WHEATON, Md. (AP) — The indictment in the 40-year-old slaying of two sisters who were abducted from a Montgomery County mall could be a record-setting case if it goes to trial in Virginia.
Authorities announced Wednesday that Lloyd Lee Welch Jr., a convicted child sex offender who’s already serving a lengthy prison term, has been indicted on murder charges in the deaths of 12-year-old Sheila Lyon and 10-year-old Katherine Lyon.
The sisters were last seen on March 25, 1975, at the Wheaton Plaza Mall near their home. According to the indictment unsealed Wednesday, they were killed sometime between the date of their abduction and three weeks later. At some point they were taken to Bedford County, Virginia.
Despite intensive searches and digs along a mountain there, their remains have never been found.
That leaves prosecutors with a challenging task: proving that a man killed them when he says he didn’t do it, no bodies have been found and other physical evidence has vanished.
Prosecuting such a case is not unheard of. Prosecutors in the United States have obtained hundreds of convictions in murder cases without the victim’s body, including a case in neighboring Nelson County where Randy Taylor was convicted of the murder of Alexis Murphy.
But Tad DiBiase, a former federal prosecutor who tracks and has written a book about “no-body” murder cases, said that if Welch is tried, it would set a record for the longest period of time between a slaying without a body and a trial.
Still, he said he believes a conviction is possible.
“They do have some damning evidence against him,” DiBiase said. “You always want forensic evidence, but it doesn’t look like they have that, at least so far.”
Prosecutors in Bedford and Montgomery County said they studied those other cases as they weighed whether to proceed. The Lyon sisters’ case presents an unusual burden because of the amount of time that has passed, but prosecutors said they are sure the girls were murdered.
“We have a difficult road. We have a difficult burden,” said Randy Krantz, the Bedford County commonwealth’s attorney. “But in my assessment of this case, it was either move forward or do nothing, and we were willing to move forward.”
Police said Thursday that they have evidence other than what Welch has told investigators
Welch told investigators that he left the mall with the girls and his uncle but that the last time he saw the girls they were at his uncle’s house. He says that he saw his uncle sexually assaulting one of the sisters.
Now that Welch has been indicted, police are turning their attention to investigating the role of the uncle, Richard A. Welch Sr., who is more than 70 years old.
Lloyd Welch has also told police he didn’t kill the girls, and he has also denied involvement in the slayings in a letter to The Washington Post. He has refused repeated requests by The Associated Press to interview him from prison in Delaware, where he is serving a 33-year-long sentence for molesting a 10-year-old girl.
Welch was charged with first-degree felony murder, committed during an abduction with intent to defile. Under the Virginia statute in effect in 1975 that he would be tried under, he could face the death penalty or 20 years to life in prison. Krantz said prosecutors have not decided whether to seek the death penalty.
WTOP’s Amanda Iacone contributed to this report from Washington.
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