"Tape Recorder Man"

[Gruffin]

I've been reading these threads with interest. I was 8 and living in Derwood when this happened, and I don't think many people realize or remember how much this incident affected the whole climate of the area for young people, and in particular how much freedom parents gave to children. I don't think it would be too much to say that the spirit of the sixties really ended (at least in the DC area), March 25, 1975. Though it has only been the past couple years I have begun thinking about this event again, somehow reading this forum gives me great peace of mind, I guess just from the little so doing makes me feel like I am on the trail of the vile monster, improbable though the quest may be.

Anyway, about the tape recorder man (TRM). First off, I think it is important to realize just how much tape recorders were integral to youth culture about this time. I remember the children (and more especially girls) in our neighborhood would spend a good deal of time playing outside listening to the radio (WPGC mostly) with their tape recorders on the ready for the song to come on they wanted to tape. It was the cheapest way of getting music. I assume children were that way in Kensington, too.

But I have an idea about TRM. It may well be most probable that he acted alone, but I think his having an accomplice is a good deal more likely than most people on this forum seem to have thought. People have wondered what could induce two girls to get in a car with someone? How about the girls being chased by a creepy man who had earlier accosted them creepily with a tape recorder? Jeb has mentioned he came to think while observing TRM for just a short time that he was an SOB baby snatcher. Maybe the girls and the other people TRM had approached had similar feelings rather quickly? If so, from experience if nothing else, TRM would not, it seems to me, have approached the girls earlier by way of making them more at ease with him, since naturally he would have just thought that would make them on the alert to him.

So what is it about holding a microphone? One possibility is that from a distance a man holding a microphone looks rather like a man holding a knife. Suppose in the parking lot near the entrance to the girls' neighborhood TRM started chasing the Lyon sisters, looking from a distance like he is merely the crazy dude trying to interview the girls for his tape recording, but looking to the Lyon sisters near him like what he really was, namely a man chasing them with a knife? They would high-tail it into their neighborhood. Once in the neighborhood, an accomplice alerted by walkie-talkie or some such would get in or next to his car (or house?) and upon seeing them running, he would look alarmed, and in a seeming spirit of helpfulness tell them to "quick, get in"--right into the trap. And in case someone had seen what TRM had done, TRM could just switch or ditch the knife for the microphone before heading back to his car in the parking lot; if someone saw him, no matter, he was making people believe he was merely a ridiculous man who has tried to chase scaredy girls with a tape recorder. If things didn't seem to have gotten too hot, he could then go meet his accomplice somewhere prearranged and alas they'd each have a girl to victimize.

It seems to me, from having thought what really vile disgusting people are like, that disgusting males have a stupid fondness for corrupting borders generally. If I remember history rightly, Thomas Jefferson predicted the Civil War after the Missouri Compromise from the mere consideration that pro-slavery types couldn't resist crossing borders drawn. And sure enough, a whole group of nasties, the so-called border ruffians, went to Western Missouri to perform depredations against Kansas (leading to John Brown resisting them, an immediate cause of the Civil War). So from that standpoint, I also think it makes sense the vile abduction happened near the border between the mall and the neighborhood. They would abduct at the border. And if this accomplice car theory is right, the nearer the neighborhood accomplice was to the footpath from Faulkner to the plaza lot, the more practical sense it would make (else the running girls might attract attention from innocent neighbors), provided the car could be in a place where a car might reasonably be ordinarily. I've never been to the neighborhood area. In fact, after the abduction our (quite prudent) family always went to Montgomery Mall and later Lake Forest and White Flint. We moved away from Maryland a half-dozen or so years ago.

Just ideas, I know, but I figure sometimes theories based on basically nothing yet are right or at the least might spark something in someone else to find the truth.

 

[Richard]

Gruffin,

Welcome to websleuths and to the Lyon Sisters topic.

Great post and good ideas. There are a lot of possibilities regarding the Tape Recorder Man - and a lot of theories as to how an abduction may have taken place.

