Lloyd Welch is Person of Interest

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Richard said:
It is true that TRM was seen at Wheaton Plaza on 25 March 1975 and also on at least three other occasions at Wheaton Plaza prior to that date.

It is also true that an individual came forward to Montgomery County Police claiming to be a Tape Recorder Man BUT he claimed that he had ONLY done his tape recorder thing in Prince Georges County and NEVER in Montgomery County.

MCP investigators at the time aparently accepted his story about being the PG County TRM, and they accepted his story about being in a car accident on 25 March 1975 (meaning that HE could not have been the TRM seen at Wheaton Plaza that day).

That did not, however, cause them to completely disregard their analysis of TRM at Wheaton Plaza or to abandon him as a person of interest in the case. In fact, they were still trying to connect potential suspect Fred Howard Coffey, Jr. to TRM when he came to light in 1986.

MCP did not think it important enough to report to the press or general public that this "PG ONLY TRM" had come forward. The story was initially told to me during a conversation that I had with case officers some 25 or 30 years after the girls disappeared. And even then, they expressed doubt as to whether or not the guy was on the level or just a self-confessing nut who wanted to get into the act.

There were, in fact, many individuals who called in false leads, and hoaxes concerning the Lyon case in 1975.

All that said, I agree with you in that tunnel vision can hamper any case. All clues or calls should be handled with an open mind and an eye to other possible scenarios. I would hope that this was actually done by the MCP officers in 1975 and those case officers assigned to in the years following.

Regarding the TRM, MCP only issued two composite sketches which appeared in print and TV media in April 1975. When they were unable to generate positive leads through those sketches, MCP moved on to other things. It has mainly been the news media which over the years has continued to show the TRM sketch and relate the story in the many re-tellings on occasions.

Several Washington area TV stations actually showed the TRM sketch during the February 2014 MCP/FBI press conference about Welch. You may recall that there was a big Teaser broadcast in the news the day before saying that there would be a big announcement the next day. In prepararation, many news services dug out all they had in their files including old photos and the TRM sketch to show during the next days feature news conference - which turned out to be about Welch.
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Honestly, we cannot say that it is true that TRM "was seen" at WP on 3/25/75. It is only true that "Jimmy" claimed to see a TRM that day and his buddy agreed. People have decide on their own if they believe his story.


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From Washington Post article 21 August 2014:

... Lloyd Lee Welch, a Delaware inmate identified as a “person of interest” in the notorious disappearance of two young girls in Montgomery County 39 years ago, has been denied early release from prison, Delaware officials said Thursday.

Welch, a convicted sex offender, had sought to have his sentence commuted by the state’s Board of Pardons, but it denied his request ahead of a meeting Thursday, said Matthew Hartigan, acting spokesman for the Delaware Department of State.

In 1998, according to court records, Welch pleaded guilty to sex offenses in Delaware. His release date is set for June 2026, according to Delaware records. ...
 
Hi Richard and everyone.

I was busy writing and promoting my economics book on the minimum wage
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KYDDLP4 (any reviews on Amazon.com are appreciated)
all summer, so I have not thought much about Lyon sisters case.

I still jog the last-known route of the sisters because it's the easy way to get around and not that I am obsessed with the case.
A sidewalk has been added to narrow, built over an old creek, McComas Ave, so it's slight safer to jog.

I thought that if anything developed it would be on the local news. But I missed the small story about parole/early release denied; thanks Richard.

Since someone here pointed at that the girls had an hour or an hour and a half before they had to be home at 4 PM, they could have walked anywhere in Kensington, and anything could have happened to them. But I would bet on Welch if I were a betting man.

I guess many crime cases just go cold and are unsolved forever. With Welch in prison, I guess there is no rush to charge him if the police had any evidence, but it seems like to me that the press release/request for any information on Welch turned up nothing?
 
SteveP,

Welcome back and congrats on your book. A college professor of mine always referred to the subject as "Eco-Schlectiks".

