Lyon Case List of possible suspects
The following is an updated listing of most of the potential suspects discussed in these threads. They are not in any particular order. I have not included all information, only a short sketch. Go to the referenced posting in this thread for more detailed information.
Please note that I include only known criminals who were convicted of similar crimes (and one person killed in the act) in my list of named persons.
Fred Howard COFFEY, Jr. (incarcerated)
- Known child molester and killer
- Worked in Wheaton for Vitro Labs April thru July 1975
- Pre and Post offenses against children
- had several vehicles
- former Navy
Fred Howard Coffey, Jr. is currently serving a life term in NC for the 1979 murder of a 10 year NC girl. He may have been involved in the Lyon Sisters abduction, and possibly in the 24 July 1975 abduction/murder of 15 year-old Kathy Lynn Beatty, also of Montgomery County, Maryland... Post # 5 and several subsequent ones.
Michael Edward PEARCH (deceased)
- mass murderer at Wheaton Plaza April 1975
- mental and emotional problems
- had vehicle (green Volkswagon)
- lived close to Lyons
- also lived on a remote farm in western MD
- previously lived in Suitland, PG county.
- Army trained in counter espionage, abduction, false ID's, weapons
Michael Edward Pearch, born 20 April 1945 was shot dead by Montgomery County Police in the streets of Wheaton, Maryland on 13 April 1975. His death ended a shooting spree which he began at Wheaton Plaza Shopping Center during which he murdered two people and wounded five others. Could he have been involved in the abduction of the Lyon sisters from that same mall 19 days earlier? See Post # 7
Arthur Frederick "Freddie" GOODE III (deceased)
- tortured and killed young boys (no known girl victims)
- Lived in Hyattsville, MD
- mentally retarded/disturbed - resided at Mental hospital for a time
- rode a bicycle or bus (not a driver)
Freddie was a homosexual pedophile who lived in Hyattsville, Maryland (Prince Georges County). He had been arrested on three separate occasions for indecent assults on minors when in March 1975 (Same month and year that the Lyon Sisters disappeared) he was arrested for five sexual assaults on a 9 year-old boy... see post # 2
Ellwood Leroy LEUSCHNER (deceased)
- convicted rapist (repeat offender) on parole
- moved from CA to MD sometime between 1974 and 1976
- molested and murdered two (possibly three) 9 year-old boys in Salisbury MD 1977
- had a green or blue Camaro
On 1 November 1977, a paroled California rapist was arrested in Salisbury, Maryland by Maryland State Police on the charges of kidnapping, raping, and murdering a 9 year old boy. The boy was abducted from his trailer park and buried on a farm ten miles away. The suspect, was one Ellwood Leroy LEUSCHNER, age 45. He was a tall, gaunt, white man who worked as a general laborer at the Campbell Soup Plant in Salisbury... post # 3
Raymond Rudolph MILESKI, Sr. (deceased)
- convicted murderer of family members 1977
- had a work van, separate work place, flexible work schedule - Cabinet installer
- PG county, near Iverson and Marlow Heights shopping centers
- actually spoke of being involved
- former USMC
- alleged associates: Marvin Peele, Ernie Bertrand/Bertran/Bertram, Tommy
Raymond Rudolph Mileski Sr. was a convicted murderer serving a life sentence in the Maryland Prison system. He is linked to the Lyon Sisters, because of claims that he has made on several occasions. Those stories have some varience to them, but basically Ray states that he knows who the abductor/murderer of the girls is.... post # 4 Note, Mileski is now deceased.
Hadden CLARK (incarcerated)
- born 1951
- lived in Montgomery County, MD
- convicted serial killer of at least two Montgomery County girls
- admitted to having killed others, but not the Lyon sisters
Hadden Clark, born in April 1951, was approaching his 24th birthday when the Lyon sisters disappeared. A cross dressing, psychotic, serial killer and cannibal, he led a truly bizzare life until finally convicted and sentenced to life terms for the murders of Laura Houghteling and Michelle Dorr, both of Montgomery County. See post # 8
Timothy Joseph Buzbee (incarcerated)
- aka The Aspen Hill Rapist (1980's)
- was 18 and HS senior in March 1975
- no known murders
Date of Birth 08/27/1957
DOC ID 170707
Holding Facility North Branch Correctional Institution, Cumberland, MD
- Timothy Buzbee would have been 17 and a half years old when Sheila and Kate Lyon went missing. At the time, he lived in the Aspen Hill - Rockville area and was still in High School.