While most theories do seem to involve one unknown suspect, there have been a few which suggest two or more.

A possible suspect and scenario which seems to fit your theory is that of Ray Mileski. He murdered his son and wife in November 1977, was arrested, tried, convicted, and sent to prison for life. While in a Maryland prison, he made statements to two other inmates about being involved in the Lyon sisters' disappearance.

Montgomery County Police received the tip from the inmates in 1982 and soon dug up the former Mileski back yard. They found nothing.

In 1999, another tip came in regarding Mileski. This person stated that Mileski had been involved with another man in the abduction of the two girls from Wheaton and their imprisonment in Prince Georges County.

While nobody ever connected Mileski or the other man with the Tape Recorder Man, the area where they allegedly held the girls was only minutes from Iverson Mall and Marlowe Heights Shopping Center. Both malls were places where a TRM was reported to be seen interviewing young girls days before the Lyon sisters went missing.

Mileski was contacted in prison and made a number of written statements in two letters indicating that he had knowledge of the case, but insisted that it was someone else (known to him) who committed the crime. He died in prison a few years ago.

 

[Gruffin]

Thanks Richard for the information on Raymond Rudolph Mileski, Sr. Yes, I think Mileski is a good fit in the scenario I suggest. Your information that Mileski lived in P.G. County near malls where TRM was seen is the most suggestive thing. I had forgotten that or failed to read it. And looking at a map, it's not a part of P.G. County very close to Kensington (at least not by fast roads, I'm thinking). So now that scenario seems as plausible as any to me, with Mileski waiting in the neighborhood while TRM started outside.

Abducting girls for molestation by pretending to be rescuing them from a child molester would suggest a remarkably devious and heartless sense of humor, to put it mildly. I haven't read much about heinous criminals, but to me, the one person who comes to mind as having such a sense of humor would be Stalin. And teaming up with brutish sadistic molester types like Yezhov is the sort of thing Stalin did as well, and I suspect TRM is a brutish sadistic (child) molester. I have read some people suggest Stalin's taste for superfluous cruelty had much to do with his weird relationship with his second wife. If I remember rightly, one theory I've read somewhere or another is that eventually, she couldn't take any more of his sadistic homicidal tendencies, and so she blessed him out, whereupon he either killed her or she killed herself (probably because she felt sure he was about to kill her). Mileski, too, killed his wife in an argument, so that somewhat suggests to me he was the sort of evil Stalin-like person one could best imagine hatching such a plot.

I figure TRM was probably some brutish child molester type, very possibly Fred Coffey, and his job would have been to be the bad guy chasing the kids into the neighborhood, with a knife, say. Mileski would have been the "good" guy in the neighborhood, deceiving the girls into thinking getting into his car would save them. Mileski would probably have been the brains because I don't think simple brutish child-molester types like Coffey would be smart enough (though they could have gotten the idea for the scenario from simple copying of someone else real or fictional, rather than from creativity) to create such an elaborate plot.

The main conundrum with this scenario is the same as that which confronts the simple TRM kidnapped the girls in the far-end-of-the-parking-lot scenario: Why did the two boys in the car at Devin and Dunne say they saw the girls walking home (and apparently not mention anything odd going on)? One possibility is that they actually saw the running spooked girls getting into the car, but thought the girls were running away from them because they failed to notice TRM. --Maybe they had on some previous occasion made a suggestive remark or something possibly even totally obviously innocuous to the girls, and perhaps because of an excess tendency to feel guilty figured on that day that they had ended up being the cause for the girls' terror? --Maybe they didn't want to end up being known as the boys who caused the kidnapping by scaring the girls so much the girls ended up jumping into the car of an opportunistic child molester that happened to be driving by at the wrong moment? The other possibilities I can think of are are like those for the simple scenario: the boys got the day wrong or misidentified the girls, or the girls were seen by the boys leaving temporarily the mall (e.g., to see whether the woman with the newborn baby was available, but she didn't answer) and the girls went back to the mall but weren't seen heading back, or (seems unlikely) the boys were involved with the abduction or intimidated somehow.