Nothing new has come out of MCP regarding Welch, although they may well have generated some new leads with all the publicity.

Regarding the time the girls were supposed to be home:

Kate had told a girlfriend that she planned to be home at 3PM when she spoke to her by phone that morning. They talked of getting together.

Mrs. Lyon said that she had not given them a hard time, but that when asked by the girls, she suggested that 4PM "would be a good time."

It was not until 6PM when they started dinner that Mrs. Lyon started to get upset with them because, she said, the girls knew they were supposed to be home by 6PM for dinner.

At 7PM, when they still had not showed up, the Lyons contacted the police, began calling neighbors, and friends. By 7:30 PM, John Lyon and the police were cruising the streets looking for the girls.

A boy named David was the first witness to come forward and he stated that he saw them near Drumm and Faulkner walking toward the Mall. This he was quoted as saying was about 7:30PM.

By 27 or 28 March 1975, Police discounted David's sighting because the time frame did not fit with what they felt was correct and they mentioned this to the press.

When MCP doubt about David's sighting was published, two other boys came forward and claimed to have seen the girls walking west on Drumm near Devin, while the boys were riding in a car on Drumm, headed west between 2:30 and 3:30 PM. It should be noted, however that the girls' "expected" arrival time of 4PM may have already appeared in news reports when the two car riders came forward - so that may have influenced their time estimate.

Remember that they stated explicitly that they only came forward AFTER reading that David's sighting was in doubt. They said that because it had earlier been reported that the girls were seen as late as 7:30PM, they did not consider their (earlier) sighting relevant.
 
Those were the days when eight to twelve year old kids could walk around all day, and not be in trouble until 6 PM. Today, if I am 10 minutes late driving a kid home, I get a phone call from the Mom asking, "Is everything OK."

Having a be-at-home deadline for dinner at 6 PM would give the girls even more time to wander around Kensington, if they got bored after being at the mall for a few hours. If they were really planning to meet a neighbor-kid friend at 3 PM, it would be limit their wandering options and increase the chance that something happened at the intersection of Drumm and McComas, the path/woods, or Jennings, which I hope the police thoroughly investigated. Because of mistaken sightings, it did take the police about two weeks to narrow down the last sighting area by which time memories may have faded. Did I hear two kids in the woods talking 14 or 15 days ago; I can't say for sure who I saw jogging this morning.

I can't recall the name of the previous poster, but she was sure that no teenage girl, having been a teenage girl herself, would leave the mall to go back home and must have had something else in mind to do. I am not as 100% sure as she was, but I think getting bored at the mall after a few hours and thinking of something else to do, such as go to the library or friends house, is a good possibility.
 
There are indeed many possibilities. This case is so full of questions and open ends that it is a bit like trying to assemble a jig saw puzzle with half of the pieces missing, no idea of what the picture is going to look like, and then a bunch of other puzzle pieces thrown in the mix.

Does this bit of information fit or not? Is it relevant? Is it just a coincicence or a positive lead?

Sometimes one has to look at the over all picture of what IS present and what is NOT present to try to form a theory or idea of what happened.

In regard to Welch (subject of this particular thread), I would view him as a rather low intelligence, disorganized individual who was very young at the time (18 years old). He may very well have been at Wheaton Plaza that day as some witness testimony suggests. He may very well have had some knowledge of - or even participation in an abduction of Sheila and Kate. But what would we expect to see or know if that is the case?

As a disorganized person without a car or drivers license, who hitch hiked everywhere, he would likely have been on foot. An attack upon, or attempt to abduct two girls would have likely occurred somewhere outside and would have likely created some noise and disturbance of the area. Dropped items, clothing, blood, bodies left at the scene would have been a likely result. None of that was found anywhere in the mall or on the probable route.

This would tend to indicate that Welch was not a lone assailant of the girls. Also, although he is likely mentally ill with a violent past, there is no evidence that he ever murdered or kidnapped anyone. If he had progressed to the point of abducting two girls without a trace of evidence at age 18, why was he such a bozo in his later criminal ventures?