- Although he was never named as a suspect in the Lyon case, he later was involved in a number of stalking incidents and rapes, some of which involved young girls.
- He was arrested, tried and convicted of rape in 1982 and has been in prison since that time. In 2009, he was charged in four additional rapes.
- Before the four rape charges went to trial, however, Buzbee filed an appeal, which went up to the Maryland Court of Special Appeals.
- In 2011, the appeal decision went against Buzbee and now the road is clear for prosecutors to continue with plans to charge him with the four additional rapes.
Bar Jonah (deceased)
Although his true preference was little boys there was a ton of child *advertiser censored* in his possesion when he was aphrehended. .. post # 19
Richard Miles CHANEY (incarcerated)
- Maryland resident
- Murdered 10 year old Maryland girl in 1971
- not caught until 1978
In 1978, a man named Richard Miles Chaney, dob 19 November 1939, was arrested, tried and convicted of the 1971 murder of little Elizabeth Ann Metzler age 10 in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. He was sentenced to Life without Parole - the highest allowable sentence at the time. In 2002 and 2003, he appealed his sentence, but lost. He is still incarcerated in a Maryland Prison. "Possible Connections" thread page 3.
Gerald Anderson ABERNATHY (deceased)
- abducted and murdered a woman in Kensington
- ties to Kensington
- other rapes, abductions, murders in VA and PA
- convicted of rape and murder (died in prison)
- whereabouts unknown for March 1975
Wendy Lou Stark, abducted and murdered 1982 Montgomery County, MD, closed case: Could this recently closed case be related to the case of the Missing Lyon Sisters or of Kathy Lynn Beatty? The perpetrator of this crime was a repeat offender who had escaped from a Virginia Prison and was living in Kensington, MD in 1981-82. Did he have previous ties to Kensington? More importantly, where was he in 1975?... "Possible Connections thread post # 243. Note Abernathy is now deceased.
James Mitchell "Mike" DeBARDELEBEN (deceased)
- sadistic murderer of women
- Counterfeiter known to have been in Wheaton MD 1975
- many different kinds of crimes
- Had a 1971 green Chrysler
- post 590 on the origional thread (page 24) and other recent threads as well.
- born March 20, 1940 in Little Rock, Arkansas
- died January 26, 2011 in prison of pneumonia at the Federal Medical Center in Butner, North Carolina.
- convicted rapist and counterfeiter
- aka "the mall passer"
- After his arrest for counterfeiting, he was found to have committed much more serious sex crimes. He was not brought to trial for any murders
John Brennan CRUTCHLEY (deceased)
Born October 1, 1946
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Died March 30, 2002 (aged 55)
Bowling Green, Florida, U.S.
Alias(es) The Vampire Rapist
Conviction(s) Kidnapping, Sexual battery
Penalty Life sentence
Status Deceased
Occupation System engineer
- During the mid 70's he lived in Fairfax County Va. At the time there were several disappearances of teenage girls. Some investiators suspect his linkage to the Lyon Girls & Kathy Beaty. He was extensively familiar with the area, & also lived in Pa. where there were a number of missing females, & deceased females. Post 22
- convicted kidnapper and rapist who was suspected of murdering more than 30 women, but was never tried nor convicted of those crimes. He was called the "Vampire Rapist" because he drained the blood of his victim almost to the point of death while he repeatedly sexually assaulted her.
- He moved to Fairfax County, Virginia in the mid-1970s.
- He worked for several high-tech firms in the Washington, D.C. area, including TRW, ICA and Logicon Process Systems. At about this time, several teenaged girls disappeared in and around that area.
- He later moved to Florida and began working in 1983 at Harris Corporation in Palm Bay, FL.
- Some investigators linked Crutchley with the disappearance of two teenaged girls, the Lyon Sisters in Wheaton, Maryland and a possible rape-murder of teenager Kathy Lynn Beatty in nearby Aspen Hill, both in Montgomery County, where his second wife's family lived.
James Kowalski (incarcerated)
- possible ties to Kensington
- Child poronographer
- in a rock band
- possible involved in disappearance of George "Junior" Burdinsky
- There are a number of 1993 Washington Post articles about James Kowalski and his trials for child poronography and for child molestation.
- His convictions were for innapropriate actions with young boys ages around 11 and 12. No references to molestation or kidnapping of young girls. Although suspected of being involved with the disappearance of George "Junior" Burdynski, he was never charged or convicted in that regard.