Maybe MCPD has had it very right, the two people (Coffey and Mileski) they seemingly most suggested were suspects being the two people who did it.

 

[Gruffin]

Sorry, should have said "Devin and Drumm" in preceding post rather than "Devin and Dunne", and it's too late for me to edit.

 

[Richard]

I typed a long post to this thread which was lost when the website changed my name to "Unknown". Will have to get back to it later.

 

[Claudette]

I typed a long post to this thread which was lost when the website changed my name to "Unknown". Will have to get back to it later.

That is so frustrating!! I always copy everything before I hit preview now, it has happened to me too many times. lol

 

[Richard]

....Abducting girls for molestation by pretending to be rescuing them from a child molester would suggest a remarkably devious and heartless sense of humor,...
I figure TRM was probably some brutish child molester type, very possibly Fred Coffey, and his job would have been to be the bad guy chasing the kids into the neighborhood, with a knife, say. Mileski would have been the "good" guy in the neighborhood, deceiving the girls into thinking getting into his car would save them....
The main conundrum with this scenario is the same as that which confronts the simple TRM kidnapped the girls in the far-end-of-the-parking-lot scenario: Why did the two boys in the car at Devin and Dunne say they saw the girls walking home (and apparently not mention anything odd going on)? ...
Maybe MCPD has had it very right, the two people (Coffey and Mileski) they seemingly most suggested were suspects being the two people who did it.

You make some good points concerning a possible two man abduction team theory.

First, I would like to state that MCPD has never named anyone (not even TRM) as a "suspect" in the Lyon Sisters' disappearance. Most case officers probably consider their disappearance to be an abduction by a non-family member. Although each different case officer over the years may have had his or her own theory and favorite person of interest, there has never been any official statement regarding either a suspect or a scenario.

There are two points of interest which often come up during the discussion of any theory or proposed scenario. These are usually WHERE and HOW the girls were taken.

The WHERE question is one in which scenarios do not not differ much. While it is theoretically possible for the girls to have been abducted inside the Wheaton Plaza Shopping Center, or at their own home, most scenarios tend to focus on either the parking lot surrounding the mall or the residential area of Kensington between the Mall perimeter and the girls home on the corner of Plyers Mill Road and Jennings.

The entire walk (at a brisk pace) from the Mall to the Lyon home takes about 15 minutes. One could drive from the Mall to their home in about 5 minutes going at the legal speed limit and not encountering any unusual traffic. The route by vehicle, is necessarily different from the walking route dute to two areas being blocked to vehicle traffic (then and now). The total distance is less than a mile.

There are a number of considerations which would go into an abductor's planning regarding WHERE, along this rather finite and limited route, would be the best place to take the girls. Such risk factors as witnesses seeing or hearing something, the ability to spot, intercept or approach the victims, and the ability to get a vehicle in and out would all play into the plan. In the end, however, the outcome probably would have been the same.

Regarding a scenario of a knife wielding assailant chasing the girls, I think that this would have certainly drawn unwanted eyewitnesses to observe or even intervene. Showing a weapon might make the girls run or cry out, or stop at one of the many houses along the route. This would be a crime of felonious assult which would involve police investigation. A weapon might have been shown to force the girls into a vehicle, but certainly not just to scare them.

A much more subtle approach, involving either a single abuctor or a team would be for one man (possibly TRM) sitting in a vehicle in the rather small and isolated portion of the parking lot outside Wards. He is in a position to see in all directions and determine if any witnesses, police, etc are in the area.

Seeing the girls, he could simply offer them a ride (nice guy, no harm, no foul). If the girls accept, he has them. If they are afraid or apprehensive, then the stage is set for step two, which could involve either the same person OR a second team member. Alternatively, he could simply contact an accomplice by Walkie Talkie or CB radio of the girls approach to his (the accomplice) position.