Did Welch witness something that day? A much more likely possibility. Welch's mother stated that he and his girlfriend were at her Hyattsville home reading about the missing sisters in the paper when Welch stated that he intended to call in a tip to try to claim the reward money being offered.

This was most likely on 1 April 1975, because that was:
- the day that the Washington Post first announced a $7,000 reward being offered by the WMAL radio station.
- the first day that the story and sketch of the Tape Recorder Man (TRM) appeared.
- the date that MCP has in their records of Welch giving them his address (his mother's house) in Hyattsville, MD.

Welch has never been identified as a suspect, but rather as a person of interest in the case by MCP. Could this be that they think he has knowledge as a witness?

Perhaps Welch had seen the Tape Recorder Man and had information about him. Maybe he saw or even followed the girls as they left the mall or when they were walking home.

If he was indeed the Long Haired Man (LHM) seen following the girls at Wheaton Plaza, perhaps he spoke with them.

Lots of possibilities.
 
Richard said:
SteveP,

Welcome back and congrats on your book. A college professor of mine always referred to the subject as "Eco-Schlectiks".
Click to expand...

Thanks. Economics has always had an "on one hand, but on the other hand" problem because economists sometimes disagree.

On the minimum wage, 600 Ph.D. economists wrote a public letter supporting a $10.10 minimum wage, but about the same number of economists wrote a letter against a $10.10 minimum wage.

The difficulty in economics is that there are multiple causes, of say unemployment, at the same time. It would be like if a body showed up with lethal levels of drugs, alcohol, fight wounds, and he had a bad heart to begin with. What killed him?

In contrast, in unsolved cases such as this Lyon sisters case, the problem often seems to be that nobody can come up evidence of one cause/person. In other cases, such as the OJ Simpson case I see disagreements over the strength of the evidence for one cause/person.

I have seen a few disagreements over the cause of death in criminal cases, such as someone gets into a fistfight in a bar and dies of a heart attack. The guy who hit him argued his bad heart killed him, but the state was claiming the fight caused the death. Economics is all about multiple causes, which don't have clear answers.
 
Richard said:
why was he such a bozo in his later criminal ventures?
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Welch was obviously so addicted to sex with young girls that he could not quit even when someone as dumb as him must have realized doing so would land him back in prison. Welch also had an adult girlfriend (and about four children?) so it's not like he had no other way to get sex.

I would guess that Tape Recorder Man might have been someone who had the same desires as Welch, and maybe checked out the same girls the same day at the mall, but Tape Recorder Man had enough self control to limit his desires to looking.

I would agree that because of Welch's limited abilities and resources, he would have had a lower chance of success, say 20%, than someone with military experience (this was right after Vietnam), a car, and a house who might have an 80% chance of a well-though out plan succeeding But there are more screw-ups like Welch than smart serial killers, so the odds are good if not likely that it was some screw-up. And the "smart" serial killers get caught when their luck runs out.

And if guilty, Welch did make the "mistake" of being seen checking out the girls to the point where a sketch was made of him (or LHN) at the mall and having the crime happen on his walking route. It was only through sheer luck, some other bad leads or hasty police work, that Welch was not looked at deeply by the police at the time, which may of cleared him or convicted him. To be fair to the 1970s police, Welch had no sex-crime record at the time and looked/looks like such a screw-up, that I in 1974 (and Richards still today) might have thought he was not a good suspect.
 
Richard said:
As a disorganized person without a car or drivers license, who hitch hiked everywhere, he would likely have been on foot. An attack upon, or attempt to abduct two girls would have likely occurred somewhere outside and would have likely created some noise and disturbance of the area. .
Click to expand...

While I agree that the attack, if done by Welch, was likely outside, if Welch's intention was to smoke, drink and maybe some kissing and touching, Welch, like any high-schooler up to no good, would have walked 100 feet or more off the sight of the well traveled path.

