Sheila and Katherine Lyon-sisters missing since 1975 - #1

DNA Solves
DNA Solves
DNA Solves

New Posts

Status
Not open for further replies.
The current photo of Lloyd Lee Welch (aka Michael Welch) they have because he is currently an inmate in a prison in Smyrna, Delaware. He has been there since 1996 or so for raping his girlfriend's daughter. The second person of interest is Richard Welch, he is the uncle of Lloyd Lee Welch. They said he worked as a security guard at Wheaton Plaza or in the Wheaton, Maryland area back in 1975, the year the girls' disappeared. They also said he is still alive and lives in Hyattsville, Maryland. Hope more tips come in from anyone who remembers these two guys and their activities in the mid 1970's around Montgomery County and PG County.
 
Lloyd Lee Welch was actually 18 yrs old in March 1975, when the girls went missing. He was old enough to drive a car. Driving age was 16 yrs old. They never said he didn't have a car or access to a car. He could have stolen a car as he was a thief. He was arrested in 1977 for breaking into a house in the Wheaton, Maryland area. It does make more sense if a second person were involved in order to abduct the two girls. Maybe one flashed a badge and asked the girls to get into a car for questioning, never to be seen or heard from again.
 
I hope that law enforcement is barking up the right tree. I have mixed feelings from what I saw of the press conference. The Mont. Co. police chief spoke with a certainty but then dropped the old " I hope people will come forward" line.

My guess is they are on the mountain for a reason, I don't think they would be digging and spending those kinds of resources based on gossip, especially not such a large area. Fox5DC has another picture of Welch Sr, I will try to post it here-

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/By-BBSEIAAAs87e.jpg:small (couldn't link to pic, it is here though)

Looks like a younger version of the guy in the first picture, same hair part and facial structure.

I am very curious as to if Welch Sr. has a criminal record, where he has lived the past 40 years and the like. Someone said he is in Hyattsville now, is this substantiated?

I shouldn't speculate but I like the theory of the two working together. They are both probably miserable scum (Jr proven by his record) but it's possible the uncle was the John Muhammed influence to a younger Lee Malvo type (Welch Jr). Maybe authorities leaned on Welch Jr and he is coming clean to avoid the death penalty or clear his conscious, but there is a lot of time elapsed and his memory not so good. He is 57 and probably has a history of substance abuse, doubt he could remember much about a 39 year old burial spot.

I hope to see more info on Welch Jr. Unfortunately it is a fairly common name, so I do hope that some unfortunate innocoent person is not harassed or wrongly accused.

EDIT- I have to wonder too why there was not a photo released of Welch Sr. at the news conference? I would think there would be a paper hard copy from drivers licenses over the years if nothing else.
 
2 October 2014 Press Conference

At a press conference today, Investigators named a second Person of Interest in the Lyon Case. He is Richard Allen Welch, Senior.

He is an uncle of POI Lloyd Lee Welch, Jr. (Brother of Lloyd Lee Welch, Sr.)

Richard Welch is still living and may have been a security guard in the Wheaton area in the 1970's. Investigators are asking businesses in the Wheaton, MD area to review their records to see if they ever hired a security guard named Richard Welch.

A Grand Jury will be convened tomorrow in Bedford County, Virginia to review evidence.

The search of property continues on Taylor's Mountain.
 
i will be on the edge of my seat the whole time. I really hope they find something! These girls have been gone for too long, and the person(s) who took them deserves to face justice, here and beyond!
 
Richard Allen Welch, Sr. lives in Hyattsville, MD. A check of Maryland Judiciary Records indicates that he has a pretty clean record. Only a couple of court cases and in those, he and his wife were co-petitioners to become guardians of two minor children.

His son, Richard Allen, Jr. on the other hand, has quite a long list of court appearances for various criminal and traffic offenses. He was born in either 1966 or 1972 (records vary) but would have been a small boy at the time the Lyon Sisters disappeared.
 
http://hyattsvillelife.com/hyattsvi...nterest-in-1975-disappearance-of-lyons-girls/

The younger Welch was a reward seeker who contacted police in April 1975.


On April 1, 1975, just one week after Katherine and Sheila went missing from Wheaton Mall, Lloyd Welch provided his address to police as 4714 Baltimore Avenue in Hyattsville.

USA Today reports that his niece, 38-year-old Debbie Roe, 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.”

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.’

OK so the stepmother is in Oakdale,Tennessee and is 80 years old according to the Washington Post.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local...59acc8-4a55-11e4-b72e-d60a9229cc10_story.html

Helen Craver was the girlfriend and is now deceased.
Richard Allen Welch Sr. is the brother of Lloyd Lee Welch's deceased father.
Debbie Roe (mentioned in the first link) is the niece of LLW.
 