If he is part of a team, as you suggest, then a second man or woman in a vehicle down the road in their direction of travel could offer a "safe" ride home. An approach might be that the second person is a police officer and have they seen or been approached by any strange men? A variation might be that the second vehicle driver acts as the scarey "bad guy" and the nice TRM arrives just in time to "rescue" the girls.

In the case of the Lyon sisters, two teen-aged boys driving a car down Drumm, near Devon sighted the girls, as did a Mr. James Mann (age then about 50) who claims to have seen the girls opposite his house, on the corner of Devon and Drumm. He even claims to have waived to the girls. None of these witnesses claimed to have seen the girls in any sort of distress at this point in their walk home.

Not far to the west on Drumm from Devon is the intersection of Drumm and McComas. At this point, the girls usually turned into a wooded area and followed a foot path through those woods, behind a number of houses. There was no evidence of any kind that a struggle or abduction took place in those woods. The path is about 600 feet long and it exits the woods onto Jennings Road. At this point, there are about a dozen very closely spaced small brick houses leading all the way (only a few hundred feet) to the Lyon home.

To intercept the girls by car on Jennings Road would have taken a person experienced in the many twists and turns of several narrow interconnecting roads, and the timing required would have placed the whole scenario in the "extreme luck" category. At that point (on Jennings) the risk of being seen would be at its highest, and there would have been little chance that the girls would have accepted a ride of only a few hundred feet.

The most logical place of abduction (besides the Mall parking lot) would have been at the intersection of Drumm and McComas. This place is accessible by vehicle and is the one place along the route which is least observable from houses.

A second abductor could have been stationed at this choke point to meet the girls.

BUT this could have been either the primary or secondary abduction place chosen by a SINGLE abductor. It takes between 2 and 3 minutes to drive to this location from the Wards back door parking lot. It would have taken the girls 7 or 8 minutes to have reached it by foot, and they HAD to go there on the way home. FROM that location, they might have taken two or three different routes home. And those were routes that a vehicle could not follow.

It is likely that the abductor (quite possibly TRM) sat in his vehicle at the Wards rear entrance/exit parking lot watching for the girls. When he saw them, he could have asked them into his vehicle. However, if ANY hitch occurred, such as a witness driving up, or someone else in the area, etc, he could then have simply observed their direction of travel, and then drove off on his intercept course.

Regarding any possible connection between Ray Mileski and Fred Coffey :

There is nothing that I know which positively the two in any way. Police cannot place Coffey in the Wheaton area positively until April 1975, and then they have his residence as the Holiday Motel in Gaithersburg (Montgomery County), MD. Ray Mileski lived in a small brick house on Suitland Road in Morningside, MD (Prince Georges County), although a tipster stated that he had a workshop somewhere in the vicinity of Branch Ave and Beech Road, just south of Iverson Mall and Marlow Heights Shopping Center.

There are some interesting COINCIDENCES, not the least of which is the fact that a TRM was seen at both of those malls talking to young girls only three days before the Lyon sisters disappeared. Another coincidence is in the backgrounds of both Coffey and Mileski. Both were former military; Coffey was Navy and Mileski was Marine Corps.

Another coincidence is that the man whom the tipster stated was involved in the abduction and imprisonment of the girls with Mileski was born the same month and year as Fred Coffey (March 1945). I have refrained from naming that individual because to my knowledge he has never been charged formally of any crimes against children or any abductions. However, I will state that he was involved in numerous misdemeanor charges and incidents of a discreditable nature with legal authorities. I verified that he lived in a number of residences in the vicinity of Mileski's home and his alleged workshop.

Another coincidence of some interest is that a piece of land at or near the alleged Mileski workshop site was owned by a man named Coffey. I have never been able to confirm whether or not he is any relation to Fred Coffey.

