Here are some excerpts from a recent Washington Post article which included quotes from relatives and neighbors of both Lloyd and Richard Welch:
... In recent months, investigators also have spoken to Welch family members.
In Oakdale, Tenn., Edna Welch, 80, said Montgomery detectives have talked to
her once on the phone and visited her twice. She said they are trying to get
Welch family members to turn on each other. “They get our family fighting over
who said what,” she said, “I’m telling you, I’m mad about it.”
During one visit, Edna Welch said, detectives had a search warrant and took
photographs and letters that Lloyd Welch had written to her from prison. She
said they also took a letter, containing Bible verses, she had written but
hadn’t mailed. “Maybe the Lord intended for them to read that,” Edna Welch said
of the investigators.
She said she knew Lloyd Welch as a boy and doesn’t think he had anything to
do with the disappearance of the Lyon sisters. “I’ll go to my grave, if I die
tonight, saying he didn’t do it,” adding that she wasn’t “excusing him for what
he has done in later years.”
Edna Welch said that Richard Welch is her late husband’s brother. She said
that Richard Welch and his wife are hard-working people who raised their
grandchildren. Asked whether she thought Richard Welch had anything to do with
the sisters’ disappearance, she said, “That’s totally insane.” ...
It was late last year that Montgomery detectives looking through the case
files began to take a new look at Lloyd Welch.
Police would not say what sparked their interest in the elder Welch.
Neighbors said that they saw police go into his house recently.
Stella Mungeon, a neighbor of Richard Welch’s, said members of the Welch
family were living there when she moved to the neighborhood 13 years ago. “They
keep to themselves, and they care for their own,” Mungeon said.
Josephine Elliott, another neighbor, described the Welches as kind and
family-centered.
“They have always been a great couple,” Elliott said. “I always see them
together.”
Elliott expressed surprise that Richard Welch could be connected to the
disappearance of the Lyon sisters in any way.
“I can’t believe they would be involved in anything like that,” she said. ...
LINK:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local...59acc8-4a55-11e4-b72e-d60a9229cc10_story.html