The story about Lloyd Lee Welch, Jr. calling in a tip to police in hopes of getting a reward on 1 April 1975 is significant. That was the first day that a $7,000 reward was announced in the newspapers. The reward, raised by WMAL radio where John Lyon worked as an announcer, was offered for information leading to the safe return of the Lyon sisters. MCP initially had asked the radio station to hold off on offering the reward, but gave the go-ahead and the reward was offered on 1 April.

The date of 1 April 1975 was also significant in that it was the first time that the story and sketch of the Tape Recorder Man (TRM) first broke. It was a major story in all the newspapers and on all the TV channels in the Washington DC area. Welch would have seen that story and read about the reward before he called in his "tip". MCP has confirmed that they have his name and Hyattsville address for that date.

The big question would be; If Lloyd Welch was responsible for the girls' abduction, why would he think that he could collect the reward? Perhaps he only had information or perhaps he was simply used by others that day. If he was deeply involved in their disappearance, calling the police and giving his name and address seems like something either really guttsy or really stupid. Or both. But whatever his actual motivation to call in the tip, it would certainly be a factor in his favor and his defense at a trial.
 
The take by the Hyattsville community newspaper this afternoon:

http://hyattsvillelife.com/hyattsvi...nterest-in-1975-disappearance-of-lyons-girls/

To me, the photo noted earlier showing Richard Welch, in uniform, on Santa's lap is suggestive. Welch looks to be about the age he would have been at the time of the crime. LE has placed him as a security guard in the Wheaton area at that time. Where would a security guard be on the job with Santa? At the mall, of course. Wheaton Plaza was the only major shopping center in the region in the mid-70s.

Lloyd Welch was seen talking with a security guard at the Mall, presumably prior to the abductions -- but perhaps after having been seen "paying attention" to the Lyon sisters. It's easy to see why Richard is a person of interest in the case ...
 
I wonder if Richard Allen Welch ever owned a beige or tan colored 1970 Ford Station Wagon. On April 7, 1975 a credible witness (an employee at IBM) reported to Mont County Police that he saw two girls gagged and bound in the back seat of a tan Ford station wagon. He remembered that one girl raised her head and was wearing gold wire rimmed glasses and resembled Sheila Lyon. He said the driver seemed nervous and ran a red light. This was in Manassas, Virginia and the car had Maryland tags. The witness now lives in Cary, North Carolina. I found a recent article on the internet about his account of that incident.
 
I wonder if the security guard Lloyd Welch was seen talking to at Wheaton Plaza that day was actually his uncle, Richard Welch. Makes sense, especially if the two were hatching a plan to abduct young girls that day.
 
One picture on this website shows Welch with what appears to me a 70's model Ford Pinto SW, not beige but woodgrain. OK maybe its a Mercury Bobcat, not so sure...

http://www.wdbj7.com/news/local/bed...s-conference-about-lyon-sisters-case/28368986

I am pretty sure the Manassas witness would have used the term "compact" or Pinto (those things were pretty ubiquitous in the 70's) so I really doubt the picture means much. It could mean that he did favor Ford products in earthy colors, but that's a reach.

I am sure that law enforcement knows every car that every American has owned since the mid-90's when the information age boomed. I am not so sure they have gone back with records over the years to add cars people owned in the 70's or 80's. It was unfortunately a lot easier in those days before the widespread use of computers by LE to drive uninsured or just use some old tags.

I'm a strong advocate for privacy, but it's really frustrating that LE does not have access to basic info like the security guard employment and any motor vehicle records.

Just had ankle surgery Tuesday, I am hoping that there is an arrest made while I am still on the couch. :)
 
The car described by the IBM man, which he claims to have seen on 7 April 1975 was a tan or beige 1968 Ford Station Wagon with a new Maryland plate (they just came out that year): DMT-6xx. He claims that he could not read the last two digets because the plate was bent.

Station wagons are almost extinct these days, but they were pretty large back in the 1960's and early 70's.

The story of the Tan Ford SW was that a single man who resembled the recently released sketch of an unknown "Tape Recorder Man" was sighted in early morning rush hour traffic in Manassas Virginia. A girl or girls were seen tied up in the back of the Station Wagon and the driver drove through a red light and accellerated, heading west out of town.

The Tan Ford Station Wagon became the focus of the investigation for a time and police had to look in several different DMV stations to determine all 100 vehicles that had plates beginning with DMT-6xx. This was because records were paper and because the new plates had just come out. Records had not yet been consolodated as plates were still being issued.
 