Mileski, in his letter writing, referred to the man he claimed abducted the girls as "C.D." He wrote that he had met this C.D. "in the pen", and that it was there that he came to learn about the Lyon girls' abduction. Mileski was clearly trying to negotiate a better prison site in his letters, asking to be transferred from a Baltimore prison to the Western Maryland prison in Cumberland. It would seem that he got his request, because that is where he died a few years later. But whether Mileski really knew anything about the Lyon sisters, or was involved in their disappearance remains a mystery.

Mileski was convicted of killing his oldest son and his wife, and the wounding of his youngest son with a high powered rifle inside his Suitland Road home in November 1977. He drove his youngest boy to the Andrews AFB Hospital, then went to see his middle son before turning himself in to police. He had acted alone in the commission of those murders.

There is no evidence that Fred Coffey was ever arrested or charged for any crime in Maryland, or that he ever spent time in a Maryland prison. In 1986, he was tried and convicted in North Carolina of numerous charges of molestation of three young children. Then in 1987, he was convicted of abducting and murdering Amanda Ray, age 10 in Charlotte, NC in 1979.

Coffey was on death row until his sentence was changed to Life in Prison and he has been in NC prisons since 1986. He is considered a strong suspect in the 1986 abduction and murder of 8-year-old Travis Shane King of Bristol, VA, and in the 1981 abduction and murder of Neely Smith, age 5 in Charlotte, NC. In those and other molestation convictions, Fred Coffey had acted alone. Coffey had a number of aliases, among them "Chick Coffey", and "Ray Davis".

 

[Gruffin]

Thanks for the interesting information, Richard. I shall consider it the next few days, presumably. I thought you and others might be interested in something somewhat bizarre I've noticed.

I was a little surprised at myself that I totally misremembered the name for Drumm St (as Dunne St.). So I wondered whether my mind was playing tricks with myself for some reason. I decided probably I was mostly thinking of Dunne and Bradstreet (which is really Dun and Bradstreet). I decided to look up streets anyway, but accidentally (or so it seemed) misremembered Devin as Devlin. What popped right up in Google is that Devlin was the name of a Hanna-Barbera cartoon series from Sept. 1974-Dec. 1974, featuring Evel-Knievel-like characters who doubled as detectives. Then I typed in Drumm, and there is a comic book character called Jericho Drumm that was created in Sept. 1973. I was thinking maybe I was getting a little conspiracy-theory oriented, but now I see just about everyone here, even you who are so thorough about everything, calls Devin Pl, Devon Pl. On the map I have it is called Devin Pl, not Devon Pl. I wonder whether you spelled it wrong because your brain on some level senses that to solve the crime, you need to spell it wrong? Right now I'm wondering whether somewhere in one of the 16 episodes of that TV cartoon (which I don't really remember, but some of which maybe I saw--I'm quite sure I never read the comic book containing Jericho Drumm), there is a crime which in its particulars somehow resembles what happened. I can't find the episodes on the Web.

There is a condition (I don't remember the name of it) wherein one notices weird connections that don't really seem to make any sense between names of things and views them as having some sort of malign significance. (I actually experienced this along with sheer terror in the summer of 1991, so I know firsthand something about it. But I was also on some level expecting cryptic clues from terrorized people, so I wasn't as purely that way as I could have been.) An example is seeing the word therapist in a hospital and cowering in fear because it is a word that lacks just one space from being "the rapist". This is considered paranoid and insane, but maybe it's not so much paranoid as a defense against child molesters (and thus is only usually insane, inasmuch as it is rare one is dealing with child molesters). Most people seek understanding, which is in a way just a harmonious relation between one's ideas. Perhaps child molesters or a somewhat broader class of bad people tend to care not so much for harmony in ideas as harmony in names (e.g., because names are more directly important in communication and making an impression, and making an impression tends to be more selfish than understanding), and basically just don't have understanding in any normal sense. And so when one sees harmony in names with no corresponding harmony in sense, it suggests somehow that it has to do with potentially very dangerous child molesters or the like. One can imagine, for instance, the perp looking at a map and feeling a sense of harmony with the idea of committing a crime resembling a crime on an episode of Devlin at a street named Devin, at an intersection with a street whose name is the same as some comic book character that bears some relation to such a crime, even if they have no practical reason to do anything so preposterous. Of course, it could all be coincidence, or something in between, namely the perp liked those cartoons and comics.