Robert RELDAN (incarcerated)
- from New Jersey
- On Parole in NJ May 1974
- committed two double abduction/murders of young girls in August and December of 1974
- killed four more girls in October 1975, two of them in a double abduction/murder
- known to cross state lines to abduct, murder, and dispose of victims.
- age 35 in 1975.
While it is not known if Reldan was in Maryland in March 1975, he was known to have been out on parole and actively committing abductions, rapes and murders before and after that date in nearby New Jersey.
- Chronology:
- Raped a woman at Teaneck, NJ, in 1967, served 3 years in prison, then paroled.
- Five months later, in 1971, he assaulted another woman in a hospital parking lot, pulling a knife on her moments after his latest therapy session.
- Convicted a second time, he emerged as a "model graduate" of Rahway prison's rehabilitation program for sex offenders. Authorities were so impressed with Reldan's progress that they chose him for a television interview with David Frost, aired shortly before his parole in May 1974.
- August 10, 1974: Mary Pryor (17) and Lorraine Kelly (16), reported missing from North Bergen. The girls were last seen on August 9, when they left Pryor's home to do some shopping, and police believe they were hitchhiking when they met their killer that afternoon. Their bodies, raped and smothered, were recovered from a wooded area near Montvale, four days later, on August 14, 1974.
- December 13, 1974, Doreen Carlucci (14) and Joanne Delardo (15) vanished from a church youth center in Woodbridge, their bodies discovered two weeks later, in Manalapan Township, NJ. Beaten and strangled, one victim was completely nude when found, the other dressed only in shoes and a sweater. The killer's garrote, an electrical extension cord, was knotted tight around Carlucci's neck.
- October 6, 1975, the first solitary victim, Susan Reynes (26), disappeared from her home in Haworth, New Jersey.
- October 14, 1975, in Demarest, Susan Reeve (22) vanished without a trace on the short walk home from her bus stop, after work.
- October 24, 1975, Denise Evans and Carolyn Hedgepeth (both 15) disappeared from home in Wilmington, Delaware. Their bodies - shot execution-style - were recovered in Salem County, New Jersey, the following day.
- On October 27 and 28, 1975, the remains of victims Reynes and Reeve were found, seven miles apart, in a wooded region of Rockland County, New York, just north of the New Jersey state line. Searchers were led to one corpse by an arrow, scratched on a highway embankment above the name "Reeve." Autopsies revealed that both women were strangled.
- On October 31, 1975, police arrested 35-year-old Robert Reldan in Closter, New Jersey, on a charge of attempted burglary and held without bond. Reldan was questioned about the murders of Reeve and Reynes, but on November 2, 1975, homicide detectives publicly announced that he was "not considered a suspect" in the slayings.
- January 1977, Reldan is indicted on two counts for the murders of Reynes and Reeve.
- April 21, 1977, Reldan is charged with plotting to arrange the deaths of a wealthy aunt and her boyfriend, hoping to expedite a hoped-for inheritance. A Bergen County detective, posing as a hit man, twice visited Reldan at Trenton state prison, where he was serving three years on the burglary charge, and their conversations were secretly recorded as evidence .
- June 1978, convicted of conspiracy and awarded a term of 20 to 50 years in prison.
- June 1979, first murder trial ends with a hung jury, and a retrial was scheduled for October.
- October 15, 1979, Reldan uses a smuggled key to unlock his handcuffs, sprays his guards with Mace, and escapes from the courthouse in Hackensack. He was recaptured hours later, at a hospital in Tuxedo, New York, after crashing his stolen getaway car into a ditch. The trial resumed next day, despite the anonymous mailing of $100 bribes to several jurors.
- October 17, 1979, convicted of the murders of Susan Reynes and Susan Reeve.
- January, 1981, escaped from custody and was recaptured with added sentences.
- In 1986 He murdered someone in prison and was convicted and given further sentences.
Unknown suspects...
Unknown person dubbed The Tape Recorder Man on these threads. He may or may not have been involved in the disappearance of the girls, but was seen talking to them shortly before they disappeared.
Unknown Suspect dubbed the Pennsylvania Strangler (1976-1977)
Although the victims of this Never Identified Suspect were somewhat older than the Lyon sisters, this series of related homicides were very close in time and geographical vicinity to Montgomery County, Maryland, and also to other possibly connected disappearances discussed in these threads.
The "Green Vega" serial rapists, so called because they abducted women in a green Chevrolet Vega.
The "Freeway Phantom" who abducted and murdered young black girls in Washington DC and Prince Georges county, Maryland in the early 1970's.