Welch might be stupid, but I don't think he is stupid enough to give a beer or a joint to a kid on a well-traveled path. Welch does sound stupid enough to overplay his hand, touch one of the girls, and lose it when rebuffed, while a smarter sex criminal would have said, "Sorry, I thought you wanted it" and walked away. If a young kid was drinking a beer or smoking a joint, there is a good chance the sex crime would not be reported and at the time, even if reported, mere touching or kissing not taken that seriously.

If the girls had an hour or two to spare, Welch could have talked them into walking as far as the railroad tracks, passing only a dozen or less houses at the time.

The only "lucky" thing that seems to have happened to Welch his entire life is that he might have got away with murder, and even that "luck" may have taught him the wrong lesson, that he could get away with anything, leading to his current life behind bars. Still, being born dumb, having a drunk father kill your mother driving drunk, and likely being a sex abuse victim himself, is no excuse for doing the same thing to others.
 
Now that I think about it, if Welch's game was offering beer to young teenagers, it's unlikely that Welch would have had the beer on him at the mall or on him if he saw the girls walking home. I am not 100% sure, but I think in 1974 an 18 year old could by beer in Maryland and Washington. DC.

In the 1970s, an 18-year old obtaining beer for younger friends was common, although giving beer to kids as young as the Lyon sisters was not common.

Welch could have talked the girls into walking to Kensington to buy beer and drink it out of sight.
Or Welch could have had a few beers stored in the creek near Plyers Mill Road, to keep the beer cold and out of sight. If Welch bought beer in Kensington or Wheaton and did not want to drink the entire six pack, he had limited options on where to keep his extra beers.

I am not sure what the open container laws were in the 70s in Montgomery County Maryland, but I don't recall seeing people walking on streets with open beer. Welch may have liked to walk the railroad tracks largely out of sight to drink.
 
Person of Interest Lloyd Lee Welch and his attempt to claim a reward...

On 1 April 1975, the Washington Post and other news media released for the first time the offer of a $7,000 reward being raised by WMAL radio for information leading to the return of the Lyon sisters. It is likely that Lloyd Lee Welch attempted to collect that reward as indicated in the two following news story excerpts:

----------------

Here is an excerpt from a 19 February 2014 news article (See Thread on News Articles for more) which indicates that Welch was at his stepmother's Hyattsville home sitting on a couch when news of the Lyon Sisters' disappearance hit:

... Lloyd Lee Welch's niece, 38-year-old Debbie Roe, of Dover, Del ... said her grandmother told her Welch was sitting on a couch when news broke of the missing sisters. Welch has told Roe that he was at the shopping mall around the time the girls went missing....

-----------------------------

Here is a more detailed story about Welch and the reward which indicates that he actually DID call in to police in an attempt to collect a reward:


... Welch's stepmother, Edna Welch, told News4 she recalls Welch and Craver hearing about a reward in the case and Welch saying he was going to try to collect it.

"Lloyd and Helen were sitting on my sofa when the news broke about the girls, and they were talking about a reward for information," Edna Welch said. "Lloyd thought he was going to get something in it, I reckon, and he called in and said he knew something, but I don't think he knew a darn thing." ...

LINK:

http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/l...ppearance-of-Md-Sisters-Police-244783641.html
 
Lyon Sisters: Police to Search Property Once Owned by Family of Person of Interest

"Tuesday afternoon, authorities traveled to a property located in Bedford County, Virginia, between Lynchburg and Roanoke. It was once owned by the family of Lloyd Lee Welch, Jr., AKA Michael Welch, who in February was named a person of interest in the Lyon sisters' disappearance."

http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/275339991.html?_osource=SocialFlowFB_DCBrand
 
According to breaking news on NBC 4, remains have been found. Prayers for closure!

46ad2ed666825e18fdf134053d492b5b.jpg
 
Amen, hollye! No MSM link yet. I'll keep checking.
 
Trying not to get my hopes up but . . . . . I am so hoping for a resolution to this case.
 
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