 

[Richard]

Gruffin,

I looked at the map and you are right about the correct spelling of Devin Place. It is not "Devon" as I had written.

I went back to some of my earlier posts of years ago and found that I have been pretty consistant in my incorrect spelling of the name. Perhaps I made the initial mistake because the I and the O are next to each other on the keyboard.

If you see it incorrectly spelled as "Devon" on other websites or newspaper articles, you will know the source of their information.

It is certainly possible that an abductor might choose a place because the name has significance to him on some level. It is more likely that coincidences and interesting links are seen after the fact, however.

-----------------------------
Here is an excerpt from the origional Washington Post article (Thursday, 17 April 1975) about the sighting of the girls on Drumm near Devin. It is titled:

"Police Give New Data on Lyon Sisters" by Alice Bonner.

Note that the article stated that this information had come a week earlier from a "friend of Sheila", they (police) had "withheld it until yesterday (16 April 1975) to verify its reliability."

quote ... The youth, police said, told them he was riding with one other person in a car going west on Drumm Avenue near the shopping center when he saw the girls, Sheila, and her sister, Katherine, also walking west between 2:30 and 3:30 p.m. on March 25, the day they were last seen.

... Drumm Avenue westbound leads away from the shopping center. Police said the friend saw the girls near Devin Street, about three blocks from the shopping center and about half a mile from their home... He told policed the girls were alone and "just walking normally along the roadway". The youth was identified only as "over 15 years old"....unquote.

 

[Jeb]

This day differed from others, because there was an Easter Bunny, & a TRM present at the Plaza. The Lyon Girls were seen talking to both. LE will probably tell you that the 'Bunny' was enterviewing children around the time the girls left for home. But where was TRM?

 

[Gruffin]

I notice on internet satellite maps that there seems to be a path to Faulkner from the Plaza, roughly in line with the southern edge of Wards, that shares the northern part of the parking lot of the Kenmont Swim and Tennis Club for about 75 feet. Is this where the girls usually walked? Or is the path north of there? The northern edge of the club parking lot would seem a spot the abduction might have happened or started if the girls walked there. Maybe TRM's question about whether the girls played sports was some sort of tie-in to his saying, e.g., that he just played tennis or basketball there, giving him an excuse for his car to be in the parking lot. In a 1972 grainy aerial USGS photo, there seems dense trees east and west of the club, but not much north of it or around the circle ending Faulkner. But I guess most of the trees near the girls' path were deciduous and not in leaf on March 25, so I'm thinking tree cover was probably hard to come by any place along the route. I notice about 15 houses on Faulkner along the girl's route. I agree it does seem hard to imagine a plot (like the one I had mentioned) involving the girls being chased for a while along this road. But then every particular scenario seems strange, especially given the people claiming to have seen them walking at Devin and Drumm.

It's hard to tell from the old grainy satellite photo how large a road there was surrounding the mall parking lots and between Wards and the end of Faulkner. I guess the "small and isolated" part of the parking lot you mention, Richard, was just west of Wards, so close to Wards that the building itself cut off view from the main south and north parking areas? And I notice a building off to itself in the old photos (now the area is just part of the parking lots), about one-fifth as big as Wards and maybe 150 yards south of the south end of Wards (with its center maybe 30 yards east of a meridian intersecting the center of Wards). I wonder what that building contained. If they had gone there on their way home, perhaps they used a weird more southerly route home (which would make it even harder to explain why they were seen at Drumm and Devin, but whatever).

 

[Jeb]

Without being rude, I would like to indicate that any speculation about a parking lot abduction, would almost be suggesting the 4 witnesses who
noticed the girls walking along Drumm, where either mistaken or lyin'.

