Man convicted of killing Lyon sisters to start serving time for 1975 murders amid new probe of other crimes
Neal Augenstein | naugenstein@wtop.com
December 11, 2024, 12:49 PM
Almost 50 years after 12-year-old Sheila and 10-year-old Katherine Lyon were abducted from Wheaton Plaza, in Wheaton, Maryland, the man convicted of killing them will soon begin serving prison time for their murders. ... It comes as federal investigators look into other possible crimes involving Lloyd Lee Welch.
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In September 2017, Welch, already a convicted sex offender,
pleaded guilty in Bedford County, Virginia, to two counts of first-degree felony murder as part of a global plea. Welch was sentenced to 48 years in prison in 2017 for the global plea, which included the Lyon sisters’ deaths and a series of 1996 sex crimes against two young girls in Prince William County, Virginia.
Long before his arrest in the Lyon case, Welch was serving a 33-year sentence in Delaware for sex offenses against a 10-year-old girl, who was also one of the two victims in the Prince William County attack. That attack happened more than 20 years after the Lyon sisters were last seen in Montgomery County, Maryland. ... With his Delaware sentence winding down, the now 67-year-old will be transferred to Virginia to begin serving his 48-year prison term for the Lyon sisters’ murders and the Prince William County sex crimes. ... “It was a very long time coming, but justice, in some form, was finally served against Mr. Welch,” said Wes Nance in a WTOP interview Tuesday. Nance, as the Bedford County prosecutor, helped orchestrate the global plea in 2017.
The disappearance of the two girls — daughters of former WMAL broadcaster John Lyon and his wife, Mary — during Easter vacation in March 1975 sparked fear in the region and marked a turning point in attitudes about child abduction and safety.
FILE – Undated photos of Sheila and Katherine Lyon, released by the FBI. (AP Photo/FBI)
The girls’ bodies have never been found.
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Neal Augenstein
Neal Augenstein has been a general assignment reporter with WTOP since 1997. He says he looks forward to coming to work every day, even though that means waking up at 3:30 a.m.
naugenstein@wtop.com
@AugensteinWTOP
In 2021 I had a thread about William Bradford Bishop. That case too came out of Montgomery County.