less than 12 hours old.

Welcome to DU!

[mahatmakanejeeves]

4. Welcome to DU.

That's part of the requirements for posting in the LBN. You give the source, the link, and the title of the article, with no editing.

I let people know how I found it. In this case, it was via a tweet that had been retweeted. I make sure to include a time and date stamp, and I include a link to the author's Tweeter account.

The story will also show up in the Virginia newspapers. Try

https://www.roanoke.com, run by the Roanoke Times.

https://www.richmond.com, run by the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

Along with the Charlottesville Daily Progress, they share a news bureau, so the same story will show up at all three newspapers.

The story had not shown up at the Roanoke Times's website when I posted. That won't take long.

Again, welcome to DU. And thanks for your post.

[Maggiemayhem]

2. He resembles Montie Rissel

The youngest serial killer from across the Potomac in Arlington/ Falls Church area. The same time frame but he sought women in their early twenties.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

5. I'm drawing a blank with that name. What more can you say about him?

Google is my friend:

Rissell Gets 4 Life Terms In Murders

By Jane Seaberry October 12, 1977

An investigation that started in August, 1976, with what a policeman describes as no more than a gut reaction ended yesterday with the sentencing of 18-year-old Montie Ralph Rissell to four consecutive life prison terms for slaying four Alexandria women.

Rissell, sentenced in Alexandria Circuit Court, had once been arrested on an attempted robbery charge by Alexandria police Det. John W. Turner and lived in the western Alexandria neighborhood where the four women and Turner himself lived. (Rissell has also been convicted of slaying a fifth woman, who worked in the western Alexandria area, and is to be sentenced Monday by a court in Fairfax County for her death.)

The first of the slayings - that of Aura Marina Gabor, 26 - occurred on Aug. 4, 1976. She was found strangled with her own brassiere.

[Maggiemayhem]

7. I had an encounter with him.

I was on a trail behind my building prior to a photo class at Nova. He had a Rottweiler type dog with him and came out of the woods. He followed me and tried to get me to take pics of a watering hole in the woods. I declined and he walked along beside me as I was trying to get back my building. I tried to make small talk with him ( instead of running) . He told me he didn't work because his car was impounded, he was 18 and from Florida. I said goodbye, gonna be late for class and he didn't follow me further,but he now knew my apartment building. I didn't think much about it, after all it was a secure building and a high rise. Well, that night he called all the apartments from the ring up phone until he got me and I refused to buzz him in. He got in anyway and tried to get me to open the door. I was terrified and called a male friend to come spend the night and I never heard from him again until months later, I caught an article in WAPO about him with a picture. Holy shit! Luck was with me. I was 20 or 21 at the time and lived in Shirlington area of Arlington. The moral of this story is if somebody creeps you out, trust your instincts.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

8. Yikes.

I've taken a few courses at the Alexandria campus of Nova, but I don't think I had any classes in the arts and photography building. Rather, that is what that building is now.

At the time you're talking about, that might still have been John Tyler Elementary School. Your class might have been in what is now the Bisdorf Building.

[Maggiemayhem]

9. I have no idea. It's been too long.

I remember a young woman in my class worked for Time Life.

[Honeycombe8]

6. My heart breaks for those little girls. That was before we were so careful.

They went to the mall alone, ages 10 & 12. Can you imagine anyone now letting their children that age go to the mall alone? That was also before we trained children as well to avoid strangers & yell "stranger danger." Those poor little girls must have been frightened out of their wits and died a horrible death.

There is a special place in hell, I hope, for the evil people who do things like this.