 

[Richard]

The path which connects the parking lot to Faulkner, is very short - probably only about 20 feet long. The path through the woods which is referred to in many posts is further west starting at the intersection of Drumm and McComas and extending for about 600 feet to Jennings.

You are right about the Swimming pool and Tennis club being very close to the path and Faulkner. The girls had been to that swimming pool the previous summer, but in March it was not open, and its parking lot was probably empty. There is no direct road or driveway connection between the Swimming Pool and the Mall for vehicle traffic. But the walking path at the end of Faulkner would allow anyone to walk from one place to the other.

I am not certain what the separate building South of Wards was in 1975, but in 1984, I recall that there was a building in about the area you describe which was for Car Insurance adjusters. I brought a car there in 1984 which had been damaged in an accident and the adjuster looked at it and made arrangements for its repair. I cannot recall if they actually did repairs there, or if they were sent elsewhere.

There may have been other walking paths from Wheaton Plaza to the residential area of Kensington, but the one mentioned as being the Lyon sisters' usual route would have been the most direct for them.

Regarding the four witnesses who stated that they saw the girls walking on or near Drumm and Devin; Two were teenage boys driving a car, a third witness was a 12 year-old boy who stated that he had been playing Basketball and jogged past them, and the fourth witness was Mr. James Mann who claimed in 2005 to have seen the girls from his house.

It would indeed seem that the girls had been seen walking home. However, there were different problems with each eyewitness testimony. Time interval between the event and the report of it to the police was a problem with three of the four witnesses, and a wide time interval between the time the girls were last seen at the mall and then seen walking home was a problem with the earliest report (from the 12-year-old). He was reported to have stated that he saw them at 7:30 PM, and police soon discounted his report. It was only after the boy's story was discredited by police that the other two boys came forward. And of course, Mr. Mann told his story some 30 years later.

At the time of the newspaper report that I quoted in a previous post, police seemed to believe that the girls actually did make it to Drumm and Devin. Some case officers in later years voiced their doubts about the veracity of the sightings.

 

[Jeb]

Richard, when was the boys' 7:30 PM sighting on Drumm Ave.discounted? I'm asking because I have a '75 newspaper article where the Captain of Police(at the time) indicated that the story had not been discounted.

 

[Richard]

Richard, when was the boys' 7:30 PM sighting on Drumm Ave.discounted? I'm asking because I have a '75 newspaper article where the Captain of Police(at the time) indicated that the story had not been discounted.

Jeb,

I seem to recall that police began to voice doubts about the accuracy of the 7:30 PM sighting by David, the 12-year-old boy by Friday the 28th of March 1975. But I could not find a newspaper article for that date in my files.

Remember that by 7:30 PM, 25 March 1975 - the day the girls went missing - Montgomery County Police had been contacted by John and Mary Lyon and the search for them had begun. No article ever stated WHEN David (the 12-year-old witness) was questioned by police, but it may have been that evening.

I did find two articles which discussed police concerns and doubts about the 7:30 PM sighting. I quote below:

Washington Star, Monday 1 April 1975 - in an article which included the Tape Recorder Man sketch and story stated;

Quote ... The two blonde haired girls, clad in jeans and lightweight shirts, have been missing since they walked to the shopping mall from the family's home on Plyers Mill Road in Kensington about 11 a.m. , a week ago today.
Their brother Jay, 14, told police earlier that he had seen his sisters at the mall about 1 p.m. A 12-year-old boy told police he had seen them at 7:30 p.m. last Tuesday when he was running along Drumm Avenue.
(Chief Gabriel) Lamastra said neither of those stories had been discounted because of the new information ("Jimmy's story about the TRM). In the three sightings, Lamastra said, "the time element is not that accurate." And he said, police "just can't figure the connection" on the report of the girls being on Drumm Avenue (at 7:30 p.m.). ... Unquote.