The problem may not be that the police don't have access to records; it's more likely that these records no longer exist. Under Federal and Maryland law, employers are required to retain payroll records for only three years. Before the digital age, it was too burdensome for employers to retain all those paper records indefinitely, so any 1970's information was almost certainly destroyed long ago.

To complicate the search, yesterday LE said that Richard Welch had been a security guard "in the Wheaton area", not specifically Wheaton Plaza. That could mean any business that employed security guards: banks, office buildings, car dealerships, schools, storage facilities, you name it. It could be Wheaton Plaza, too, and maybe it is. Hopefully someone will come forward with more information.
 
Security Guard Uniform

Recently released photo of Richard Allen Welch, Sr. in a 1970's vintage security guard uniform is interesting. It appears to be a khaki shirt and black tie with a gold sheild type badge. On his head is a round, military style cap with another gold badge on the front.

This uniform is not like uniforms of Security Officers seen in 1970's vintage photos taken at Wheaton Plaza. In those photos, security guards appear to be wearing dark blue coats of military dress style, with lighter color trousers.

The larger established Security firms like Pinkertons, Brinks, Burns, etc usually issued guards uniforms that looked more like police uniforms in Dark Blue or Cadet Gray colors. Shirts were usually light blue with red patches on the shoulders. Badges were distinctly marked with the company's name - both on chest badge and hat. Hats were usually of the "8-point" style, rather than round military style.

The uniform worn by Welch appears to be possibly that of a smaller company, rather than one of the larger, nationally known and well established firms. Could be military surplus, such as Army parts with the gold badges added.

The badges do not appear to be the universal wide silver color shield with a star in the center which are available everywhere, but rather something that a company had made for issue along with the hat emblem.

Sometimes, a store, business, hospital, etc would have their own security force with their own uniforms, but at times they would supplement that force with guards from a security firm by a contract. This could be a regular practice, or a temporary thing due to increased security needs, for say a large sale or carnival, or event. In those cases, each "rent-a-cop" or contract guard would report both to the security officer at the business and to his own employer - usually on a standard report form for each shift of duty.
 
welch security.jpgwelch-security2.jpg

If I was LE I would check on the security uniform color scheme, which I think is unusual, and the badge design.

There are likely security and work uniform companies in the area who would remember- or people who had been employed by the same company and wore the same uniform.
 
Richard said:
Security Guard Uniform

Recently released photo of Richard Allen Welch, Sr. in a 1970's vintage security guard uniform is interesting. It appears to be a khaki shirt and black tie with a gold sheild type badge. On his head is a round, military style cap with another gold badge on the front.

This uniform is not like uniforms of Security Officers seen in 1970's vintage photos taken at Wheaton Plaza. In those photos, security guards appear to be wearing dark blue coats of military dress style, with lighter color trousers.

The larger established Security firms like Pinkertons, Brinks, Burns, etc usually issued guards uniforms that looked more like police uniforms in Dark Blue or Cadet Gray colors. Shirts were usually light blue with red patches on the shoulders. Badges were distinctly marked with the company's name - both on chest badge and hat. Hats were usually of the "8-point" style, rather than round military style.

The uniform worn by Welch appears to be possibly that of a smaller company, rather than one of the larger, nationally known and well established firms. Could be military surplus, such as Army parts with the gold badges added.

The badges do not appear to be the universal wide silver color shield with a star in the center which are available everywhere, but rather something that a company had made for issue along with the hat emblem.

Sometimes, a store, business, hospital, etc would have their own security force with their own uniforms, but at times they would supplement that force with guards from a security firm by a contract. This could be a regular practice, or a temporary thing due to increased security needs, for say a large sale or carnival, or event. In those cases, each "rent-a-cop" or contract guard would report both to the security officer at the business and to his own employer - usually on a standard report form for each shift of duty.
Click to expand...

Richard, you are great man. While I was trying to figure how to upload these pics, you said it all.

I think it is an unusual uniform too.

LE needs to get this picture on any social media of people from Montgomery and PG County, get to the hard to find people in their 60's and 70's who may recognize that uniform. I would go to the local news with the picture and call for help in identifying it.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

DNASolves

Who is Fairfield County Jane Doe (1993)?

Members online

... and 77 more.
Total: 256 (members: 78, guests: 178)

Online statistics

Members online
78
Guests online
178
Total visitors
256
Totals may include hidden visitors.

Forum statistics

Threads
608,999
Messages
18,248,400
Members
234,523
Latest member
MN-Girl
Back
Top