Here is an article from the Washington Post dated Thursday, 17 April 1975 about the two boys in the car seeing the girls between 2:30 and 3:30 p.m. on Drumm near Devin:

Quote ... (Detective) Caswell said the new information (report by two boys driving) does not rule out the continued investigation of reports that a man carrying a tape recorder was seen talking to the girls at the shopping center about 1 p.m. that day or reports last week that two girls were seen bound and gagged in the back of a moving station wagon near Manassas, Va.
Caswell said detectives are "95 per cent sure" that the latest witness saw the girls. Police seem to give less credibility to another youth's earlier report that he saw them at about 7:30 p.m. that evening at an intersection near the plaza. Unquote.

 

[Motherof5]

I think there is a very good chance that the girls were taken right after they were seen by the boys in the car between 2:30 and 3:30 on Drumm near Devin. Due to the lack of anyone hearing or seeing any type of struggle, I think they were taken by someone known to them. Even TRM would be known to them at this point on their way home.

 

[Jeb]

I agree, & would like to ad this. I figure they were taken on Drumm after Devin, and before they got to the wooded area they were said to have used as a short-cut.

 

[Motherof5]

I agree with u Jeb and I think we all agree that a vehicle was used so it had to happen before they got to the short cut.....I think they would have felt safer talking to someone out in the open on the street where anyone could see them rather than in the woods. They already talked to TRM and kids generally think that one short conversation means that the individual isn't a stranger any longer. I also agree with Richard's theory about asking the girls for directions to Jennings and then acting confused....then asking them to show him the way and he will "give them a ride home"......

 

[liz b.]

I read that the TRM had kids read from a card into the microphone. Does anyone know what exactly they read ? Also, I read in the Washington Star article that a boy heard him asking the sisters if either one of them did sports...This reminds me of the "you could be a model " ruse, in which pedophiles would approach young girls, and offer to help them become models. I wonder if this guy would say something like " you have a beautiful speaking voice " ? And, of course, he was able to immediately build trust and rapport with these particular girls because their father was a radio broadcaster..... He could have said something like " so that's where you get your talent for speaking from ".... MOO And I wonder if he made a tentative time and place to meet them later ? Outside the mall someplace... Told them he could get them on the radio, make them famous, whatever...

I'm curious,though, how he got away with theses "interviews " without mall security intervening. Or, without any adult simply asking him what he was doing ? Seems strange... MOO

 

[Richard]

I read that the TRM had kids read from a card into the microphone. Does anyone know what exactly they read ? Also, I read in the Washington Star article that a boy heard him asking the sisters if either one of them did sports...This reminds me of the "you could be a model " ruse, in which pedophiles would approach young girls, and offer to help them become models. I wonder if this guy would say something like " you have a beautiful speaking voice " ? And, of course, he was able to immediately build trust and rapport with these particular girls because their father was a radio broadcaster..... He could have said something like " so that's where you get your talent for speaking from ".... MOO And I wonder if he made a tentative time and place to meet them later ? Outside the mall someplace... Told them he could get them on the radio, make them famous, whatever...

I'm curious,though, how he got away with theses "interviews " without mall security intervening. Or, without any adult simply asking him what he was doing ? Seems strange... MOO

What you mention are all possibilities, regarding TRM's actions and motivations.

What you read about TRM handing an index card to a girl and asking her to read it was stated about a man with a tape recorder who appeared at Iverson Mall and at Marlow Heights Shopping Center the Saturday before the girls disappeared. Those two malls are adjacent to eachother and are located in Prince Georges County, Maryland, just south of Washington DC.

According to several witnesses (who came forward after hearing about the TRM in Wheaton Plaza talking to the Lyon sisters) there was a man who resembled the sketch of TRM approaching young girls and asking them to read a Phone Answering Machine message into his tape recorder. Most, if not all, refused to read for him. This guy's approach was something like, "Gee you have a pretty voice, would you mind reading this message for me." or words to that effect.